Slippery slope

It's a slippery slope down to the pit of misery, and I find like in some twisted emotional chutes and ladders game, that I never know what one little thought might trigger the downward spiral.  For example, I was looking at my kindergartner's journal today that he brought home on this last day of school.   Lots of entries about zombies and volcanoes and a few about what his birthday will look like.  Innocent musings.  Happy pictures and short sentences filled with the simple anticipation of turning six.  I couldn't help but think how that will be the first of the boys' birthdays that we aren't together.  Now we have to navigate this distasteful course of the divorced family birthday situation.  We've always had home birthdays too.  We've never really been that gymnastics place or pizza fun land restaurant family.  Too expensive I've thought and better to just be able to do it ourselves at home.  And we've thrown some amazing parties for the boys.  Hawaiian and Legos and Star Wars and Roahl Dahl, and more.  And I can't imagine another party like any of those again.  At least not with both parents involved.  And what's bound to be more important to the boys than sharing their birthday with both parents?  So I guess we get to become one of those gym  or swimming pool birthday families where we can both show up and not talk to each other and smile and hug on our boys for their special days and ugh.  Awful.  Ok, so I guess it's only "awful," because it's so not my vision of what I want for my family.
Anyhow, thoughts of my now-first grader's upcoming birthday made me wonder all of a sudden then if he (my soon-to-be-ex-husband) postponed the inevitable back in January because of Number One's birthday.  Did he stall and not leave right before my trip to Hawaii in Februrary?  Had he given up all the way back in December but didn't want to make it official until after Hanukkah?  Or then until after NO's birthday?  Maybe it was the same with Thanksgiving.  So when did he give up?  When did he cross that line?  I obsessively want to know.  When did he stop loving me?  And then I go to the inevitable: Did he ever really love me to begin with?  And there you have it, from looking at a kindergartener's school work to wondering if he ever really loved me to begin with in no more than two minutes.  It's taken me longer to write all this down than the amount of time the thoughts bulldozed their way through my brain.
I try to stop the downward spiral by reminding myself that I'm pretty certain he loved me to the best of his ability for a good time.  I have evidence. Cards. But that reassurance is weak in the face of such pain.
Good thing I'm going to see the therapist tomorrow.  Maybe she can give me some tools for shutting down this emotional spiral.