So DD anniversary finally came around. I guess I just need to rant. I've been dreading this day for weeks (months even). So I'm relieved it's finally here. It's a milestone of sorts I guess. I survived a year, I'm still here, functioning again, sort of. That's a win in my case.
When DD hit I decided to give myself 6 months to begin with. Not even my M, that was a whole different story, just myself. I was in such emotional pain, suicidal, PTSD, could not function. I completely broke, and in front of my teenagers at that, which I wish more than anything I could have prevented, but I was a blob on the bathroom floor, crying, wailing, for weeks. Months even. I immediately started IC twice a week at first. I was already on antidepressants for CPTSD from my childhood so that dose was upped. I could not eat and lost la lot of weight super quickly, lost 70% of my hair, sleep was impossible(even on sleep meds I got only an hour at most), I was not functioning at all.
So I told myself, just give it 6 months. Six months of complete agony just surviving minute to minute, and hopefully at some point hour to hour. I decided to lower my expectations as low as they could go, I knew the first six months would be pure survival, anything else was a bonus. But I gave myself six months to decide if I could survive this agony, until then just go with the flow. One breath at a time.
At 6 months I gave myself another 6. This time I decided that now the first 6 months were over, I would give it another 6 months where expectations would be to suffer slightly less, wail on the floor slightly less, but still accept that things would be an utter struggle. And then after that year, if things really, truly, were as bad as on DD I could re-evaluate my will to live, whether or not I could survive this hell. Every time I felt or thought 'I can not live with this' I can not ever get over this' 'This is impossible', I just pushed the decision to decide of that was really true forward in my mind, telling myself, you can decide when the year is up if that is true.
Well, here I am 365 days later, no longer suicidal, and knowing that yes I did survive. Somehow I survived, I am surviving it.
After about 7-8 months my physical symptoms (I had so, so many, doctor's at one point thought I had developed MS or some other neurological disorder) finally dissipated. I no longer need sleep meds and my appetite came back after a few months. I'm still not at the top of my game at work due to major brain fog and being so exhausted, but I can keep a job, I function. I no longer spend 9/10 nights on the bathroom floor wailing into a towel.
And lo and behold. I'm still married, I still live with my WH. Something I never thought could happen. Are we great? Far from it. But we are less shitty than a year ago and we are still trying. That's a win. And today also marks an entire year since he ended his A, since he last was in contact with the AP. So there's that. I'll take any win. 365 days since we restarted our M. I'm trying hard to turn this day around to that. The day the A-bomb hit is also the day we started rebuilding.
One year ago I just wished, in absence of the possibility to have the A undone, someone would knock me out for the first year so I wouldn't have to endure living until the pain was slightly less intense. I just wanted to fast forward through the first year or so, to a day when I would se SOME glimmer of hope, have even minutes of peace from the stabbing pain. So I'm glad to be on the other side of that first horrid year. I have no illusions that only the first year is difficult, but in my case, I truly believe the second can not be any worse than the first, even if there would be a second DD, just because now I know this didn't kill me. I look back at this year with grief, not only grief for the M but for the person I was that I lost. The mother my kids had that they lost since she turned into a blubbering, triggered, crying, raging, screaming unhinged version of herself this year that I wish they had never had to see. PTSD is no pretty thing.
But I survived. I pulled myself out of that dark hole with the help of hours and hours of IC, MC, TRE (trauma release exercises), EFT-tapping, meditating, journaling, crying, screaming, talking with a close friend,raging and working out. Lot's of working out. There was some wine and the occasional tequila involved as well I do admit. 
So cheers to me, high fiving myself for surviving the hell my WH put me in. Hoping for a slightly less horrible second year with more peace, some joy hopefully, and less time spent in survival mode.
