In the last 6 months, I have taken a step back from therapy and trauma work; quite frankly, I was exhausted. As I left the office that day, I was given the advice with the promise to return to treatment when my mind settled. I said I just need a break, I need to not have to schedule an appointment for broken me, I need to not cry over the past for a small moment, I don’t want to do the work, well, for the time being. I want to just be able to breathe without putting in all this time and effort. Funny thing I have a love-hate relationship with therapy. Mental health is no joke.
With the combination of shock, the lack of fully understanding, and the why's, my brain goes round in circles until my unconscious has a believable answer for my conscious selves.
I am 3 years out from realizing my beautiful life. Yes, I said beautiful life because it was a peaceful, content, fantastic life. I had lived this before and believed we were better, stronger, ALWAYS, AND FOREVER. This time there was no going back, no 2nd chances, no making it go away because this time, it affected every aspect of our life and the lies we’re starting to pile up. I didn’t know up from down. I so wanted to wake up from this awful nightmare that he, yes, HE had created. I would’ve liked that beautiful life back, you know, the one he “faked.”
Meanwhile, yes, the collateral damage is what I call the people who didn’t create the disaster they are now facing. The ones now forced to suffer the consequences of. They are under pressure from family and friends to just hate him, get over it, and trust me, if only the therapy work would do its magic and heal it all.
Sadly I didn’t find a fast way to do this as you can’t go from loving someone (and being lied to) to feeling nothing for them overnight. It’s been three years, and you know what? I still love the husband I thought I had, my best friend, my partner for 25 years, the man I choose to have 3 exceptional children with.
No
Yes, I realize how messed up that is. Yes, I know he isn’t that man I created in my head, yes, I have eyes, ears, and if I only told you all the messed up reasons, but I will keep some of that to myself for now.
In therapy, I have learned I have to let my brain make its circles, the panic attacks, aren’t they special, the nightmares of the past, oh, they still exist. Still, it’s the good dreams of the past that have become disturbing when you wake up and realize it was a dream. You are right back into visiting every scenario and outcome in your head; I will always come to a resolution; eventually, it’s a process that takes different people, different times. In the beginning, with my 1st therapist, I think it was a giant waste of money and time, and to be fair to him, I am sure when I sat in his office once a week for a month, it was a waste of his time also, I am sure he has helped hundreds, but it was not the right fit for me. I mean, I did threaten to hit him with his office sign about “it’s better to feel pain than nothing at all.” I won't lie; I would like to know if he ever hung that back up on his wall or if he removed it because of my comment. One can wonder, right?
I did a lot of work with my 2nd therapist. I got very comfortable with her until she realized how deep the trauma was and what I had lived and informed me I needed someone who specialized in my kind of trauma, you know, the repeated betrayal kind. I really did like her, and I felt like the biggest failure that day she referred me out. I would then have to start over retelling and reliving the trauma of the most recent affair along with the many discovered from the last. It was when I had to retell the day about the gun. I said my husband, my protected father of my children, held his loaded duty weapon to my head, and the awful cold words he uttered were this. “Now, what tough girl?” I said I still have nightmares about this, and when I see his face, it’s all I think about? The hair stands on the back of my neck, and I freeze with fear, and my insides shake.
Will that trauma ever heal? Because you want to know the secret? The one that got me referred to you? The awful truth of it is so many days I wish he would have pulled that trigger. I would do anything to forget the past trauma, the one that has left me like this. The one I wish never happened, and I could completely forget. I worry about everything, and the things that once seemed meaningful are now meaningless. I worry about what would happen if I actually let myself feel again. I think it would hurt and that I dont truly deserve to feel again. Without knowing I changed, I am not the same me I once was. I worry about what would happen if I actually live again because I did that after his last affair that I actually knew about. Yes, I realize how messed up that sounds, and look where that got me? I also worry about what would happen if I don’t.
I can look and see all that I would have missed if he pulled that trigger. I don’t want to remember, but then that part of you says I had such a wonderful life minus the lying and the cheating. Yes, isn’t that amazing how you can see all the beautiful moments of life, but you now see them as a clouded version because of what you would discover to be so many lies! The moments and places, it really is the worst mind games ever. My mind can’t weed out the good from the bad anymore. It’s all muddled together. Therapy is fantastic, and it’s awful, yep I said it. It’s horrible too. I am learning you don’t have to climb a mountain to stand on top of the world, and it’s okay to be lost as long as, eventually, you find your way back. I am missing the old me. I don’t remember me before him? I also know that I have to let me that was me with him go. I can’t quite figure that out my mind hasn’t done the circle in that, because this me today, the damaged one. “ oh, how I would get a scolding in therapy for calling myself that. In therapy, I have to use the word healing, but like I said, my mind hasn’t circled that, and hey, I took a break, right? Don’t tell my therapist! 
The me today who and what is she? That I have yet to discover,she is a fighter. I can say that because for the record “My kids need a mom” lives because of them, they saved me from that day, August 12, 2018, but that’s a story for another day or maybe never. I was called a doer the other day, and I was flattered, but it’s the dreaming I crave. Dreaming is the beauty of the world and making it come to life. There is beauty in bright places, even in dark times, and when there aren’t, you can be that bright place.
Learning to heal and grow and resume therapy when your brain has settled on ‘its story.’
For now,
I will just keep my head above the water!
