I Don’t Have The Skillset

I wrote a show pretty much from the pain that being invisible to the world I was born into caused me. And I’m not, I don’t have the skillset, or the sense of entitlement that comes with being seen so thoroughly as I currently am. I’ll get there. It feels nice on some levels, but it’s also very foreign and quite, I feel like it’s some discomfort with it. – Hannah Gadsby

The quote above is from Hannah Gadsby, speaking with Monica Lewinsky in a Vanity Fair interview about dealing with trauma in the public eye sparked by the well-deserved success of Gadsby’s incredibly insightful Nanette. (If you haven’t already, you should definitely watch Nanette and it’s worth sticking it out through some of Lewinsky’s awkwardness as an interviewer for the insights of both women during their discussion.)

I’ve been trying to write a response to this. I’ve written lots of words about how awful it was to feel invisible for so long. About how awful it’s been tor realise that it wasn’t just 22 years of a miserable, abusive marriage that made me feel that way, it was a lifetime of conditioning from my parents to believe that invisibility was all I deserved and attendance at churches where leaders used my faith to convince me that my unhappiness with my invisibility was my fault.

I’ll still write about that sometime.

For now, it simply comes down to the fact that Hannah’s comment ‘I don’t have the skillset, or the sense of entitlement that comes with being seen so thoroughly as I currently am.’ felt incredibly personal.

I want to be seen. I hated being invisible. I hated feeling disconnected and insignificant and unnecessary. I hated feeling generic and replaceable. But now that I’m being seen, I have absolutely no idea what to do. 

I’m exhausted and confused by social interactions that I used to cope with so easily because I had very clear expectations about who I should be. It’s so much easier to follow a script. I’m frustrated that I have no clear sense of who I am, what I enjoy, or what goals I want for my life. I’ve spent too many years being what other people want me to be, prioritising what they enjoy, and directing my efforts into activities that minimised the chances of disapproval. I can’t remember who I am or what I like.

I struggle to find ways to prioritise myself or to even understand what that means. I try, and the mental and emotional backlash is significant. I don’t have the skillset to understand how to process other people prioritising me. The backlash from that is even worse. Kindness towards me makes me uncomfortable and, if I’m feeling particularly vulnerable, distresses me. Compliments confuse me. I am not equipped to process your unmerited kindness or your prioritising of my needs ahead of your own. I am not equipped to value my own opinion and thoughts and emotions and I cannot fathom that you would see value in them.

Being visible feels foreign and uncomfortable. And confusing. Too many years of allowing others to push me to the bottom of the list, too many years of deliberately placing myself there, too many years of dissociating myself from what was happening around me in order to cope. 

Finally being seen makes me feel like a shadow – I’m here, but I lack substance and resilience. It’s so hard to work out how to push back against the habits of a lifetime. It’s not just a matter of redefining myself and starting over. I feel like I can’t even find the starting point.

And while all that is happening inside my head, all the never-ending loops of thoughts and emotions, I’m living my life because I have no choice. I don’t want to go back, so the only alternative is to move forward. I have awesome children who inspire me and challenge me to be a better person and a wonderful husband who is so patient with my confusion and brokenness and who loves me and values me even in those moments when I feel least visible and least able to cope with being seen. 

I can do this. I am doing this. But being seen is so much harder than I ever imagined it would be. 

An Apology To The People Who Love Me

I’ve had to accept some pretty awful truths about myself over the past couple of years. I’ve had to accept that I’m far less strong, discerning and functional and far more fragile, broken and lost  than I thought I was. I’ve had to accept that for so many years I was hiding behind a facade that provided me with the semblance of a functional life while the real me was in hiding only making an occasional appearance. 

I’ve had to accept that despite my best intentions, my dysfunction, anxiety and issues impact people who love me and who least deserve to be affected by consequences of the abuse I’ve received over the years from others.

I don’t want this to be a list of excuses or reasons why it’s not my fault that I’m so high maintenance and I’m not looking for sympathy, reassurance or explanations of how my insecurities and issues are a natural consequence of my abuse. I get that. I am very aware that I didn’t become who I am in this moment in isolation and I’m aware that failures of the two most foundational relationships in my life to this point – my parents and the 22+ year relationship with my ex-husband – have created dysfunctional emotional pathways and automatic responses that I haven’t established by choice..

I know that many of the ways I react aren’t voluntary – they’re reflexes born of a deep-seated need to protect myself and conditioned responses I developed to minimise the hurt and help maintain appearances for the first 45 years of my life.

What I want to do is apologise for the ways my dysfunction hurts those I care about who go to such lengths to reassure me over and over that I’m loved, safe, valued, and connected.

I want to say I’m so very sorry that even though you’ve given me every reason to trust you and even though I believe your words of love and encouragement, I keep a small part of myself in reserve; a small corner of my heart that I’m shielding from the disconnection I know will come when you realise that I’m so flawed and broken and unloveable. 

I’m so scared that you’ll leave me without warning that I prepare myself in advance and push you away. I’m so sorry that I send you mixed messages by telling you how important you are to me then ignore you or withdraw from your attempts to reach out.

I’m sorry that I tell you through my words and actions that I don’t trust you and don’t need you. I do need you. I want so desperately to feel connected, but it’s the desperation that makes me pull back, because I’m sure that when you realise how needy I am, you’ll retreat anyway. I’m sorry that I’ve needed your support so often, and have made it so difficult for you to provide it without getting hurt in the process.

I’m sorry for texts and messages that remain unanswered and invitations that have been turned down. I feel so inadequate and lost in social situations now that I avoid them while at the same time wishing I didn’t feel so lonely and disconnected. I am trying to find a way to reconnect with the wider world, but it’s taking me a lot longer than I could ever have expected because it’s hard to connect when I don’t have any sense of who I am.

I’m sorry that sometimes when it all just seems too much and I want to run away and hide, I run away from you as well even though you aren’t part of the problem. I’m sorry for the times my rejection has hurt you. 

I am sorry that I respond to emotional triggers you can’t predict or control, and that your attempts at conversation and support so often result in tears and emotional monologues about how awful I am. I’m sorry that I filter your words through my insecurities to hear messages that you never intend and that I am so bad at stopping the chain-reaction of negative thoughts once I start down that path. I’m sorry that so many of our conversations end up in you offering reassurance and comfort with your original words and message lost amidst the tears and anxiety. I’m sorry that I ask for your honesty, then punish you by responding so badly when you give it to me.

I’m so sorry that the battle inside my head between being myself and being who I think everyone else needs me to be results in such a mess of emotions and thoughts and that you’re so often left with no possible way of navigating a conversation without it ending in distress and tears. I hate that I’m so conditioned to focus on what other people want or need me to be, that it takes so much effort to simply be myself. 

I’m sorry that my insecurities and confusion and constant sense of overwhelm mean that so often when you need me I’m caught up in the mess inside my head and I either don’t see your needs or respond to them in a way that isn’t helpful. I feel this most keenly with my children and I hope as they grow older they’ll forgive me for the times I’ve let them down and made it so much harder for them to process the huge changes that have happened in their lives in the past couple of years. 

I am grateful that I have such wonderful, compassionate, caring children who have been so incredibly forgiving of the difficulty I’ve had navigating us all safely through our lives over the past few years. I remain constantly surprised at my good fortune having such a wonderful man in my life who loves me so much that he’s willing to walk beside me as I slowly, slowly work through the mess inside my head and heart and attempt to find myself amidst the rubble of my old life. I am thankful for the wonderful friends who have withstood my neglect and confusion and tears to continue to reach out to me in support in moments when I’m unable to stand alone and for those friends who have simply continued to be themselves and share in a way that gives me moments of normality amidst the emotional challenges.

The process of dealing with my past and my abuse has been exhausting. I have only come as far as I have because so many people have loved and cared for me and helped me in so many ways to remain connected despite my belief that I’m neither capable nor deserving of connection and love.

I am sorry that this process is so difficult, for myself and for those closest to me, and even though I can’t always show it, I am grateful that you haven’t given up on me. Thank you. x

How Does This Happen?

A few months after I left my abusive marriage, when I was confused about how I’d stayed in a relationship that was so toxic for so long, how I hadn’t even really realised how toxic it was until various social workers and secular counsellors immediately recommended I contact abuse support services when I shared details, a friend said something that has stayed with me: you don’t realise the air you’re breathing is poisonous until you take a breath of fresh air.

It made sense at the time in relation to my marriage. The reaction of others as I shared details from the 22 years I was with my ex-husband gradually helped me realise that what I’d accepted as ‘normal’ was in fact toxic and dysfunctional to an extreme level. I was surprised, but somehow not surprised, as I took a step back and realised that the relationship that had made me feel so sad and hopeless and isolated wasn’t considered normal by others. 

Then I faced the judgement of Christian friends and my church family for stepping away from my marriage and betraying my wedding vows. I had close Christian friends urge me to return to my ex-husband, even though they were aware social workers and domestic violence counsellors were advising me to protect myself and my children from his manipulation and encouraging me to access support services for abuse victims. Church friends ignored my assertions that he was controlling and toxic and urged me to do the ‘right’ thing for myself and my children and restore our family to what God intended. And I took a step back, took a deep breath and realised that the poisonous air hadn’t just been inside my marriage, it was inside my church too. 

Then my mother assured me she was there for me and I told her my ex-husband had been abusive. She was sympathetic and said she wasn’t surprised that I was so unhappy. She encouraged me to talk to her and lean on her, and in the same breath told me that she would be available to him too, because she loved us equally. When I told her he was stalking me, she said that was very troubling and if he shared anything with her that she thought might indicate there was a problem, she’d definitely let me know (then let me pay for the morning tea that she’d taken me out to for my birthday). 

And when, after months of no contact, I called her to confirm what my ex had told my (confused) kids – that he was planning to have dinner with my parents and they’d sent him a birthday card – I was informed very firmly by my mother that she had no intention of allowing me to tell her who she could talk to and she would most certainly be happy to have my ex visit her any time if that’s what he wanted. Followed up by a vicious text from my father accusing me of maniacal ranting, relentless selfishness, and informing me that I was no longer allowed to contact my mother directly. 

And I took another step back, took a deep breath and realised that the poisonous air had been there from birth. That I’d never breathed fresh air. That I’d been conditioned to accept the poisonous air as normal since childhood. Not just normal, but what I deserved; all I deserved. 

How did this happen? How did I live a functional and ‘normal’ life for so long, gasping for breath? 

I feel stupid and naive – how did I not realise this was happening? Why did I allow other people to define my worth? Why did I accept it when they said I was worth nothing (unless I was exactly what they told me I should be)? Then I feel angry. These were people I trusted, people I should have been able to trust above all others. People who should have loved me unconditionally but didn’t really love me at all. 

And then I just feel overwhelmed and broken and lost. How can I retreat to a place where I feel safe so I can rebuild myself when it’s obvious I’ve never been emotionally safe or accepted for who I am? When my entire sense of self has been defined by others whose only concern was how I made them feel? What does it say about me that those that should have loved me valued me so little (but said they loved me, even though I made it so difficult and was so unloveable). 

It isn’t possible to rebuild myself, because who I thought I was is built on lies and manipulation and judgement. I’m starting over and it’s surreal and awful and terrifying to be 47 years old and have no idea of who I am. I can’t discern the real me from the conditioned and controlled version of myself. I don’t know what I like, what I want, who I am. I feel lost. And I feel so supremely inadequate for the task of moving forward into my new life. 

I need to start over. But where do you start, when your life is already underway? When you have responsibilities and commitments? How do I take the mental time out that I need to work out who I am when I have a full time job, three teenagers and two step-children to encourage and support, and a new husband whose love gives me stability, but also leaves me confused and overwhelmed because I simply don’t know how normal relationships work? Where is the space in my life to work out who I am when I have so many reasons to simply be what everyone else needs me to be? Just like I always have. Just like I’ve been conditioned to do. 

My therapist has been talking with me about core values, about the core of who I am. She’s reassured me that person is good and kind and compassionate. But we’ve had to acknowledge that those characteristics are a response to how I’ve been treated and how others have made me feel. My parents, ex-husband, and church family made me feel so invisible and insignificant and inadequate, that I hate the thought of making others feel that way. A longtime friend jokes that getting people to share random details of their lives with me is my superpower, but the reality is that I hate the thought making others feel isolated and inadequate and I do what I can to help them feel connected and let them know that who they are matters, even if it’s only for the length of a casual interaction.

Which works on a casual level, but proper friendships require substance and I feel like an outline of a person, with no detail and no depth and no focus – a vague shadow that finds it so hard to connect with others. Real friendship requires giving of yourself and I simply don’t know who I am and I feel like I have nothing left to give.

And I wonder again, how does this happen? And how do I find the emotional reserves to move forward, when I feel depleted beyond my ability to recover? 

And I take a deep breath, breathe in fresh air, and face another day. Because I deserve the chance to be who I am and I refuse to let go of the hope that it isn’t too late to find myself underneath the debris of the person I let others tell me I was.

Unravelling

Once, when I was very young, my grandmother removed a splinter from my finger with a sewing needle threaded with a strand of cotton. I asked why she needed to thread the needle and she replied that she would use the thread to pull the needle out if she lost it in my finger. It didn’t occur to me that she might be joking. I was in my teens before I reviewed this memory and had a WTF moment as I realised the absurdity of what she had said. 

As children we absorb the words of those we trust unprocessed and unchallenged, and as adults we often don’t unpack those memories to evaluate the validity of what we have accepted as truth. With some memories, such as this one, it’s not a particular issue one way or another. It’s a nice memory of my grandmother and serves as an amusing anecdote but not much more. Other memories are not quite so easy to process.

A significant component of my C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) therapy has involved working through old memories, reviewing the messages I’ve taken away from those moments, and evaluating the validity of those messages.

Reliving memories from my marriage and the first 18 months after I left it has been awful, triggering guilt, self-doubt, anger and panic. It’s been confronting and has left me feeling bruised and exhausted.

Dealing with memories of my childhood has been far, far worse. I feel like I’m unravelling.

As with the splinter anecdote, reviewing memories connected with my parents has involved rethinking the ‘reality’ those memories imprinted in my mind and it’s not as straightforward as simply realising I misunderstood the first time around. 

As an example, when I was about seven (or probably a little younger) my mother asked me to choose between her and my father in a very tense situation. I chose because I was asked to. My mother has reminded me of that moment, and that choice, repeatedly throughout my life, always emphasising how hurtful my choice was. Those reminders reinforced the message that I am, and always have been, selfish and thoughtless.

I’ve never had a rose-coloured glasses view of my childhood but there were plenty of happy moments amidst the conflict and challenges. Creating a timeline of memories with my trauma therapist has revealed a pattern of judgement from my parents that has caught me by surprise and accepting the dysfunction of my relationship with my parents on several levels has been disorienting and upsetting.

I want to rail against my parents for the unfairness of the way they raised me – that I was expected to be perfect and judged for falling short of that goal, made responsible for things that were clearly beyond my control (including the behaviour of others) and reminded often that my choices were disappointing and my attitude selfish. While other family members caused drama and difficulties at every turn and were forgiven, it was made very clear to me that my failures were unacceptable and disconnection as punishment was far more frequent than I realised until I began to create the timeline. It’s been confronting, but it’s also helped me understand why my response to others choosing to disconnect is so strong and so painful (and why I always expect people to walk away).

With the help of my therapist, I am slowly allowing myself to process the events of my past in ways that don’t simply reinforce that I’m always to blame, always inadequate, always a disappointment. Seven-year-old me responding to a request to choose between my parents isn’t proof that I am thoughtless, insensitive and selfish. It’s an impossible situation for a child to navigate, and blaming me for my response and spending the rest of my life reminding me how hurtful that response was says more about my parents than it does about me. 

I want to be angry. I want my parents to take responsibility for all the hurtful, diminishing, undermining, self-esteem destroying things they have done and said. I want them to understand that I tried my best, and beyond my best, to be what they expected me to be, even though it was never enough. I want to respond to accusations by both of my parents in recent years that I am selfish and think of no-one but myself with a list of all the ways that I am damaged and incapable of prioritising myself because they taught me, explicitly and implicitly, that my thoughts, feelings and opinions are insignificant. When asked to make a choice, even a simple one like what movie to watch or what takeaway to buy, I instinctively choose what I think will work best for others. Prioritising myself takes effort on my best days and is impossible and distressing in my lowest moments. I have my selfish, self-absorbed moments, of course, but to accuse me of caring only about myself is particularly hurtful coming from the people who taught me that my needs don’t matter at all. 

I’m gradually realising that processing these memories isn’t breaking me, it’s helping me to discard thoughts and beliefs about myself that I should never have taken hold of in the first place. It’s unravelling the network of lies and unrealistic expectations that have kept the real me restrained and silenced, and stopped me believing in myself and *being* myself. It’s about removing the tangle of distorted perceptions and expectations imposed by others so that I can be myself, not the person they’ve told me I am.

It’s scary to do that. The dysfunction is familiar and my overwhelming self-doubt is safe in it’s own way. There is a weird sort of comfort in assuming that I’m always to blame, always wrong, always inadequate, always responsible but never good enough. Being myself is scary and overwhelming. It’s like I’m having to relearn how to think and feel and function, yet life goes on at the same pace and there is very little time available to adjust and recalibrate. As a result, I’m making lots of mistakes, frequently triggering the well established pathways in my brain that tell me I’m inadequate. It’s a constant battle to reject the influence and control of people who never liked who I really am (a thought expressed by both my mother and ex-husband)

Taking a step back and realising that I’d blindly accepted my grandmother had a Plan B if she lost her needle in my finger was amusing. Taking a step back and realising I’ve blindly allowed my parents and my ex-husband to define how I see myself – that I’ve accepted their disappointment as valid and reasonable – has left me feeling vulnerable and disoriented. It seems stupid to say that at 47 I’m having to relearn not just who I am but how to be that person when I interact with others, but that is where I’m at. It’s so hard to resist the behaviour patterns of a lifetime. The task of working out who I am and what I want seems impossibly huge, especially when I’m trying to integrate that with my existing relationships and responsibilities. 

As always, I feel completely inadequate for the task ahead, but I’m holding on to the hope that there are better days ahead. Unravelling is just another necessary step in this journey.

Sadness and Fear

Right now, in this moment, my life is going well. I am happy, I am loved. I am safe. On a pragmatic level, my children are happy and healthy, my bills are paid, and I have a roof over my head, food on my plate (too much at times), and we have everything we need and lots of things we want. I have a secure job working for someone I respect, amazing friends who support and encourage me and make me laugh, and a wonderful husband who reminds me daily that I am loved and valued.

Life is good.

Despite this, today I feel anxious and sad. My chest is tight and my thoughts are chaotic. Tears aren’t far away.

When I respond to significant triggers (like something that creates a sense of connection to my ex-husband or parents), I feel weak and pathetic. It’s humiliating to feel so powerless and vulnerable when something connects me to my past, but it’s also possible to explain and rationalise those feelings. These people hurt me, and it’s not surprising that things that connect me to them are distressing.

Today’s unfocused, generalised distress is a different thing. There’s nothing to blame except my own dysfunction. I still feel weak and pathetic, but I also feel stupid and neurotic. And ungrateful – I have so many wonderful things happening in my life and so many people offering me love and support, it seems inconsiderate and selfish to still be feeling so sad and overwhelmed.

The sadness is complex. It’s a background hum of thoughts on a continuous loop in my mind telling me that I’m always responsible, but always inadequate, always a disappointment. It’s a pulsing throb sending waves of emotion that bring tears to my eyes and an ache to my chest. It’s a cloud hovering on the horizon as a reminder that if I become complacent an unexpected trigger could result in panic and tears.

That sounds like I wander around in a state of constant misery, but that’s not true. I love my life – my husband, my kids, my friends – and the future seems so much brighter now than it did during the bleak, hopeless years of my first marriage. But the sadness is always there if I stop to look for it (and often when I don’t). I’m not miserable, but I am fragile. I’m often happy, but the awareness of potential sadness keeps me on guard emotionally in a way that is exhausting, which makes me more fragile and more likely to react intensely to triggers when they occur.

Framing how I feel in that way – varying shades of sadness – somehow seems both accurate and misleading. I’ve distracted myself today trying to work out why and it came to me in one of those moments of clarity where you feel both brilliant for working out a complex puzzle and devastated by the truth.

I’m not sad, I’m afraid.

There is genuine sadness, of course, about my past and about things that are happening now, and I have ways of dealing with that, but I don’t know what to do with this fear that looks like sadness. When people try to comfort me, it often makes it feel worse and intensifies the fear that I am too damaged, too vulnerable, too inadequate to function without people propping me up.

I am afraid that I’m too much work, too ‘high maintenance’ and people will give up (reinforced by the fact that my parents and so many church friends have done just that).

I am afraid this happiness won’t last. I’m afraid that I’ll do something that will push others away, or that they’ll simply realise that I’m not worth the effort.

I am afraid that I’ll never find a way through the maze of memories and thoughts that link me to people who taught me that my value was conditional on me fulfilling their expectations.

I am afraid that I’ll never shed the beliefs about myself I’ve learned from them – that my feelings don’t matter, that my opinions don’t matter, that I don’t matter.

I am afraid that if I’m not vigilant, I’ll slip back into old habits where I prioritise everyone above myself. And I’m afraid that at the end of the day, that’s all I’m really good for anyway – facilitating the lives of others.

I am afraid that if I stop long enough to accept support and acknowledge how overwhelmed and hurt I am, that I won’t be able to get myself moving again.

I am afraid to allow myself to believe those who tell me that they love me and value who I am, because I find it so hard to see anything in myself that justifies that love and I’ve spent a lifetime with the word ‘love’ being used as a way to control and subdue who I am. I am afraid that accepting love means losing myself, again.

I am afraid. And after so many years of telling myself I am strong and confident and capable, acknowledging that fear feels like admitting that I am none of those things.

Truth and Authenticity

I’ve spent the majority of my life – my childhood and my first marriage – being directly and indirectly told that it’s my responsibility to make everyone else’s life work. I need to make sure my opinions aren’t too strong, my emotions aren’t too intense, and that I don’t do or say anything that might indicate that someone should be held accountable for their own behaviour. I should behave in a way that makes it easier for others to look good – I should anticipate their bad behaviour or weaknesses and moderate my behaviour accordingly so that they won’t be upset (no matter how much that upsets or invalidates me and my feelings). My focus should be ensuring the emotional comfort of others without giving any thought or priority to my own emotional wellbeing.

Words (reading and writing) were my solace and refuge during my childhood and marriage, but they were also the way I maintained the facade of a happy life. It’s amazing how easy it is to be truthful without being authentic, and how willing people are to hear what they want to hear and not look beyond the surface of what you are saying.

I often described my relationship in my first marriage as ‘functionally dysfunctional’, although the reality was that it was only functional for him, and was miserably exhausting in its dysfunction for me. It’s amazing what you can gloss over and hide, even from yourself, with the use of a well-turned phrase.

I remember a planned get together with friends visiting from out of town towards the end of my marriage, where I cancelled at the last minute because I couldn’t bring myself to go and pretend that we functioned in any way as a couple. I was exhausted and I simply couldn’t find the energy to do what I usually did, which was actively manage social situations so that my ex didn’t have to deal with anything that was inconsistent with the completely inaccurate version of our family and our lives that only existed inside his head. [side note: the husband of that couple refused to talk to me after the separation once he established that I wouldn’t go back to the marriage, except for drunk texting me on two separate occasions. His upsetting, insensitive behaviour helped relieve some of my lingering guilt at not going along to the planned catch-up mentioned above.]

I used words to hide the truth of my life from others, to protect my children from their father’s inability to connect emotionally, and to talk myself into believing that I was okay. And I allowed the words of others – particularly my parents and ex, but also church friends and leaders I turned to for help – to become the foundation for how I defined myself. I let them tell me that I was a disappointment and inadequate, that the things that mattered to me weren’t important, and that I was to blame for my own unhappiness. I allowed them to make me responsible for the failings of others and accepted their explanations that it was my flaws, rather than their actions, that were making me unahppy.

I was confronted recently by a counsellor questioning a positive statement I made (with some confidence) about my ex-husband and his ability to function emotionally. I made the statement after giving a range of examples earlier in our conversation demonstrating his complete inability to respond to the emotions of others. She asked why I believed that in the hypothetical we were discussing he would be capable of acting differently. And the truth was, I didn’t believe he could. Nothing in my 25 years of experience with him gives me any reason to believe that he’s capable of responding to any emotions other than his own, but my default is to use the words that help people believe the best about themselves and others. Part of that is innately who I am, but a significant part of it is a response conditioned by my parents and reinforced by my ex-husband. My only value comes from my ability to prioritise others whilst minimising the inconvenience of others having to acknowledge me. Always. Regardless of the cost to myself.

And there is the reality of why I’m finding it hard to write. I can’t trust myself to be authentic. It hurts to be completely honest about what I’ve experienced and what I’m feeling, because confronting my past means accepting that I’ve been complicit in creating the fiction that made it easier for others to treat me so badly. I masked what they did, accepted the way they treated me, and used words to convince others, and myself, that it was all okay. I used words so often to deflect and obscure, I’m not sure if I can trust myself to use them now to honestly describe the truth of my experience. I’ve even talked around the edges in the examples I gave above, both of which were events that were extremely upsetting to me at the time and which remain significant, distressing memories.

It’s tempting to say that I don’t need to write about this, but I’m not sure that’s true. I think writing is going to be the most effective way of processing the thoughts and memories, but I’m not sure I’m brave enough to take the first step. My experiences involve very few examples of major trauma. Instead, it’s a seemingly neverending list of small moments, words, actions, assumptions and expectations spanning my entire life where the people who should have loved me most constantly reminded me that I was a disappointment in every way. I start with one thought (like the time in my mid-30s when my mother took me aside to remind me I needed to behave at the funeral of a beloved elderly relative because I had to make sure I didn’t trigger the bad behaviour of my consistently self-absorbed and unpredictable sister [who wasn’t given a similar warning]) and before long I’m feeling overwhelmed by a series of connected moments, comments, and criticisms that leave me feeling exhausted and bereft and desperate to wrap it all up in words that make it less painful.

If I choose to write now, it can only work if I am able to be authentic and I’m not sure I can, because it hurts to go beneath the surface. It hurts to examine the reality of my childhood and first marriage and to accept that so many things I worked so hard to convince myself were okay, were actually abusive and cruel. Writing now means pushing through the compulsion to edit and re-edit until the words are smooth and non-confrontational and to gloss over events that can’t realistically be described as anything other than awful.

And I don’t know if I can.

I Should Feel Happy

In less than 12 hours the divorce hearing will be over and my application for divorce will be processed and approved by the court (I hope). In one month the divorce will be finalised.

I should feel happy.

Instead I’m remembering that the feeling of being released from a cage when I made the decision to leave was counterbalanced by an incredible sadness and sense of failure that I hadn’t been able to make the marriage work.

I’m remembering what it felt like to describe my marriage to others, honestly and openly, and have them react in a way that made it obvious that what I’d accepted as normal – what had been my normal – was not normal at all. That my relationship had been twisted and dysfunctional and the effort I had made over so many years to make things work had been futile from the outset. So many wasted years.

I’m remembering the awfulness of the separation. Of having someone who professed to love me respond to my claim that he’d never really liked who I was as a person with “you’re right, but I’m okay with it now”. That he believed I only thought I wasn’t in love anymore because evil spirits were manipulating my thoughts and deceiving me. So many awful words and accusations and lies.

I’m remembering that somehow, despite all the horrible words and actions, one of the things that made me the saddest was his gift for flowers a few weeks after our separation. Flowers that were apparently supposed to make me feel valued, but instead made me feel even more invisible because after 22 years of marriage, the best he could do was a cheap bouquet from the supermarket that were predominantly flowers that I was allergic to.

I’m remembering the family and friends that in those early days I thought would be by my side at this point, who have instead made it clear that they can’t see past all the ways I’ve disappointed them to offer love and support when I need it most.

I’m remembering how having my signature witnessed on the divorce application made me feel like throwing up, right there in the foyer of the office where the JP worked. That I was almost overwhelmed by feelings of failure and, in that moment, that I struggled to believe that real love was possible.

I’m remembering all the tears of the past 16 months and the worries for the future.

I might not be happy, but I’m relieved that we’ve made it this far, that the kids and I have survived such emotional turmoil able to love each other and believe we’re heading for a better future. By this time tomorrow I will have passed another significant milestone in the process of freeing myself from the sadness of my past. That’s enough.

Accepting that I am Broken

Several events recently have forced me to accept that after decades of fighting to be strong and confident in a relationship that constantly made me feel insignificant and invisible, and another 15 months of an emotionally manipulative separation, I’m not simply emotionally battered and bruised, I’m broken.

I want to write about it – about what it feels like to not be able to trust yourself, to be vulnerable to so many emotional triggers, to be constantly debating with yourself and analysing your thoughts and emotions in an attempt to discern the reasonable from the irrational.

I want to describe what it’s like to accept that you’ve been a victim of abuse and all that means – the sense of weakness and failure and frustration and guilt. I want to share how it feels to realise that the only counselling that provides meaningful support and comfort comes from domestic violence and trauma specialists.

I want to describe what it feels like to stand on the sidelines of public debate about how evangelical churches handle abusive relationships, reading comments by those who are criticising the presentation of research, deflecting attention away from the main issue and feeling offended by the suggestion that Christian communities would condone any kind of domestic abuse. I want to share what it is like to listen to these discussions while feeling overwhelmed by the memories of my own failed attempts to seek help from leaders of the four different churches I attended during my marriage.

I want to describe what it feels like to have some of the most significant people in my life look at me in my most vulnerable moments and tell me that they think I’m self-absorbed, selfish, lacking in faith, unnecessarily emotional and inappropriately focused on my own happiness. To have my father tell me I only think of myself and my mother say that she can’t bear to be in the same room as me, while they mention that they are willing to invite my abusive ex-husband over to their home for dinner. To have Christian friends pass judgement because I’m not valuing the preservation of my marriage ahead of my own emotional wellbeing. To face a wall of silence from people I assumed would be the foundation of the network of support for myself and my children.

I want to share how terrifying it is to encounter an unexpected emotional trigger that leaves me shaking and in tears and feeling so incredibly isolated. What it feels like to be curled up on the floor having a panic attack feeling weak and fragile and hating myself for not being able to control the flood of anxiety that makes it so hard to think clearly.

I want to write about how much I hate that my brokenness impacts on those I love.

I want to talk about all of these things and more. The thoughts swirl in my mind and I want to share them, but when I sit at a keyboard suddenly the words are flat and meaningless and convey none of the intensity of what I’m feeling. It’s just another part of me that is broken.

I’m hoping that accepting that I’m broken and making the effort to get the words out more regularly – dull and lifeless as they are – will help me to reach a place where I feel less shattered and better able to pull the pieces together to redefine myself and my life.

Today I am broken, but hopefully accepting that brings me one step closer to feeling restored.

Standing Tall While Falling Down

“You’re so brave and strong.”

I’ve been told that many times since I separated from my husband but I rarely see myself that way. I was so incredibly unhappy for so many years and it took me so long to make the decision to leave him that the final step seemed almost an act of conceding to the inevitable rather than an act of defiance. I simply ran out of energy and gave up on trying to make the relationship work.

I don’t feel brave and strong. I often feel weak and exhausted and overwhelmed. I feel like I’m constantly trying to put together a jigsaw where several of the pieces are missing and a couple are substitutes from a completely different puzzle (and one or two have been chewed by the dog). Even in the happy moments (and there are lots of them), I’m usually bracing myself for the next challenge, the next confrontation, the next trigger, the next moment where I go from happiness to feeling worthless and inadequate.

I want to live an authentic life – I’ve always wanted that. I hate lies and pretence and have always emphasised to my children the importance of honesty and sincerity in what they do. The need to maintain the facade of a happy and functional relationship for so many years was painful because I felt like I was betraying myself every time someone made a positive comment about our relationship and every time I made an excuse for my husband’s behaviour. When a girl from a youth group we had been involved with said she’d always hoped to find a relationship just like ours, I think I died a little bit inside. I certainly felt guilty that my efforts to present the image of a happy marriage meant she’d believed that our relationship was one worth striving for.

My struggles with authenticity continue, even though I’ve left the relationship. I’ve found it difficult to socialise over the past 16 months because I feel like I’m a completely different person to who I was in April last year. I feel like trying to connect with people who knew me ‘before’ means bringing a new person into the conversation, one that they may not like or relate to. I feel ashamed that I wasn’t my authentic self with them for so long and sad that the dysfunction of my marriage made it increasingly impossible for me to be myself anywhere.

I considered apologising on my personal Facebook profile recently for the number of links I’ve shared about domestic abuse and DV support services as well as the long, TL;DR-worthy status updates about things that are happening in my life related to the separation and divorce. There are lots of positive things happening as well and I feel like I’m somehow letting everyone down by not focusing on those things and instead talking about a topic that is so difficult and awful.

But talking about this – not just the generalities but the very personal and sustained impact of domestic abuse – is part of how I’m reclaiming myself.

I guess it comes back to being authentic. Currently, I’m often falling down. I stumble and limp my way through the day. After years of putting a happy face on my sadness, I find I just can’t sustain a stream of upbeat posts and updates. Being so open and direct online has been challenging after years of trying to keep the space relatively neutral and impersonal (as part of the facade). I’m gradually feeling more comfortable mentioning my children, my partner and our life and I’m trying to remember to share some of the trivial, entertaining things that catch my attention, but primarily I’m trying to be true to myself. For now, that means acknowledging the hard stuff. Accepting that I’m falling and failing at times is the only way that I can feel that I’m standing tall and truly being myself.

And after two decades of feeling invisible, being myself and (hopefully) encouraging other women who relate to my situation to do the same helps me to feel like falling, stumbling and limping my way through the day might actually be brave and strong after all.

How His Birthday Makes Me Feel Like A Failure

It’s my ex-husband’s birthday in a few days. In the past (pre-separation) the family routine for this day was reasonably predictable. I would make something he liked dinner and bake a cake, organise gifts from myself and from the kids, and usually work in with some plan of his mother’s to also celebrate the day. For his 40th, I organised a get together with family, and two different gatherings with friends and organised a gift based on Plan B, because his mother told him he didn’t need what I originally intended to buy him.

As a comparison, for my birthday each year I organised dinner and a cake, although in recent years the kids have generally organised at least the cake. I organised gifts for my ex and the kids to give me. I made an effort to catch up with my parents for lunch or coffee around the time of my birthday. For my 40th, I organised to go out for dinner to a restaurant with my children, ex and parents, prompted him to go and pay at the end of the night, and bought my own birthday gift over his protests that what I wanted wasn’t really what I wanted.

Last year his birthday was only 7 weeks after the separation and everything was still in a state of chaos. I reminded the kids about his birthday and gave them money and they organised a gift for him and had dinner with him to celebrate.

This year it’s more complicated. It’s been a horribly traumatic 14 months and I’m past the numb ‘shock’ stage and well into a kind of PTSD stage where there are an unbelievably large number of triggers that spark significant emotional trauma responses. The challenges of separating my life from his and dealing with his ongoing emotional manipulations while simultaneously trying to process the emotional abuse of the past (and raise three teenagers, work full-time, and maintain a new relationship) mean that I am exhausted and often feel overwhelmed, resulting in almost constant background anxiety and, occasionally, some rather spectacularly awful panic attacks.

So, it’s probably no surprise that the need to work out what to do about his birthday this year has been an emotional and logistical challenge. I’ve reminded the kids (one month ago, two weeks ago, this weekend) that his birthday is approaching. I’ve told them I’ll make money available to them to get what they want. The kids are largely indifferent and haven’t put any effort into getting him a gift or making any plans to help him celebrate.

I get their indifference. He’s been awful to them in many ways over the past year. Celebrations of special events have been particularly difficult and have apparently often been accompanied by his repeated comments about how things used to be so much better when we were able to be together as a family before I ruined everything and made everyone miserable by leaving him. I also know that if they don’t do anything, he will report it as further evidence that I am undermining his relationship with them.

Looking at things logically, I can see why someone would think it is reasonable for me to simply say that aside from making sure the kids have adequate money available for a gift, that I want nothing to do with any special events/gifts for my ex. He never put any effort into those events for me during our marriage (forgot my birthday at least once and our anniversary multiple times, never organised gifts for my birthday, Mother’s Day and/or Christmas or any other special occasion). In fact I can see that it would be reasonable for someone to say that I’ve well and truly discharged my gift-giving responsibilities to him since I not only organised gifts FOR him, but also every gift FROM him to myself, his children, his parents and sisters, and others over the 22 years of our marriage.

But, instead of being able to shrug this off and move on, I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt and frustration with myself. I feel like I should be able to rise above this to ensure that the kids buy him a gift and make an effort to connect with him for his birthday. I feel guilty that I’m not able to better encourage them to prioritise him. I feel like a horrible person that I can’t bring myself to put time or energy into thinking of a gift he will like for the children to give him.

I’ve read the meme that regularly does the rounds (usually around Mother’s Day and Christmas) about the man who helps his kids purchase gifts for his ex-wife (their mother) as well as buying her flowers and helping the kids make her breakfast for her birthday, etc. I’ve read how he explains this effort on his part as a lesson to his children about valuing and respecting their parents, and showing that even though he is no longer with their mother, he values the importance of her contribution to their lives. I’ve watched friends navigate the emotional challenges of ending a marriage while still managing to prioritise their children by establishing a functional and even friendly relationship with their ex-spouse that includes helping the kids to celebrate special occasions for and with the other parent.

I’m not doing any of that. And I feel like I should be able to, that I should at least want to, because I should want that lesson for my children about love and respect and the importance of giving to those we care about and who play significant roles in our lives.

I feel like a failure because it’s impossible for me to work out where my involvement in the kids’ relationship with their father begins and ends. I don’t know what aspects I’m responsible for facilitating and what I can legitimately step away from. I feel like I should have found a way to better navigate the separation so that the kids weren’t put in a position of having to relate to their parents as two completely separate entities – they have a mother and a father, but don’t really have parents working as a team for their welfare. Although, if I’m honest, they never really did.

I’m annoyed with myself for finding this so emotionally crippling. Surely I should be able to simply pick out a book, movie or music CD, suggest the kids buy it and walk away. But I can’t, which makes me feel small and mean-spirited. Surely it shouldn’t feel like such a sacrifice to spare five minutes thought on a gift.

So, today I’ve felt like a failure because there is nothing in place for the kids to give their father for his birthday, because I haven’t found a way to encourage them to organise a gift by themselves, and because I’ve hurt someone I care about deeply by having a panic response to being confronted with a request to choose a gift for my ex.

It seems like such an insignificant thing to respond to so strongly. I’m sharing about it here because these unbelievably hard, seemingly insignificant moments are now part of the everyday fabric of my life. Aside from my love for my children, my partner and a few very close friends, there are so few things I feel confident about and it’s a constant battle to not feel like this uncertainty and overwhelm is because of some inadequacy on my part.

I’m okay, but today has been another hard day. 🙁