February

Who can tell how I'm going to be from one moment to the next? One minute I'm doing tons better and the next I'm a basketcase all over again. I know I need to cut myself some slack. Not only is it that time of the month, but it's the beginning of February. We're smack dead in the middle of winter and here I sit wondering why I'm way more emotional that usual. How quickly I forget.... Up until last Februrary, I spent the 5 Februarys before that inpatient because things got so bad this time of year... and the years before that I probably needed inpatient care but wasn't in a therapy setting decent enough for the therapist to realize it.

Last year was tough, but not inpatient worthy. That was thrilling. I don't feel near needing inpatient help right now either, but in a moment of clarity, I wonder why I'm just now realizing that this is always a hard time of year for me? On top of things coming up in therapy, adjustments fiance and I are both having to make, planning a wedding, and just normal every day crap, I'm in the worst time of the year for me. Duh! No wonder I'm a basketcase.

It doesn't make the pain or depression any less and it doesn't make things easier to deal with, but I think I can start to cut myself a little bit more slack now. I am not turning into some needy, emotional girl who has a secret plan to run her fiance off by draining the life out of him. I realize some of you may almost laugh at that statement, but for a time, I really was afraid I was starting to self-sabotage our relationship b/c so much of the time (even though he's being insensitive and driving me crazy lately) I feel like he's more than I deserve and it's only a matter of time before he wakes up and realizes that.

What I am doing is surviving February the best way we know how at the moment. And while I want to be handling it better, I do need to give shout-outs to everyone inside for working so hard b/c even in this struggle, there are no impulses to self-harm. Just lots and lots of tears!! Tears we can handle. There is also the realization that by the mid to end of March, this will have passed and Spring will be here. Our mood and ability to handle and cope with strong emotions always improves in the Spring and through the Summer.

I talked to a dear friend last night who helped me put fears from my last post into perspective. While I still plan to talk to fiance b/c I want him to understand as much as possible, she helped me to see how many of my thoughts, fears, etc. are still rooted in the PTSD and the shame from the abuse.... and really have nothing to do at all with the current situation or fiance.

Right now I have to trust the people in my life who truly know me/us (the good and the bad) that we will not be dragging fiance into some downward spiral with us b/c we are on our way up. Yes, there are still great struggles, but the progress we've made over the past couple of years only lends to the progress we can continue to make that fiance can share in with us.

I sometimes wonder if abuse victims ever learn well enough that they don't have to be perfect and do everything right and keep to this impossible standard in order to be truly loved and cared about? I know there are people in my life that do that for me, but will I ever get rid of the fear that they may decide to leave one day? Will I ever trust that whether I'm being emotional, irrational, irritating or just a pill, someone else is truly going to stick with me? Are you ever able to let go of the fear that you may run everyone in your life away? And what does that say about me if I believe I actually have the power to do that? Sounds kind of grandiose.

For now, I have therapist, a few very dear friends, family and a fiancee that love me. This is more of a blessing than most of the people I know. I want to learn to cherish this rather than living in fear of losing it. At the same time, I'm going to remember to cut myself some slack. It is February after all.

Didn't Sleep It Off

For the first time in what feels like quite awhile, I wasn't able to sleep last night's feelings off. I woke up feeling pretty miserable this morning. In fact, it was really hard to wake up and I didn't even get out of my pajamas until after noon. I ended up being pretty productive today despite that fact. Actually, once I got going, I really used distraction to my advantage.

My mom called and we talked wedding invitation wording. Then a good friend of mine who is designing my invitations, called and I talked details with her. Tuesday nights are date night with fiancee, so I got busy getting things ready for tonight. I decided to cook a meal and rent a movie. I'm not ready to talk to fiancee yet. If I can't explain what I need or process things okay with therapist right now, it seems impossible I could do so with him. Therapist and I have been together 2 years longer than fiancee and me. She knows things about me that I hope to be as open with him about, but he doesn't know yet. She has never judged me harshly no matter what horrid things I may have shared with her. It seems as though I base everyone else's ability to understand and show compassion off of her reaction. That may be wrong, but the feeling is if/until she gets it, how can I expect anyone else to? No matter how much they may love me.

It actually ended up being a nice normal night with fiancee, and I am grateful. I'm feeling better now than I have all day. How quickly I/we forget the safety we feel when he's around. It's so easy to get scared of him or what will happen with him when he's not around for a couple of days. I'm glad we had a 'normal' and fun night tonight. Things are so busy right now it seems we're either always talking wedding stuff or relationship stuff. I want some fun times so he won't be afraid every time we're together equals a major conversation. I need some fun with him too. Having dinner and a movie kept us busy and entertained enough that I don't believe he was able to pick up on the internal struggle - and like I said, we were feeling a bit better by the time he left. Not because anything has changed, but just because we had a nice night with him.

I still feel everything I did in the posts last night. Therapist and I will for sure have lots to talk about tomorrow and I see many many more tears in my near future. It's been awhile since we've had to sit with such a strong inner turmoil. I'm really proud of us that there have been no impulses or desires to act on anything unsafe. I'm also kinda glad we're allowing these feelings to be (in all honesty, it seems to be because I can't put them away). It is definitely not fun and it is making some everyday things difficult, but it's going to make us work through them sooner rather than later if we can't ignore them.

Tomorrow will be my first day working as a counselor when my own issues feel they have the potential to interfere with my ability to help my clients. I've had struggles in my personal life while in this job, sure, but they were external issues with other people. They weren't abuse related issues and they didn't cause such intense reactions from soooo many parts inside.

It took everything in me to not call therapist today and cry into the phone about everything we blogged about here and ask for reassurance. I know she wouldn't have minded if we did call, but I guess we felt inconsolable and we weren't in crisis, so it seemed pointless. I don't think she could convince us of anything different and what would it benefit her arguing with us on the phone for 15 minutes while we sob that it's just too much and she just can't understand?..... Even though, we really do think she gets it.

This dull nauseous feeling in my stomach is getting old too. How did I function for years with a feeling like this in my stomach? Does it feel worse now b/c it reminds me of those really dark days? Or was I just blessed to grow unaccustomed to the feeling I am now having again? Either way, I'm going to trust and pray this will be short term. I am also fervently praying for wisdom and reassurance from God on how to handle things internally and externally. This will NOT consume my life long term.

Part II

In case I'm posting these entries too close together, the first part of this entry is entitled: Clear as Mud.

Assuming default mode passes in time, we've got to come up with a way to handle the current situation. A couple of ideas come to mind, but I don't know if they're good ones or not. Obviously, therapist and I will continue to work on things in therapy and she can talk with parts who have fears, concerns, memories, etc.

The other options I have so far:
1. Keep boundaries the way they are, inform fiancee of my fears, and pray harder than I ever have that God will take care of all of our needs so that sex is not the issue I see it being right now by the time our wedding actually rolls around.

2. Talk to fiance about the possibility of relaxing our physical boundaries a bit so that we can continue to slowly adjust to being more physical with him over a longer period of time.

While I truly believe my God is great enough to allow the first to happen, both of these feel manipulative towards fiancee on my end. Either I think he's not totally going to "get it" until after he says, I do. Or I'm asking him to potentially adjust his moral standards for my benefit.

And again I default back to how this whole situation would just be easier if I wasn't alive. Fiance could find a girl who can love him with all of her, who won't always having her past come up and bite hard during times that are supposed to be the happiest, who won't always feel so needy and insecure whether she tells you about it or not.

I know for so many years I walked around this and even more turmoil on me and held down a job and/or school, frienships, etc, but right now, for the life of me, I have no idea how. Things are shut down here tomorrow because of snow, and I am so thrilled that I don't have to go anywhere or be anything b/c honestly, I don't feel I could fake it right now.

Clear as Mud

Yep. That's about how clear everthing feels in my head right now. Before I proceed, I should probably preface this entry with

*TW S*xual Content* - please read at a time when you feel you are in a safe place.
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Despite my intial reasons for creating this blog to be an online journal to discuss my healing and issues around the childhood abuse we suffered, I very rarely speak on anything specfically related to this content. In all honesty, I believe it's more of an attempt to spare myself than anyone else. I only started this blog a year ago. It's been almost 2 years that I've been in a pretty good place. I think days that remind me of the dark spaces I've been in lead me to not want to blog and to distract and to forget as soon as possible. I like my new "healthy" happy life not overrun by utter despair, pain and desperation.

Unfortunately/fortunately (depending on how you look at it) we've entered into a space, a set of therapeutic work that needs to be done, that is going to make it impossible to try and stay in my nice little bubble. Vacation is over. It's time to put the gloves back on and enter the ring again. Ugh.

I know I mention fiancee a lot in my blogs, but typically it's about how something he said or did affected me emotionally. He is involved in my current issue, but more indirectly as this has nothing to do with anything he's done right or wrong or even anything he's completely aware of at the moment.

Our wedding is in 3 months and 29 days! I am so excited! Final details for invitations are coming together, bridesmaids dresses and tuxes have been ordered, wedding bands picked out, etc. I am so excited to be marrying fiancee!!! I/we are not excited about the wedding night. We never have been, but we've been working hard on our own and talking through some things in therapy. I thought we were making great progress (and I think maybe we were) until some progress we made this weekend sent my mind spinning. We contained everything until therapy today, but then when it was a safe place to talk about anything and everything with someone who has never judged us, it felt as if all hell broke lose in my head.

Let me back up just a bit. I don't judge other couples' physical decisions in their relationships. I think each couple needs to make that decision for themselves. However, based upon the way I was raised and fiancee and mine's spiritual beliefs, he and I have decided to wait until we're married to have sex. In fact, most would be surprised to find out how strict our physical boundaries are. This has been fantastic for me in our dating relationship b/c fiancee has never done anything to physically trigger me or any other part. We feel safe with him and feel respected when it comes to our body. In less than 4 months, technically, all boundaries are gone. Now, fiancee will respect whatever I need and am comfortable with, but at the same time, the poor guy will have waited 2 years to have sex with me. What kind of a wedding night will it be if I say "No thanks, can we just make out instead?" or if we follow through and then I end up in a flashback or overcome by guilt and shame afterwards - not b/c of anything to do with him but because it reminds me of all of those times as a child when..... well, I'm sure you can fill in the blank.

So, this weekend I tried a few, um exercises with the goal of hoping to make some things we're fearing less scary. The good news is that things went better than expected. That's also the bad news. You'd think by now that things that seem to solidify the abuse would make me feel better in the sense that I know I'm not making any of it up, but it doesn't. All of these old painful memories resurfaced instead and I find myself mourning so many things I thought I'd mourned all over again. In addition, it felt wrong that I didn't mind some things. My mind knows that sex and sexual acts are supposed to be pleasurable things, but I still feel such guilt when I enjoy something.

Some of this, I believe, is due to a 10 year old part who found pleasure in certain acts when the body was a child and carries an immense amount of guilt over this. As much as she's trying, she still can't quite comprehend why those same feelings can mean good things now. She knows what happened to us was bad so she thinks having positive feelings about them was bad. To her, it makes no sense that having those feelings in the present can be good. She and therapist talked for a long time tonight. I think some seeds were planted but right now I'm feeling more confused than ever.

Right now this feels like a lose/lose situation. Either when we have sex with fiance we do okay and even potentially enjoy it (if not the first time, at some point) which will lead to immense guilt and shame - none of which will be his fault; or we will freak out, not have sex, and poor fiancee will have to help us pick up the pieces from whatever memory or flashback came up.

Therapist says we're on a tough road but we can do this and there is a way to have sexual pleasure without feeling extreme guilt and/or to not freak out when husband will go to our "no zones" (those places off limits, at least until the wedding night). Because she says it, I believe her. However, right now I feel trapped. I don't feel there's a good way out of this situation and I'm frustrated b/c we've entered into default mode. Default mode is where we start thinking how if we were just dead then this whole issue would go away from everyone. To clarify.. These are NOT the same as our suicidal thoughts. Default mode just means we go into thinking how we and everyone else in our lives would be better off if we were just dead. It feels like we're on the verge of pulling fiancee down into this spiral with us and I want so bad to spare him. I can't imagine living without him though. Haven't we made enough people hurt with us in this process? I feel like we've tried to warn him, but he just doesn't see, and one day soon, he's going to get knocked upside the head with the reality of how screwed up everything in my head still is no matter how many days or months in a row I may appear "normal".

This is getting long and I need to take a break. Part II will follow.

Need sleep

We need sleep so this won't be long. I don't know why we're so tired. We've technically gotten 9+ hours of sleep the past few nights, but by about 7pm tonight, I was ready to pass out.

I don't even know why I started this blog entry tonight. There are several things I could talk about but I don't have the energy for any of them tonight. Sorry.

Maybe tomorrow I can get out a more decent entry. Therapy should be interesting, so I know I'll only have more to talk about then.

Suicide *TW*

One of my fiance's best friends had a friend commit suicide yesterday. I do not know the person that died or anything about the situation, but every time I hear of someone committing suicide my mind seems to go so many places all at once.

Obviously I feel sorry for my fiance's friend and the family of the person who passed. Where my mind seems to go the most is to the person who actually committed suicide. Wishing for death for so many years personally and being in and out of suicidal phases myself, even attempting once, I understand the depths of pain and despair one must be in to actually reach this place and then either attempt or succeed in following through. I wonder what was going on in this guy's life? I wonder what was so painful and so horrible that he decided he couldn't go on one more day... one more minute? I feel so sorry for him that he was experiencing such intense pain and suffering. It is a feeling of utter hopelessness that I would not wish on my worst enemy.

I wonder if anyone was aware and if they were trying to help or not? Was he carrying this burden all alone and putting up a great facade on the outside? Maybe it was a combination of both. When I was at my lowest, most people in my life would have had no clue that suicide was running through my mind constantly. However, my therapist knew, all of my doctors at the inpatient unit and a few close friends knew my struggles. It wasn't enough for me. For me it wasn't about not having support. It was about not feeling I had the energy or desire to continue one more day. My only option - my only way out - was death.

I feel very blessed that I did have people intervene in my life, and that I am here to write this post today. My life is a much different story less than 2 years after my attempt. I wish this guy had been able to find the strength to hold on b/c what I've learned is that God truly is faithful and he will deliver you.... even when you have no idea how and all you see in front of you is a black abyss of hopelessness.

I pray this guy has finally found the peace that he was so desperately searching for and now I pray for peace to those who he left behind who will miss him greatly.

I wonder as time passes from my own darkest hour if my intense feelings of pain for someone who commits suicide (whether I know them or not) will fade or if it will always strike a cord this close to home?

Almost a week

I didn't mean for almost a week to go by before I blogged again. It's not like it's been an uneventful week. For some reason, I just haven't made the time to blog. A couple of times it was because after I talked to friends and therapist, I felt too exhausted to rehash everything in a blog entry. It was very beneficial for me to get immediate feedback, but not so good for blogging purpose, because now everything will just be an abbreviated version, almost more like a documentation.

Most of my ups and downs this week revolve around fiance. I guess that's not too surprising to some of you. That would be "normal" everyday issues that most people deal with in any significant relationship in their lives.

On Friday, fiance was the greatest man alive. On Sunday, I wanted to kick him to the curb. By Tuesday, we were back to us - or as close to us as we have been since he returned from Afghanistan. I am very much learning it is going to take a lot longer than the month the military said it would take fiance to readjust to life here and to readjust to having a significant female in his life again. This is not so cool ever, but especially when you and parts inside still struggle so much internally with self-esteem issues. Thankfully we have therapist, good friends, and an ever improving fiance to make up for the times fiance is a total jerk.

Friday, fiance volunteered to give me money I wanted to give a friend who was in need of help. He has never met my friend face to face, but because he could tell how important it was to me, he gave me the money and told me to tell my friend it was a gift and she didn't have to worry about paying it back..... He's generous and I love that!

Sunday night he basically told me there's tons of stuff he wants to do, and so he's only going to hang out with me on Tuesdays and then Sunday evenings b/c of church and he didn't want me to plan any trips for the weekends b/c he wanted that time free to do what he wanted to do. He's struggling to share his life with me again and selfishness of his time. While he didn't have much free time when he was deployed, he could spend that time however he wanted and didn't have to be concerned with anyone else's feelings. He was around men 24/7 and is not only having to learn how to interact with a woman again but is having to learn how to go back to us being a "we" and that he's not just a "he" anymore. We're a team. After lots of tears on my part and confusion on his part, we sort of reached a stalemate.

I spent lots of time on Monday in prayer and consulted a couple of friends who I know have been in similar situations. They helped validate my feelings and also helped remind me of what a huge adjustment he's going through and while my expectations are not wrong, I need to have more patience. I don't think he's able to meet them all right now (even though he used to be able to), and if I ask too much too soon, I may inadvertantly push him farther away. With this in mind, I've institutde an unconditional love, increased patience approach. The hope is that he will see I really am in this for the long haul and in time, he'll begin to return the more attentive man I fell in love with. At the same time, I'm not going to let him walk all over me or not continue to make him aware when he uses insensitive words. He can still learn how to recommunicate without me holding a grudge.

I think both of us are going to fail miserably at this from time to time. I will get my feelings hurt "too easy" in his mind and he will be "incredibly insensitive" in my mind. The best thing I can say about this though is that even though we've had our struggles since he's been home, neither one of us are having second thoughts about getting married... We're just going through a few bumps... and better to learn this stuff about each other before we say 'I do' rather than being suprised after the fact.

Anyways, all that to say, we still have a ways to go in learning each other again and finding ways to communicate better again, but it's nice to feel solid in our relationship tonight.

I tell you one thing, back when I was completely consumed and overwhelmed by not "normal people issues", I had no idea how hard and challenging just normal people issues can be. I sure am learning a lot these days!!!!