I got DF'd in 2002, about 6-8 weeks after getting my dog. For quite a while, with that initial severing of anything/anyone I'd ever known growing up, she wa the only thing I had.
Since then, like many, I pulled myself up out of the muck the org leaves us in and built a life for myself.
Yesterday I had to put my dog to sleep. It was sudden, unexpected. And it's been a HUGE smack in the face...of just how much life has changed, I've changed, since then.
I think growing up seeing SOOOOO many people struggle and one way or another always seem to filter back to "the truth", part of me has been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something to happen, externally or internally, that would put me back.
Her death, at least in this first day after, has created the opposite feeling in me. A feeling of.....WOW....look how far we've come, how long it's been. And how FAR we've come. The timing of her departure now instead feels like more fuel for my fire to continue building the life I've worked so hard on thus far.
I don't even know if any of this is making any sense or if I'm just rambling. If so, my apologies.
Anyway....has anyone else ever had that moment where you realized just far you'd come, and that while it's a moment of satisfaction that you made it out, and that now you're just getting warmed up essentially?