Proud to be free again
A friend described a different perspective on surviving an acrimonious divorce yesterday. I can't get her language exactly, but the essence was around the idea that she was proud to be free of knowing someone who treats others badly. She had an abusive narcissist spouse, and so did I. I've struggled to put my bad wife aside.
I make small progress every day. And my therapist is now working on me to gain nurture and nutrients from the kindness and compliments I often receive from my new friends and acquaintances. But, my ex still comes up in nearly every conversation and my heart is still broken.
So, bring "proud" rings true to me as a healing principle through the later stages of post-trauma symptoms. My marriage destroyed most of the ways I nurtured myself and eventually my default systems of self respect collapsed. I became the angry self-medicating version of myself that I did not like. And most of it came because I was trying to love and care for a sociopath who was visibly hurting others long before she directly tried to destroy me.
I was in love with someone who was getting thrown out by her affairs within weeks, and then telling all my friends how stupid her lovers were. It's a miracle I'm still fundamentally capable of kindness, goodness, trust, and curiosity after that sort of mistake and intentional degradation.
And now I have that good person—me!—back. What a nice stranger I am to myself. Proud to know you, David.
I make small progress every day. And my therapist is now working on me to gain nurture and nutrients from the kindness and compliments I often receive from my new friends and acquaintances. But, my ex still comes up in nearly every conversation and my heart is still broken.
So, bring "proud" rings true to me as a healing principle through the later stages of post-trauma symptoms. My marriage destroyed most of the ways I nurtured myself and eventually my default systems of self respect collapsed. I became the angry self-medicating version of myself that I did not like. And most of it came because I was trying to love and care for a sociopath who was visibly hurting others long before she directly tried to destroy me.
I was in love with someone who was getting thrown out by her affairs within weeks, and then telling all my friends how stupid her lovers were. It's a miracle I'm still fundamentally capable of kindness, goodness, trust, and curiosity after that sort of mistake and intentional degradation.
And now I have that good person—me!—back. What a nice stranger I am to myself. Proud to know you, David.
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