Two Steps Back

Ugh.  Here we are again.  D had a PO appointment yesterday and I drove along, being on spring break and all.  Usually when I go, I look at it as a rare opportunity to spend some quality time together in the car since it essentially takes all day, between driving to the PO's office (which is about 2 hours away from where we live now), then driving to his counseling class (which is an hour away from there), then home.  Normally I rush out of class, skipping lectures sometimes to get home in time to leave with him.  Yesterday, I was almost sick at the thought of going.  

I'm not sure why I was so upset about it--maybe because the past several times I've gone, I've convinced myself that there's just no way I have time to go in to the meeting with D.  I tell him each time that I'll have to use that time to study.  Usually, he asks me to go in with him once we arrive and by then I accede, knowing that he values the support so much.  The PO likes me, and likes when I come because he sees it as proof that D is establishing a support system and being held to honesty about what's happened in his past week, proof that we are tackling this problem together rather than (like on the last go-round) D just skipping along without tackling his problems at all.  So I usually go in, but I don't usually think about it until right at the moment when it comes time to go in.  I think that makes it easier because then I don't have time to concentrate so much on the fears--fear of being seen in the courthouse of my old city by someone who knows me, fear of the judgment that I'm sure people in the probation office make of me (the crazy wife who stayed with the sex addict, what an idiot/mental case she must be), fear of D being judged too harshly.  Yesterday I was feeling all of those fears from the get-go.  

D knew something was up because I cannot hide my feelings well.  For once, I was up front about my feelings, but that of course upset him because he was actually feeling really good about the day, with nothing negative to report to the PO.  We talked most of the way to the meeting about how lately I've just been feeling myself slip a little bit at a time.  In general, things have been going really well--I'm on break, I feel refreshed and happy, life is good--but in between those things I have been cracking a bit.  I have been negative, angry, reactive, and I have been falling back into that place where my worries and insecurities control me and I in turn become a control freak.  The insecurities have been hanging on my back whispering sweet-nothings in my ear for a month or two now, and for the most part I've been ignoring their presence but it's building and getting harder.  I've gotten frustrated with the lack of progress that's been going on for me--especially in light of D, who seems to be the model of progress lately.  It's obvious that he has a new outlook on life, that his reactions and thought processes have legitimately changed from his old way of thinking.  For a while, I felt that that was also true for me, but lately it's just been one step forward, two steps back.  

He encouraged me to think positively, like he'd been trying to do.  He gave some examples of things that have helped him change his thought processes.  He saw into the heart of the problem and encouraged me to let go of all the fears that I live in daily and just live.  I listened--but yet here I sit today feeling better but still not better.  And I know that all of this craziness is really making life worse for me and for D, because it's starting to get to the point where I'm just acting out again, trying to control everyone and everything around me and freaking out if any tiny thing upsets the perfect balance of what I've put in place.  I've tried praying, meditating, asking my higher power to help me let go of all this and find some means of crawling my way back to the peace I had a pretty good hand on a while back, but then the horrible negative thoughts creep their way back into my brain and here I am.  I'm going to try going back to my online COSA meetings, which I'd been neglecting for a while because of workload, but maybe that's what I need to get myself straight again.  At the very least, it can't hurt.