Gerda Rises Up to Go On

[Gerda]

Job, though I have been unable to post, I really appreciated all your posts, as always, and did take what you said into account. I tried to get tougher with my lawyer. He insists that he was being pragmatic with knowing what is possible. Now I am pushing him to settle on the total debt and a few other things and he is dragging his feet. I am not sure if I should try to find someone else but I am just getting so tired!

DnJ, you did make me laugh with the swap. And I read all that you said and chewed on it. What you said about good and evil especially. I would like to thank you with another Citizen Cope song -- Healing Hands. But about what you said about good and evil -- I know that this is what I have always felt, from the days reading The Chronicles of prydain and those of Narnia, and just knowing so clearly that we have to be that light in the darkness and do battle -- and I identified my stand as my stand against evil. Now I am trying to redefine how to do that to some degree. I am not allowed to stand anymore in the same way. I don't understand it very well anymore.

I am reading a book about surviving narcissistic abuse -- MLC or not, my H's particular brand is clearly NPD for the interim, if he ever wakes up -- and the thing I like about the book is that the writer, a survivor, talks a lot about cell memory and how the body takes on the trauma. And that the trauma came from long ago, you sought a partner who would feed your addiction to it. So that no matter how much therapy and prayer, etc., you do, your body continues to react and you are in this PTSD state of terror half the time, even if the rest of your life seems to get better and better. Until you heal body and mind, you can't stop that addiction -- which includes a dependence on the outcome of MLC healing me instead of just healing either way. This articulates exactly what my experience is. My mother was mentally ill and had an MLC to boot. I was always looking for a man who wasn't like my father, and to be a wife completely different from the type of wife my mother was. But I realized about three years ago that I had married my mother! Their MLC was so similar! The financial irresponsibility identical. Even the script -- e.g., "You've been doing this to me for twenty years." She said that to my dad but after he was gone she would say it to me! I remember saying to her, "But, Mom, I am only fifteen."

Anyway a lot of times, you, my dear friends, try to 2x4 me or even just 1x4 me, and tell me to let go, stop focusing on OW or all those other standbys we all need to hear, and I write back some long boring explanation about how I think I did that but there is something else. And I guess I finally figured out that it's this deep visceral thing -- my body not aligning with my mind.

And today is one of those days. D was with H yesterday and overnight, and I found a little peace in all of it, was working and even doing some writing and feeling great but I always have to steel myself not only for what my body will do when she is with him -- my terror that I am giving her into that craziness for a whole night -- but for her return, when she will go on and on about the OW.

I get confused about what you all encouraged me to do, telling her the truth -- I think I say too much when she brings OW up. The pain is so terrible, I just try to be silent when she is talking or to look like I am listening, but my whole body is hurting, I feel like I am taking a shower in pain. Today she told me how Papa texts OW all the time and tell her loves her, etc. My mind knows that this is the reality now, and that it's not me, and that probably this R will crash and burn one day, but my body is thinking DANGER DANGER and the pain is literally in my limbs and my stomach and my arms and my heart -- it is the old pain, from a long long time ago. I feel like I am sending D out into a darkness, and then when she returns, she pulls me into it too. I am afraid that D even senses something about me, that I almost feel mad at her for telling me.

DnJ, these are feelings only, they are not TRUE, I know this. But I have to do something with them when it's happening or D will see what I feel and internalize it. I am sure I have already damaged her in this way.

What I wish is that there was a way to cut out all knowing, that D would never be a conduit for information. Every time I start to heal and to enjoy my life, I have to re-encounter what they are doing through D and any little bits of scab that have started on that wound just get ripped off.

The rest of the time, I focus on me and my kids, I build my life, all of those things we all know we must do and which allow for joy in our lives. But I need to find a way to deal with the Wednesday and every other weekend encounters without it destroying me. It can't just be a 2x4. I am one of the toughest women I know in every other regard, but this slays me every time.