Meursault's Journal

[sanmagic7]

been thinking about you, meursault, how we haven't heard from you lately.  so glad to have you back.

the aftermath of the horrendous trauma you've been through will take a while to calm down.  if you can, just allow it, know it for what it is, and be patient with yourself.    that's all you need to do.  it will resolve when it's time.

i get what your therapist is saying about finding your self worth within yourself rather than through another person.  you have to know, first and foremost, that you are worth the best of whatever life has to offer.  not because you have a girlfriend, not because someone likes you, but simply because you're you.   i have faith that you'll get there.  it may take a while, but, again, be patient with yourself.  unfortunately, this stuff doesn't always turn the corners we want when we want them to.

oversensitive about someone's dangerous driving?  i doubt it.  actually, i'm a very good driver, but i do drive fast, and a lot of people have told me that they're scared to drive with me.  i experienced that with a sister-in-law, and then i knew what others were talking about re: me and my driving.  it IS scary.  i've toned it down since then.   sounds like your mom just wants to do it her own way, no matter what anyone says.

take your time, meursault.  you're worth it, you deserve it, and things will begin falling into place.  big hug!

[meursault]

But at the same time, she was saying it can only be found WITH someone, likely a woman with me, sort of discovering it IN a relationship, but not BECAUSE of the relationship.  I sort of get it, but then it all sort of collapses into incoherence and it confuses me.

And it DOES confuse me, because there is all sorts of stuff about me that I like and the only time I'd rather be different is when I'm overwhelmed with all the time passing being unwanted.

I never got a hug or a kiss or a date until I was 23.  I just went through writing out my life hisotry in a quick two page thing, and there were two periods of several years (4-6 years each) where I didn't have a date, or get a hug, or matter to anyone  between 23 and 44.  And I really don't understand it.  When I'm drunk, women hit on me and I've had sex with well over two hundred women.   So it's not like I'm physically repulsive.  Most of my friends are women, and are generally close emotionally, so I am likeable, and maybe loveable in that way, and trustable, and that sort of thing.  I generally am pretty funny, I think. People tell me I'm a good conversationalist.  I'm interested in other people and am pretty nice.  I have a lot of interests and have a lot of interesting experiences.  I basically retired in my thirties, so I'm financially stable enough.  Almost no one has ever seen me yell or get really angry or anything.  I grew up indoctrinated by my Mom's extreme brand of feminism and think I am quite good about not being sexist for the most part.  I don't know, it all just makes me more frantically desperate and confused and certain that there is something SO hideous and monstrous and worthless about me, that it trumps all these positive things about me.  I am so utterly baffled by women.  I feel like I'm just a confused bawling little boy finding himself utterly powerless and baffled why he is so unlovable.  Could it just be that I'm just so dissociative and frozen in terror around women when the possibility of romance seems present?  Hmmm...

Anyhow, that stuff is always going on with me, but I'm putting one foot in front of the other still, and not feeling completely overwhelmed by it, though that comes and goes several times a day.  It just reaches this utterly agonizing need for some affection and mattering to someone and stuff like that...  I really think that the attachment stuff, that annihilation sensation in neglected babies is what's going on.  And then my brian is just fireworks.  Anyhow.  I'm a tired record and should shut up.  I guess I'm still trying to make sense of this stuff.  I've been pretty wound up for the last couple of hours, but know I'll calm down in a while.

Meursault

[Three Roses]

You are not a tired record and you most certainly should keep talking!

It's just a virtual hug but it's sincere.

[meursault]

About the driving thing.  Seems to me it's kind of messed up, especially seeing as how I killed my Dad in a car accident.  And how traumatic that was.  I don't know, it seems to me that it just shows such utter contempt for the trauma I went through, and the flashbacks and stuff.  I mentioned it literally dozens of times asking her to drive more carefully over several months after he died, but gave up asking.  She just has no empathy I think.  I think she neither understands nor cares.  I've kind of always thought that about her, but I don't know if I'm just seeing things.

Meursault

[Wife#2]

Meursault - I don't think you're imagining things related to your mother.  I look through the good, bad and so-so drivers I know. The worst is my mother. My husband and I refuse to ride with her, or allow her to drive if transporting our son. It will not happen. She's too scary. I'd rather pay for a cab or pay gas money to a friend than have to depend on my mother to drive me. It's always been that way.

Some folks really just can't or won't change because someone else pointed out something flawed in their behavior. Sanmagic7 stated that once she was shown that it can be scary for the passenger, she changed how she drove. Even without riding with a scarier driver than herself, your mother is being inconsiderate given your specific trauma. How in the world can you heal with EF's, actual flash backs and panic attacks happening every time you must depend on your mother for a ride?!? She is at the least being inconsiderate and at the worst being non-empathetic.

If you are truly and completely stuck depending on her (no cabs easily hired, no friends to accept gas money for transport), the only thing I can recommend, and this sounds dramatic, is to literally blindfold yourself with earbuds in your ears playing the most soothing music you can find. Put them on every time you must sit in the passenger seat. Tell her it's for your mental health. You mean no insult, but this is the best self-protection you could come up with, given her driving. You will still likely be triggered, but it just might be less often and less intense. I don't know. I'm guessing here, wanting to help my online friend.

Be a broken record! Not all healing happens in a straight line! We go forward and fall back and the same issues come up again and again. That's completely normal. Completely! If you have to say it 100 times to finally be able to move forward from it, then say it 100 times. Here. We'll still support you each time.

I hope you find in your heart enough space to allow yourself time. Maybe you are trying too hard, too quickly. I know I do that a lot - it's part of my people-pleasing, 'Everybody must like me' tendency. Please give yourself permission to goof it, to blow it and to still believe that you're worth the effort! I do believe you are.

[sanmagic7]

i echo wife2's sentiments about you being worth your time, patience, and energy.  whenever i try too hard to make something happen, that's when i get frustrated and all ditzed up.  when i take a step back, take a breath, readjust my perspective, and go with the flow, put my thoughts and energy elsewhere is usually when something good happens.  i don't know if that's worked for you.  it's different for all of us.

keep writing, mr. non-broken record.  you may realize something by seeing it in print.  in the meantime, one foot in front of the other.  that's the only way we get anywhere.  big hug.

[Three Roses]

...it seems to me that it just shows such utter contempt for the trauma I went through, and the flashbacks and stuff. 

It seems this way to me, too. I wouldn't treat a stranger that way, let alone my son! And it wouldn't matter if I agreed with my passenger or not; if I'm giving someone a ride somewhere, I will do whatever I can to make that ride comfortable for the person.

It seems your family - please excuse me for saying this - is incapable of treating you with basic human respect. I don't know if they're mentally ill, or self-centered, or what - but if I were you I would be considering going no-contact.

You deserve to be treated well! In my opinion, you owe nothing to anyone - not even a mother - who treats you so badly. Relationships should be a give-and-take arrangement; if you get nothing but misery, I'd drop them like a hot rock.

[meursault]

Well, I've hid from the world for a couple of days and just said to heck with it, I'm going to pretend I'm taking care of my sick kid.  That woman who told me I'm not marriage material reached out for help to me.  She's all suicidal and drinks a lot every day.  Anyhow, I suggested she come to me to yoga.  Why did I do this?  I don't think it's healthy for me.....Anyhow, Hopefully she doesn't want to go when we're supposed to.

Anyhow, I think I've been badly in a pretty much non-stop emotional flashback state since I cued into it that the woman I was dating was being quite distant.  The last few weeks really seem like a fog.  Extreme reactions and thinking, but only vaguely conscious.  It's been really central for most of my life, but my fear of, and feelings of worthlessness around women have just been completely beyond my ability to contain this last bit.

I think when I decided to risk trusting my therapist and told her the details about growing up a year and a half ago, I didn't really have the tools to calm myself again.  And then her boss messed with the therapeutic relationship, so I made the healthy decision to leave and try the EMDR therapy, but then got back to the therapist I trust and love after she moved on to another clinic.  And then all the legal stuff just exacerbated it all, and was a monster of its own.  And because I DO trust this therapist, and am afraid of losing her again, I think I'm desperately fixating on that big unhealed wound in case she goes away on me again....  Too scared to take my time in case this is my only opportunity to heal from the stuff from when I was a kid.

I was JUST feeling like I had told her the gist of everything.  I think it was our second last session before her boss messed things up that I said "There, I think you know pretty much all my ugliness."  I still haven't gotten it whether she is secretly laughing at me or thinks I deserved it or am making it up, or it's no big deal.  Logically, I know she doesn't, I trust her (and myself) enough to know that, but emotionally I don't have that at all.  There is another thread on here:  http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=5439.0   The whole revelation thing hasn't happened at all.  Was it really abuse?  Or did I deserve it?  Logically, I know I didn't, and if I imagine someone else in the same situation, I have no problem getting it, but was it with me?  Is it abuse if it happened to me?  What if I'm really that worthless and I deserved it all?  Anyhow, that hasn't clicked with me yet...

I really liked this article:
http://www.kellevision.com/kellevision/2013/01/what-to-do-if-you-were-sexually-molested-as-a-child.html

I don't know, I think that I've been disintegrating a lot more than I've been able to accept these last few weeks.  The aftermath of the legal stuff was expected, but I guess I never really connected with what it would look like.

So anyhow, I haven't been reading much here recently, but looked around a bunch today.  I think I'm going to start another thread about my stuff, and try to keep my focus on some of the more constructive stuff.  I really need to keep this inner child stuff in my awareness, it's really the only thing that really helps me from being completely self-hating and self-destructive.

I got Peter Walker's book from Amazon last week.  I just started it, but I'm super optimistic about it.  As well, a few months ago I bought "Freedom from your Inner Critic" by Earley and Weiss and lent in to my therapist.  She bought a copy and returned mine last week and we are going to start working with some of that.  She has been gently nudging me with Internal Family Systems stuff, so that is a good fit.  Anyhow, I'm going to start another thread in a few days and try to have it more geared toward the positives and things I can do to feel and get better.   I really feel like I've been in out of control meltdown, and although I'm pretty much guaranteed to be bouncing in and out of that still, I want to try to make things more positive if I can.  Who knows, maybe it will just be more of the same, but I'm going to try....

The little boy is feeling too scared to leave the bedroom or even stand up right now, so the father is going to go downstairs to the kitchen and make him some supper. 

Meursault

[Three Roses]

What a wonderfully caring father! It's good of him to be taken care of. Good job you!