I think it may be the finality of it all. I'm not sure of much anymore and question the devil out of everything now. It's very hard now, especially after coming to the realization that she hid so many things from me. I think the worst of it all was not informing me of her very abusive past (from age 4 to adult) until after BD. I can't see how for 10 years she never told me of it yet expected me to know her and what drives her actions. I'm going to be honest and say I feel like our marriage was nothing but a fraud...
Jeep, I'm not sure if you're still reading. And maybe you already know what I'm going to say. Apologies if you already do.
There are various levels of consciousness with something that traumatic. And with various levels of consciousness comes different levels of thoughts, feelings and reactions. A bit like peeling the layers of an onion, if you like.
The path is not linear either. And won't conform to a timescale. Any part of the path can take any length of time. It just depends on what the person is able to deal with and what comes up in their life to force them to deal with it.
Some people run and hide from it, some people face it full on, and some people do a mix of running and facing up to it. It comes down to personality, what support the person has or might have...and lots more.
Apologies in advance if you're already more than aware of all of this.
There can be no awareness at all of what happened, but the trauma comes out in ways like chronic illnesses etc. There can be a gut feeling awareness without it being attached to a train of thought. There can be a gut feeling and a train of thought without it being attached to articulated words. There can be gut feeling, a train of thought and articulated words too.
These things all sound so easy and simple to do for any of us, so straight forward. We do these things, we engage in this process all the time with our experiences, thoughts and feelings. But for many survivors of trauma each of these various aspects can be utterly overwhelming.
I believe there is research saying that in an overwhelmingly traumatic event there are parts of your brain that shut down as well. And some of those parts are to do with speech, which may be one of the reasons that trauma survivors find it so difficult to articulate in words what happened to them. I don't know, I think I remember reading that somewhere.
Anyway, I don't know if any of that helps, or sheds any new light on what you've been through. Take care.
