Tmrw is his b-day, will move there soon AND I'm about to get my period...really emotional

Thanks, but I'm about to start crying & I have to teach a class. I'm an emotional mess. I'm not so proud of myself. I miss the 'nice guy' and am still remembering the D&D like it was yesterday. : ( Thanks for all your hugs of support. -Leah

You're so kind. Honestly, I don't feel strong right now, and that's okay. It's too hard trying to feel good about myself. I just need to make it through each day and be a half-way decent teacher and get ready for my move. Yes, 2010 was one of the worst years I've had as an adult... not just because of the ex-N, but lots of other things too. Your ex-N doesn't deserve a Christmas present... do you really have one ready for him? I do hope I can find my heart in the Bay Area. If I don't rediscover who I am there, I'm not sure where else I will. I won't contact him tomorrow. But I'm to be thinking about him all day, and it sucks. I'm grateful that you and all the other gals are here to provide support, and if I'm freaking out tomorrow, when I have short breaks, I'll check out the board to remember why I shouldn't contact ex-N. I'm glad you're feeling better... it gives me hope. You're kicking a**! You're awesome. Thanks for being so supportive. Big hug, Leah

Just re-reading my post a few minutes ago brought me to sobbing tears. Especially the part that I wrote about accepting the tragedy of these disordered people...it's such a loss for them and for us and for everyone they come into contact with.I think there's a lot of deep sadness inside me about that, about this most recent ex-N, about my mom, about my dad (he seems to have some symptoms of NPD, too...BPD/NPD couple, I think)... I am an empath, you got that right. And I have a really hard time separating my feelings from everything else. My moon sign is Cancer, which is the most emotional of all the moon signs; it represents my inner world of feeling. I really need to learn how to tease out feelings from thoughts from reality. I'm not good at that, and I think that comes from growing up in such a crazy childhood home. I grew up in a war zone where nobody else had their feelings in check, and I was to terrorized, but all he did was live in my feelings... or when I dissociated, in my head. As an adult, I'm embarrassed to say that I really have a hard time separating my thoughts from my feelings in a way that brings me forward in my life with wisdom. I'm hoping to get better at that. I'm taking your word for it about getting better. I know I'm better than I was a month ago, because a month ago I was on the verge of tears while teaching, and was afraid I'd cry in front of my class. Now I just think of ex-N during most of class, and often have a knot in my stomach, and sometimes feel like crying, but I don't cry in front of my class. So I guess that's a sign of improvement. I still cry on the subway, morning commute, evening commute or both. I still miss the illusion of who I thought he was, and when I'm consciously aware of doing that (which is rare), I try to counter the narc fog with memories of moments when he was abusive or inappropriate. So I am getting better. It just feels different than I'd like it to feel. And I feel like I've changed permanently. I have trouble trusting anyone. A repeat visitor from my moving sale came to pick up some furniture tonight, and because he sent some urgent text messages that sounded a bit odd, when he came upstairs to my apartment at 10 PM, I made sure I was on the phone with a friend and that a chair was holding my apartment door open so my neighbors could hear everything. Even though I had met this man two days before and felt perfectly safe around him that day, tonight he just had to send me a few strange urgent text messages, and I was afraid and guarded and untrusting. Maybe this should have always been my 'normal,' but for me, being this careful and on guard doesn't feel normal to me. But post ex-N, I feel this way all the time when I'm around men. So I just feel like I'm living on a different planet, in a different terrain. I'm really uncomfortable, and I'm really sad because I feel like I can't reclaim whoever I was before this recent D&D and betrayal. But maybe this new 'me' with tougher boundaries, a lot of skepticism, and a loss of naivete... is a healthier, upgraded version of myself? It's very uncomfortable, so it's hard to imagine this is good, but I know from experience that sometimes the very things that are uncomfortable are the very things we need to sit with or be with. Ugh. I'll try to remember all the confidence you and the other gals have in me, because these days I find it hard to tap into that. My depression is still pretty bad and doing routine things still doesn't seem to come easy. And I'm just gonna make that okay. I'm just taking it day by day, and if taking baby steps finally gets my a** to California, then baby steps it will be. It's the best I can do right now. Thanks for all your support, you're awesome, Leah

Believe me, I've been doing soul-searching for weeks around this whole move. I've been asking myself the same questions that you just asked me. I've applied to grad school at Berkeley but I won't know if I got in until February or March. And if I get into Berkeley, it won't start until August. I admittedly tell people, "I'm going on a wing and a prayer." I'm going now because I've lived in this city for over 14 years as an adult, and almost 8 years as a child... over 20 years. In the last six years in the city, I've gone through hell. Major physical challenges, a week long hospitalization last February, stressful jobs, huge financial loss, major debt...the list goes on. 2 1/2 weeks ago I had dinner with my oldest friend. She's known me for 25 years. I looked at her and said the following, "you know that I've been really depressed since the breakup a few months ago. I don't think I am of sound mind right now. I'm worried that have poor judgment because I'm so emotional right now. I'm moving to California when I don't have a job, I have no guarantee of grad school admittance, and I don't have a lot of money. Talk me out of it. You're one of my oldest friends; tell me I'm making the wrong decision." She smiled at me and told me that it was the best decision she had seen me make in over a decade. She reminded me that my life has been stagnant in this city for most of the last 10 years... but I have been avoiding making big changes in my life, out of fear, for many many years. She told me that she wouldn't talk me out of it, and that if I didn't leave the city, then should be worried about me. And she reminded me that if things didn't work out over there in the Bay Area, I have several dozen friends to move back in with over here on the East Coast. I also believe in divination tools. Several of my close friends and I have all used pendulums to determine if I should move to California; all of them said 'yes,' a million times. : ) In fact, I asked my pendulum if I should move to California BEFORE I visited my ex-N. I got a 'yes' for moving to California several weeks before I even visited him... and at that time I laughed at the pendulum, because I had never visited California before, and I didn't understand. So this move to California, on an energetic level, has been in the works for months. I've come to feel that my ex-N doesn't energetically own that area, which happens to be a pretty wide geographical area. The chance of me running into him is pretty small, especially since he lives in a very specific area that I will probably never visit. So don't get me wrong, I had nagging doubts up until yesterday. In fact, I'm still scared sh**less to go, and there's a part of me that doesn't want to go, but I know that staying in this city any longer could make my health even worse, and could keep me from connecting to energy that is more supportive of who I am and what I'm supposed to do in this life. So there is a part of me that doesn't want to go and wants to stay here in my comfortable space that I'm familiar with. But that's the only reason why I would stay - because it's familiar and comfortable...and I'm realizing that that's not a good reason to keep staying "where I'm at," both geographically and mentally. I've gotten "stuck" here, on many levels, and I think the only way to get "unstuck" is to shake up my world, and this move is really the perfect opportunity for that. I have a strong feeling that I'm going to do a lot of crying when I get there. A lot of places will remind me of him. But my gut tells me that there's a new life for me there, and if I don't go now, I may not have the chance again... or at least for a very long time. I hope that background information helps clarify why I'm going. Thanks for all your caring and concern and support. Hugs and thanks, Leah