6ofwandz

[6ofwandz]

I find it interesting that I was always warned of the type of man that wouldn't allow me to have outside friends out of fear that it would mean I would have less time to serve him, the type that lived in fear of me developing outside influences and then waking up to the misery he forced me to live in while we were together, a man that would isolate me so severely from being able to be myself. I think when we imagine what it must be like to be in an domestically abusive relationship, it's so easy to think that it's just one way, that it can only be someone isolating us so severely that we have no friends, but I'm here to tell you that there is a very specific brand of abuser that will do everything in their power to consume so much of your brain space that after a while, in order to escape their grip, you will have to go to great lengths to sever their bond.

With my last partner, the abuse was far more insidious than my ex husband. My husband used to scream at me, make jokes about how much I talked and that he was never listening. My ex-boyfriend rarely screamed at me but spent every single day making me feel like if I wasn't constantly scanning the room or his messages for his mood that I would then have to pay for it later. He constantly encouraged me to get out and make friends but the moment I broke up with him he didn't want to leave me alone.

There's something so dark about a man who cannot be bothered to give you any amount of mental space to be alone, always making you feel like if you aren't monitoring his emotions for him then there would be consequences to pay, a suffering under his inability to control his own mood. It's downright exhausting because truth be told he spent the entirety of our relationship running from my affection and shutting me down whenever I tried to get close and the moment I would pull away he would come running and beg me to notice his suffering.

I had no comprehension that my codependency left the door wide open for all kinds of abuse to occur. I imagined that if a man was head over heels for you it would be this healthy obsession, this desire to always make sure you were tended to and taken care of. I believed that because he gave me things like my favorite candy when he returned home from the gas station, this meant that he loved me. I thought that his enjoyment when we went out and his desire to show me off to others was enough for me, that this is what it felt like to be in a healthy relationship. After we broke up is when I was finally able to comprehend that the reason he couldn't ever give me the kind of affection I needed was because he wasn't just obsessed with me because he loved who I am, he was obsessed with me because he wanted what I had; he wanted my light and couldn't figure out how to have it for himself.

While I'm sure there are some who are capable of being a little entranced by their partners and yet still able to maintain a level of healthy engagement, this was someone who desperately wanted to date me in high school and was over the moon that as adults he finally had the chance to sweep me off of my feet. The truth is, he had no comprehension of how to treat me because he had spent so long lusting over me, drooling in envy at the way I carried myself. When we reconnected and he admitted feelings he had been carrying for over a decade, it was hard not to get swept up in the emotion of it all, to not believe that maybe because this man had been desiring me for so long he had any comprehension on how to treat me. Unfortunately, I was wrong. While I had been in a ten year long term relationship, he had been galavanting around town exploring himself in a series of brief encounters with others. I was about to become his first long-term relationship.

I think there's something to be said about the appeal someone like that can have on a person. Something to be said about how I, at one point, felt like I was just a "girl" hoping to be noticed by someone who wanted to treat me right, in ways I had never experienced as a kid. He, on the other hand, saw someone he had been lusting over for decades and was so overwhelmed with the knowledge that he was finally presented with the chance at swooning me and he had no idea what he had to do to keep me. The problem was, he had no comprehension of how good I was for him and he wasn't ready for the blessing. The more I tried to emotionally pull him closer, the further he ran and the more mysterious he became. It got to the point that rather than be able to have a simple conversation with me about anything, he expected me to take the time to come up with questions he could answer about himself or us so that I might be presented with an opportunity to understand him better.

As the relationship continued, more and more of the responsibilities became mine, including taking the time to ponder if I felt like I was satisfied by remaining with him. He'd consistently tell me that he was interested in taking the time to regularly sit down and discuss where we were and what we needed moving forward as a couple, but then he would never actually take the initiative to sit down and ponder what he wanted or address the issues he felt existed between us. Soon it felt like it was my job and my job alone to be managing his emotions, finding the time for myself to cope with mine amidst his constant interruptions, all while acknowledging that I was incapable of actually having to a conversation with him about how I felt because he couldn't be be bothered to make the time for me. Every single time I desperately needed the space to be able to express how I felt, he would be drunk.

As time progressed, there became less and less time for me to have the chance to even think for myself. This was evident in how at the beginning of the relationship he had a full time job where he worked a decent amount of hours and brought home a good paycheck. After he lost his job (from drinking no doubt) he seemed perfectly content in working a part time job at the bar bringing home pitiful amounts of money that was left over from whatever he hadn't spent on drinking the night before. He started spending more and more time drinking during the day, constantly itching to go to the gas station and get himself another tall boy, always slurring his words and going somewhere emotionally that I had no way of getting to. He became more and more distant, continuously giving me just enough to keep my around, filling me up with empty promises in an attempt to get me to stick around when he knew it would be best if things ended.

The truth is, he didn't want to let go. I was comfortable. I was the person he had dreamed about for over a decade and finally got to fuck at night. I was something he had spent forever manifesting and when I finally arrived, ready to make a life and a future and a family with him he realized he was way outside of his league. He knew that I had already been working intensely on myself for four years and he hadn't even taken the time to sit with himself for a single second, yet he didn't let this stop him. He knew what he wanted and he did whatever it took to keep me around no matter how bad things got. The more time that progressed the more and more he found ways to keep himself around me and in my orbit to keep him afloat. He didn't love me, he loved the way my light make him feel warm. He couldn't care for me because he was too busy being so obsessed that he became envious of what I had. He fumbled the bag because he spent four years doing everything he wanted with me and to me without ever caring about the repercussions of his actions. The more I distanced myself from the pain he caused me, the more he did everything in his power to make sure that he took up my entire brain space until there was nothing left for me besides the ruins he had left in his wake.

#complex ptsd #spiritual awakening #spiritual journey #trauma #abuse #domesticviolence #codependency #recovering codependent #alcoholic

[6ofwandz]

The Codependant's pain part 1

Oh the pain of being the one who always sees the good in other people, hoping that if you love it strong enough there they might be able to see it themselves. The pain of desperately wanting to do whatever it takes to achieve this goal, thinking that you are just seeing the person for who they really are, thinking that maybe they just need to put the right glasses on so they can see themselves. So, you go over to the mirror and you select the pair you think is them, and you show them who they are but the sight is so shocking to them that they throw the glasses on the floor and step on them.

This is what it feels like to be in love as a codependent. More often than not, we tend to attract the same type of person and find ourselves, over and over in the same situations where we are sacrificing who we really are for the betterment of others because we believe ourselves unworthy of actually getting the recognition and love we deserve. It's even worse as a healer because it's like stumbling upon someone injured and wounded and you see them for their pain and you want to help them. I hear their soul crying and it echoes in my heart. I used to think for so long that it was just because I had too much empathy for someone else, but I also see now that it was a combination of both my need to constantly control the situation and me not realizing that I was unknowingly tapping into their energetic field and taking it on as my own. The problem is that I was not only carrying the weight of my own issues and unpacking the trauma that my parents passed down to me as my birthright, I was consistently finding myself wrapped up in someone else's thoughts and opinions about themselves, about me, about what they thought about the world around them. I was carrying the burden of everyone around me so they didn't have to feel it. They couldn't actually understand who I was or see me for me because the intensity of my brightness was so great all they could do was focus on keeping it off of them. And, in the end, they were only able to recognize the cold they felt when I was no longer present in their life and they missed the warmth I brought to them by being there.

I have realized that for people like myself, it can be very easy for me to understand the pain of other people, wish for them to not have to feel that themselves, and then do my best to take whatever damage of theirs I can take so that I can rest comfortably that they didn't have to experience that pain. The problem is, as an autistic person I'm not always good at picking up on other people's intentions. Add on to that the fact that I did grow up in the most isolated conditions and you can gather that my perception has not always been present. I have had to go through some of the most vulnerable, painful experiences to know what it feels like to be human, for me to be able to understand and comprehend the human experience as a soul, and unfortunately only through the depths of the darkness I found there was I able to know how to tell when someone has ill intentions. I am not saying that I am perfect at this practice, but I am saying that in a way I kind of traumatized myself to see how much I could take only at the time I didn't realize these were my intentions.

This relationship was proof to myself that I could love something so much and believe with all of my heart and every single intention inside of my healer's body that they would grow by being with me, but I realized after much heartache that you cannot sacrifice who you are for the betterment of someone else. I gave every single part of myself to another man thinking that if I did he would be able to see me for the entirety of myself and who I really am. But in the end all he did was use me for four years, cause me so much stress I broke several teeth, sexually assaulted me multiple times, continuously make excuses for what he did to me because he thought that if he said his intentions out loud to me that was enough to have completed that task. I didn't understand that wanting to be the other half of his whole left me open to being sucked into his orbit of hidden anger, aggression, and pain.

When I left him it's like a fog was lifted in my brain. I could finally disconnect from the never ending loop of negative intentions he had waiting for me. It's like all the darkness inside of him had just been sitting there so long that it slowly turned into a goop and it's been slowly leaking out of him the last four years and somehow being with me meant he felt safe enough to show those parts of himself. Unfortunately, I know that I am not the only person he has done this stuff to, no matter how much he denies it, because nothing adds up. He is not a person to learn from his mistakes. Instead, when he realized that I needed help packing up the apartment two weeks after I kicked him out he thought it would be the perfect opportunity to convince me that he would like to help me clean and pack up the house.

I really hesitated. I didn't know if I wanted to give him the chance at coming back into my life after I spent two weeks doing everything in my power to distance myself from his emotional vortex, but every single plan I had for after the breakup fell through. I no longer had someone to watch the cats or other major obstacles solved and instead the help I thought I might get after we split I never got. Truth be told, I was too proud to ask for help, too embarrassed that I had let myself stoop so low for a man who clearly didn't love me outside of the things I could do for him, all the ways in which I was able to bring him warmth while he pretended to fight the shame in his mind. So, I let him help me. By day two he was already suggesting breakup sex and to be honest, I was so touch starved the last half of our relationship that I fucking fell for it. I did my best to maintain an air of composure and not give back in because I knew it could be a trap and yet still, as soon as he was back he was back in my mind again playing games with my head and talking me into us in bed.

To be honest, I knew it was a risk to go ahead and give in but I waited two whole days of ten hours days of packing and cleaning and purging the house with him. Two whole days of him constantly being flirty at every chance he could and I missed the way it felt when he touched me so much. I had spent those two weeks going through a huge amount of downloads myself and when I saw him I was just so proud of how far I had come that I was completely blindsided by the familiarity of our emotional dance and I was swept up into the drama of it all. We spent that entire weekend in bed, bouncing between doing just that and having these deep, intense conversations I had longed for the entirety of our relationship.

Unfortunately, two days turned into two months and he metaphorically had me by the throat again before I could even tell what was happening. I wanted so badly to believe that somehow those two weeks had been a catalyst to his growth; that somehow in those moments of disparity for him he could maybe see how much he cared and loved for me. I had no comprehension that what was actually happening was that he had simply figured out that he didn't like the lack of warmth he felt when I wasn't around. It is so hard shining so brightly all the time, of not ever being sure if people like you because of who you truly are or simply because you make them feel better about themselves just by being yourself. I process slowly as well and having to take the time to realize that someone isn't as good for me as I think they are takes time.

I think the reality of the situation, truly, is that I felt bad for him when we reconnected. I'll continue this in another post because this is already starting to get very long.

#codependency #recovering codependent #trauma #complex ptsd #spiritual awakening #spiritual journey #long reads #memior #abuse

[6ofwandz]

Nine years ago I embarked on a spiritual journey I had no idea had this kind of destination. All I knew is that I had taken the time to examine my childhood to understand the kind of adult I had become and I didn't like what I had discovered. I had sunk into an indescribable depression that I could not claw my way out of no matter how hard I tried. I could not understand why looking in the mirror was getting more and more difficult. Why I was so consistently full to the brim with anxiety that I could hardly function on a molecular level? I had done all the introspection that I could on my own and had gotten pretty far but I knew there were pieces I was missing and I needed some help getting the rest of the way.

It wasn't without resistance, however, and I knew that I needed to be courageous enough to push through that difficult moment and insist that I be able to start therapy despite the hesitation of my ex-husband. He had explained that he had been in a relationship with a woman whose therapist had turned her against him and so he didn't believe in it anymore. He saw what it had done to his personal life and didn't want me to have any influences that might cause me to leave him like his ex left him. He probably knew that I had been changing and found himself terrified that I was finally going to get the realization that he wasn't as good as he said he was.

And so, I embarked. I gathered up the little I knew about myself and began on a journey to understand how I had gotten to this point, to comprehend how my soul had gotten so lost in the dark hole that was my chest. My anxiety had gotten absolutely out of control and I could hardly function working at a shift supervisor at my job--it was simply too much pressure. My depression made me feel like I could hardly get out of bed and I had been researching everything I knew about what I had experienced online and had hit a wall. It was time that I go to therapy and get help, though at the time I didn't even know what I needed help with. I just knew that I needed something.

Looking back on what got me here, I can say with full certainty that I never expected myself at this intersection, in this moment. At the time it was literally just about me going to therapy to try to learn some symptom management. I didn't believe that I could heal myself enough to actually change my entire life. I just wanted to learn a few things so that I could stop having panic attacks every day at work. I didn't know that I would spend the next nine years of my life hyperfocusing on trying to find the best answers for my emotional state of being every day trying to learn something new about myself so that I could stop hurting with such intensity. I had no destination in mind, just the acknowledgement that I couldn't continue traveling the path I was on and hope for different results.

The journey has most certainly not been easy. I have lost many friends because not everyone is as ready to do the same amount of work as I have. I have gone to the absolute depths of my self, leaving only pebbles to overturn, and have come back victorious. I can say with assuredness that there is no way I would have been able to look my current self in the eyes as a younger version of myself, I would have absolutely crumbled from knowing that I got the chance to become a hero in my own story. I'm so so so proud of me.

#trauma #spiritual journey #spiritual awakening #complex ptsd #healing #healing journey #self awareness #self reflection #self compassion

[6ofwandz]

I am an extremely cautious person. I don't make decisions unless I have weighed all of my options intensely through rumination, lost sleep for several weeks, and journaled until my fingers are sore and calloused. I have always felt as though I have suffered from a sensitive soul and that means that it is difficult for me to make decisions because I find myself constantly thinking about what the other people in the situation are experiencing as well (and for me I feel as though there are always other people to consider). Unfortunately, I think that this has made me susceptible to being used by manipulators who cash in on my feeling empathetic in order to wipe their slate clean of guilt. They use me to feel sorry for them and in doing so provide themselves a way of feeling less shame for the things they haven't taken the time to delve into because they are too scared. It takes the pressure off of them.

Being in a relationship with me is a double edged sword (friendship or romantic) because I am someone who has a very bright light. I have been through a lot of shit and have used that shit to alchemize my experiences through really hard work and determination at discovering the root cause of my issues and solving them. I am also naturally a mirror and for so long I couldn't understand why in my childhood people were uncomfortable in my presence. Lately, I have come to realize that the reason people were so uncomfortable is because they were unsure of how to feel about my light. On the one hand, it was bright enough that without even meaning to I was exposing the dark parts of themselves they didn't want to explore yet--those secret pieces they didn't even want to admit existed when it was just them and the deafening silence ringing in their ears. This generally tends to create a strong, visceral reaction in people who are embarrassed at their internal response when they are in my presence. In the past, this has caused me to encounter a lot of extreme circumstances with others who mistreat me because they are too terrified of what my presence brings up in them. It has been a very, very painful thing to learn and experience and alchemize. I had to unlearn the ideology other people had told me which was, simply put, that I was the problem.

It took me a long time to understand it but often times what I experience from other people is jealousy. They see how long I have worked on what I have gone through and they see the glimmer of confidence I have felt comfortable showing them and they wish they had taken the time like I have to discover themselves. I think people often want to believe that working on who they are is an easy process and when it proves to be otherwise they become discouraged and disappointed and give up.

I have not lived an easy life. In fact, trying to heal from the horrific things I have been through means that I have had to crawl my way the depths of hell and back just to be able to see the light of day. I was born in nothing with nothing and nobody and had to bring myself up from their darkness and into my light. I had to do it all on my own because at every single opportunity someone was trying to take away my crown, my blessing, my gifts. Every single chance they got they were attempting to rob me of who I was so they could fill me up with their worries, their concerns, their unfulllfilled hopes and dreams. They saw me as this empty vessel, innocent and open to receiving their truths about the world, unwilling to realize that I had hopes and dreams they could never comprehend. Trying to understand other people's motives as a person who was raised on a rotting foundation of insecurities and lack has been like rebuilding a wall with the same bricks and inspecting each and every one of them for cracks, hoping that by the end you will have something stable to stand on.

The truth is, the people in my life who tried to shut me up were just stealing everything they could from me because I was too naive and disabled to understand. I had grown up so cut off from the outside world that I had no comprehension that what I was going through was as serious as it was. No one in my family said anything because they all belonged to the same religious ideologies and I spent all of my adolescent years being silenced, brainwashed, and isolated.

Anyway, I have decided that I am going to be moving forward in my life in relationships in an entirely different way after the collapse of another long term relationship in which I realized that sometimes people decide to keep me in their life by a string because then they can get the benefit of my light keeping them warm but just far enough away that it isn't directly shining on the problem areas they don't want to discuss. They get the advantage of having the guiding presence of my light without the uncomfortability of it directly igniting their shame. If they dangle the carrot in front of me, make me believe anything they say, feed their elaborate lies to me on silver platters then maybe they could harvest its energy without getting burned.

For the first time I am being more selective about who I give my energy to. This is a time in which I desperately need to make friends to cope with this horrific intimate partner betrayal I am experiencing but there seems to be no opportunities in my area for me to connect with other people that don't also pertain to a bar, a recovery program, or emotionally unfulfilled people who just want to be friends with me because I am the only one bringing any positive energy to the experience.

I don't exactly know what I'm doing as I move forward in protection for myself but I know that I am finally done being treated as an object people only want in their life when it benefits them. I need real fulfilling friendships with people who are ready and eager to do the work that is required to stay an active member in my life. I love being a hermit but it is time that I get out of the house and find joy in the world, but I am going to be far more cautious this time moving forward. Not everyone is going to be able to get a sample of my light for themselves. This time, this is for me.

#trauma #spiritual journey #spiritual awakening #complex ptsd #abuse #lightworker #spiritual healer #healer

[6ofwandz]

It's hard to explain how it feels to grow up as a child in a home that constantly invalidates who you are, day in and day out while cutting you off completely from the outside world. When you experience that level of isolation, of complete and utter depravity, it makes it so much easier for you to be susceptible to future kinds of abuse. It's hard to identify its presence at times because it looks so comfortable and familiar that you don't even realize it's dangerous. Pretty soon the sound of someone screaming at you doesn't phase you anymore and when the man who says he loves you takes the time to show you his angry, loud side you don't even realize that you didn't deserve it, you just know it made you feel gross. You don't know yet that it feels safe despite this terrifying realization because it feels familiar and that it feels familiar because it feels gross, much the way your parents made you feel gross every time they couldn't control their emotions in front of you only this time it's not your parents it's a man you think you know and you don't realize that him screaming at you is just a sign of something much more sinister beneath the surface.

#complex ptsd #trauma #abuse #domesticviolence #codependency #recovering codependent #trauma recovery #abuse survivor

[6ofwandz]

It took me nine months to decide if I was going to leave him or not. Every single time I thought about our relationship, I kept getting stuck in a loop about how he made me feel when the times were good. How he would always suck me back in every time I reached a new breaking point, convincing me that he genuinely loved and cared about me by giving me the affection I was starving for the rest of the time we were together. It was a cycle. Something awful would happen between us--he'd have a bad day and slam his head into the bedroom door and leave a head size crater there, for example--then I would reach a new peak of frustration with his continued behaviors, have a meltdown, and he would self-flagellate until I would think he was changing for good this time. He would acknowledge how I felt but wouldn't ever actually do anything to change. He could intellectualize the shit out of a conversation about his emotions to the point that I believed he had dealt with them until the next time he would drink too much and I would inevitably be left to clean up the mess of his emotional explosion.

In the beginning he love bombed me so hard I didn't have an opportunity to even realize what was happening. I don't exactly have a long history of dating partners and I have CPTSD. Having been an abusive relationship before (which culminated in him being physically aggressive with me) I thought that maybe this time it was real love and that when someone loves you like that it can feel like love bombing. I thought I knew him so any doubts I had were just ill-informed and came from my internal place of lack. I thought maybe him taking me out to eat to a nice restaurant, teaching me how to tie a bowtie, and getting me an expensive valentines gift was just how men who really loved you showed you they cared. That my ex-husband who was never really interested in any holiday that was romantic in nature would never have done those things for me, so maybe this time I got it right.

I had been extremely sexually deprived in my last relationship, the ten years we were together practically a drought, him forbidding me to have any alone time because he didn't see the need. When I met my most recent ex and he couldn't get enough of me I thought to myself "finally." I had no idea that he was practically performing magic on me every time he touched me. In fact, it was a consistent comment of his during sex that he was "proud in knowing he was the best sex I ever had". I had only slept with two other people besides him, I had no comprehension of what was and wasn't "the best sex" and he knew it. He had had a completely different experience in his twenties. While I was married and practicing my life as a "wife" (I hadn't come out yet), he was out partying and having all kinds of wild experiences with friends. He knew that I was isolated my entire life from the outside world and also knew that that left me swooning for his bad boy side. Unfortunately, that was not just a persona that this man used to swoon me with, he was actually just a self-centered traumatizing partner who had no comprehension of how to actually own up to his mistakes.

The thing is, people might read the things he did to me that were nice and think to themselves that he couldn't be that bad. After the break up, I was very clear on my social media about the things he put me through and then deleted friends who didn't want to support me in the aftermath of his abuse. This is what abusers are really good at doing: providing a narrative to the public that makes them look lovable and kind in such a way that anyone who speaks out against them looks like the crazy one. Despite all the nights where he was throwing up in public from drinking, or the knowledge that he's still incapable of getting a full time job somewhere and putting in the work, people still seem to want to be in his life. No one has really taken the time to listen to me talk about all the horrible things he put me through and all the reasons I continued to stay. I want to share my experiences because I wish I had these words as a resource on the bad days. I just think more people should know that abuse doesn't just look like one thing. But more importantly, how to get out of the chains of repeating this behavior before another generation has to be subject to the consequences of our insecurities. This account is my confession to all the ways in which I wished I had been honest with myself years ago before I reached this point. If nothing else, I hope that maybe you can learn from my mistakes.

[6ofwandz]

I am tired of holding secrets for people who should have treated me better if they wanted to be more respected in the retelling of my life. I have felt the oppressive forces of the silence my abusers have had in response to my pain and I have been determined to not allow this to keep me quiet. Just because they refuse to discuss what truly happened does not mean it didn't happen and I am tired of staying quiet. Not telling of the atrocities I have faced does nothing but aid in them maintaining the power they have seemingly had over me my entire life. I have had enough. I am finally going to tell my story.

#trauma #story #memior #spiritual journey #spiritual awakening #healing #complex ptsd

[6ofwandz]

I've officially hit rock bottom.

I am 35 and have already wasted so much of my life living for other people hoping, desperately, that if I came across the right person they would complete me, they would be the one to fill in all the blanks my parents left when their lack of love ripped me wide open as a child of immense trauma. I have flayed myself for other people to feed off of only to have found that I was left with nothing but the scars of the wounds I created for them, reminders of all the times I allowed myself to stoop lower and lower because some part of me took pity on the people who repetitively abused me.

I had been with my last partner for four years. I had given him parts of myself I had never even dared showing anyone else and at the end of last year I knew things were coming to an end but I just couldn't let go. I knew he couldn't either. So there we were, in a terrifying death grip: me, unable to let go no matter what he did to hurt me, and him, not wanting to leave the person who for the first time in his life saw him for who he really could be. I had spent so long allowing this man (who did the least to meet my needs while we were together) make me feel like I was constantly wavering between too much and not enough for him, when I was sacrificing my physical health just to survive his abuse.

I never thought it would happen to me. That I would get roped in a second time after I went to all that work of slowly severing the ties and setting myself free. I couldn't understand how other people got sucked in time and time again. Every time they told me at the shelter that it takes an average of seven times to leave your abuser, I wanted to laugh. Why would anyone want to go through that again and again when it took so much strength to leave the first time?

Well, I finally know. It's because it feels so comfortable.

I built my entire life around one person again. I did it with my ex-husband of ten years and I did it again with my last relationship because it's what I thought I was supposed to do. I believed myself to need another person so much that I would forget myself, naturally. They were nothing but karmic relationships meant to teach me something about myself and the lesson was that I deserve to care for myself, first and foremost, without question.

The truth is, I knew pretty early on that things weren't right with either partner and I chose to shut down my intuition because I couldn't bear to handle the truth. I didn't want to admit that I might need to be alone to discover myself, as my biggest fear was ending up alone. I had been alone my entire life, emotionally speaking, and I didn't want to admit it. I thought having the physical embodiment of a person there would be enough to satisfy my spiritual needs, but I didn't realize that "just wanting someone to be there" isn't enough to actually have my needs met. I was settling. Over and over again I was settling because I was terrified of discovering what it meant to be truly and absolutely alone. I thought that filling the void with someone who was interested in me was enough. It wasn't. I could never be satisfied. They couldn't love me. They could only love the image of me they had created in their mind, just like I had done of them. They could only see me for the way that I helped fill that void inside of them the way they filled it in me, our mutual fear of the emptiness inside of us feeding the triggers inside of each other.

When I kicked out my boyfriend in February, I expected it would be the end of it, that I would never be able to see him again. After all, the more the relationship continued to escalate, he eventually convinced me that if we ever split he would never be able to bear seeing my face again. So, as I began to make my plan of escape, I emotionally prepared to move forward in life without him.

But, of course, the universe has ways of working that do not always make sense.

Two weeks after our breakup he was back and of course this time he decided he was so terrified of us ending that he claimed he wanted to risk it all. He made me believe he committed himself in ways I never saw him commit in an attempt to win me back and I let him because this time I believed it was real. I got swept back up in his charm, his mystery, the way he wanted me to believe he loved me. And, maybe he did, but he could only love me as much as he loved himself, and since he hadn't really taken the time to get to know himself yet, that wasn't very much.

I poured my soul out into his and he couldn't be bothered to return that love until it was too late, until I had already decided that I was finally ready to walk away for good. It's a painful state of affairs admitting that he couldn't be grateful for what he had until it was too late and I had already walked away. I spent two weeks attempting to pry myself away from him and then when he came back around again I was not strong enough yet to say no and now I am once again trapped trying to leave.

This is why we stay even when the situation is abusive. It's familiar. It's comfortable. There stands a person that we have poured our entire heart and soul out to and we are somehow expected to just forget them, to walk away without a single support system and attempt to pull ourselves back up and into the future without anyone else to rely on? Codependency cuts us off from other people because it makes us believe that we don't need them, that the only person we truly need is our partner and then when they harm us and they abuse us and they take us for granted, which they are often apt to do in these kinds of relationships, we have nothing to fall back on because the one person that said they would be there for us through thick in thin has turned out to be a monster. It's a stark reality to wake up and know that you got yourself into this mess and you are the only person that can be accountable for what you have done, to clean up your disaster, and come to terms with all the ways in which that made you unable to be the parent you wanted or the person you could be alone with when the room gets quiet at night. I have a lot of wreckage to navigate now and I'm far from being through this storm. I just have to remind myself that I never deserved any of this. What I did deserve was a man who cared about me enough to leave me rather than spend four years carving from me what he could and apologizing to himself later for not taking the rest.

#complex ptsd #spiritual journey #spiritual awakening #trauma #abuse #domesticviolence #alcoholic

[6ofwandz]

So yes, I saw him drinking every night on facetime for months before I invited him to come live with me. The pandemic had just come to America and everyone was talking about going into lockdown. He said that he was working in the basement at his sister's house, his bedroom, after going through a horrible roommate situation with someone who had screwed us both over at separate times. I had visited his sister's house so I knew this to be true, but he was working a full time job and it seemed like a decent relationship with her and everyone else he spoke to. Like I said before, I thought I knew this man. We went to the same high school.

Despite my nervousness at his levels of alcohol consumption in this phase of our relationship, he was the most emotionally open man I had ever experienced, or so I thought. He swooned me with all these seemingly deep conversations. We would smoke together and go down the rabbit-hole of some topic. He knew about my passion for my daughter and my desire to be a constant and active participant in my child's life. (I have a seven year old from a previous relationship). When my mental health seriously collapsed in 2020 and I lost custody of my daughter for a few years while I worked every single day to get better, I thought he was by my side.

A few months into the two of us living together I realized that I never been around someone who drank so much. He was getting these huge hundred dollar orders of alcohol delivered to us during the height of lockdown, and once he started drinking while at work I knew something was seriously wrong.

Then the meltdowns started. He would get so drunk he'd have to spend the rest of the night in the bathroom, slumped over the toilet passed out from how much he had chugged after work. The occasional night where he would become overemotional from drinking became more and more frequent and if I wasn't careful I would have to spend another night listening to him incoherently attempt to rehearse heartbreaking moments of his past he hadn't given himself the permission to process any time before.

As a codependent I didn't know how to set good boundaries with him. I thought that a good boundary was to not get too attached to the idea that he was drinking, to not let it determine how I viewed him. I believed that I was supposed to just stay quiet as long as he was spending his own money, not reminding myself that his money was ultimately impacting me when I began paying all the bills, when I got stuck with the entirety of the electric and gas bills because of another sob story he had given me.

So, I stayed quiet, time after time as I continued to witness him throwing up at parties, screaming at me that he was fine to drive home from the bar, losing hundreds of dollars in one weekend multiple times, after he sexually assaulted me multiple times, once in front of friends. I stayed with him because he seemed like a family man. He encouraged me in my art, told me I needed to get more friends, seemed to believe in me when no one else really did. I stayed because I saw his potential and I believed that when he told me that he wanted to change, but that he didn't know where to start, he was just so overwhelmed, he was scared. I have heard every single excuse in the book and still the kind part of my soul told myself that he was doing his best and I was being too hard on him for expecting to be treated better. For hoping that someone who claimed to love me as much as he did, who made me feel like he genuinely wanted to do life with me, would respect me a little more than he did.

I have been through it all with him these last four years and yet still, to this day, two months after we broke up, he believes there is a chance that one day we will work out, that we will be able to make something incredible together if only he takes the time to heal by himself. The truth is, if you had asked me a few weeks ago if I also believed that I would have said yes. I would have told you that what society said about abusive men is all wrong, they can change. I would have believed myself strong enough to have evaded the attempt of a man who knew he had done me tremendous wrong and yet still believed that he could win me back like he had made such great emotional changes in the two weeks since we had broken up. After all, I spent an entire month planning my escape, nine months before that contemplating once and for all if I wanted to stick around. It took me having to save his life and him claiming that the two issues were unrelated for me to finally get the courage enough to leave. I still have not been successful in getting myself out, however, and this is my rock bottom.

#complex ptsd #spiritual awakening #spiritual journey #trauma #abuse #domesticviolence #sexualassault

[6ofwandz]

I grew up in a childhood home so absolutely segregated, isolated, and cut off from the outside world that it left me wide open and vulnerable to finding myself in not just one but two domestically violent relationships as an adult. I am a codependent and I have fallen victim to two different men's empty promises and I'm here to tell my story. I think it's important that we are willing to have the vulnerable conversations about what domestic violence looks like, and to put stories to the real life struggle that is dating in a world full of men who claim they have no comprehension of the ways in which they are wounding others. It doesn't always have the physical violence we expect to pepper the entirety of the relationship, rather these men wait until their partners are so comfortable that by the time they show their true colors there is no safety-net available to fall back on. They will hold the mask so firmly to their face that it becomes so difficult to see that it isn't the real them after all until it's too late and your entire life and identity is tied to the lies they tell you about themselves. It's a brutal reality. One I am desperately trying to share with others because I think it is important to comprehend the ways in which someone can act like they are sweeping us up off of our feet when in reality, they were just sticking their foot out long enough for us to trip so they could be thanked when they pick us up off the floor.

#complex ptsd #trauma #spiritual awakening #spiritual journey #abuse #domesticviolence

[6ofwandz]

I have been going through one of the most intense moments of upheaval in my life with nearly no support and I desperately need somewhere to talk about my experiences.

I am disabled and knee-deep in a very traumatic breakup of a four-year relationship. I have no family to rely on and all of my friends have their own issues or live in other parts of the US.

After growing up in a cult, getting married by the age of 22 to an abusive man, leaving him in 2018, and going through some of the most horrific traumas, I found myself swooning over a man I had met in high school. I had met him during some of the hardest times of my teen years and while we never hung out outside of school, I felt this connection to him I couldn't explain. When he accidentally came to my 31 birthday party after multiple failed attempts at reconnecting over the years, I thought the stars were aligned. On our way back from the bar, when I was far from sober, he mumbled something about liking me in high school. He was the only person in the room who calmed me down when no one else could that night. I thought I finally met the man of my dreams.

By the time we had our first date, I was so head over heels I had no concept of reality. I had never known a man to send me so many steamy messages worshiping me before we even we fucked for the first time. I had no idea what it would be like to be with someone who could make me feel like that. At the time, I was completely roped in the first moment he touched me, but looking back I know that he was performing a version of his own magic on me, hoping to finally catch the person he had eyes for in high school but felt too worthless to ever obtain. I got caught up in someone who could make me feel good, which was something I had never experienced like that before, and trusted that because I had known him in high school that that meant I must have known him when we met that last final time.

I couldn't see that it was lust. I thought it was old souls connecting, reuniting and forming a lasting bond. It wasn't just sex. We'd stay up on the phone for hours at night. I'd fall asleep video chatting him as I talked about my plans to escape my parent's house for the second time (only this time I was 31). He'd write me poetry, took me out to the most amazing Valentine's date I'd ever been on (me ex-husband never took me out for Valentines, not once in 10 years), and genuinely seemed to care about me in ways I had never experienced before. I had never had someone listen to me like he listened to me. He made me feel safe those first few months together.

But then, the pandemic hit. Before I knew it he was talking me into moving into an apartment I couldn't afford on my own so that he could get away from his sister. Maybe she is actually overbearing but I am sure that he also wanted to be able to escape her judgment when he was drinking in her house. The entirety of the three months we dated before he moved in with me he was always drinking on video chat, hiding the cans in his room in his sister's basement knowing how uncomfortable she was with it. He made me believe that she was just breathing down her neck all the time, and maybe she was, but I also know now that he genuinely didn't want to confront himself and he didn't like how she was attempting to make him do that.

So, in my vulnerable condition, having just left my parent's house for the last time, all alone in my new apartment I needed help paying for after my other partner and I split, I agreed to let him move in with me. My family had always told me alcohol was something to avoid at all costs; that if I wanted to question what it could do to someone I should just look at my uncle and know I didn't want that for me. I bought all the things he said and felt that of course they were wrong, they were wrong about everything else weren't they?

#abuse #domesticviolence #complex ptsd #trauma #spiritual awakening #spiritual journey

[6ofwandz]

Tomorrow's eclipse

In 2017 I got to experience a full solar eclipse for the first time in my life. I had to work that day at my customer service job, but I remember my manager and I stopping what we were doing to go outside with our obnoxious customers to watch it. I didn't know what to expect.

What I remember the most was how it almost felt like it was wavy outside. The way the light quickly went from being bright and full of sunshine to dusky and dark was so unnerving. Watching the moon slowly overcome the sun, the big circle slowly overcome by a dark shadow, the sliver of brightness shining around the dark orb like a halo.

I didn't think anything of it at the time but I have been second guessing if tomorrow I want to participate in observing the eclipse.

Will you be participating?

#eclipse2024 #solar eclipse #eclipse

[6ofwandz]

its funny— the act of being swallowed up  by another  feels so similar to a droplet  being absorbed  into a lake,  how dare i believe  the act of being consumed  does not also mean  camouflaged,  does not also mean  changed  to resemble  that which swallowed it,  eventually we all start to resemble  our enemies  to avoid being hunted  wondering why  it’s only their face  we see in the mirror  when all the lights go out. 

#poetry on tumblr #poetry #writing #creative writing #trauma recovery #cptsd

[6ofwandz]

I'm a codependent and I'm finally ready to stop feeling like I simultaneously have to avoid relying on anyone ever and also never feeling like I am completely capable of doing anything on my own. I'm done shrinking myself for the benefit of others because I am too afraid to stand in my own light. I am tired of not speaking up even when it is a detriment to me simply because I don't want to have to deal with the repercussions of someone else's inability to ground themselves. I am sick of feeling like I am not fulfilling my purpose simply because I am being swayed by people with ulterior motives who have convinced me they care about me.

This is my life, my one and only chance to live this experience in this body and I am tired of squandering it for others because I am too afraid of what it might be like on the other side.

The more I step into my power, the more I start to fight back against the oppressive ideologies of others, the less afraid I feel. I am still gaining my strength after a lifetime of being weakened, but I believe that I can overcome this. I see the next step and it's a big leap to get to the new me on the other side. I know that there are going to be some things that I am going to learn about myself that will challenge everything I know about who I am. I am stripping down to the scaffolding. This is a complete remodel. Everything I know from before are just their cold left-overs. I am gutting myself to rebuild. I am emptying me of myself in order to find me. I couldn't be more proud.

#recovering codependent #codependency #spiritual awakening #spiritual journey #trauma #complex ptsd #abuse survivor

[6ofwandz]

I crawled into my mother and father 's expectation (s) when I was born instead of my own skin and have been weaseling my way out ever since.

#poetry on tumblr #poems

[6ofwandz]

Right now I'm standing on the edge of a cliff. In the distance I see the new me, the life I have been working so hard to obtain and yet have still not been able to grasp. I know I want to jump, to make the leap to the dreams I have had my whole life, but I'm terrified. My inheritance did not include faith in myself. Instead, I spent countless hours worshiping at the feet of Jesus, begging him to make me a vessel, to give me the courage to have the faith in him I wasn't allowed to see in me. And now, at 35, I am finally on a journey of self-discovery I have not yet given myself the permission to explore. But it is time. I must take the first brave steps into a new perspective, a new chance at a beginning just for me and I must be courageous in my terror.

If there's one thing my mother taught me, it is how to hold on to something and never let go. The funny thing is I didn't even realize that my soul was clinging in the same ways she was until I found myself in the second domestically abusive romantic relationship of my life last year. I didn't even realize that I was, actually, emulating her marriage to my father by allowing myself to sacrifice who I was for the best interest of someone else just to be loved. I became the thing I was most terrified of. I started to see her in the mirror. After a while, it became hard to see myself there--every time I gave up another part of myself to a man bent on hurting me to better himself I saw my reflection shrinking. I began to see more and more of her wrinkles, her personality, her emotional distress in my reflection. I knew something needed to change.

And so here I am now, standing on the precipice of the most terrifying leap of my entire life, acknowledging that this time I must do this alone, this time I must be willing to risk everything to get where I want to go. The old methods won't work anymore. I can't continue to entertain patterns of behaviors that are harmful to me because those pathways simply lead me back to the same spots. I have to start over. Truly. I have to empty myself of the me I have come to know because that isn't me anymore. It can't be. I was always just a collection of the pieces other people left behind when they were done with me, but this time I am taking back my power even if it terrifies me.

I'm writing here because this time next year I won't even recognize myself. I'm finally ready to start laying down the way others perceive me . I am tired of limiting myself to the small-minds of those who benefit from me staying on their level. It is time that I finally take back control of my own life and start living it for myself and not for all the ways in which other people want me to express myself. I am sick of being a shadow because I'm afraid of shining too much. For so long I was afraid as I watched (over and over again) my light reflecting the insecurities of those around me, only for them to turn around and project those emotions on to me as though they were truth. It lowered my self-confidence because after a while I just started to believe it was all my fault.

So, I start again. I am going to continue purging the parts of themselves they left me with and discover my own self for the first time. I am extremely codependant because I spent my entire life never having someone to rely on, even as a child, and now as an adult I still believe I cannot lean on other people because time and again they break my trust.

I'm sharing this journey here because something is calling to me to impart the wisdom I have gained on this treacherous journey I call life. I firmly believe that right now, with the solar eclipse arriving on April 8th, 2024, Monday, and the intense astrological changes happening at this time things are headed in a new direction as a collective. I just feel like pulled against my conscious mind to this entirely new path, and I know that there have to be other people out there who relate to me.

I also remember how it felt growing up as a teen reading tons of other people's stories on their blogs because it helped me feel so much less alone. I desperately want to be able to be the light for other people that I wasn't able to find in the darkest parts of my life. If this resonates, I hope you'll stay. You deserve a place to rest your head.

Either way this is my journey and i'm so excited to share this with you.

Hi, my name is Danger.

#memior #spirituality #spiritual awakening #spiritual journey #healing #gratitude #trauma #complex ptsd