Healing From Your Past

I don't get emotional like I imagine normal people do. My ex used to say I was full of shit when it came to being depressed - I'm always smiling and joking...

I'm not always immediately affected... When it finally hits, it's a crippling surge of emotion that nearly incapacitates me. I either do nothing but sleep or simply not be able to sleep at all.

Right now I'm thinking of a bunch of unrelated moments an tearing up because I don't feel those things anymore. I don't know how to describe that better - literally just moments where I felt elated, felt an overwhelming love, even if the situation the moment sprang from didn't make feeling such a way logical.

I think there have been times that I wanted to feel a certain type of love despite the horrible circumstances. These mini snapshots may have been my means of survival at the time, however, when my mind dredges up these snapshots in the middle of the night, they are hardly helpful; they are manipulating and confusing at best.

In the past, analyzing little things like this would have made me crazy. I will not let them ruin my present.

I think it's important that i recognize these feelings for what they were: I am not remembering moments where I FELT loved, or the joy or elation that comes from someone expressing love, respect or adoration for me. In these moments - which notably took place during the middle of the night as well, while my then partner was sleeping. I dissect the moment in which the feeling took place - it's not hard to force the logical realization that it's very easy to look at someone sleeping and feel a tsunami of emotion for them. When they are asleep, they likely are not degrading, insulting, manipulating or abusing you. Perhaps those moments were how my abused mind justified the reason behind why I didn't leave. It turned these unreciprocated feelings (likely formed for survival) and manipulated the memory into something it simply was not. It was never a moment of true joy or bliss, nor any enviable feeling at all.

Now that I can see it for what it truly is...was - it's not joy I feel. It's sadness. The poor girl in those moments of misguided emotion was so broken and abused by the object of her affection, yet continued to project waves of love onto them.

Seeing it that way now, I am not sad or feeling jaded that I am not feeling those ways at all. Quite the opposite. I am proud that I have healed enough that I do not. I am over the moon that my current decision making has not created an environment in my broken mind that deems it necessary to feel a fabricated, unhealthy emotion onto a sleeping human being who hurts me as a means of survival.

Dysfunction can feel like home. I accept the love that others give me now because I am worthy of it. I accept that boundaries are healthy as well as necessary. I will no longer waste precious moments guessing the quality of my life by comparing it to my abusive past. I take people for face value when they take position in my life and if I find myself unable to do that, I will deny that person the position. I allow myself to receive love as strongly as I give it.

Recognizing these self destructive behaviors, being able to identify toxic patterns and the parallels in thought processes has taught me what they mean:

 They mean I have healed some...

They mean that the cycles and patterns in abuse are breaking....

They mean the people who have abused me no longer have the power to hurt me anymore...

They mean that I am setting a healthier example for my boys...

They mean I am winning. I almost lost my progress, that is, until this realization rocked me to my very core. Fuck that. He doesn't get to win  anymore. I don't allow him to hurt me.