Zelda - Baby One More Time

[Zelda09]

Thank you, V. I googled difference between depression and trauma and this came up, I related to it said as difference between dreaming and remembering:

ut when we continue to experience fear and flashbacks, too much cortisol can damage the hippocampus. This is part of the short-term memory system, where memories of events up to about two weeks ago are temporarily stored, waiting until they are woven into part of our story about ourselves. A lot of cortisol in the hippocampus means we have especially vivid memories for highly emotional events, like remembering exactly where we were on 9/11. But too much cortisol short-circuits the hippocampus and interferes with the process of weaving together short-term memories so they can be put in long-term storage. Thus, the PTSD sufferer relives, rather than remembers, traumatic experiences. It’s like the difference between remembering and dreaming. When I remember something, I’m aware that I’m in the present, looking back on the past. But when I’m dreaming, the only “I” there is is back in the dream.

Was I ever scared for my life? No. I had those weird day dream flashes where I saw my STBX and I passing in a door way and he'd suddenly pin me and stab me. It was a startling and vivid visual that increased with time. Nothing like that ever happened, and the night before his settlement check was the most direct violence I'd ever experienced.

I have felt like I've been living a very raw day over and over again where I woke up and realized that nothing that was real was real at all. It was very different than the first BD, when the M just seemed to be on the rocks. Him sneering at me on the couch, it was a sudden realization that STBX had been acting for a very long time. We have a poster here with name Uturn, and that is the trauma, the sudden boomerang for me. H had been telling me how much he loved me and how lucky he was only hours ago, before the big violence. And then he looked so cold and unfeeling and happy with himself at the mention of D. It defied what I believed possible out of him, and everything I thought I knew about 'us' and the last six years, about what I meant to him and what kind of man he was.

So that is layer 1, the immediate emotional trauma of being set up, told to trust, used and discarded with that kind of violence.

Layer 2 is the years of being told I was selfish, unable to relate to people, unable to understand myself or him, I had an inability to listen, I was not a soft person, I was not capable of meeting his emotional needs. It is in the walking on eggshells wondering when te next outburst would be, how to appropriately frame a request so that it didn't set him off. Feeling like I was approaching it too wrong, too emotionally, too unemotionally, too suddenly, having it in the back of my mind I would drive anyone to these upset moments.

I am trying to work through Layer 2 where it is valid. Where I can improve, being less judgemental - and I think I've made some progress. Less critical. Listening more deeply to everyone.

But the rest of it was bs. I loved him well and was far more patient with his irrational and nasty behavior than I should have been. And this is the feedback from friends and family.

Layer 1 is the sharper trauma. Everything I know and trusted suddenly upside down and laughing at me. It says I was worthless, worth only using. It says my own judgement about the man I chose was dramatically off.

Layer 2 says someone else out there will make him happier just by virtue of being not me, that I wasn't enough.

To work through these very alive feelings, I am trying to keep my own experience more central. So, what does that sound like?

Layer 1 - getting angry. I do not deserve to be treated that way. I am worth more. He is an a$$hole to have been so violent, unapologetic, to steal from me that week and sit there sneering about it. It's that simple. He is a number of names. It is not a reflection on me. It's sad that it happened that way, but it's my past. Everyone was duped. My family and our friends, they also believed he was lovely. They all saw real STBX come out, each in their own way and time, and no one is saying I've lost anything great here. I deserved more and I stood by ground.

I need to hold on to that and tell my hurt and worthless feelings, it was abuse. Him. Not me. I wasn't discarded, or less, awful, or any of that...it was only what he was trying to make me feel through the violence and silence afterward.

Layer 2: I can own some of that. I could have been a better partner. But the things he told me about me, and about what he needs...get a grip, Z. Rational me knows that he simply has never demonstrated constructive, reparative communication skills with me, friends or professionals he had to work with. His R problems will not stop with me. I am changing what I can and he point blank told me he wasn't interested in looking at himself or his past. This wasn't about me, not all these years of psycho-analytics and gas lighting and all the other bs.

I am stronger than him. I always was and I forgot it. I swam out there and tried to help a man flailing in the water drowning, and he was slowly taking me down with him. I allowed for all that, I even went out multiple times again and again after him.

But no more. I choose to see him as his split, reactive personality and I know I cannot change another person or expect different outcomes. I choose to honor my pain and experience as more important than his 'pain,' which I now see as a tool of manipulation that turned me into a doormat.

I know I am getting stronger because I now see a choice in either sitting in the 'dreaming' re-living it feelings - OR - shrugging and saying I'm better than that. I've made that choice for two, almost three days in a row, and it feels so good. I just have to stay with it.

Allowing it to all die as part of my past instead of fighting so hard to make it make sense in the present.