The Long Road Out

I'm 25 months into my mental health spiral, and for some reason the last 24 hours some part of me has wanted an official "diagnosis."   I should ask my therapist or my ketamine guide what they think.  Neither of them seem particularly interested in the DMM—in fact, I'd guess they think labeling my condition would be contrary to functional medicine and healing.   Maybe I won't ask…I'll just keep working on moving toward the sunlight at the moments when I'm capable.   Diagnosing myself, here's what I guess:   I arrived in 2022 with a lot of unprocessed guilt, shame, and grief.  These toxic cultures were surviving quietly underneath the umbrella provided by a "I am not allowed to fail" pleaser/caretaker syndrome.  I solved life's problems successfully alone.  That part of me worked hard, every minute of every day, from age 5 until age 67. I compounded this by picking a narcissistic partner—I loved her (I apologize to ...

            I'm beginning to evolve out of a 2 year cycle with PTSD.  The trauma was long-standing but was triggered by marital abandonment, which sent me down a sad road that I couldn't overcome.               I'm glad there's so much more therapeutic help available now…I have been sustained by 2x a week talk therapy, hugely aided by the new research in psychotherapy-assisted psychedelics.  Particularly ketamine, and I'm now beginning a psilocybin microdosing campaign to (hopefully) lock in the benefits of KAP.  More on that later.               The assisted ketamine accelerated recovery by "dusting off", testing, and demonstrating untold neural pathways that had fallen into abject disuse as the manic rabbit hole of PTSD took control.  Among the characteristics I experienced under...

This is from a recent webinar with Linda Thai, and her course "Befriending the Nervous System.   "Fear is the cheapest room in the tavern.  You deserve better lodgings."   "Trauma leads to the potential of a vortex of problem solving, since that's our basic survival skill."   "Traumatic memories become encoded as sensory experiences and become embedded as 'trauma hashtags'.  Hold the space for longstanding feelings of mistrust and betrayal" that result in the opposed dynamics of: demanding and withdrawing, pleading for and rejecting help, charm and defiance and ghosting, grandiosity and self-loathing, entitled rage and helpless rage."  

I spent most of my adult life in a marriage where I wasn't heard.   Instead: I was talked over I was interrupted I was told "that's not true." I watched my partner yawn most times when I tried to express myself I was criticized in public…   The list goes on.    My abused spouse support group talked a lot about not having a voice…any voice.  And I've read a lot about the subject.   I contributed to this problem by not having a technique to ask for what I needed.  I've subsequently read books like Say What You Mean , so my skills around difficult conversations (that's all I had for 28 years) have improved recently.  Too late to help me out of a hostile environment.   My support group was all women, except for me.  I can see that one primary response to not being allowed to express yourself is common across the genders (presumably the non-binary ones too):  we tend to turn the silencing on ourselves in the ...

On this day when the NY Harvey Weinstein conviction was overturned and the Supreme Court appears ready to hold Donald Trump immune from his January 6 actions, you continue to ghost me—and solicit support from your community around the idea that I'm the devil and "good riddance."   I accuse you of the crime of using me to fund your education in healing modalities, and then intentionally withholding any of your skill or education from your husband.  This is the crime of withholding help.  I assume if an MD walked away from a bleeding victim, there would be liability.  You did this to me, and stepped on my heart at the same time.  You stole nearly all of the first aid I had available.    I accuse you of malpractice.  I know you'd do the same thing to strangers than you did to me.  I've seen you walk past people dying or in pain so many times. 

I am not a coke addict.   I am not a crossdresser.   I am an abused spouse. I have 9 months in a support group for victims of abusive marriages to prove it.   I am alone.  And, like you, afraid of dying alone.   I have a cat I love very much.  Ceci.   I have a problem with self-criticism.   I am not cruel in crowds, even when forced by circumstances, to paraphrase the Polish poet.  I would never do that.   I am working hard to overcome depression and PTSD.  I have established a ring of safety around myself to keep out bad actors.  I'm learning how to enforce it.   I think "eye for an eye" justice is for those who could not form attachments with their parents at an early age.  Which is why I respect Bob Marley so much.  He remained a radical peace activist anyway, and he stole his absent white father's name back!   Crying is the best release I know.  Ketamine-assis...

If it was me, I would try to help, listen, and stand by for support as long as I could before I began to harm myself.    Except for the last part, that's how I helped you through every crisis you created in your life.  I messed up on the last part…I always harmed myself.   That's what I've tried to do in my very sad and difficult relationship with my brother.  It's been terrible and I feel ashamed and guilty every day of my life.  But I still know I did the best I could without destroying myself, despite your daily humiliations and boredom.  You have taught me my limitations—and absolutely nothing else.  You never shared anything that mattered to you.  Just your trash.   If it was you?  Let your performance be your record, but here's what I believe you did:   Have an affair and brag about how great the sex was. Develop a chronic yawn to hide your fear Tell every mutual friend we have that I'm a coke and p...

I miss you a lot.  Hundreds of times a day.   But I'm also certain you'll gloat and use that information against me.  Or, more harmfully, do what you always do:  ignore any one you feel you have in your control.   I stopped saying "I love you" five years ago (that was more than a decade after you stopped saying anything meaningful about me).  You don't care why so I'll explain:  the minute I said I love you, you ignored me for a week or two.   Every single time.  You ignored me.  Your rudeness doubled.   That's why I value my anger:  it's the only tool I have to drive you away.  You are toxic, and because you get rejected by your lovers, or don't have enough of them, you come back.  Three times so far.  And I let you stomp all over me, insult me, hurt me.  For 28 years of total hostility.   You put a million times more time and energy into campaigning for my destruction than yo...

If a woman complains about an angry man, it's assumed by all parties that she speaks the truth.  This cultural mandate is so strong that it overrides evidence of dishonesty, personality disorder(s), suicidal tendencies, adultery, theft, violence, gaslighting, denial, sexual abuse, clinical indecisiveness, and more.   I found myself in a situation surrounded by these characteristics. I got angry.  All these elements listed above are core elements of sociopathic narcissistic personality disorder.  People afflicted with this genetic disease believe they're perfect.  Since they can't afford to lose the spotlight on their charm, they will backstab until the land around them is scorched and charred and black.  Not a living thing will stand.  Not family.  Not pets (my beautiful Emily died a year ago yesterday—I was not with her).   I am appropriately angry at being victimized by a sociopath.  My narcissistic marriage never got s...

As far as I know, my gorgeous loving purring cat, who I honor every day, never asked strangers to confirm that I'm a psychopath. I have another love machine ally now. Ceci. I wonder where you find unconditional love. Or if that matters to you. It's not adoration and it requires reciprocity. It has very little to do with sex behind bars in Montreal. I imagine mutual love makes you puke. Like Canadian tequila.

I just had a wondrous thought---what if I'd had kids with my life partner.   Let's say two.  A boy and a girl, binary or not.   My guess is that one or both would no longer be on speaking terms with my ex.  And neither would be willing to meet Ms. Fetlife. Both would be certain that my ex's current friends were complicit in their pain and suffering, and would have vowed to never be in the same state with any of them.   Why am I making this guess?  Thanks to another friend who left his wife and declared her crazy.  My ex has the same characteristics as this friend (let's call him the "Wilmington equivocator"):   WE committed serial adultery WE had a long history of not speaking to one or both parents. WE yanked everyone's chain by leaving, returning, leaving, returning, leaving, returning.  Ad nauseum. WE "piled on" when his new girlfriend put out that his ex-wife was "insane."  It never occurred to WE to defend the po...

In my previous marriage, the end was gentle—a handshake and a kiss outside the courtroom.  Quickly, our points of disagreement faded from memory, and for over 30 years I've recalled Melanie as a kind, generous, beautifully smart woman.  I suspect she still is.   My second marriage (I'm not allowed to write her name!) was a violent immature horror show that ended with serial ghosting and her getting dumped by adulterous lovers while she was shitting on me.   The fact that I now identify as an abused spouse has been a burning spear in the middle of my brain for two years.  Rather than forgetting the bad parts, new instances of humiliation, gaslighting, theft, and sociopathy surface.  The vast majority of these new memories are from watching her mistreat and manipulate her parents and anyone else she could control.  But I got a solid plurality of the abuse, and I alone lasted for the entire 28 years.    I hate the sewage that'...

            Now that my marriage is gone, my contradictory strong emotions have put me into an emotional tailspin.  I'm undiagnosed but I think the combination of mania, depression, and PTSD have turned me into a sad, lonely mess.  I now am certain I am a victim of spousal abuse from a textbook Nacissitic Personality Disorder wife.                Here are some thoughts:   I am my brother.  My brother is bipolar and was homeless for 12 years.  He's aggressive, angry, and unable to trust his ability to process information from other humans.  As a trauma survivor, I am all those things now, too.  One tangible result of my dysfunctional marriage is that I lost connection with the medicine that could have helped me heal.  Specifically, while integrating separate MDMA journeys, my ex wife attacked me.  Since s...