Hello my friends. Today I'm doing something I don't know if I've ever done before. I have a long history with narcissistic abuse both from parents and husband. I have done and tried everything to make them stop. I have talked till I'm hoarse. I've explained why it hurts. I've screamed and raged. I've cried. I've hit myself. I've blamed myself. I've let them blame me. I've threatened. I've driven off crying. I've slammed doors. I contemplated and threatened suicide. I've rolled over for it. I've allowed it and showed them how to treat me. I've rationalized it. I've excused, exonerated, tolerated, turned a blind eye to, ignored, pretended it didn't hurt. I've retaliated. None of it worked.
I've dysregulated when they were dysregulating so they wouldn't feel solely responsible. I've cleaned up their messes. I've body blocked it so my kids wouldn't see or hear their dad and grandparents ripping me apart. (They still saw.) I've humored, placated and soothed the perpetrators like fractious children. I've parented my parents and husband. I've defended. I've made an idiot of myself to shield. I've made everyone think I'm the problem. I caused their shitty behavior. None of it worked.
I've prayed. OH HOW I'VE PRAYED. For strength and patience. For them. To be released from anger. To be shown what I can do to fix it. And I've kept going back, again and again, allowing them to do it again and again. Because I am terrified of abandonment. Because I've been abandoned. And they know this. My husband knows my back story. He says he feels sad about it. And still, he weaponizes it, doing and saying things he knows will trigger these fears. So I keep giving in and giving them what they want. And still it keeps happening.
The thought of standing my ground terrifies me. I've let them rage at me. I've believed their bullshit about how it's my problem. How it's not abuse but a fight. I've let them call the shots, dictate terms and tell me how I'm supposed to respond to their behavior. I've let them define what God expects of me. How I brought it on myself. I've let them gaslight me. I've let them "make peace" on their terms, when they "were ready." I don't even know what it feels like to be ready myself. I just play by their endlessly changing double standards and hypocrisy. Playing the roles they've assigned to me.
I've let them gaslight me about how I should be thinking and feeling about God, when they who are the only face of God I know, are acting insanely unloving. I let them tell me (gaslight me if I'm honest about how it feels) that there is a God who loves me and how I should be so grateful for that. What they know but seem to ignore is that I've been doing this relationship with God thing a long time, longer and more genuinely than any of them. But I let fair weather pretend performative Christians tell me what I'm supposed to be doing. I just accept they know better and their shaming is my just desserts. I believe their lies.
But what's different today is that I'm being honest. I'm taking the blinders off and acknowledging all that happened in its naked ugliness. I'm not trying to explain to my husband anymore what he's done, why it hurts, etc. I'm explaining it to me. I'm owning my own feelings, not what I'm told I feel. Or at least trying to figure out what those are. This is foreign and frightening. My stomach feels sick thinking about it.
But part of the sickness is the realization of how much time I've wasted trying to repair and make up for damage that other people have caused. People who have no intention of stopping. People who plan to continue doing exactly the harmful things they do and who will not stop till it's a problem for them. People who do not care about me. I'm accepting that and expecting nothing.
I've refused all my life to accept that the harm that was being done to me was being done. I covered for my parents and my husband. Because they said I had to. Well, I don't have to. I'm not going to fix what they broke. I don't owe them anything. I can quit playing the game any time I want. I can stop letting them make up rules as they go along. I don't want to care about what they do anymore. I don't want to be hurt anymore. I don't want to play supporting actress to their shitshows anymore. I want out.
It's a bitter pill to swallow that I can't trust people who I should be able to trust. People who proclaim to love me yet who do nasty things out of the blue. For shits and giggles. So what do I feel about it? Not angry. Aware and exhausted. I can't fix what I didn't break. They're just going to keep breaking it. I'm going to let myself sit with that awareness and exhaustion.
I want to do what I want. I want to call the shots in my life. It's about damn time I did. If I screw up, oh well, I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. There's a betting chance the only one hurt by my screw ups will be me. It's a lot better than being screwed over all the time. Oh and I'll be determining what constitutes screw up. And why am I so worried about screwing up? Because they've gaslit me that this is all that will happen if I do it my way. Yanno what the H with their nonsense. It may very well turn out that I make a huge, glorious amazing success of it!
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