I realize that this is part of the coming out of trauma thing, but I can’t pretend that everything is ok or that everything is going to be ok.
I lied to myself about love with a man. It took SO MUCH for me to stay with that man for so long. I lost myself, I had sex I didn’t want to have, I looked the other way and forgave and forgave and forgave. I should get a ribbon that says #1 cognitive dissonance champion. I went against my values, instincts, comfort and repressed my anger and who I am as a fucking person to make sure he could live stress free. He tried my patience and my soul almost daily. I’m surprised I’m not riddled with ulcers or cancer. I kept quiet, I kept the peace, I let him be a hypocrite, feed off my energy, not thank me and literally disrespect me every day I was with him. I know in the end that it’s my fault for staying, it’s my fault for putting up with it, it’s my fault for silencing myself. But if I even dipped my toe into showing up as myself, I was shut down. By a large, loud man who believed he was stronger and superior. God, I wish I would beat him at his own game, just once. To have the self confidence to be WRONG so fucking wrong, so often and so confidently. What a gift, truly.
Anyway, romantic love doesn’t feel real. Not for me at least. I can’t lose myself again like that and I have yet to find a man who sees how I express myself, how colorful my world is and not cringe or try to clip my wings. Not one. Every single man in my life has had a comment or a look or a change in energy with me. So, my idea of love is gone. Dead. I give up. I know now I will never have a true partner in life. And that’s ok. For the first time in my life, I’m living alone and I honestly like it.
I was hoping my parents would grow up and show up for me. This is the lowest I have ever been in my life for an extended period of time. They haven’t put on their parent hats and tried to comfort me or be there for me. Surprisingly, my dad has gotten the closest to this. But he still gets annoyed that I’m not doing what he says. “If I was a woman your age and single, I would be dating nightly! To have the power to get that much attention from men would be awesome!” Ewww. So many layers of eww. The dynamic with my ex husband perfectly mirrors the one I had with my mother. She was the exhausted single mom victim and I was the needy, thankless kid. So I felt guilty, responsible for her well being and frame of mind, mood etc and tap danced accordingly. I took it on starting at age 3 or 4. I didn’t understand and I felt shame when she wasn’t in a good mood, I blamed myself and took up the task to fix it. There’s no logic for this other than I was 3 or 4, she was overwhelmed with life and needed me to stay in my room and be quiet or be useful and quiet. I internalized that. It’s my burden to carry… how I relate to her, the irrational triggers I have from that age are mine to heal and fix. I totally own it. But today, right now, I find her energy to be incredibly toxic, selfish and she pushes my buttons in a way that no other human can. Again, it’s not her fault. She is too oblivious and delicate to hear this, so I let it be. But I will never have a mom. I will never find comfort in my mommy. I can accept that. But undoing the trauma that the very immature part of my brain holds has been tricky. She triggers it. She makes my insecurities and sadness flare up. So, I need to figure out a way to handle this because talking to her feels like being held at gunpoint.
I’m too much for friends. I’m on this self discover journey and it’s been all consuming. Like, totally all consuming. That’s why I started this blog, because this is all I think about. Some days I’m so proud of myself for the articulate vision and some days I want out of this brain and body because I’m desperate to have some peace. I want to have other interests, I want to be blissfully ignorant and be that lobotomized wife again. Sitting here, in reality, my rose colored faked out world burned to the ground… I fucking hate it here. It’s so loud and slaps me in the face minute by minute, hour by hour. It’s the matrix after the red pill. This world SUCKS. That all said, I’ve isolated myself from friends because I’m a downer, boring, obsessed on sad shit. I’m an asshole. I get it. I’m saving them from all of this. I would hate being around me right now.
My art is boring, I don’t like it anymore. I don’t want to paint anymore. With the possibility for romantic love gone, not wanting to be around friends, not wanting to travel, just feeling like life is unsafe and a slog and that I made it something it wasn’t… being creative, putting beauty into the world etc feels like a huge lie. It’s a lie. And the escape and expression I used to get from it has lost its shine.
I’m hyper sensitive. I can feel everyone else’s emotions, energy etc. I used to avoid it, but now I can’t. So I can sense how shallow people are, how asleep they are, how tuned out and swept up in numbing out they are. Most people aren’t present. Or, they were like me, chasing love, chasing acceptance, chasing attention. But when that is gone, when you don’t really respect the people you are desperate for attention from now (your parents, your spouse, any suitors, most of your friends) it’s like… I don’t want that anymore, I was participating in a game I no longer find joy in or comfort in. I opt out. I don’t want to connect with shallow, superficial. I don’t want the fake, shitty version of me to please the shitty version of you. Conversations about Coke Zero, super bowl commercials, traffic, politics. Fucking boring and stressful. Your information probably isn’t unbiased, your anger is triggering, our inability to do anything is frustrating… I feel inept, hopeless and just claiming that I am no longer ignorant of suffering isn’t enough. Right now, if I can’t do anything about it, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to hear that Sarah McLachlan song anymore. I can’t handle it. I’m too raw at this moment. And I know that makes so many people not respect me, and I need to be okay with that. **IF** I had a new purpose, it’s going to help people get out of shitty relational patterns, see their worth sans any other human and navigate an authentic life. I must be free of the distractions that will derail that. I must focus on healing and releasing the pent up emotional trauma before I will be good for anyone or anything again. After I get an handle on that, I want to make millions to donate to saving the animals.
I’m not going to off myself. But to not find joy in anything other than coffee, pastries, my dog and writing? Bleak. I get it.
I’m hoping to find something that will get me excited again. But literally everything I pursued was based on a lie. Everything I wanted was based on needs that weren’t met when I was a kid. I was desperate for love, validation and acceptance. So everything I did was to earn that, like tokens. Now that the tokens have no value to me… I have no idea who I am or what the new token will be.
So, right now, life is a wasteland. But I see it as a wasteland of my own making, my own choices coming back to haunt me. I guess I can just say read this as a cautionary tale.
Everything you allow, every time you sacrificed yourself for someone else, every lie you cover up for someone, every time you are uncomfortable to benefit another person, every time you disregarded the consequences because you had some desperate need to fill… it doesn’t just disappear. It comes back and you have to pay for it. I’m not saying it’s all your fault. You are human. But please recognize your humanity and stop trying to bury it. We need connection, healthy connection, love, validation and that thing… that thing that makes us feel safe and whole. Please stop pushing it away, saying your stronger than that or that you are the only fucking one who doesn’t need it. You do need it. You are human, you aren’t weak. We need to embrace these vulnerable parts of ourselves. Denying it will just make it bigger and harder to deal with later. Guaranteed.
So, this is rock bottom. I see da plane, boss.
