stuck *trigger*

[phoster]

It hit me like a ton of bricks last night, depression. I began feeling trapped walking the path Im on, paying for all the mistakes Ive made for the rest of my life. I have surface happiness, things that make me feel good for a moment, but it doesnt last, because it isnt rooted deep down inside. happiness is something I wear on the surface, for an occasion like a tux.

Ive been asking some serious questions, like what would make me happy? The answers are equally depressing, because they are things I feel powerless to change. I cant go back to 18 and start all over again.

I love my wife, but from the first date my inner voice told me she wasnt right for me. We are complete opposites. We dont like the same foods, the same movies, or anything. That isnt even mentioning our sexual appetites, which are night and day. She sees sex as unimportant, and is very conventional, and I am totally the other way.

We have a baby, the only baby I can ever have. I have a step-son, one that Im the only father hes ever had. We have a home. Deborah is a great mother, and a good wife. Yet, in a thousand years of trying, well never be a good match. I love my kids, and wouldnt want to be a weekend dad. I can never have another child, because I let Deborah push me into getting fixed, when again, I knew better. All of this was inside even then. I didnt want the vasectomy because I knew I wasnt happy.

To leave means giving up my kids, my family and home. It means admitting everything is a big mistake, and living with the destruction. The price is too high, so I walk on. There is no hope that I will ever have happiness in the flesh. I realized last night there was just too much unhappiness, deep rooted, unchangeable, undeniable. I must walk the walk I started and see it through. I will remain faithful and true. I will wear my mask, and pretend to be happy, but inside I will never be happy. I trade away that for the good of others, and for valuable pieces of happiness that I do have. I realized last night that I am trapped. I cant leave, and I cant be deeply happy where I am.

 

[Brayton]

Funny--I'm feeling depressed today, too. Yesterday was pretty good but today...yuk.

I guess, despite knowing better, I want recovery, as it proceeds, to perform as a general panacea.

Part of me still clings to a feeling of desperate need for my whole life, past included, to be 'cured.'

I think that adjusting to that reality through concious awareness is now a primary difficulty for me.

None of the past ends--years and opportunities were lost. And the child's pain remains.

The differences now include that I can acknowledge the pain of the child I was and accept it without judgement; I can be conciously aware of why I feel the way I do sometimes, particularly in response to a trigger or recovered memory and not feel that I am crazy; and I can make present-time choices based in that clear knowledge of who I am and how I got where I am at today.

Does that mean guaranteed happiness for me someday? I think that for me that even the definitions of words like 'happiness' are forever altered by the abuse I experienced.

On the one hand that can be frustrating and depressing but on the other hand it is also a tool to see the world and people around me with greater knowledge, understanding and empathy.

General everyday happiness? --unlikely I think for me at least. But contentment, almost everyday? --I now think that that is likely for me and I look forward to it.

Another primary difficulty for me now, however, is that people that I have had relationships with as the old me don't have the same clearer understanding of who I am as I do.

They are disoriented by the change, are uncomfortable and uncertain of who I am, why I have changed and what that means for the relationship we have to one another.

It is not my job to teach them all. I suspect that many of them would not be ready listeners anyway. I know that it is likely that a good number of them have experienced childhood abuse themselves and may be in denial or unknowing of what happened to them.

An open revelation of what I experienced might consequently be shocking and frightening to them. It might trigger something in them that they are not ready to think about--not ready to feel about.

My older sister is a case in point. Earlier on in my recovery, as I was remembering more and more, I shared with her some of my memories and feelings and asked her a couple of questions about it.

She is five years older and I was looking to her not because I thought she witnessed anything that happened to me but because I thought she could provide more detail about the family environment I was in.

What I told her triggered some of those memories but also I think some others--perhaps she witnessed some of what happened to me, perhaps she felt something more general like responsibility for a younger sibling's welfare.

Whatever it was, she hasn't spoken to me about these things since and holds back from communication of any kind.

My relationships with other members of my biolgical family are forever changed. They are so radically altered that they hardly exist anymore.

My partner of 19 years is struggling a great deal with understanding the change. He wants to know what the outcome will be when no one can predict that or even say that there will someday be one definable outcome.

Recovery is what happens to me, the positive change that I go through. If the people around me don't adapt to that (and that is not my responsiblity) then I will probably lose those relationships.

These changes and the loss of relationships scares me but I now think that that is inevitable an I am beginning to feel that I will be able to handle that as my self confidence grows.

One of the things I know now that I did not know before is that everything is changing all the time and new relationships can and will be formed as needed.