Is This Recovery?

They say it takes an average of two years to recover from an affair.

Next month will mark one year. The worst year of my life. As I inch closer to this "milestone," so many more thoughts and feelings and emotions and fears are cropping up, adding to the approximately 9 billion or so already in circulation.

This is absolute torture.

The more time that passes, the more I've begun to notice that for everyone else, the shock has worn off and life has gone on. Sure, you could argue that life is "going on" for me too, but not in the same way. I'm still here, but most days just barely, and some days only because I promised. Other people have the luxury of settling back into their own lives and routines. Other people get to forget that my entire life came to a screeching halt. I feel like I'm moving in slow motion, watching everyone else get on with their lives while I'm stuck living this nightmare that's only slightly less horrible than it was a year ago. I'm feeling all the same things and hurting in all the same places while the world spins on, completely oblivious. It feels like I'm losing touch and falling behind.

I can go through the motions, but that's all it is right now: passing the time and hoping that one of these days I'll wake up and it'll hurt a little less. And that's assuming that day will come at all. Today it feels like a dangerous thing to hope for, because all my broken pieces are all still just as broken as they've ever been. And just as painful.

It's terrifying, feeling this way with no end in sight. It's also exhausting.

Is this recovery? Because it feels more like dying to me.