I thought I had been depressed for the last year.
But I’m finally getting the news that it wasn’t depression. It was complex trauma.
My ex and I were living apart. Him in our grand house and me in my little rental.
I had a trip I needed to go on and he was watching the dog. I went to pick her up and he decided to give me his obviously very rehearsed announcement, in our driveway, in the dark (because he hadn’t replaced the light bulbs in the carriage lights in the driveway… one of his only chores. 1 bulb of eight was working… it was symbolic and eerie).
He told me he was keeping the house, he had changed the locks and he was starting the divorce. And he whispered in the most sinister, evil voice “You’re going to get a lot of money. You’re going to be so happy with what I’m offering”. And then I heard a deer in the woods and he said “sometimes, we get deer here”. Like I hadn’t lived there for 10 fucking years and been the only one doing the yardwork near the said woods.
And he seemed to enjoy it. He had a smirk, he was so puffed up. So entitled. I didn’t recognize him AT ALL. All in MY OWN DRIVEWAY which I shoveled and cleaned and etc etc.
This was the narcissistic discard.*
He was smug, so cruel. I think he truly liked talking to me this way. It felt like the authentic him. This is who he really was and this is what he thought of me. 23 years and we didn’t even have a heartfelt conversation about it, there was never a conversation about it. So, without me giving him sex, I was trash. I was NOTHING.
That 10 minutes changed my life forever. It gave me clarity I’d never had before. It ripped away the illusion I had painstakingly kept alive for decades. And that illusion was that he was safe, I was loved, albeit in a strange way, and this was my home. Nope, nope and nope.
Meanwhile, I still loved him as a friend, I was offering to bring him food when he was sick, I was inviting him out to dinner and inviting him to see the dog. And he was an asshole about it. I regret offering him the olive branch SO MUCH, believing we could be friends… this moment, this night, this discard… in one moment it showed me that my 23 years of service to him meant NOTHING. And he was enjoying hurting me.
I had a panic attack a week later, went to the emergency room.
Had another panic attack and finally went on the Lexapro.
That entire year had a theme. And that theme was:
- I faked out my entire life. I don’t even know what it’s like to be on EARTH. I Think I lived in a fantasyworld every day of my life.
- Love didn’t exist. Forget it.
- I live in extreme sensitivity, empathy and sensing other people’s emotions. It feels like a prison.
- I don’t belong here.
- I don’t want to live in a world where everyone treats me like this. Like I’m nothing. Like I’m a burden.
- I can’t trust people and I can’t trust myself to decipher people. So, I opt out.
- Life isn’t for me. It never works out for me. I seem to make all the wrong decisions. So, I opt out.
Turns out I didn’t have depression. I was dealing with complex trauma, which mimics depression but it isn’t a chemical imbalance. It’s full body grief. It’s disillusionment collapse. The Lexapro didn’t fix it because there was nothing really to fix, I was having an awakening.
A fucking annoyingly LONG, complex, grief-filled awakening that I didn’t sign up for. Take me back to the fantasy.
So, the Lexapro dampened my emotional reactivity so I could survive the logistical brutality of the divorce, it was a life raft. But it didn’t actually solve anything. It just got me through the soul crushing work of the divorce shit.
So, awakening vs. depressions… the symptoms that point to awakening:
- I feel heavy and numb, but aware. Very, very aware.
- I am disconnected from desire, but deeply attuned to truth. I’m giving up fantasy for reality (sometimes I wish I hadn’t!!)
- I don’t want to “die”, but I don’t know how to be alive in a world where love doesn’t seem real.
- I’m trying to integrate reality into a life that avoided it for MY ENTIRE LIFE. I was living a lie, false self for my entire life. To feel safe and that I belonged. Because I was told I was inherently bad.
- I feel like I’m living in a Morrissey song. “In my life, oh why do I give valuable time… to people who don’t care if I live or die?”
*A narcissistic discard, oof. It’s dark, heavy… it’s EXACTLY what I went through:
- You’ve been devalued for months or years. Your contributions ignored, your needs minimized. You’re constantly doubting yourself. You’ve tried everything to “fix” the relationship.
- You start to reclaim yourself or question the dynamic. Maybe you set a boundary (ding ding ding!), stop performing (also, ding) or stop giving them constant praise. You’ve finally said, I matter, too.
- The narcissist senses control slipping… and decides you’re now useless. That’s when the discard comes. Abrupt. Unfeeling. Sometimes even cheerful. They may say things like:
- “I just can’t do this anymore.”
- “You’re the one who changed.”
- “You never really loved me.”
- or, like my ex did, whisper about money while literally standing in my driveway – in my life – handing me a check to leave the life that meant more to me than anything. Which is such an incredibly shitty, horrible, fucking terrible way to handle it.
- You’re left stunned. Not because the relationship was good – but because you sacrificed so much and stayed through so much pain. You thought that meant something. But the discard makes it clear:
- YOU WERE AN OBJECT TO THEM, NOT A PARTNER.
It was calculated, it was rehearsed. It just shows me he doesn’t really have a heart, possibly not a soul now that I see it. I could have NEVER pitched a divorce the way that he did. Never ever ever ever in a million years. Because I loved him and I saw his humanity and I wouldn’t want to hurt him like that. I would have honored our time together. I would have honored all of it. Fuck him for not seeing that.
I set boundaries, I started sticking up for myself. I had been shit on for so many years that I started acting out (meaning, I withheld sex).
I was threatening HIS illusion, he wasn’t getting HIS needs met… so he was going to annihilate me. (because he’s an asshole and he hates his mother).
And I wanted to sit in front of a fire with cocoa in hand and talk about how we loved each other, but maybe this was not a good match and let’s figure out how to move forward with grace and blah blah blah. Nope… he wanted to shred me to bits.
