Messages

Today I realised that I'm with the partner I'm supposed to be with right now. He's so easy going and understanding and forgiving without being a pushover.

I'm so grateful that I'm learning a quiet, non-painful, non-tumultuous love through him. It's surprising and scary and disturbing to experience such an all-around good relationship. 

[Someday I'll love Ocean Vuong]

I tried to find the right corner to post this note in, but if the mods deem another place more appropriate, I would most definitely respect this.

I wanted to share this poem which moved me so much.

I wanted to start this thread so others may post some poems which were instrumental in their recovery.

"Someday I'll love Ocean Vuong" by Ocean Vuong:

After Frank O'Hara / After Roger Reeves

"Ocean, don't be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don't worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won't remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother's shadow falls.
Here's the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
Don't worry. Just call it horizon
& you'll never reach it.
Here's today. Jump. I promise it's not
a lifeboat. Here's the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty into.
Don't be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean,
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it's headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here's
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here's a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here's a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin."

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/04/someday-ill-love-ocean-vuong

Over the past several months I've come to better understand the origins of my C-PTSD and how to get support.  I lived a life of chronic emotional neglect and abuse for about 45 years.
   
Yet, I've noticed that the place where I feel the most "raw" is regards to my 20 yrs of marriage.  I have compassion for the child & adolescent, I have compassion for the experience of being "abandoned" by my husband, but I feel a low grade contempt for that Pollyanna me who allowed my husband to be inappropriate with me and my kids.  I think it's a combination of anger, self-loathing, sadness, guilt and regret.  I feel this low-grade irritation and contempt for my ex.  I went through the usual grief stages already during our divorce.   I thought that I was done w/anger and had moved on to peace... How can I move past this feeling?  Has anyone else had similar experiences?

I really don't like this...I feel so sad that the photos w/my children cause me pain...I think the primary thought is "if only that 'me' had known..."

Oh C, dear dear C, I feel your pain so much. I ruminate on the grief and hurt too. I just feel so wronged, and stepping into the light just seems so difficult and phony to me. Insincere, when I feel so rotten on the inside.

I have no solution or wisdom, only that I know others have done it, and that we have a plethora of tools at our disposal, and that we owe it to ourselves to try them all out and gather a few which work for us. Reassess, repeat, keep working at it.

In some ways destruction is chaotic and painful and robs us of all meaning (Nietzsche), and at the same time destruction allows us to rebuild something anew and make us build new meaning at exactly our own terms (Sartre).

[Edit]: As an addendum, it is so unfair that we have to do this process on our own and that it feels so so lonely. Others have been nurtured surrounded by a loving family. That in and of itself is something I ruminate over myself. And yet, there is beauty in recruiting a new community for ourselves and know that we are all here to cheer you on!  I have to tell this myself too.

Love and hugs.

Heh, I was grateful for that very thing today. I remembered what talking to my FOO is usually like, and then I took a deep breath and revelled in the fact that they are wonderfully, gloriously elsewhere. The sun was lovely here, too, after many weeks of winter. The kids were high on sunshine, running and laughing, and I felt happy, too.

This is a beautiful paragraph and it lifts my spirits. I'm so glad you're doing well, and I wish you many more such lovely days!   

Seems like the more I think about it the more I remember. It is fascinating.

That is some powerful headspace to be at!!!

So attachment to me, is the key issue for me.  If I do attach, it's wildly dysfunctional and outrageous.  THAT is what I'm currently afraid of in my current therapeutic relationship.  (Let me clarify, now that I KNOW I'm gay, I don't confuse the attachment with sexual desire, so it's not as confusing as it was before)

I have NO idea what a healthy, bonded relationship feels like.  I wouldn't recognize it if it was thrown right in my face.

Ana, I'm wondering if you think your relationship w your sons models out healthy attachment?  You love them, and yet you let them live their life as self confident individuals with lots of freedom and autonomy?  I don't know. 

I saw some keys, so I picked them up and stuck it into an electric outlet.....that's about all I remember about that. Was later told the baby sitter had to knock me away from the wall with a broom. Guess I'm lucky to be alive.

My goodness! Yes definitely. I know someone who went into cardiac arrest when they did something similar as a kid.  Glad nothing serious happened!

I remember when I was 1 stealing a toy from a friend. That's about it.

I have a real driving phobia because it exposes me fully and it's an open invitation to be ridiculed and live up to the "female bad driver" stereotype. I'm terrified of being honked at, or yelled at, or otherwise attacked.  It's my terrified state just like when I lived with my FOO.

I want to overcome this phobia so I am more functional in society by having a car!
It's a debilitating fear.

Unmotivated (got sick AGAIN!) and still having a lot to do (things I want to do vs things I should do are weighing me down).

Today I talked to my B about my testimony of having gone through narental abuse. His reaction was basically a cold non reaction, followed by some hypersensitivity around other unrelated knitpicky things.  So invalidating.

Kind of confirms how dysfunctional my family growing up really was, to see his reaction like this. 

Not gonna lie though, I'm a little disappointed in him.

I got a 51 which is great considering that I would have been in the red zone completely 1-2 years ago.  Out of the Fog really got me on the road to recovery!

Amazing!

I'm wondering if anyone has good resources on building trust.

I'm realizing I don't even know an intuitive feeling of trust - I know technically it means reliability and having faith in someone.  Because of the way I grew up I don't even know how to get familiar with the feeling.

So I'm hoping to find some good books, podcasts, youtube clips, worksheets, anything really. For me to train myself.

My T told me to go out and explore this topic, so naturally I come here first 

I think you can forgive, the forgetting is the hard part. I would love to be that strong to be able to forgive and forget. But I'm just human...*sigh* would love to have some super powers though.

Oh trust me I will never forget. I may have blocked a lot of it out but my limbic system and fear center will never ever forget as exemplified by my hyperarousal, high state of anxiety, etc.

I don't need a lot of money to be happy with the right guy....

I took it twice.
Once answering as I would have 10 years ago- 95 (all red).
Once answering for how I feel now- 60 (3 red / 4 yellow).
It's nice to see that I've made progress.
It's hard to imagine me in an emotional place that would show an equal amount of green and yellow. But if I've come this far, who knows what's possible.

This is incredible! It gives me so much hope. I'm wading through a lot of my past, with all its messy details, and other people's journey of recovery is sooo comforting and encouraging.

Thank you so so much for sharing!!!!