Struggline a little

Struggline a little
P

phoster

Registrant
I am kind of struggling right now. It just feels so hopeless sometimes. Okay, Ive ripped my past, present, feelings and thoughts apart for years. I understand how everything fits, and why things happened. Ive made peace with my attractions and drives. All of it is great, and I do have a certain amount of peace and happiness that I have never known. Despite it all, I have a hole in the middle of my soul.

The hole is this feeling of deep sadness and loneliness. It grows and shrinks as life comes at me. When life is good, it is small and quiet, and when I have problems it can get very large and loud. If feels like no matter how much my wife holds me, or how full my world is, it never goes away completely. It was there before my abuse, and continues after five-years of recovery. Am I trying to fix something that cannot be fixed?

I cannot help but wonder, because it was always there, and no amount of therapy, love or support seems to completely erase it. Sometimes I wonder if it isnt something genetic or part of the person I am. I have all these things, and a full life, and yet, when all the day to day noise stops, and I find myself alone, it is still there.

The day my abuse began, I was sitting on the swings waiting for my best friend. Going back to my story I posted all the way back in Dec of 03, even then I talked about how sad and alone I felt. All my life, I have had this emptiness. The abuse was one of the bad events that made it worse, but it was there even before that. How do you fix that?

Ive thrown everything at it, sex, food, learning, faith and recovery. All those things help to numb it, and make it small and quiet, but none seems to solve it. Now it seems no matter what I do or have, it is still going to be with me. I feel doomed to live with this inner sadness. It feels like it will be part of me until I die. That is a hard thing to live with sometimes.

What I find is that it is just enough that when things get rough, it derails me. If I am trying to eat right and lose weight for example. I will do okay until I have a fight with my wife or something, and then it jumps up to make me feel all down, and before you know it, I am back doing unhealthy stuff again. It is proving a very hard thing to combat.

I guess I dont really have a question. I just needed to vent, and this used to be a place I came a lot to do that. Maybe it isnt fair for me to vent after being away, but I needed to go somewhere.
 
Phoster, i know how you feel. sorry i don't have
anything helpful to say about it, but i'm glad
you vented and i'll listen anytime you need too.
jason
 
dude your welcome to vent anytime ,i know i feel like i lost something inside of me somewhere back there in my past its like it was there but now its gone i dont even know what i lost just that something is missing. shadow
 
My T taught me that "it will never go away".

We have to learn to deal with it. Your not married to this site, its a resource, its a haven, a place to come when you need.

We all come and go, we use it when we need to. So dont feel bad about taking a break.

One thing that worked for me was exercise, I swim. I swim alot.

I found after a workout my brain feels fresher than before. It also helps keep the balance between the unhealthy stuff, which Im also guilty off.

Peace.....
 
Phoster,

If you need to vent bro, this is surely the place for it! Just let out whatever you need to say.

It sounds a lot like your abuse history is only a part of the problem, so even though you have made progress there, if the other areas aren't also dealt with you will still be vulnerable.

Some guys here, for example, come from majorly dzsfunctional families. They felt abandoned and uncared for even before the abuse began. They felt, like you yourself say, like they had a big hole in their heart. And this in turn made them vulnerable to abusers. A kid who feels unloved and all alone in the world would do almost anything to relieve the pain that causes. Does this apply to you in any way?

Another thing we have to consider is that the past is the past. We can never change it, or as you say, "erase" it. If that is what we are seeking, we will never get it.

What we CAN do is try to stay in the present and change the way we RELATE to that past. That one IS within our power. Perhaps what you need is some help towards shifting how you see the past and how it affects you. That is what therapy is all about.

Just some ideas.

Much love,
Larry
 
i am certain my homelife is very much the cause. there was zero affection in our home. my family fears it. i recall that one of the things that struck me when Mat began abusing me is how strange it felt to be touched, not just in an intimate way, but touched at all. remember i was five, and already no one touched me at home. yes, i am certain that is where it began.

the thing is, you would think if you filled your world with affection and intimacy that it would make that go away. it doesnt. it is still there, even after basically remaking my entire life. i mean i wouldnt call it depression or anything nearly that severe. it is just kind of there in the background waiting for something to upset me so it can rear up and throw me for a loop.

thanks everyone for your support. that has always been the great thing about this place.
 
Learning to ride a Tiger is pretty hard, you keep falling off, but time tames the beast more than we let the beast win.

What you are describing is grief, but it will pass, just as it always does,

ste
 
i hope and pray you are right. at the moment it seems pretty unreachable. time will tell.
 
Thank you for describing this feeling. Before I always tried to ignore it, but lately I see it, accept it, and face it every day.
 
Phoster
I can empathise with your position, I can see that it isn't a "question" - it's much more a statement of where you feel you are right now.

And I have to say that it's a place I recognise, it's a place I live in and experience daily.
Is it a bad place? No, not compared to where I was a few years ago, and from what you say I think you'd say the same thing. We might not be living the perfect life as seen on TV and in the glossy magazines, but it's the life we have and it's the one we're making the best of.

I don't expect to forget my abuse, I don't expect to ever stop having to make huge efforts to live the life I want to live. Maybe 'normal' people have to make similar efforts but for different reasons?
I know there isn't a 'cure' for what I have to live with because of my abuse, but I also know that there are many different ways of making my life bearable, actually more than bearable, the majority of my life is good now. But it's something I have to work at.

Working at it, in the sense of making efforts and decisions that are hard at the time but ultimately beneficial, is difficult. Do I want those benefits? Of course I do, and as I progress I am getting to see the balance working in my favour. I see that the efforts are getting less and the benefits more.

Letting affection into out lives is one of our stumbling blocks as survivors, we just don't trust other peoples motives and see someones affection as a bargaining tool. They give affection, so they must want something in return.
Well I guess they do. They expect affection and respect for the reasons they offered affection in the first place. Is that such a bad deal? Hell no!
It's the basis of a good relationship, but we are mired in our 'trust issues' and build false barriers to keep their affection out.

I believe that many of us who have done what we sometimes believe is 'enough' therapy and work still need some more. I'm convinced that I do.
I don't act out any more, but the drivers behind that behaviour are still there. Not as strong and I control them now, but they still have some power over me.
Why? I think it's because I still have certain insecurities and trust issues. I will tell my wife when I'm having a bad day, but it's usually when we go to bed at night and not in the morning when I'm at my worst. That's a trust issue for me, and intimacy with my wife will only reinforce that trust.
So I still have some work to do, I'm convinced of that.

I've seen a few guys leave MS saying that they're 'cured' - I call bullshit! Sorry, but that's the way I feel. I can't see any way that we can force ourselves to forget our abuse, and therefore I can't see how we can possibly live without making certain efforts to live with our abuse.

Tough? Yes, but I also think it's reality. It is for me anyway.
Dave
 
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