So Grateful to Have Found You All Today

[stella.h]

Hello to all you brave and courageous members of this community. Grateful just doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling about having stumbled on this board...

I'm actually not even really sure what to say - I'm not used to talking about myself. I'm pretty good at being the one who listens. And that seems (strange as it may sound) to be part of the problem. I love to be there for people. I love to support them and sit with them in all the moments that life brings us. And. It is close to impossible for me to give myself permission to need someone to listen back.

So here I am. Feeling like the only person in the world who lives this way. Feeling like I have lived two lives for the last 35 years - the life the world knows about and the life that I, my parents (also the people who have hurt me most deeply), and my treatment providers know about. And feeling utterly exposed because three weeks ago various events led to the truth of my "secret life" being outed in all its ugly, messy, raw reality. There was some initial love and then one by one friends (all but one) started to disappear.

How do you talk to all the people in your life who always knew you "struggled" because maybe you flew below the radar for a while here and there, but they never knew what the struggle really looked like until they were hit in the face with the truth of emergency rooms and filthy apartments and medication and poor nutrition and financial chaos and therapists and psychiatrists and groups and... Do they even really want to know? Or did they maybe like the "public" me a whole lot better than the real me?

But the public me took so much damn effort to keep up that I have yet to be able to live a life in line with my values. I miss birthdays; I don't initiate social plans for fear they don't really want to see me; forgetful is my middle name; avoidance is my game; I hide; I sleep 20 hours a day when I think no one will notice; my best friend since I was 10 has a two year old I've never met because it's too painful for me to face the fact that I'm 35, single, and too scared to think about children given that I can't even take care of myself. I don't like this person I am. I have so much love in me for so many people in this world that sometimes I feel like my chest is going to explode. And yet, you'd never know it from the way I behave. I am inconsistent and unreliable. I am forgetful and disorganized. I lie about "car trouble" so I don't have to leave the house and see anyone because I am so profoundly exhausted from "behaving" during the times I do go out and see people.

I am in therapy. And things are changing. Slowly. But 35 years of trauma (yes, it continues to this day given that I am still in close contact - and am 100% financially dependent on the people who hurt me most deeply: my parents. Though I will say that those relationships are changing and growing too. I truly believe that while my parents actions resulted in life threatening emotional wounds, they were doing the absolute best they could with what they had/have at the time) takes a long time to heal. And the darkness has been deeply hidden for many, many years.

Again, to be able to speak all of this out into the world and to trust it will not be judged and, most likely, will be understood is one of the greatest gifts I may have ever received. Thank you. To each and every one of you who are here, struggling along beside me. We may not be able to see each other, but I feel your light and your presence as I sit here alone with my dog.

With love to you all. Thank you for letting me be here. Thank you.

"It's never too late to be what you might have been." ~George Eliot

[marycontrary]

Yup, that public persona is a major pain in the """" to keep up, isn't it? Well, one thing I found is that I could not afford, literally afford with time and energy, to keep the public face. It is like I have become Judge Judy. And I like it. And a lot of other good  people like it.

What do you think, do you have Judge Judy inside of you?

[Whobuddy]

Welcome! 

You are no longer alone. And it is very cool that you have a dog.

[flookadelic]

Hello Stella,

Welcome aboard! I was astounded when I found this place. The fact that so many shared experiences I thought to be impossible for others to go through was amazing; and the ways we have found to negotiate the ebb and flow of this condition are really extraordinary. Some may work for you better than others, and that's part of the beauty of this place. We have all been so severely critical of ourselves that I think we have no taste for judging anyone who has gone through the same hells, the same darkness. Rather there is a huge amount of mutual respect that we survived. The rest we build as we go along.

The main thing is that your compass is set and you know what's going on. I can't believe it took me over 30 years to get a diagnosis; after some misdiagnosis it has to be said. My perpetrators are dead which (and I know this may sound harsh but cptsd is a pretty raw condition) makes things a bit easier as I am useless at confrontation. Having said that I have discovered the one thing in me that can motivate me to confront stuff, injustice and unfairness.

I am, to a large degree, still hidden from my family. My close friends know I have CPTSD but the perpetrators walked on water as far as the rest of my family goes and it's not for me to damage the precious memories they have of our parents and my niece and nephews grandparents. It is such a strange situation, basically I'm the only non born again evangelical in our family, and the youngest by a huge degree, so they never saw what happened when my parents converted and the exorcisms began because they had moved out leaving just us in the family home. The excesses inflicted on me were never spoken of by them to anyone else. If I had only believed so much would have been different. So I carried it all inside and tried, and tried and tried. I even got somewhere. I ended up, much to my amazement, with a career in social work, a beautiful home, a lovely wife...but all through suppressing and resisting the growing...turmoil and darkness within me. In 2005 I could no longer hold it together, I lost it all in five weeks flat.

It took another nine years before I got diagnosed.

So yes, I was an excellent actor. But that kind of dysfunction cannot remain hidden. "There are three things which will not remain hidden, the sun, the moon and the truth" - The Buddha

In so many classical ways I'm a practical mess, my physical health is shot (fibromyalgia) and my general awareness is pretty vague but boy, am I hypervigilant. But I have learned and grown from that life implosion in 2005. It is only when everything was blown apart could I look beyond what imprisoned me; a false sense of fractured self that lay in bits. Rather than try and rebuild it I was prompted to look beyond it. A fantastic book around this time was Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart" - I can't recommend it highly enough.

So welcome to the forum from me. I'm pretty much a junior member here but have found this to be an incredibly non judgemental, supportive, kind and warm space. Out of the storm, indeed. Of course, we still have to leave the harbour from time to time but we can now do so with the backing and support of those who truly know what this condition is all about. And that is so, so valuable.

So welcome dear frootles and I hope that we can all be a part of each others recovery and healing!

[C.]

Welcome Stella.  I share your sentiments about this supportive forum.  I discovered it a couple of months ago and have found it to be a tool that really helps me heal, every day.  I know what you mean about gratitude...there really aren't words...

Ahhhh...the public self...yep, i figured how to look like a middle class soccer mom when I was really a divorced single lady barely surviving on food stamps and a few days ahead of an eviction notice...bizarre...i'm finding a more balanced middle ground now.  My friends from those days mostly disappeared.  But I found new people and you will too.  And learning to love and accept ourselves is truly the first step anyway.

"Listening"...a vomit receptacle...what you describe is so true.  I don't know if you've read much of Walker's book, but I identify with what he describes as "fawning."  Basically I learned to preempt abuse and neglect by caring for those who should have cared for me.  They still would like that to happen.  But I'm done.

Now for me listening needs to be balanced with opportunities to speak.   Otherwise it serves no purpose for anyone like what you said.

Welcome.  I look forward to the ongoing reciprocated discussions with you!

[Trees]

Hi, Stella, I am glad you are here.  I am very sorry to hear you are hurting.  I hope you will feel free to share your real self here.  A facade is not necessary here.  Big hugs to you.   

[flookadelic]

Hello Stella, I have just massively edited my initial post on this thread as I got a bit mixed up between threads and wrote a lot that was relevant to another thread, not this one! So if you had read my previous post and thought it nice but somewhat irrelevant there is something (I hope) more relevant in it's place!