I am happy Looking for a good birthday card for a friend And I think maybe I should take up writing them When my eyes find the 'To My Husband on His Birthday' How I loved the first Husband card I got to write And I feel a flash of anger, how even the sight of this card Brings it all up again, but no, it's just a card I might have a husband again, try not to be bitter Let my eyes settle on another one But it's no use I want to cry and scream at the manager now About how not one of these other cards is suitable for My friend, they're all ridiculously awful
So I go on Bottles of wine 'we' used to enjoy How I am boiling with hatred now On a good day I would choose one purposely To re-write another memory over it One that has nothing to do with you I have done this with favorite flowers, cafes, dinners Piece by piece I am erasing your importance Re-claiming the things in my life to their own purpose Without you All the wine is overpriced anyway And so I move on
In the dairy section And there are the special pastry shells Surely you once loved me? The special treats you would make to surprise me? Our marriage was so sweet, as toxic as it was at times I can't believe it. I just can't. How unceremoniously you drop kicked me After the weeks of comforting me And telling me I should trust you Those purely loving moments All along our years What was real? It's none of my business anymore What you believe Or thought of me
And I am trying to put it out of mind I'm learning nothing now But then there you are, the most vivid memory Standing in front of the brussel sprouts Excited like a child over your favorite vegetable I surely loved you.
They say a narcissist adores and loves like a child When was I no longer something you were devoted to? How long were you acting? Certainly the months you came home after separation The year earlier when you let it slip during a fight, "I'm not trying to divorce you just yet" Were you ever mine? Did you know your own mind? The week you were talking to me about marriage And also telling an old girlfriend I wasn't your ex 'yet' How to make sense out of a heart like this I felt so very loved and adored
Your 'yet' finally came Why did it take so long What I now see as inevitable Why did I make so many excuses and try so hard for Security you never gave us
In the checkout line One celebrity with her happy engagement details... And I remember you rolling out of bed proposing in your boxers With no ring It was ok at the time. I was happy to romanticize that even. Another celebrity that was cheated on And I feel the sting of knowing that you were so curious Lusting after others for so long I fight the small, ugly, worthless feeling that gives me I hate that I just snapped at the checkout boy Like he was the idiot
But even the no contact confuses me some days You were everything And now you are nothing to me It is as it should be You would only hurt me again. A man that has a capacity, true ability to love Could not have done what you did I was an object to you And god how you sought to intimidate me I didn't understand it then
I was the woman a fool would have left You saw it and you came home But within a month or two you turned me into A shadow of myself walking on those eggshells I had learned to no longer scream back at the injustices So I shrunk
Yesterday an old friend told me how radiant I looked How she hadn't seen this for months Of course you threw me away, who could blame you It's not like you had insight to think about How your actions and words might have hurt All you saw was a fragile person Who replaced the angry one who could no longer meet your needs No longer the amazing girl you fell in love with Off the pedestal
Was it a long descent I was blinded to? Or was it the short and traumatic bit that left you smirking at me?
Out to the parking lot And I think I see your car I feel sick I can't make sense out of anything that was my life How could I ever look at you again I rehearse the detachment How it doesn't matter, you are just a person I used to know But it is a soccer mom who steps out across the lot
And I drive off wondering Can I avoid you the next time I go through the store? How many times do I need to have this experience To have done with it To find some peace
Mid 30's Psych-abusive M with violent tantrums from XH D 9/15; NC forever on
I'm sorry you've had to go through all of this. The raw emotion you have expressed above caused my eyes to water. Our sitches are all so different but the emotions and feelings are so similar. I hope you can find peace one day, you deserve it.
Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in what will be
Zephyr - you say you get the 'sense' my STBX is controlling me, or I'm letting my emotions be controlled...you are welcome to try to explain more. I am still upset about everything, of course. Anxious about getting it done for the reasons I described in response to Gan. I don't know that this is a deeper psychoanalytical issue to 'fix.'
Hope you had a great birthday! Mine is Friday.
So what I was tryng to get at was that it still looks like you are working on detaching your emotions from H. It just seems that You are still so angry that it is affecting you, is this healthy phase of loss...I think you have to go through that phase. You are looking at so many things but the root of you severing his control over will eventually surface and i know you are trying to figure that out. Eventually you will have to let all of that anger go...once you've held it long enough to know that it is time.
Maybe you Are getting there and I was out of line, I am sorry if I was...I just hope that you are not getting stuck. I hope for your happiness and I know you can do it!!!
Zephyr, thank you for your input. My emotions are far from detached from the whole thing. It's been 3 months and I don't think I'd be human to not experience some of this. I have very good days and weeks, too. Everyone here talks about detach, detach, GAL as though it was a magic pill and yet look at all of the suffering in their personal sitches. It is only the practice of best possible mental attitude. There is no magic bullet to replace the time it takes to authentically get there. I thank you for your support.
I am enjoying a lovely weekend of GAL, ps. Despite grocery store trips, I feel better. 'Levity'
A strange thought today, The memories of him are noticeably fading. How good this will be. But I am also sad that there is so little left and the good ones are fading faster.
Mid 30's Psych-abusive M with violent tantrums from XH D 9/15; NC forever on
[quote=Zelda09] My emotions are far from detached from the whole thing/ Everyone here talks about detach, detach, GAL as though it was a magic pill and yet look at all of the suffering in their personal sitches. It is only the practice of best possible mental attitude. There is no magic bullet to replace the time it takes to authentically get there.
Thank you for writing this Z. Its extremely honest. Thinking about you often.
ME: 28 W: 24 M: 2.5yrs T: 5yrs BD: 22 SEP 14 W Leaves: 5 OCT 14
Z, I agree. It's a bit like home improvements. You think - Oh, we'll just take down that wall and decorate in here. Sounds simple, but the slog of actually doing it is tough! I think that's why it can grate sometimes when people say - you need to GAL, have PMA, detach and so on. Because the process of doing these 'simple' things takes a huge amount of work and isn't easy.
Take care! xx
T 13 M 7 Me 48 H 46 SS 15 BD 7.14 PA D final 5.16 (H filed)
We receive & we lose, and must try to achieve gratitude & embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses - Dubus
Hi friends. Toots, Fogg, Tlee, all the rest who bother to read...thank you. It is nice to know our little journals have some relevance to each other. I am trying to restrict my time here and channel it more productively, so this is a bit of a long post coming up.
Closure is something you give yourself.
And so, there is a family law mediator/attorney who will be working to put this thing to bed. I am lucky to be well loved (who is the narcissist now, huh? :)) and so these services have been offered to me at no cost by this dear semi-retired friend. He will be contacting STBX to see if he can ease any of his 'legal fears' (last great 'rational' opposition to finishing what he started - when he demanded I sign this stuff, he certainly didn't seem very fearful).
If the man refuses reason, I am prepared to file.
I also have requested that H does not show up unannounced again and will take responsibility for his things within 15 days and remove them from my home. No more threats about he will get his things whenever the He&& he feels like it, or 'drowning' me in legal bills if I insist.
Will the real H please stand up?
I submit that people are incredibly complicated. For instance, if I saw STBX pull up in the driveway, I might wish to vomit, kick him in the nuts, and hope for a bouquet of flowers and heartfelt words - all at the same time! Surely, his head is a mess too. Or incredibly vacant if he's the sociopath I think he is.
Depending on whom he's talking to, I am
a)manipulative and evil to our friend he parceled out by sympathy for his suicidal thoughts, how bad I was for him (the ones I heard about only in fights)
b)perfect for him pre-accident (not post)to our closest friends that night, but spookily showed no emotion - and accused me of cheating
c)someone he still loves, and recognizes he is an angry person, and never wanted his marriage to end this way most recently to a friend who loved our love story. and when friend asked him what he was doing to work on himself, and put it back together, blankness. Not interested in discussing that. As though all those powerful feelings never caused him to consider such a thing, were off the subject for his image management
d) unfortunately another victim of the accident, the accident messed him up!
BUT TO ME: e) our marriage has been awful Z, D is the only way; I want to sleep with others, I DID mean everything I said when I came home, but bc you brought the fight to me...I have no remorse for the things I did to you that night. It was the last straw for me. ...later via text, the last thing I heard from him among threats and more abuse was that he was soo much better off without me.
I think he says whatever he thinks will align with whomever he is talking to. And his ACTIONS with me are the truest of the true.
I've had to remind myself that surely if he still loved me and realized he was an angry person and I didn't deserve any of that...surely he'd be telling me instead of calling a friend to lunch to discuss.
I always, always, always chased him after he stepped over a big boundary. Maybe squeaked an acknowledgement or apology out. And I worked hard for our stability and our relationship. He went along if it was convenient enough and didn't cause him much effort or trouble.
Am I still standing for my marriage?
No. Not this one. The D has already happened. I will agree with STBX on this point, it is just paperwork at this point.
I had a dream the other night where he ripped a gate off the hinges and with superhuman strength (in real life, he used to come close, physique of an NBA star with love handles...I digress), he threw the gate halfway down the street. Many people stood around watching. He broke down crying, and he and sat there in the street holding each other, me comforting him, telling him I would try again some day if he would get his [censored] together. His head, his heart.
I suppose this is where my heart is.
But I woke up and had to remind myself of the colder truth. He set me up, day after day. The gaslighting, increasing emotional blackmail, amid promises of love and growing old together. And the right day came to sabotage and get physically violent. His smiling attitude, "got my money, b$%^&, the joke's on you!"
I am afraid that the H I loved, that I held crying in my dream, is not the one that ever existed in real life. Except as a superficial mask to draw me back to him time and time again after he scared me.
If he ever cared to prove me wrong, with real change and a steady mind and heart, I would try again. I loved him that much.
My way forward
I had lunch the other day with a dear friend of my mothers, who then called her to say, "Z has lost her edge! She's warm, radiant, softer!" Mom says, "so she's not so b%^&*y anymore?" The elderly Southern belle laughed and said she wouldn't have put it that way, but true enough.
The thing is, with abuse of any kind, I believe a person develops a hard shell. In the back of my mind, I was always struggling with some great hurt or irrational happening, the bottoming out of a roller coaster, when I was with other people. I had gotten cynical, negative, aloof, irritable.
That was not the real me. I felt a pang of, my STBX was right! I was a miserable unhappy person! And my mother told me to never believe that nonsense. She was "glad she had her daughter back, she had a hard time reaching her for last few years."
Abuse doesn't just hurt the target.
Vanilla, I have read your posts about your dear, wonderful father and his words to you. More and more your H reminds me of mine, but how wonderful your Pa is still in your life and supportive of you. I know that there is no replacement for that kind of love.
I want to build my life with some stability and this is my focus now.
I will not sit on my hands hoping that H is delaying things because he still loves me. I believe in actions, not words, certainly not words that arrive through 3rd parties.
He was the love of my life, but I am ready to create a new life where that kind of love is no longer good enough or acceptable. If he can measure up with real communication tools and not abuse, he is welcome to walk beside me.
Providing I haven't found someone else to love madly and reasonably.
Mid 30's Psych-abusive M with violent tantrums from XH D 9/15; NC forever on
Like Fogg and others, I am so sorry you've had to go through all of this. The emotions you expressed on 6/27 were so similar to the way I have felt at times (even though our sitches are different) that I did cry a bit. I can honestly say that I felt your pain.
I will pray for you now that you will find peace soon.
*hugs*
Bob
Me:55 yrs/W:51 yrs (has MS) M:14 yrs T:15 yrs No children together--3 each from previous marriages Wife Moved Out: 10/19/14 Wife Filed for Divorce: 10/20/14 Divorce Final: 10/21/15
