I Agonize Over Everything

It's been over a week since the incident of John's bad behavior and will be a week tonight from when I found out. I'm still troubled by it, even though I feel a lot better and believe him when he tells me it was just an error and will never happen again. I just can't stop envisioning the whole thing in my head, and I wonder when that will all go away.

Though it seems a little foolish, I'm making him give away the shirt he wore that night. It is permanently seared in my memory as "the shirt he touched someone else in." I will never be able to look at that shirt without thinking about it, and though I think that's a flaw in my ability to cope with this whole thing, he's still doing it. He had no problem with it, didn't even put up the least bit of objection, so maybe it's not as silly as I think it is.

I still have the pictures. Though I don't like them, I can't bring myself to get rid of them either. Last week, I wanted to take them into counseling. Now I'm not so sure. Since he still says the main picture is innocent, I don't feel closure about it. Am I reading into it too much? I think I'm looking for someone to look at it and validate my feelings about it. At the same time, I don't want to show it to anyone. I don't want anyone to see what happened. Part of me wants others to rally around me and tell me I've been wronged though. I'm very torn about this. I'll probably take the pictures with me to counseling tomorrow, but I don't know that I'll show them. We will be talking about all of this though.

I'm really looking forward to counseling for what might be the first time since we started. We are working through this, but I think talking about it in there can only help, even if it does stir up the murky water a bit. John has been great the past few days, and I am a little concerned that this might reopen the wound, causing things between us to be strained again. I guess I think of it as cleaning things up though� like a bandage change of sorts.

The thing that most troubles me lately is how I feel about myself. This has caused me to question everything. I can't lose weight fast enough. I can't seem to look good enough. Nothing fits right or looks good. My hair is a mess and completely unappealing. I can't get my makeup to look remotely pretty. I'm entirely uninteresting. I feel like a fat, frumpy cow. My head knows that it wouldn't have mattered how I look or who I am; he would have made the same mistake. My heart doesn't feel that way though. It tells me that if I wouldn't have gotten so fat or let myself go so much, he wouldn't have done it. Essentially, I blame myself for not being good enough.

It's not something that hasn't always been there. Without going into grand (and boring) detail, I haven't felt attractive for a long time. It's not that I'm full of self-esteem when I'm thinner, but it's better. There are so many emotional factors involved in my weight and how I feel about it. I have been feeling particularly dull and ugly lately though, so John's mistake hit doubly hard.

Then there are the feelings of guilt for taking this so hard. So many women (and men) deal with so much more than I have. This would seem easy, even ridiculous to a lot of people. I hope I can come to that point, but I'm not there now.

In an effort to narrow in on something, I think my weight has become the target. Feeling that's the cause of so many of my troubles, or at least an indicator, I want to do something about it. My diet has changed drastically since last week, and I'm just now getting to a point where I think I might have it in control. Though initially the news sent me spiraling into another unhealthy direction, I think I've righted myself and turned out better than before. As much as I hate to say anything good came out of this whole thing, that is one.

There are other things too. John is much more attentive and patient. He's been better about keeping his defensiveness under control when we have argued. I feel a lot happier about our relationship, but at the same time I keep wondering if it's temporary. I guess it's the same thing about how I'm eating. Will we be able to hold these positive changes?

I'm just thinking too much. It's typical of me anyway, and something like this sure doesn't help. I'm not constantly obsessing over these things, but when they do come to mind, I dwell on it probably for longer than I should. Kind of like now. Maybe now that I have this off my chest though, I'll be able to move forward a little more. And with counseling tomorrow, I hope to be even better. I am making progress, and I recognize that for the good thing that it is.