big changes

[jamesG.1]

so, finally, after years and years of strain and complexity, my business partner and I are parting the ways.

Add to that at least another 2 years of work that just came in and finally, after so much doubt and worry, I'm ready to move out of the beachhead and into open country.

My feelings are very complex right now. Relief and vindication in many ways, but also the agony of C-PTSD ready to fill the void. So many wasted years and confidence-sapping work patterns. So much financial insecurity and on top of all that, the family and relationship trauma alongside it.

I had four major life issues in concert. Four individuals with bizarre behavioural patterns and a total unwillingness to compromise. One I may have weathered, two at a push, but four was just too much for me and I broke.

Seven years of crisis, 3 years of aftermath (so far). My health is still very erratic and unstable, both mentally and physically. My stamina is shot, my muscle mass has pancaked and my sleep patterns are up there with bats and moths. I've drunk too much, cried too little, become reclusive and mistrustful and have left many, many people behind.

But this is a big moment. It's the last of my four horsemen to go and the last industrial-sized compromise I will have to make.

Over the last years I have learnt far more than I have been able to carry out, having been trapped in a corner by contracts and habit. Now I can finally start to build my boundaries and chose who I give to and who I trust.

I'm still very much ill. My sleep patterns are exhausting and I have huge problems with concentration and memory, but I can now begin to control my own time and money and to factor in my symptoms and needs to begin living.

It's not a return to my old self, that's not how this works, it's a new self. Now I have to find things I love and that make me happy as I am and to simply embrace what comes next.

It's life, and living it is my biggest priority now.

[Rainagain]

Two years of work is a helpful security blanket, maybe it shows you are making the right choices?

The first priority for recovery is to get out of dodge to a place of safety, sounds like you have now managed to free yourself of the things which were damaging you, let recovery begin.

You are right to be thinking of your boundaries, getting to safety is the first hurdle, staying safe is the ongoing challenge, I practice drama avoidance, mixed results sometimes but you gotta try.

Well done James, you have done amazingly well.

[Blueberry]

  for you James. Rainagain expressed it well.