Out of the fog to face reality

I am not sure I even understand this but I am going to try and put it down to make some sense of it. Today, when I got up from bed it was like being released from a bad dream. That some of the fog has lifted. I do not really know where I have been the last seven months! I know I have been functioning - cooking, shopping, attending high school football games, showering, eating, sleeping, grieving, filling the van with gas, shoveling snow. But it is almost that I have been maintaining an illusion of functioning or going through the motions. The past seven months since the divorce was filed seem like some place of unreality. I think I was functioning but that only part of me was actually present in that functioning. Maybe to describe it as though I became two different parts of myself and one went into hiding and the other came out and did all the stuff that needed to be done. Looking back on the past seven months I see myself as just existing in survival mode and somehow managing to get through the days and then not remembering much of the specifics of the days or how I actually lived them. Does this even make any sense? To be half living? Maybe that was what I was doing, only letting myself experience half of what was really happening because I would not have been able to truly feel or deal with the all of it.

I certainly knew without any doubt that this marriage was completely over on July 7th but I wonder if some part of me kept that actual acknowledgment at bay until the settlement mediation on February 19th. I can only now describe this reaction as finding yourself coming to after being in a car accident for example, and looking around and surveying the damage and saying, "Now what?" I'm not sure I was capable of even acknowledging the wreckage remaining from the end of this marriage until now. It is like the dream state I have existed in (which might better be termed as not facing reality) served as some kind of protection. And without that protective shield I would not be able to now have the strength to face the damage and start picking up the pieces.

Today I am grateful:

1. That whatever state I was in the past seven months helped get me through an incredibly painful part of my life.
2. That I am doing my best to face this trying period of my life with honesty and not by running away (literally) as my husband did. Nor am I covering up my pain with drugs, alcohol or excessive intake of empty calories, although I did eat some extra French bread with lots of butter the night before mediation. And we'll just not mention that big bag of peanut M & M's that I seemed to be the only one eating around Valentine's Day - "Oh look, the bag is amazingly empty!"
3. That I am just alive! And still feeling and still living even though it hurts like hell!