Heather and Tai - where are they now?

Tonight's part one of the epic reunion episode will be filled with lookbacks at the past six months, tears, laughs, and some bombshell never before seen footage!

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When you last saw Heather and Tai, Tai was packing up and moving out of the marital home... so what has happened over the past six months since the cameras stopped rolling? Ok yes, for a start, I've been watching WAY too much reality TV. I mean, that SCANDOVAL, am I right? (Vanderpump Rules anyone? No? Ok, never mind)

I may or may not have said this before, but I tend to shut down when I get overwhelmed. I've learned over the past couple years in therapy that some of this is a trauma response, and some of this may be an over stimulation thing related to my ADHD. I think Tai's move out caused SUCH an incredible emotional burnout that I crawled into a weird cocoon that resulted in my totally abandoning this blog (and in the meantime, I also started two other ones... you know, two new hyperfixations - another byproduct of ADHD, as I've learned from therapy and TikTok).

In the interest of time, and getting us back up to present day, I'll just hit some of the high (and low) lights. One of the things that I've been weighing, while planning this post, is just HOW much of the business to expose. In the weeks and months following Tai's moving out, things were really good. We decided to put a pin in filing the divorce until June 1st, 2023, with the promise that we'd focus on working on fixing the problems at the root of our separation, and in June we'd decide if we were making progress or if we wanted to push forward with the divorce or if we were going to map out some sort of reconciliation.

As with all honeymoon phases, this one seemed to lose its sparkle too. I'm not sure if this was the chicken, or the egg, but I went through a period of high stress and anxiety. It was equal parts situational, and pharmaceutical. My psychiatrist likes to say that while medication may be a science, it's not an exact one. Truer words... In any event, as I said above, when I get overwhelmed, I go into shutdown mode. That was the stage I'd reached - I was in full "burnout" in the actual clinical sense of the word. I started to do what I do best and went into survival mode to the exclusion of all else. I didn't have room for anything other than eating, sleeping, and going to work and even at those, I was only marginally effective.

One of the interesting things about relationships is that they say opposites attract. Tai and I could not be any more different in so many ways. How we respond to stress and how respond to each other's stress are perfect examples of this. I needed to be left alone - every fiber of my being was SCREAMING to be allowed to crawl into a dark hole. Tai's instincts were FORCING him to be there for me, when that is the last thing I wanted or was able to accept. The more he tried to be there, the more I wanted to peel my skin off of my body. It all came to a head with a "pop over" one morning. I lost it, said mean things, got to see the hurt look in his eyes - all of the things that I'd hated about "us" over the past several years. And in that moment I realized that in our "honeymoon phasing," we'd been having fun, but had done no work. Nothing had changed. We hadn't changed, our issues hadn't even been discussed, let alone been resolved.

Another interesting thing about how different we are is how we get over things. I uh, just don't... So somewhere along the line when I'd cooled off and we were chatting again, to me it was glaringly obvious that things had taken a GIANT step backwards, and it felt irreparably broken to me. However to him, I'd cooled off, therefore things were back on track. THAT was a fun conversation... The end result being yes, this is done, we are taking the pin OUT and filing the paperwork. I won't speak for him, but I know for me, this was completely soul crushing - I had spent two years coming to peace with the loss of my marriage, and then I'd found new hope that perhaps we'd reconcile, and then suddenly that hope was gone and I found myself mourning the loss of my marriage anew. This threw me into an incredible depression. Again, this may be only in part situational, but it was certainly a big part. My biweekly therapy sessions turned into sob sessions. I'm sure my therapist was startled by the shift in my demeanor and I know my treating psychiatrist was very alarmed. It was so bad, it was rubbing off on my poor crazy lady pup too. She tends to be very very anxious anyway, and she's incredibly attached to me. My depression was causing her to become so distressed that she developed stress colitis badly enough that I ended up having to take her to the vet. I told the vet "ONE of us needs more medication - I'm not sure which of us it is... maybe BOTH of us!"

After Opha went to the vet, I went to the human vet, and once both of us had our meds adjusted, we both settled back down. Once I was calmer, I had time to think more rationally, and I realized that I just didn't know how to have a life that didn't have Tai in it, but I didn't know how to carve out a life with him in a healthy way if we weren't going to work on our issues. If I tried to talk about the ugly stuff, he'd shut down. My discussion style is fight, and his is flight. It doesn't make for particularly productive conversation. One of the things I'd raised initially when we'd talked about potentially reconciling was couples therapy. We never actually made it happen. I spoke with my personal therapist about it and decided that the only way I'd be able to move on was if I was able to put a bow on some things one way or another, and I didn't know how to do that without getting help navigating the tough conversations. I stopped short of calling it couple's therapy - I didn't want us to go into it with the expectation of the end result being reconciliation. Rather, I wanted the end result to be open communication, resolution of long standing and deep seeded issues, and a health foundation for whatever our new relationship would look like.

So that's where we are. Today is Monday, June 19th, 2023 - we've just had our 5th therapy session together. This blog came up in our session and I decided it was time to revive it. I find writing cathartic and I think it's good, if sometimes painful, to be able to go back and see where we were vs where we are now. Our first two therapy sessions were pretty rough - we still hadn't really sorted through the issues from round two of "yes, we are moving forward with the divorce" and those sessions were about that. They forced a lot of really good, raw, painful, important conversation. As we've progressed through therapy, our "between the sessions" communication has gotten a lot better and we have generally been a lot better too.

Today's session was around whether or not we pull the trigger on filing the paperwork. What that means, what it looks like, what the implications of that are, why the (my) hang-ups are about being divorced. I talked a lot about how irritating it is to me that nobody acknowledges how hard being married is... how scary it is suddenly know that you're "locked in" and it's not as simple as just calling it quits. Today was a good day, and this past week was a really good week. There are going to be more tough weeks and tough sessions too. And once again, I've resurrected this blog to use as my personal diary, and you're welcome to come along for the ride!