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The day I walked out from my 3 week life changing experience, I was walking on a cloud. I had not felt that good, alive and ready for life in many years. I was ready to take on anything. Yes, I could hear the warning from one of the OT’s ringing in my ears. “The world have not change, only you” “blah, blah”, what ever, I will be changing it myself. Everything is going to be perfect. What does she know in anyway.
Week 1 was fantastic, I stood up for myself, I was confident, I said no and it felt great. I was changing where my life was heading. I was more important than anyone else, and if I was taken care off, everyone else around me would be to. The perfect plan, the perfect recipe, what could possibly go wrong. Well, the short answer… EVERYTHING apparently. (Que, the sound of shattered glass, demolishing buildings and roaring earthquakes as my life comes crashing down). As you have come to imagine already, my head and my reality are generally not on the same page.
Suddenly people walked circles around me. I was called bossy and pushy by my own husband, people just avoided me. Well as anyone with RSD will know this sent me into a complete spiral. The rejection was way more than I could handle. This also made people nasty, and tried to portray me as something I am not. I was being accused of cheating and eventually my marriage started falling apart and one fateful Sunday morning my husband left. Note that all of this happened over a course of 3 weeks, not months, not years. Weeks.
Turns out I cannot change the world. I can slowly make changes to my own, to better my life and those around me. I can also not take my own trauma and dump and accuse everyone around me of it. Like the saying goes, “Do not bleed on people who did not cut you”. I had put my boundaries up for everyone, not just the people I needed to. My attitude was that, if you wanted to be apart of my life, you better learn how to climb.
My husband was suddenly faced with a brand new person. When he met me I was young, broken and in need of rescue. Always strong and independent, but needy. No he did not pity me, we have had an amazing life thus far. We just clicked, we were meant to be.
Suddenly everything I have done for the past million years that I have know him, due to my trauma, became visible to him. The accusations and crap that he was told about me cheating did not help the situation. Suddenly he became needy, invaded my space, which felt like he was becoming controlling, which made me push away even further, which made the rumors seem more real, which made him more controlling, which made me even more uncomfortable, more selfish and then came the accusations and the flash backs from my past, which as a form of punishment to him, I tried accusing him of, I tried so hard to portray him to be that same person who hurt me. Suddenly we became each others worst enemies, but it was not because we did not love each other, it was because neither of us wanted to be rejected, neither of us wanted to be left, neither of us wanted to get hurt, so instead we were hurting each other, so we could be the ones in charge of the hurt, and in some messed up way it would have made us feel better?
Until recently I have pushed back most of the things that have caused me trauma. My mind and emotions was a deep cave of nasty that was slowly uncovered, as my therapist and I chiseled away the layers of each year of my life and building an open mine of hurt, abandonment, hate and rejection. An open mine, representing my life. Suddenly my parents were no longer my biggest enemy, yes, my childhood had a large part to play in this toxic relationship I found myself in, that caused me the biggest trauma. The one, I tried accusing my husband of being the same, the one I wish I had a magical wand, that I could magically take away from anyone who experiences it.
5 year of my life I spent on a person that basically ruined me. Why? because I felt I did not deserve better, because he manipulated me into believing that I deserve the treatment I got, made me question my own sanity. Made me lie to and deceive the people I loved. I learned the hard way that toxic relationships are the hardest to leave. I never dealt with this, I never opened up, I was ashamed of this, when I finally saw what everyone had warned me about, I pretended that none of it happened and denied it, and by doing so hurt myself even more. Not even the nights being pinned down with hands around my neck made me leave. My eyes only opened, the night they closed from being beaten in.
My husband cannot even hold me in bed at night. He can not sneak up behind me and give me a hug, he cannot tell me what to do and what not to do, because all of these things heighten my anxiety, it brings back parts of my life that I would rather forget. For years I deprived him of having a more physical relationship because I was to proud to admit that I made a mistake. I was to proud to get help. And when the shit finally hit the fan, my pride is what nearly cost me my marriage.
Your past does not determine your future. All of the struggles and pain you’ve gone through leading up to this moment is a reflection of all you’ve overcome. No matter where you’re currently at in life, there’s always something or someone to be grateful for. – Journey of a woman
