Thought From My Overactive Mind

Many people who know their loved one is a narcissist still seek their approval and don’t hold them accountable for their actions. They will hold the abused more accountable to a avoid being shunned by the abuser. Even though the shunning is inevitable. Enablers value being liked by the narcissist momentarily than acknowledge the damaging disorder. Time after time after time. They appear to have a dry erase board type of memory to the narcissist’s offenses. Wiped clean after each offense.

It’s amazing to see the control they have over friends and family they discard and circle back around to. They get praised for crumbs of affection. Forgiven for mistreatment even without an apology or even an acknowledgment. Clean slate every time.

Not me. I’ve got a memory board marked with sharpie.

Permanent.

Left Over Emotions

I’m sad and I’m pissed off about it. Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? I mean big deal, right? People get sad. I just need to allow it, get through it, and move on. Here’s the thing, my moving on feels stagnant. It not only feels stagnant, it is. I don’t want it to be and I don’t try incredibly hard to get things moving pleasantly along. I just can’t. I’m juggling too many balls already to throw some others in the mix.

When your marriage ends and you’ve been a stay at home parent you lose. Unless your life before lead you to the kind of financial stability that is almost impossible to blow, you lose. It doesn’t matter if you were the one who did what you needed to do and you married someone who wasn’t who they appeared to be, it doesn’t matter. They win. You lose. There aren’t many ways around it. You lose the years you gave to raising your family and away from a career that cannot be replaced. You don’t start where you left off, you have to start at the bottom and hope to get to where you were before. Even considering getting to where you deserve to be, should be, is a pipe dream. You’d have better luck starting over with something new. At least emotionally. It’s degrading to work under people who have less experience and have worked fewer years than you. You lose. Your spouse, who wronged you and worked the entire time, continues climbing the hill to success. They make more than when they were with you, take multiple vacations a year, keep their wardrobe updated, and take time for self care. All the things you can’t afford because they don’t follow court orders and pay you what they are suppose to to make up the difference. Nope they don’t. They’re suppose to keep your kids on health insurance but they don’t. You get blamed. You lose.

Dating? Ha! I flip between not wanting to and knowing I can’t add that in to the juggle. I don’t have time. I don’t have any desire to play games. I’m not yet at the point to believe fully that just being me is enough. Pushing through years of someone telling you how everything you do is wrong, keeping money from you, insulting you, baiting you when they need something, screwing with you when they’re bored and exploding on you when something isn’t going their way when it doesn’t even have anything to do with you. It’s hard to believe I am enough and I don’t have time to fight my demons to make myself comfortable enough to be me. I’m lonely though. I like being with someone. I like supporting someone and receiving support back. I barely remember what it feels like.

I’ve never be able to plan for the future with anyone although it is something I’ve always craved. My ex would never talk about the future, talk about what we wanted as a couple and plan together how to get there. You know, normal stuff. I was baited with normal and spent many years confused about why we couldn’t get there. I thought he was struggling because of his parents divorcing when he was young. I thought he didn’t know how because he didn’t see the example from having a two parent home. My heart hurt for him and I told myself I’d be a good wife and be patient. I’d give him time to get there. Time to trust me and not be afraid. I thought he was normal and I’ve always been full of empathy. He used my tender heart to mistreat me. Someone I trusted recently told me I allowed him to do it. That hurt. I didn’t allow anything. No one allows abuse. You get stuck in it when someone you thought you knew shows you who they really are. You’re confused. You’re afraid. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to walk away. Especially when your parents die during all of this and you know you have no support when you walk away. Oh, and their deaths, per your ex, made you boring and too sad to tolerate. I never had time to be sad. I was left alone to take care of an infant and a 1 year old the first time and a 3 & 4 year old the second. I couldn’t even make it to my dad’s side as he was dying because I wasn’t allowed enough money for a babysitter and I had to wait until a friend left work so I could drop them off with her. He died 5 minutes before I got there. Still warm but gone. My husband didn’t want to be inconvenienced. It wasn’t fun. It was too much work to have to keep our children for an unknown amount of time. He felt trapped if he didn’t know what time I’d return. He’d rather not do it. It was my problem. The worst part is I’m still defending why I wasn’t boring and too sad years later when I know those were just words used to hurt me. He never thought that or even cared. He just wanted to hurt me and make me feel badly so I wouldn’t ask him for help. I rationally know that but I’m still defending myself. So ridiculous. Abuse. This is what it does, even when you are strong.

My parents both died in November. The third week. Three years apart. November stirs up a lot for me every year. I try not to be sad or be taken over with it but the sights, the smells, the way the sun sets, it all makes me feel it all like it just happened. I miss them. I’ve never needed them more and I’m alone. No one to hold me or let me take time for myself. There’s no one taking on life’s stressors with me. It’s just me, worried about my future, worried about how I’m going to have enough for all the things the kids will need every year and every stage of development, and worried that I will be enough. I have no one to discuss their issues with. No one to talk to about worries and no one to be excited and proud with when they’re amazing. It isn’t what I dreamed it would be. I never knew it would be so lonely. I never knew I’d be so overwhelmed with all the things so often. I didn’t know I’d wake in the middle of the night full of fear because I don’t know if I’ll be enough, I’ll have enough, and that they feel loved enough. I hope they can’t see that I feel depressed often and can’t do anything about it. I hate that I can’t be the mother I could have been without all this pressure on me alone. I have the weight of the world on my shoulders and it’s not getting lighter.

My kids are wonderful. They are smart, funny, caring and loving. They have their own problems that I have to help them learn to work around. I have to teach them how to not give up, to keep pushing forward even after defeat. I have to teach them how to work with their genetically inherited anxiety, adhd, and other. I have to help them grow to be emotionally strong, while allowing them space to have emotions. Never telling them they aren’t real or important but that they are needed to recover and move forward. All the while ignoring my own needs. There isn’t anyone to pick up the slack for me to have a moment for myself to recharge or release. I’m never at 100%. I carry a lot of guilt because of that.

I’m so angry I’m sad. I’m angry a stupid month stirs up so many emotions. I’m tired and I feel like I’m failing because something is knocking me down. I’m lonely but don’t need rescuing. I’m tired but don’t need sleep. I just want something that I needed and will never be. Sometimes I don’t. Today I do. This month I do. I just want someone to understand. I want a mentor that can help me get where I need to be so I can breathe. This load I’m carrying only lets me sip at the air I need.

Hurricane

A hurricane is headed our way. No big deal. We’re a hurricane state. This hurricane though has made me think of my engagement, during a hurricane named Ophelia back in 2005.

My marriage ended with my husband having an affair with a stripper who’s stage name was Ophelia.

I didn’t see that coming.

Life is weird.

Stages

When I was in college I pondered the meaning of life, what I wanted from my life, and what being a good person means. Now in my 40’s, during a pandemic, I wonder…am I so tired all the time because of an overlooked gas leak 🙄? How can I be this tired when my packed schedule of running around has been canceled since March? Am I really hungry or just bored?

So basically the stages of my life so far have been being born, cared for through childhood, pondering the meaning of life to blaming my tiredness on anything but age and to eat or not to eat. What’s next? Maybe collecting large hats to ride me out to the sunset. I mean anything could happen, right?

Are You My Mother?

You are not my mother. You are a SNORT! Oh Dr. Seuss, I love that book.

That’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I need to leave this somewhere. While all of the good men are out there thinking about ways to honor the mother of your children my ex is thinking, you’re not my mother, why do I need to worry about you. Sweet, right? It really doesn’t matter and I can laugh at it now. It use to bother me that our children worry about not being able to get me anything or do anything for me. It takes me a while to convince them that homemade cards are my favorite present. They really are.

The Club To Which I Belong

I am a person of feeling. It seeps out of my pores. I lose my train of thought, I tell stories within stories, and I cry often. I feel. To have a marriage, have children, and then have it end in such a manner, without reason, leaves a person like me hollow in the spaces where all the meaning should have been but never was.

We met on Valentine’s Day of all days. So cliché. I met who I thought would be the love of my life on Valentine’s Day, love day (eye roll). He was the man I would marry and have a family with and live happily ever after. Except none of it was true. It was all as fake as a mirage in the desert. It never existed. I saw it. I even thought I felt it but it was never there. It was just me building a family, having children, and feeling each and every moment alone with you right beside me. Alone when we made love. Alone when we said our I do’s. I was alone in the delivery room as we welcomed our children into the world. I was alone.

There was never support, only jealously and rivalry…competition. There were criticisms and betrayals. The loneliest times I’ve ever felt were in spaces with you. I attempted to bond us and make us closer. I wanted to be closer to you. I needed it. I thought you had a wall up and needed time but you didn’t. The wall I imagined being up never existed. You were never more than who you were. You were shallow and empty. You were self serving and secretive. You were focused on your needs and resented the love I had for our children.

From moment one of our lives as parents you try to dictate how I parented. You criticized the way I breastfed, the foods I ate, how much water I had to drink. You stormed out when I refused to let our baby girl, in leg braces, cry it out. When you asked me to turn off the monitor and ignore our infant crying I didn’t so you pushed me with your feet out of our bed. You were annoyed with me every time either of our babies cried or pulled me away from you.

When our son needed more from me as a toddler you said I was making him weak. When he needed to get in bed with us during the night you made me take him back to his crib every time. Even when he woke up 15 times a night to be close to me. Even when it would have meant we both would have gotten a little sleep. You blamed me for his waking.

Our marriage ended but it really never began. You were always a fraud. I was something you wanted for a reason and never for love. You need me for that reason until I wasn’t needed anymore because I gave my love to our children too. You were so jealous of it. Resented it. It was much worse with our son. He was your competition. The thought of it is just so insane.

Now I am a member of this club. The club where you had a marriage that was never real. A club where you allowed yourself to fall in love with an empty man and had children with him believing you were building a family together. It wasn’t true. Everything you believed you had never existed. It was just something you were doing alone. Your feeling and emotions and moments were real and his…his were all an act. He played the part until it wasn’t fun to play anymore. Until the attention and love wasn’t just his. Then he turned into a beast. A scary, evil, shadow of a man that you thought was real.

I belong to a club where every memory wasn’t what I felt or believed it to be and I don’t know what to do with that. For me to finally grasp that there was never a reason why, doesn’t make sense even though it is true, was life changing. I believe there is a reason for most everything. That is unless you married a narcissist. Then everything you believed about humanity shifted. I believed everyone had feelings. I believed that everyone could love and have empathy. I was wrong. Everything changed inside of me. I’m a person who feels and there is nothing to feel about any of that.

❤️iom

Not The Same

I’m not the same as I use to be. I’m a lot more of some and less of others. I’m a lot stronger in lots of ways and weaker in a few. I’m a lot braver than before but still afraid at times, with certain things…but I’m ok. Ok. I’m at peace with ok.

This life we are all living can be good and it can be bad but it’s the only life we have. When I dig down deep to figure out what’s important in mine it all comes down to very simple things. I need to give love, to be loved, to help others when I can, I need to laugh, hug lots, listen to music and enjoy the breeze on warm days. I need to watch the sun set and continuously be amazed by how beautiful it is. Simple things are my life blood. Keeping up with others is not.

I’m not the same as I use to be, I’m better. I’m better for understanding what matters and what doesn’t. Love the ones that love you and stop chasing after people that don’t.

❤️

Thoughts….

I’ve abandoned my site for a long time and I’m not back. Sometimes writing is therapeutic and others it is only a place for negativity. I needed and need not to record all of the bad…fears, regrets, anxiety. You know. I realized something recently and I wanted to put it here. At this age and time in life, to really know someone and to let them know you you must admit and share the hardest moments of your life, the ones that made you who you are, and the happiest ones. Those are the things that really define who we are. Daily life can be shuffled through, good deeds and doing things for others can just happen but they don’t tell our real story. They may make us appear to be good people, and we might be, but it doesn’t say who we are. There’s a risk, letting someone in like this, as they can use the information to hurt you, as I know well, but until you take a risk you’ll always be alone. Alone even in a relationship, Alone even with friends.

Life lesson. Trust is scary.

Not Living Yet Living, PTSD

Time waits for no one.

It’s sobering.

How one human being could turn my life on it’s head and I wafer between strong and weak year after year after year. Not moving forward. Not falling backwards. Nothing ever easy but not always hard….just not easy.

I have purposely taken a break from this…this writing about life, this existence. My existence because I just became tired of hearing myself or my words as I typed them down. My inner voice out loud. So over me. I just wanted to live and not talk about it. Good or bad, just exist. So that’s what I’ve been doing but what does it even mean. I feel like I’m just letting time pass by and now, at my age, I feel it more and more with every sunrise and sunset. I feel myself losing chances to be more, to be brave, and to be everything I want to be but can’t. I don’t need a pep talk or atta girl. I don’t need anything but everything and that just doesn’t mesh. Always circles. Constant cycles. Pros and cons. Too much thought yet too much pain compartmentalized to not have to think just to be able to live. Wtf.

I need.

I want.

But I’m good…enough.

Contradictions. Constant contradictions. Surrounds by such bravery…nerve.

Fear

Wasting life yet living.

Afraid to want more. I’m such a coward but not. Contradictions. Constant contradictions.

Just it’s all so fulfilling, so exhausting, and so empty all the time. So afraid of living while living. Aways twists and turns. Always triggers.

PTSD.

Must be.

Why one person? How? One. Did so much damage without permission. There no love there anymore. Zero. The hasn’t been any in years. So how do the triggers still affect me. How does it still control me.

I’m too funny to be so afraid. The bottom always falls out. That’s why I’m standing still in. To afraid to move and fall off the edge.

PTSD, what a bitch you are.

Disappearing & Reappearing

As I got out of my car tonight, I decided to take a quick pic of my daffodils before he rain returns tomorrow. It’s been raining so much lately and the temperature has been up and down so much I’m not sure I can identify any season. I feel it is mirroring my life. Always changing yet always staying the same. Finding predictability in so much uncertainty is at its best….blind, crazy, undeserved, optimism. How I hold on to any, I have no idea. Non. Zero. Zip. Some days I don’t. Some days overwhelm me. Self doubt blankets over me yet I keep karate chopping it off, hoping for more…dreaming dreams filled with passion.

Optimism

How does one person face so many challenges and still choose to see her glass 1/2 full even on days when it’s empty? I even kept my chin up refusing to fully let my skin absorb all the abusive and mean words thrown at me during my marriage. They hurt but I didn’t believe them…not really. It hurt worse that someone who was suppose to love me didn’t.

The daffodils caught my eye tonight and I felt like they represented me. They popped out of the ground during all this rain and continued to stand tall. They’ll probably find a way to survive if it briefly snows this week but if they don’t….they’ll come back and be stronger next time. Like me. Stronger every step of the way even when I have a day or week of doubt. I always return, glass 1/2 full.