Resuming Life
Sections:
- A Rough Start
- When I Started Feeling Better
- Jumping Back In
I may be three semesters behind where I thought I'd be at this point, but I am officially a student again! Knowing how dangerously low abuse dragged me down makes me very proud to be where I am.
I'm excited to feel an actual desire to move my life forward. With COVID, the hurricane, and my narcissistic ex repeatedly discarding me, it was a long year+. I'm sure everyone has had a rough time readjusting lately. Readjusting to life after my relationship with D.B. has been...challenging.
A Rough Start
I can't say I was actively trying to return to normalcy this whole time. There were several months that I had given up on being alright; it felt impossible.
I wanted to be ok, but the pain and confusion made my old routines impossible. I didn't do much of anything until about 10-12 months after the main discard.
The only thing I did was work on this webpage, and I'm glad. Creating it ended up being an incredible outlet for releasing some of the emotional turmoil that was crippling me. I don't think I would've been able to make it if I had not found a way to express myself or learn about the intricacies of abuse dynamics. It was a lot to untangle.
I'm tremendously thankful that what helped me is now helping others, but other than creating my webpage I didn't do much else. I stayed out of school for the past few semesters because I could barely function at home.. so I wasn't going to dare try entering the world again. I couldn't.
Daily tasks felt like enormous challenges I wasn't ready to face. I wasn't in a sturdy enough state to be around others or even get out of bed often. For several months it felt overwhelming to get dressed, do my makeup, drive to the store, or simply schedule an appointment over the phone.
The mere thought of trying to do basic things was so exhausting and horribly anxiety inducing that I'd freeze up before I began— thus, I'd never actually start. I wanted to hide. I wanted my life to hurry up and get itself over with.
When I did force myself out of the house I hated it. I felt like a freak. I only left home to drop my kid off at school and pick him up. That simple act would always make my chest tighten. I didn't know how to interact with people and go about normal things. I didn't want to. I didn't want to try. I felt hopeless.
When family came over I'd walk to the other half of the house and shut myself off from them. I'd lay alone in my room disgusted with myself. Exhausted.
I just wanted everything around me to stop.. then it would have ended the same way my sense of normalcy had the moment he shattered my most cherished core beliefs.
My mind and heart felt like they ended the day he discarded me, but then everyone else's world kept going. It was like I was mourning a death. That actually describes it perfectly..This abuse and the discard feels the way your mind does when a loved one dies, but the pain you experience the moment you find out they passed away keeps going.
It is like the worst moment you've experienced, except the moment never ends. You are stuck in a hellish emotional and mental state that normally lasts hours or days, but instead it feels like you'll be trapped in it forever.
Months of being stuck in a moment like that feels like years. That moment wouldn't let me go. I couldn't make the torture stop. I couldn't be alright. I couldn't stop suffering.
I was ashamed, hurt, and missing my desire to keep going. I saw no point. I didn't only feel like I couldn't do anything. I also didn't want to do anything. I no longer felt how I used to. Instead, my emotional world was only occupied with grief, shame, and some atrocious form of emptiness.
The first few months following the main discard I experienced a type of misery I am not sure I’ll ever be able to explain properly. It was unlike any other sadness I've known. I have suffered with depression before, but this was something different.
It was like something had punched a hole through my life, mind, and heart. Everything in my universe was scattered in complete disarray.
I couldn't process anything the way I used to. Nothing was right. I didn't know how to move about the world anymore. I didn't know how to be a part of anything. It was a miserable, slow, and frightening struggle for many months. I felt like I was in a separate world apart from everyone else.
My trust. My confidence. My clarity. My hope. My reality. My mind. My heart. My will. My passion. My joy.
—All of it was completely destroyed by the trauma his abuse caused.
I had to find bits of all I was and all I used to know so I could rebuild it. The pieces I managed to rediscover were so small and disfigured that even after they were gathered I felt like I had to start all over.
His hate and cruelty decimated my entire world. It changed how I saw everything.. It tainted all the beautiful parts of the human experience I held dear. It made me feel I could never believe in anything good again.
I believed, and then was coldly shown there was no point in doing so. His abusive selfishness killed a part of me, the part of me that made my life worth living— hope.
I couldn't hold steady or be certain of ANYTHING anymore.
It took a lot of will power to wait it out. I felt like I was waiting for things to start improving for an excruciatingly long time. It took so long that I would often want to quit.
I'd feel hopeless, alone, and stuck. I'd go back and forth between feeling numb and feeling emotionally devastated..over and over again. All the joy I expressed was an act to get people to leave me alone, or to keep my son from crying with me.
Eventually I started to have days in which I thought I felt decent enough to seem normal. I wanted to do better and be productive. I began pushing myself harder because I was angry at myself for being distraught for so long. Even in regards to my own recovery I felt like I was failing to be good enough (because I was struggling).
Pushing myself harder did NOT work. When I'd try to be ok again and fail to do so, I'd feel like an even bigger failure for not being able to 'get over it.' I thought I was doing something wrong because I wasn't alright yet. I felt like I should have been able to be strong enough to power through. But what I needed wasn't to be tougher. What I needed was time.
My heart could barely take it. He broke it, he really broke it. Yet, even though he was the one who broke my heart and mistreated me, I was the only person I couldn't stand.
I'd get stuck in obsessive thoughts as I'd attempt to make sense of how much he hated and hurt me. I'd start dissecting and analyzing moments throughout our relationship. I could not comprehend how or why he had treated me the way he did.
My mind was exhausted, but refused to stop racing. It kept hitting walls, but it never stopped going in the direction I didn't want it to. The fact that he didn't care that I was in pain made it hurt so much worse.
It was easy for me to blame myself. I figured if I had been lovable he would have loved me. I had spent years completely alone trying to become stronger and better.
I put in all that effort and endured years of loneliness, just to then make the same stupid mistake I made a decade prior!?
I LOATHED myself for getting abused again. I hated myself for what he did.
Getting broken down and heartbroken was something I felt I deserved after he left. I felt how he wanted me to— like I did it to myself, like I was worthless, stupid, unlovable, ugly, nothing, alone, hopeless and weak.
The events of the day he discarded me, that look on his face, and every single moment of our relationship played on a continuous loop 24/7 as I'd lay in my room wishing for it to stop. I didn't want to see or feel it anymore, but the memories and pain wouldn't leave me alone.
I'd been open enough to let someone see me. I had let him see me, but he responded like what he saw was disgusting, pathetic, and worthless. He pushed me aside like I was only ever in his way.
I was in a very bad way after he left. I was in a bad place while he was here too, but at that time denial, cognitive dissonance, love and hope kept me blind and fulfilled. He set out to do serious damage, and he did.
On July 8th 2020, everything I suppressed throughout our relationship collided with the severe damage from the discard itself.
I could no longer avoid seeing the full mess, so EVERYTHING HIT ME AT ONCE. All the pain, confusion, and devastation came flying at me simultaneously on his birthday.. And the powerful way it struck me down in that moment kept me there for a good while.
Before I learned about narcissistic abuse I didn't think what I felt was caused by trauma, I thought it was caused by ME.. I thought something was horribly wrong with me, and that all the bad ways I felt were 100% MY FAULT.
I thought that how badly I was suffering was something I had done to myself by failing to be who I was supposed to be.. I thought all the bad was only occurring because I HAD FAILED.
I didn't feel I was deserving of a diagnosis of CPTSD due to my ex and me having had a life full of people like him. I felt I was making excuses to be unstable and overly emotional. I didn't believe I knew anything, yet I was certain that I was a horrible, selfish, crazy, and useless human being.
I blamed myself and my failure to be good enough for every single bad thing I'd been through or felt.
When I Started Feeling Better
I've fought hard, and I am nowhere near done. Sometimes I have days or weeks that hit me really hard right after I've made solid progress. It happens, but not nearly as often as it used to.
My battle to recover and mend my heart may not be anywhere near done yet, but neither am I.
How I Started Waking Up
I did not understand what had happened to me. His behavior throughout our relationship was not logical. Therefore, my brain wouldn't stop trying to fit all the pieces together.
My exhausting thoughts urged me to do some online searches by typing in how my ex treated me. I wanted to know how other people survived it..but then I discovered ‘it’ had a name. Thank God I listened to myself, because it was just by chance that some of the first articles I came across summarized my entire relationship with my ex.
If I had not done those random searches regarding events in our relationship, I would have stayed exactly where he wanted me. I would still blame and hate myself. I would have ended up giving up permanently. I'd be gone.
How extraordinarily difficult it was for me to make sense of what happened is what led to me discovering the truth.
The place I landed after his abuse was a dark, scary, and hopeless place to be lost. Knowledge saved me. Writing saved me. I saved me. I'm my own damn hero, because D.B. refused to step up and stop being the antagonist.
Of course I doubted myself. I actually searched just as hard for ways to be wrong..I wanted to find information that would make the horrible reality I was discovering untrue. I didn't want to be correct.
I became, and I still am, obsessed with abusive dynamics, personality disorders, trauma, and grief recovery.
The knowledge and evidence I found through my research showed me that I was traumatized because his abuse was legitimately traumatic. How he treated me was unacceptable. He treated me a way that NO PERSON should ever be treated.
After I learned the basics I decided to look back over my personal writings in my journals. I was sickly hoping they'd prove I was wrong. Yes, after all I learned and felt empowered by, I still didn't want it to be true.
Everything I read in my journals was written long before I knew what was going on.. I had written it all before I knew I was being abused. THAT was difficult to see, because certain patterns were obvious. I could tell how low I'd fallen.
My writings showed me that I was too busy focusing on preventing his pain, to even realize how depressing my journal entries had become while we were together. I could clearly see that when I wrote in my journal all those months back, I was NOT ok.
Reading over my journals and doing research added a whole new aspect to my life. I started to see through many of his heartless manipulations. The knowledge was the beginning of my journey to a healthier place.
When I started being able to combine my knowledge with my slowly improving self-awareness, I started being nudged out of that moment I'd been trapped within since the day he blindsided and abandoned me. That moment I was sucked into on July 8th 2020, it finally started to end about six or seven months after it began. Finally, that moment wasn't all I existed in anymore.
Remember that moment I compared this abuse to? How the discard left me in the same state of mind you are in when you first discover a loved one has died? Well, I finally transitioned out of that moment, but do you recall what moments follow that initial shock of learning something life changing?
I had to face it.
I had to force myself to look straight at something that was extremely unpleasant to acknowledge. I had to stop hating and blaming myself in order to see the depth of the damage done by his abusive behavior. I had to face the emotions I was denying whilst collapsing beneath them. I felt them, but I had been denying WHY I felt them.
I had blamed myself. I thought I felt them because something was wrong with me, because I was flawed and weak. That wasn't true, but to accept that, I had to stop and to face the actual origin of the pain I was in.
He thinks I like blaming him. That man has no clue how difficult it was for me to blame him(hold him accountable) while we were together, and after he left. I hated me, not him. I had moments, rage, and sorrow. I'd write it all out. I'd hold my ground for a moment and be certain, aggressive, boldly defiant..but then shortly after, I would revert back to shame and self doubt. I'd gaslight myself down from a solid viewpoint. I carried on his work for him after he was gone. I was alone, but the pain he inflicted and the damage done kept going.
His words, his cruelty, and his degrading mistreatment left me unsure of myself. My belief in myself would go back and forth. It still does sometimes, but It has gotten drastically better. That's why I was able to return to school this semester.
Understanding why I doubt myself, why I get 'triggered', why I miss him so badly, why I gravitate towards people like him- Understanding some of the complexities of why these things are to be expected, helps me be much less hard on myself.
Instead of beating myself up for struggling and acting poorly, I am able to remind myself that this is all a completely normal part of recovering from a completely abnormal situation.
There is nothing normal or healthy about narcissistic abuse, so why do most of us think we should be able to handle ourselves in a perfectly rational and productive manner while healing from it??
Are we carrying on their impossible standards by placing them on ourselves? I think so, in part. But hey, at least we can reflect on it, and continuously become better versions of our already awesome selves. 🖤
Jumping Back In
This sounds a little sad, but it's a wonderful thing! I assure you. The fact that my heart and spirit were so devastated and unrecognizable, makes me appreciate every tiny bit of my kind, funny self I catch a glimpse of. Any and all progress means a great deal to me.
If you have clawed your way out of a very dark place before, the faintest of light is something amazing. I'm starting to see more light. It's still dim, I still have moments or days..but it is a light! It is no longer pitch black. I can see well enough to know which direction to go. Even if getting there and understanding the path takes some effort or strains my eyes, it's still there!
I feel like there's a point to my life again.
I want to feel warmth again.
I was stuck for a long time. I'm still not completely out of that place, but I am well on my way. I'm able to focus on other things again. I am able to enjoy myself a little sometimes. I am able to wake up in the morning and know that one day it will be ok.
I have hope again. Having hope is wonderful! When I have a good moment it is incredible for me. I'm so glad, because I appreciate any happiness I can feel.
When I notice I'm able to feel or do something that I wasn't able to over this past year, I become energized and even more hopeful. I love when that happens! Those days are the best.
It does get better. I promise. If you are at a point right now where you want to give up, I sincerely hope you don't. You matter. Things can become alright again. It just takes a lot of time, support, and effort. You are worth it. If I deserve to be alright, so do you. Please don't give up on the goodness you deserve. Everyone deserves to be alright.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: