I am done counting days.  I have come to the conclusion that counting days and reading things about how to deal with a break up first thing in the morning only helps for a short period.  The first few weeks it helped a lot.  I felt like I was not alone.  I was able to chat with people who were also struggling and I was proud that for the first time in my life I was able to stick to a no contact agreement I made with my ex.  It was a good choice…for the time.  Then something starting happening.  I was getting depressed.  I was crying out of the blue and felt myself sinking.  Some of the stories were making me worse not better.  The counting of the days was making me anxious.  I was focused on what would happen the first time I had any contact with him and could not stop thinking about how it may be terrible.  I was afraid to go places because I might run into him.  I was on constant alert and I was so tense I was starting having trouble sleeping.  I woke up thinking about the breakup because I got a reminder first thing to do my mending assignment and I thought about it right before bed when I did my check in.  So I made the decision after reading about the pros and cons of counting the days to stop.  I had made the 30 days we agreed on and I had started to heal.  I was ready to move on.  So I made the choice to send him a message we talked about when we made the agreement.  It was simple “I wanted to say hello and see how you are doing.”  I had been warned by my friends in the chat room that this would only make matters worse…what if he doesn’t respond …what if he says never contact me again… but the thing is those things did not matter because I was not sending the message because I wanted to open something up I was sending the message because I needed to move on.  He responded with a similar message and said he was doing OK and asked how I was.  I told him I am doing good and it was nice to hear from him.  That was it.  There was no discussion, no drawn out conversation.  I felt like a million pounds had been lifted off my shoulders and all that tension was just gone.  Yesterday I was able to focus and not think about him or the breakup for almost the whole day.  This morning I woke up feeling lighter and not burdened by being focused on mine and others pain.  I felt like I was finally moving again…I was not anxious or afraid anymore.  I felt strong and I had made choices that for me were the right ones.  I want to stress that this may not have worked for someone else.  Everyone is different and every relationship that ends is different.  I did the very best I could, I compromised and communicated but in the end it was just not a good fit.  That does not make either of us bad people.  It was time to let go of any resentment and just move on.  I want to live in today.  I don’t want to constantly look back on the past and what could have been different or focus on what I could have had in the future.  I have learned some valuable lessons and this relationship brought me closer to where I need to be in my life.  I am learning to love myself more and more.

This morning as I was unloading the dishwasher I picked up one of the spoons that a friend and I had nicknamed the exile spoons.  They were spoons I had loved because they are small and flatter and I need to eat slower and take in less food so they were perfect for me.  But the person I lived with at the time hated them.  I had to put them in another drawer, in exile, because they did not want to even get one by accident.  It made me realize that I had been doing the same thing.  I had put a person in exile in my mind.  I made sure I would never even accidentally  run into them which  made me think about them more.   I refused to hang out with or talk to anyone who was around them because I did not want to hear even one thing that might upset me.  I was not living my life fully because just like those exile spoons it was constantly on my mind.  It made me feel sorry for the person I had lived with who must have always been afraid one of those spoons would jump out of the drawer and into their mouth at anytime and it made me realize that I had made the right choice in ending the exile.  I don’t want to hang out with the exile spoon but I don’t want to be afraid either.  I no longer want to limit where I go and who I talk to.  I’m done being afraid.  I can make boundaries and decide when I am ready to go places and talk to people.  I am a strong amazing woman with an amazing life.  I can handle what the universe brings me.  There is evidence in that because of the things I have already lived through in this life.  So thank you universe for another lesson and another teacher who I walked with for awhile.

Now I am off to spend a day on set for a movie I am doing.  I can’t talk about it right now but I will post about the opening when we are allowed to.   🙂  My life just keeps getting better.