Thank you 010207, Ciluzen, Anna and Courage for your kind words. My intentions are more honorable than my capabilities and capacities to offer much to my friend. But she is a strong woman with the softest heart and more tenacity than she possibly knows she possesses. What I have seen in her this week, makes me feel very confident that she will thrive!
Im just going to journal and process here , if that's alright?
This week has been emotionally tough, and I am surprised at my calm reaction. I finally feel able to practice the art of letting emotions pass by like clouds, to roll like waves. Lots of triggers around at the moment. I'm an observer, an introvert, an empath -I take on my surroundings and people's emotions and intentions easily. That coupled with changes that are coming in my own life. Well it can be exhausting living in my world. But I am getting so much better at dealing with my responses to a world that can leave me wiped out.
For a long time I rejected myself for being sensitive to a world that other's seem to cope with and brush off. It is hard living in a world and particularly my ex partners who told me to harden up, to not be so sensitive, brush it off. Their responses left me feeling crazy, and different and broken. I think you will find in my initial posts (if someone ever wanted to and I don't know why anyone would) that I struggled with how I was viewed, my craziness and difference. I was devastated that Mr Ex saw me as such, saw me as so broken that I wasn't worth being with. I realize now that the depression and anxiety I have suffered over a lifetime, has been the externalization of years of the emotional abuse suffered at the hands of my father, and the years of self rejection I suffered at the hands of myself. I chose men to replace him, that treated me the same as he did, and then when they didn't do enough to make me feel unworthy or unloveable, I did it to myself.
Recovery from abuse, trauma and mental health is one of the hardest things any one can do. It is a daily experience for me and requires more than I have in me some days. The biggest thing I have given to myself is to embrace the labels, the stigma and the judgements that people make and run with them. This has been freeing and the more I have embraced my issues and people's perceptions of me, the more I realize that I am no different from everyone else on the planet. We are all broken, all imperfect. It is human to be these things.
The relationships we have with our partners, is the first place we really all experience our broken-ness. Our mates are our mirrors, showing us where we need to grow. When we find ourselves in the position of our mates wanting to leave we are confronted in the biggest way possible about our own brokenness, our flaws, our imperfections. It is devastating and leveling. What a ridiculous gift our mates give us in their leaving.
I don't think I would have really dug as deep or learned or grown as much as I have if Mr Ex, had not been so cruel in the way he ended things. (He left me in the middle of a mental health breakdown. On a sunday morning he left me alone, naked in foetal position on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably for my pain to end, taking with him when he left a bottle of sleeping pills. He ended our relationship via a 10 minute phone call two days later, while I started anti-depressants, managed suicidal thoughts and began therapy, leaving me to the support of my family and me to start recovery on my own.
He gave me a gift. I finally took responsibility for my recovery, and I finally started to just embrace all that is broken. I realized in my journey I don't need to fix any of it. I don't need to fix me. I bucked against Lady V, Zues, Uturn, Pigpen (PP), Anna74 and JujuB, telling me that I was ok as I was, as I am. But they were right, the healing was in the acceptance of who I am. This was my journey through DBing.
I will plow on through this period of emotional triggers and change. I feel Winter is coming.
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can . And the wisdom to know the difference"
