Abused & Rising Above: Where is the spontaneous bonding serum? I need to fix my Fractured Soul

Best Lesson I learned so far!

There is something I have been wanting to write about for many month, even before I started this project of clearing trauma. I keep putting it off on purpose, I have a few excuses for this:
1.) My writing has been working so well to help me, each time I write about something the trauma and dysfunction that surrounds it seems to just melt away. Since I’m pretty sure this is the worst thing that I have ever experienced I'm afraid it won't disappear and my fear keeps me from finding out.
2.) I just really really don't want to face those feelings ever again.

Today however was a trying day, and I want something extremely positive to come from it! I think a part of the dysfunction that played out had to do with my feelings of this past event since it involved my ex and a misunderstanding while communicating.

For any of you that have read my past posts, you know that my ex and I have a long history of dysfunction and abuse. I have barely scratched the surface of what I have gone through in my life, but since my primary purpose in writing is healing and this is a huge one, it needs attention sooner rather than later.

Last November I came to a point of complete hopelessness in my life. As do so many people with dysfunction in their lives and uncleared trauma, I had decided I couldn't take it anymore and I had no way out so I created a plan to kill myself.

At the time my ex and I were not living together, again. I had agreed to one last ditch effort at our life together, so we started to see a family counselor. The last year in particular, in between our bi-daily fights (aka massive blowouts), my ex had become overall very mean toward me. At this point in my life I had been sick with mercury poisoning for well over 28 years of my life, to some degree or another, with the last 6 being a type of daily waking hell most people could never imagine or endure. Since my ex had his own dysfunction that he never even tried to work out, he took out all his frustrations with the world the world on me, physically and mentally. I had worked my ass off since I was 15 years old, even while deathly ill, and had just been laid off in September so I could no longer afford my supplements that were keeping me alive. I had some of my mercury fillings removed at this point but still had five of them left and it felt like an impossible situation. Last of all, I missed my oldest daughter horribly, and it was very overwhelming to take care of my two younger children, one of them with heavy metal poisoning like me. I had no idea how to love my children and be a parent at the time because everything just felt like a huge burden.

I had always been terrified of death. In my past, things unknown had never worked out well for me and I thought this the same. I do believe in energy, that it can not be destroyed, only redistributed. However, after having my parents preach fire and brimstone at me for over a decade, there was a small fear I would be condemning myself to an eternity of torture while trying to escape my existing hell on earth.

Talk about a rock and a hard place… it is almost unimaginable to think of how many people feel like this day in and day out for weeks, months, years, decades… of their lives wasted when they could be thriving.

So like I said I had given up hope of anything ever getting better, or more livable even. I had been desperately wanting to get my kids to @gardenofeden for the last two years. I knew it was the best possible place they could be. The dysfunction held us back though, so I decided to write a letter to @truelovelives at @gardenofeden, from one mother to another, explaining my situation and basically begging her to let my children come live there, and to love and care for them in my absence. I had to make sure my kids would have a great life, that is all I cared about and I knew that would never happen with my ex. He would dump them on his mother like he did with his other two daughters, and my oldest daughter, who then his mother in turn would give them to my evil parents since she doesn’t want to raise anymore kids. I would never let them end up with my parents.

So my letter was almost done. I had done my online research as to what pills would be best to take so I could pass in my sleep. Every time I considered it I would cry, even now, at the thought my kids might find me. I did not want them to ever have to live with that. So I had to figure out a plan so that wouldn’t happen. I didn't have any friends or family so it is not like anyone would check in on us and realize my kids had been alone for who knows how long. Sometimes we would go weeks without talking to my ex so he couldn't be counted on to find me instead of them. I finally decided I would have to tell him, so he could take care of the kids till they could get to the Garden of Eden. I didn't think he would be opposed to them living there since he knew how awesome it was and of course it would remove all responsibility he had for them. Plus in all honesty I didn't want to die alone.

I had felt so alone my whole life, the thought of leaving the world that way to was unbearable. So I invited him over to have dinner with me and the kids one night, and I told him my plan. I explained how I couldn't handle the abuse amongst many other things anymore, and it was just time to stop. I asked him if he would please be there with me. I explained all my reasons for what I wanted to happen with the kids, not wanting to be alone, etc. He was very dismissive if nothing else, like I was just talking about going to the grocery store but wasn't really going to do it. I assured him of my sincerity in the matter and told him I had already bought the pills. The only reason I hadn't done it already was because of my concern for my kids. My ex didn't say much of anything during this time of me talking. I'm pretty sure he didn't even hear half of what I said. He basically told me he didn't want to be there, and I was really hurt by that. After everything I had done for him, and lived through with him, and tried to help him with his issues. I thought for sure if he ever loved me, even a fraction of what he claimed, that he would help me ease out of my suffering. Then I asked him if he would at least take the kids so I would know they were OK and not at the house with me. He wouldn’t do that either because he felt my "sudden hopelessness" (more like 6 years worth) would pass if I stuck around, and he knew I wouldn't do it with me there alone with our kids.

I was hurt, frustrated, and generally upset by his response. I just wanted him to be there for me once when I really needed him, when the kids needed him. It was so hard for me to reach out and ask for help, it felt like every time I had asked someone to please help me I was discarded like a piece of garbage stuck to the bottom of a shoe as you walk down the street. But I sucked it up and asked the hardest thing I ever have, but I was again denied. I figured I could try and talk him into it if I had a few days to show him the advantage to the kids. So I asked him if he wanted to have some desert and stay the night. He said he wasn't hungry, but needed to go get some cigarettes from the store and he would be right back.

The gas station was less than 5 minutes from my house and he sat out in the car for quite a while after he pulled back into the driveway. He usually only did this when he was surfing the web on his cell phone or Tindering. One of the things we were trying to work out in family counseling was his want for a polyamorous relationship. Which I was not opposed to the idea, but I told him we needed to get our lives together before we could ever even think about inviting someone else into our relationship. What he really wanted was an open relationship, not a polyamorous one. When we started family counseling, we agreed to stop talking to other people in a romantic fashion, and just work on ourselves for the time being.

So we had desert when he came in, put the kids to bed, and decided to hang out and watch a movie, where he almost instantly fell asleep. So as I so frequently did the last few years, after being lied to every single day of our relationship, I checked his phone after he fell asleep. There I found the messages him and this girl I later nicknamed "Dead Fish" had been sending to each other while he was "at the store". I knew he had been talking to her previously, and it didn't really surprise me that he was again - we split the last time because he broke his agreement to stop Tindering while we were in family counseling.

What did surprise me; no correction, what shattered the little bit of my soul that was left into a tiny million pieces was what he wrote in his message to her… blah blah blah BS lies, then BAM!

"I can't wait to take you out on a date. It is all I think about."

I was speechless and dumbfounded, which rarely happens to me. Someone could have walked up with a sledge hammer and struck me square in the chest and it would have hurt less than what I felt right then. All I could think of was, "The woman you claimed to love more than anything in this world, everyday since you were 16 years old, is so hurt and depressed from years of illness and YOUR abuse she just begged you to help her end her life. And your response to that was to message the Dead Fish and tell her how you can't wait to take her on a date after your wife is dead." I couldn’t wrap my head around it, not even for a moment, and I felt like I wouldn't even need the pills because a burning hot pain was spreading through my entire body.

I'm pretty sure I threw something at him to wake him up, or maybe not, but I know it wasn't a pleasant greeting. I can't even imagine the look on my face, but if it matched my insides it must have been horrifying. I asked him to explain this message. I asked him why this would be what he deemed the most important thing to do after what we had talked about that night. His response of course was anger that I had went through his phone. Then he basically said he didn't know how to "deal" with my request, so this is what came to mind. There were an infinite number of choices of things he could have done, something even as simple as saying with a nanogram of sincerity, "Please don't go." He could have chosen anything and it probably would have given me hope and changed my mind, but his response was telling Dead Fish how much he was looking forward to their future date.

I walked into the bathroom, shut the door, sat down, and wept as my soul died.

I had cried almost everyday of my life for the last 5 years, but I had never ever expelled this type of emotion. If you have ever seen someone wail, with such loss that it moves the earthbeneath them - that is what was taking place in my bathroom. I wanted to drop dead at that very moment in that time and space. I never wanted to see the face of another human being again - knowing they would look forever distorted with all hope of humanity gone from within me. I think hours passed by. He never came to the door. He never called out to me to see if I was still alive. Nothing. When I finally couldn't feel anything anymore, no hurt, no love, no nothing I walked out of the bathroom. He was sitting there on the bench seat by the table on his phone, probably texting Dead Fish. I told him my soul was gone and he could leave now. I don't remember exactly what happened, I think he tried to give me some lame bullshit excuse about his reasoning. The damage was done, nothing he said meant a single thing to me after that. He either left or I threw him out, I honestly don't remember. All I knew is that everything I had hoped for in life, I no longer cared about at all, not even dying to end the pain because the pain was gone. I felt nothing.

Now of course this was not the last interaction I had with my ex, since we are living in the same community, but this may have been the last interaction I had with myself in any real and meaningful way before coming to @gardenofeden. It is funny how I felt nothing from then until getting here, 9 months later, but now I feel everything again while talking about it just like it happened today. The hurt, the burning hot pain spreading through my body as I think about it. This is what I didn't want to feel again, but the great news is that it is not devastating this time. It is not earth moving as it felt before.

I know on some level I have been feeling a little bit of this, everyday since, with every interaction I have with my ex. How could I not with the weight of how this felt to me at the time?

So now, with every exchange I have with my ex since last November when I wanted to be kind it was hindered by my hurt, when I wanted to be mad it was hindered by my devastation, when I wanted to be happy so we could rejoice in our accomplishments, I was hindered by my despair of loss. I allowed this experience to create a very lasting dysfunction for me. This is probably the case in 99% of break ups I would imagine. The only difference here is that I have to, and want to, face mine everyday as I learn to grow as a human being to become who I am(was) before everything got off track.

As I have been progressing the last few weeks, I keep wondering why I allow myself to still be triggered by our past dysfunction. We have so many small issues, but each time I would get pissed I would think back to this, this incident was the one that put an end to all my feelings for him. So I figured if I face it, figure it out, find out how I fit into this equation, and take my own responsibility for what happened then, I could clear this dysfunction and be all that greater for myself and my community.

So here is what I have figured out so far. This extremely selfish act by my ex probably kept me alive. It wasn't love that I needed to feel at the time, I never would have accepted it from him, with our past. With the push he gave me though it also allowed me to stop feeling the pain and that was all I needed at the moment. Untimely, even though I never got what I wanted from him during a time of pain, I did get what I needed. For the place I was in at that time I was expecting nothing but abandonment. I knew he wouldn't be there for me. Even though I wanted and hoped he would, I knew it wasn't going to happen so that is the energy I brought into it. Our pattern was him finding worse ways to hurt me if one was less effective than before, since I kept allowing myself to be hurt that is the only reason they had an effect on me. My soul was not destroyed, it had just been hiding away until I was capable of dealing with what happened. Now I'm in a place where I am loved, appreciated, I provide value to the people in my community, and I feel like my life and theirs would be effected in a less than positive way if I were not here. That provides more than enough insight for me about the fact that I personally was not a problem, it was just my very downed point of view at the time and the person I was trying to spend my energy on.

Where I focus my energy is so very important. I wasted time yesterday by trying to explain a better solution to an issue, to my ex who was completely not receptive to anything I had to say. Another hour of my life I allowed to slip away because we never would have had clear communication since he was stuck in his own dysfunction, and I definitely had an undertone of all those things I said I still felt above.

I started writing this last night, and finished this morning. I wish I would have finished it last night because I had a dream where no one was communicating and it was overall unpleasant because of the unfinished dysfunction from yesterday…

Today is much clearer. I'm sure my ex will either apologize, or he will still feel morally superior, but either way it will not effect me today. I'm going to work with everyone here to make sure what needs to get done does, and I'm going to do it with the same positive energy and hope they feel it to help clear their own issues!

Another wonderful learning experience, and chance to choose to change my life! Overall another fantastic day @gardenofeden!

~ Kimberleigh