Itchy Triggers

This past week has been filled with triggers.  Dec. 5 is DDay so it's no wonder.  I've been wrestling with a lot of anxiety and depression, which is sadly "normal" for this time of year, but compounded by last year's happenings.
Most of the triggers are little, but a biggie was H getting a text at 2am.  It was his day off and we were sound asleep.  He rolled over and turned the sound off on his phone.  Boom.  I was gone.  Seriously gone.  It started off as a knot of fear in my belly, and before all was said and done, it escalated into H and I having a full blown argument.  I know better than to try to talk to him when he's just woken up or extremely tired, and he knows better than to try to "reason" with my (often) unreasonable fears.  And still we persisted.
It was a rough night.  Dec. 5 of last year is when he got the text that changed our lives in the wee early morning hours.  As it turns out, it was the chick he works with who gets too flirty with him and while the text was purely work related and innocent, it still pissed me off even when I was "reasonable" again.  Her BF dumped her for her friend not too long ago and I want to call her out on her pyscho jealousy that she displayed afterward and say, "Can you at ALL see where the hell I'm coming from?"  But I feel like it wouldn't do anything but stir the pot.  Who knows. *shrug* If she EVER sends him another text that even hints at being inappropriate, I will definitely confront her myself.
The other major "triggery" moment that left me unreasonably miserable was when a friend caught me on Skype a couple of days ago and decided to confide in me that she was, in essence, the OW.  It's a long, sticky story, but the gist is that she started flirting with someone at work, left her husband, started a relationship with this guy from work, and this other guy didn't leave HIS woman.  Now his girlfriend is pregnant and it doesn't look (to me?) like he's going anywhere, but he still continues his relationship with my friend.
Now - I guess I should disclose that I am the "sounding board" for a lot of friends.  When people ask for advice, I try to be fair but I also don't soften any blows.  I tell it like it is.  However, if people just need to emotionally puke, I'm there with a bucket and a warm cloth and I don't make any comments or judgements at all.  As such, I've been the "safe place" for people to go if they wanted to confided big secrets.  It's been very flattering to be that person.  It's been very comfortable most of the time.  (I say most of the time because often it was the sort of secret that involved a mutual friend, which left me uncomfy.)  At any rate, I found it especially difficult to just catch my friend's emotional puke and more than once caught myself wanting to scream, "YOU WHORE! What the hell are you doing!?"
I didn't. 
I did ask some very direct questions like, "Does it bother you the devastation you are going to cause his GF when she finds out?"  Not surprisingly, she said no.  As many OW feel, the GF "deserves" this because she's *clearly* "not enough" for her man.  My friend didn't much like it when I pointed out that clearly she wasn't either or he'd have picked her. 
She's heavily in "the fog" - she ignored my question and instead went on a big swooning soliloquy (I'd lost ability to listen at that point) about how wonderful he was and how he told her he loved her and how this was *DIFFERENT* than anything else she had ever experienced... and on. And on.  They're soul mates.  (Hmm... I've heard that one before.)  She can tell him ANYTHING.  (Yep, sounds suspiciously like the emails OW wrote to H.)  She trusts him IMPLICITLY - even though he's lying to his GF and still lives with his GF.  But she knows, in her heart of hearts, it was the right thing to leave her husband for this other guy.
Okkee.  Nothing I say is going to change her mind.  It was a rough conversation for me, though.  She doesn't know the details of H's A.  For that matter, I don't think until last night I had bothered to tell her about the A.  When I started to mention that most A's start out as "just friends" (because, of course, hers was DIFFERENT because it wasn't just about sex... uh huh, heard that before, too) she went into heavy denial, so I pulled way back and just let her go and sort of "checked out."
Makes me sad that I can't be there for her in any useful way.  I can't even offer her objective advice, and what advice I can offer her falls on deaf ears anyway.  I realized very quickly that holding the puke bucket wasn't going to be an option again.  I let her go last night, but I won't be able to listen to her go on and on like that again without hurting my own well being.  I won't do that.
In brighter news - H made an effort to drag all the Christmas stuff out.  He left it out for awhile hoping I'd take the initiative, and I told myself that if he made the first move I'd run with it, but I just couldn't.  Things sat.  And sat.  Messy piled up boxes everywhere.  H was dismayed, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  Finally, yesterday he said, "I want to make a date to put up the outside Christmas lights tomorrow before I go to work."  Inside, my heart shrank up a little and my tummy got that knot of fear in it, but outside I said, "Alright.  I'll set aside time."
Related - my oldest son mentioned wanting to fill the first sock.  (We do a sort-of-but-not-quite-Advent-thing with socks we decorated ourselves to count down to Christmas.) It's a tradition I started years ago so we'd have something that was *OURS* - just for our family.  Also, because H has always dropped the ball during the holidays, this gave him 25 (yes, 25 because we goofed and made 25 socks instead of 24) chances to run with it, instead of just ONE day to get things right.  It has been something we ALL looked forward to, but I had spaced it this year til my son brought it up.  It was touching that he not only remembered but wanted to take the lead on it.  As it turns out, he's in a play tonight and so he put tickets for me and his brother and sister (H is working) into the sock for us to open.
Whiiich, of course meant I had to get the freaking socks up. Heh.  I did.  Once I got started, a bunch of decorations started going up, too.  Once I started, I just didn't want to stop.  Some of it was hard.  Especially when H and I did the outside lights.  Last year I refused to take them down so they stayed and stayed foreverty ever.  Seriously, they stayed well into spring and to the point where everything that was outside got damaged and had to be replaced this year.  I was recovering from surgery so I had that as an excuse of why I didn't take the lights down, but there was more to it than that.  They symbolized all I believed to be true and all that wasn't.  They were the past I longed to hold on to.  They were everything I thought was right before I realized it was wrong.  They had gone up before I had found out what had gone down.
It was good that H made the effort and sort of dragged me by the hand through the motions.  I wish I could have been more enthusiastic, but I'm glad we muddled through it together. 
H has a work thing he has to go to on the 5th.  More triggery triggers.  Thankfully, it's short and doesn't involve OW.  I plan on going with him and we're going to hit a favorite sandwich shop before and then spend some time together after.  I don't know if he realizes what the 5th is, but when I told him what I wanted to do on that day he was enthusiastic, so I guess it doesn't matter.
Except to me.
On we go...