blessings-out-of-chaos

[blessings-out-of-chaos]

Brain spasms

Hello, beautiful void. Do you remember that "all over the place"-ness i mentioned in my last post? Well, please keep that in mind for me today. I will try my best to remain on one track today. BUT, if i were you, I wouldn't hold me too tightly to that. Sorry.

*Attention to trigger warnings concerning DV and/or drug/alcohol addiction.*

I feel like I know something is triggering me here lately. Over the last few weeks, I recognize that I'm harder than usual to live with. I know SOMETHING is triggering me but I'm not sure what. I'm having difficultly recognizing if I'm just being triggered or if I'm just having the onset of a depressive phase. OR if me being triggered is triggering a depressive phase. (I'm sick of the word "trigger.")

I'm not a morning person at all and once I wake up it takes at least until the sun comes up until I become an approachable person. Otherwise, it is pretty well known to keep your distance from me unless I approach you first. Now, I have always been like this but in recent years, I feel as though it has been magnified by 1000. It is worse if I am rudely awakened, if I am gently woken up then I'm fine. If it's not gentle though, you get a toss up of who you have to deal with until I can "human" the right way.

With this in mind, my boyfriend whom I live with, has grown accustomed to this and we make it work. He wakes up before me so he can get his alone time cause he LOVES mornings for some reason and to get some coffee in him. He gets time to himself to enjoy while also not having to worry about me waking him due to my noisy ass. When I wake up he keeps to himself on the couch until I am ready to go get my morning snuggle from him. His big hugs always help me feel better and calm me down when I feel like I just want to be destructive so I always make sure I get one of those hugs in the beginning of my day. And when I don't go out of my way to get one, he comes after me to get it cause he knows I need it.

I hate that though. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate his hugs. I hate that he can't approach me in the mornings. I hate that I hate people in the mornings and I feel like such a feral animal before the sun comes up. I have tried to just be different in the mornings and easier to deal with but that just ends up making the mornings uglier for us than if we just do it the way we do it. I know why I hate the morning time. We have to wake up before the sun comes up. I hate the dark, I hate waking up in the dark. Especially if it isn't a gentle wake. And my alarms are not gentle cause, haha, they don't wake me up. So Monday through Friday it is an abrupt alarm while the sun is still sleeping. And if I feel I didn't sleep well the night before, you can just throw in the towel.

I hate waking up because in my abusive relationship, sleep was my ex's weapon too. Pause for one second, let's give my ex a "name", we will call him T from here on out. Ok, unpause. T used sleep as one of his main weapons. I think out of all the abuse he inflicted upon me, sleep was the worst one. When he would allow me to sleep, I always woke up to him screaming and yelling at me as he would pull me out of bed. I woke up once to him carrying me out by my shirt to put me out the door, and in doing so he ripped my shirt exposing me and locked me out with my breast hanging out in the middle of the night in an unsafe area of town. The sun was not up and I had no idea what I had done cause I was fucking sleeping. As you can imagine, on those days, I had to be immediately ready for a fight without even knowing why. Sure, more often than not, I never knew what we were fighting about or why he was mad at me but it was worse in the mornings cause I'm not even awake yet. I don't know what is going on or why he is being how he is so no chance to prepare those floating shoes that glide over egg shells. I got tossed out the bed landing face first on ALL the egg shells, squashing them all.

So today when I took a nap and my boyfriend opened the door too loudly while talking in a loud voice it instantly woke me and before I could toss the blanket off me I was prepared to fight. My boyfriend does know that I have difficulties but he doesn't know how bad it can get when it comes to my sleep. He just knows that after years of struggle I can finally sleep through the night without sleep aids but still prefer to have at least headphones because the slightest noise will still wake me and leave me in a panic. He is a considerate person when I'm sleeping so he doesn't know how much it can affect me when those rude wake ups happen. Today was only the second time it has happened in the 2 years we have been together. But it did blow up a little.

I'm sure that "little" to me though, may not be so little to him.

....I hate self reflection, cause when I do, I usually realize how much of an asshole I was. My survival side is an absolute bitch. But I can't keep putting my family through my roller coasters and my inability to cope once my mask starts to slip. So I can at least say that I am making moves to seek out help yet again from a shrink. I just hope I find one that actually got into their career for the love of helping people and not one that is quick to write them off. There are a lot of those who just write people off here, how do I know? Cause I been through them. I just need to remember to have to courage to do this for myself and that I deserve to find peace. No matter how much I blame myself for all that has happened.

My family deserves to have the best me I can provide to them so I can't give up on myself. And I have to find a way to convince myself that I, too, deserve to have the best me I can provide myself.

I am 3 and a half years post abuse and just as long since he last put his hands on me but I still hear him in my ears everyday and still fear his return. I pray I can find a way to silence him once and for all and exercise this self inflicted demon that haunts my thoughts and dreams.

[blessings-out-of-chaos]

Diving Right In

Hi! I'm going to start off with, I'm new here. I came here because the ramblings in my head sometimes gets too loud. Is that why you're here too?

Well, either way, I first want to offer some trigger warnings for domestic violence and addiction for those who need it.

Now that's out of the way. I guess my goal here is really just a selfish one. I'm only here because of the trauma I experienced in an abusive relationship and am trying to find a way to process it and adjust back to a life without the chaos that comes with a tumultuous relationship. (I am out of said relationship and am 100% physically safe from him.)

(I'm warning you now, I'm a person who is a bit all over the place. It stands to reason that this and any future posts may reflect that because I'm no editor.)

My abuser was someone I had known for a long time. We met when we were kids, I was about 13 and he was 15. We were great friends till I was 16 and then one of those summer breaks where you just lose touch came along. Then when I was 30 and he was 32, he just seemed to reappear. He did all that typical love bombing, gas lighting, and trauma bonding. You know the deal.

But do y'all want to know what I really feel guilty about? Not knowing how to feel. Because, you see, my abuser died before I had fully broken my bond from him. I had one foot out the door, sure. Yea, it was my fourth, fifth, or sixth time leaving him. But I was still convinced he was telling the truth when he said he was sorry and was doing what he needed to in order to "get himself right" and kick his "stupid shit." My eyes were still adjusting from having just removed my rose colored glasses.

When I got the call that he had died of an overdose of fentanyl, I can't say I was surprised. Hell, you could say I was almost expecting it. At first I felt a sadness so heavy I thought I was going to buckle under the weight. Then after riding a roller coaster of emotions for close to a year, I reached a point where I was thankful he had passed. I had that doubt in my head that if he hadn't, then I would never be free otherwise. You know line Professor Dumbledore quotes to Harry from his prophecy? "Neither can live while the other survives." That line played over in my head long before my abuser died and still rings through my ears. Now, almost three years after his passing, I think I feel numb. I don't feel sad about his death anymore, but I don't feel glad or happy about it either. I sometimes feel as if he haunts me. Maybe that's my paranoia? He did drill it in my head that if he ever died he would make it his mission to haunt me.

I never fully processed everything that happened during our short (didn't feel short) time together, some of it I don't think I really talked about in any real detail. I have seen counselors, therapists, psychologists and while it helped, it still takes up too much space in my head. Besides, we talked more about how the abuse made me feel than the abuse itself. I thought about looking for support groups but after searching (and failing) I realized how dumb that concept is. I mean, think about it, finding a support group for survivors of domestic violence on the internet. Talk about painting some targets on some backs, right? So, I'm here. Because "normal" rarely feels normal to me anymore and I just want to try to make sense of everything. Maybe it's a futile attempt?