Hurt people hurt people
It’s been a week. I hope you’re ready to buckle up for this rollercoaster.
Whilst I was busy getting to work on my healing journey, doing my journaling, lighting my sage stick and processing my emotions, something smacked me so hard that I’m still a little dazed from it all now.
The Dreams
It started with dreams I’d been having last weekend. Dreams about him. This isn’t a usual occurrence for me. What isn’t unusual is for me to have dreams about my ex from many, many years ago – an ex from a different life. The dream is always different, but the feeling is always the same: trapped. And from these recurring dreams I have still been having seven years later I realised I probably have some unresolved trauma to heal.
However, these most recent dreams haven’t been about the ex from Christmas past. These have been about him. Yet, they have been about feeling trapped. That’s right: same dream, different ex. Probably because I brought my unhealed trauma into this relationship with him, in hope to fix the unresolved pattern with someone else. Which is probably why I found it so painfully difficult to leave. I had trapped myself in a toxic pattern.
The Psyche-Analysis
By learning about trauma – The Body Keeps the Score I must thank for that – I have been able to understand him a little better. I understood why he was unable to access his own emotions; as an act of survival, he had to live in a state of being comfortably numb.
As he was my main source of love, I was then limited to the love I was receiving. He was limited to what he could give me. And to survive in that relationship I had to learn how to numb myself so that I didn’t need to feel that love. I learned from the best how to survive.
Unknowingly, I was dimming my senses and my connections to the outside world so that I could keep the flicker of love in my romantic relationship alive. I had been so desperate to maintain even a whisper of that love that to make it the most predominant love in my life, I had to tune out the love that had surrounded me unconditionally for decades before this romantic relationship had ever snaked into my life.
The Guilt
I’ve had conversations over the last week that have been painful and insightful. I’ve learned how much the numbing of myself had impacted those around me. I thought by implementing boundaries I was able to feel more connected to my loved ones; by limiting time with them I thought I could be more present and connect with them on a deeper level when I did see them. But, in reality, I was just always so fucking tired. And I consciously stepped back, further and further away from them. I didn’t just have my heart broken; I broke hearts all around me.
I was so absorbed in my own battle for survival; I was so caught up in prioritising something that was so damaging to me that I didn’t stop to think about how I was damaging the people around me.
I’ve learned that they felt hopeless when they couldn’t get through to me. They even asked me this week: what do we do if this happens again? And all I could say in return was that just being there for me was the most important and significant thing I could ever ask for. By continuing to be that solid, unconditional love for me, even when I didn’t deserve it, even when I pushed it away to prioritise something so unhealthy, it was the purest act of love I have ever known.
And I look back on the last 3 years with shock when I see how far the cracks had spread. And I say to myself now: never again.
The Anger
A pattern I had been accustomed to was to make excuses for him. And after the guilt and sadness had lifted slightly over the course of the week, I had an extreme wave of anger. I realised that the language I had been using was, once again, exonerating him of any blame. I’d been second-guessing and psychoanalysing to try and understand why someone that apparently felt such love for me could behave this way.
And I realised this was what I had been doing throughout the entirety of our relationship. Once again, I had taken all the blame away from him and carried it for the both of us. I was furious. I don’t think any of this was intentional, but it doesn’t mean it’s excusable. It doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. And it absolutely does not deserve my forgiveness.
I thought by forgiving him I was healing and healthily processing. On reflection, I think by forgiving him I’ve carried the emotional burden for two. Every time I almost walked away, every time he told me he would be better, I took on the blame and was insistent that I needed to just work on myself a little more, just improve myself a little more. And then maybe things would change.
And whilst I stood and fought, he never once stood with me. He didn’t show an ounce of willing to try to fight. But he couldn’t help it, right? It wasn’t intentional, right?
The Hurt
The rage had gone into the depths of my soul and pulled the hurt up to the surface. It was like a knife to my chest. I hadn’t seen it coming. But the rage had found something I hadn’t paid attention to. The fight I had fought alone. The person I had loved most in the world had sat back and watched as I fought tooth and nail, and he didn’t even try. He hadn’t deemed us – or me – worthy enough. The person I had loved most was resigned to the inevitable demise of our relationship because it was the more appealing option for him than to stand up and fight next to me.
Now I am emotionally exhausted, but I am working on forgiving myself and rebuilding the relationships with the true loves of my life.
This has all been in the space of one week. I told you this would be a roller coaster.
