unable to move on

Merry Xmas !!

One thing people do not realise is that the secret weapon is actually ourselves.
We were all confident people getting on with our lives until ONE other person pulled the rug from under our feet.
I am never sure why just ONE person can do it to you but somehow they manage to kick away all the props that hold your life together.
Its like being in a tunnel . The tunnel collapses and you can see no way out but you do know the direction you must go to get out. What do we do. Sit until help arrives ? That could be a long time and nobody knows where you are. So slowly you lift one rock at a time out of the way until you spot a glimmer of light. That glimmer of light means you have hope. So you lift a few more rocks out of the way, one at a time. Yes some more rocks will fall and try to fill in that tunnel but you realise that if you stick some props in the tunnel will not seal up completely.

Gradually , one at a time you remove more rocks until you can get to the other side. Yep you may still be in the tunnel but you can see the light at the entrance so you run towards it. And finally you escape !!

A lot of us (me included) sat in the tunnel because were were afraid to go out into the light. The tunnel represented a degree of safety even though we were aware of the dangers of sitting there. Once we ran out into the light it really wasn''t as bad as we expected !!!

Make for that light !!!

Nice analogy Polar, and I agree.

There is one thing I disagree about, in my case anyway. ''Confident people getting on with our lives''. Things were not perfect and i was not happy in my marriage, but I did not allow myself to see that. I would never have left him in a million years, but looking back I should have done so long ago. I realise now that there was a sense in which I was in a tunnel in my marriage. And it got tunneller as time went on. So I am (in some ways) grateful now that he left and the tunnel collapsed around me. It took me a long time to begin to make my way out. As you say, the work of clearing the avalanche is all ours (though others can advise and listen). I have begun some of the heavy lifting, and i am starting to see where the light comes in and am very grateful. Previously I was in the dark but didn''t quite know it...

Polar and Eliza, I love both the metaphor of the tunnel and am with Eliza on the marriage/ tunnel thing. Denial is so powerful when it''s in operation isn''t it. Like Polar says you get used to the darkness.
In my case, I was the last person to see that the tunnel was going to collapse. It''s an interesting metaphor because a tunnel breaking up implies daylight getting in, almost as if life has a way of correcting things eventually whether we are ready to come out or not.
I have been meaning to write something about the unbearable lightness of being. I really cannot feel sad anymore about our divorce anymore, try as I might, this has left a vacuum and it''s very uncomfortable. The pain has mostly gone but I had got used to the pain, the rock clearing but what the heck do you do in the sunshine?