There Were So Many Examples Of This. No Matter What I Chose, It Was Always Wrong. I Questioned The Rationality

There were so many examples of this. No matter what I chose, it was always wrong. I questioned the rationality of all my decisions all the time. And I was wrong every time.

It wasn't long before my mind went blank when it came to decision making. And then he'd start screaming at me for not being able to make decisions.

Food was always a Thing

He'd tell me he was bored with the food I made so I'd find a new recipe. He would criticise everything about it, say it looked disgusting and ask why I was so stupid.

So he'd give me one to try, I'd make it and he'd love it. If I made it again, it was never as good as the first time. If I made it again he hated it. If I never made it again he would tell me that he loved it and I was withholding it because I was lazy/a cunt.

I'm lying in bed next to my amazing woman, who, moments ago, i woke up so that she'd hold me while I sobbed. For no reason that I can confirm. I am calm now and I feel her drifting off next to me. It's peaceful.

I spent so many nights attempting to pace away my anxiety and dread in the basement alone. I didn't want the creaky floorboards in our old house to wake him.

Waking him was always bad. Especially if I was looking for comfort. His demons were to be soothed, attended and deferred to. Mine, likely only an excuse for my shortcomings, were mine. What business were they of his?

This is the reminder card for my follow up appointment after my abortion. I've kept it since receiving it in the last few days of 2016. My woman asked why I've kept so many things that hurt and remind me of terrible times.

These scraps corroborate my story. If I don't keep them, the terrible things that have happened to me just become a figment of my imagination; another false excuse as to why I'm not a better adjusted Adult.

Furthermore, and probably the darker side of my trauma response, I've felt I deserve the misery these memories stir up. Comfort is not something I'm entitled to given my sins and finding reminders of that is part of how I can atone. Real pain is penance after all.

I told her. She said all of the right things. The kind, supportive words we all allow to bounce off of us; so unlike the things he would have said, which I would have allowed to soak into my core.

But I will try a little harder, and today I shredded this damn thing.

Kindness to myself is how I will erase him.

when i was a teenager it felt very revolutionary to be cruel to myself. like some kind of slow passive protest against how much everything hurt. i starved myself of sleep and food and tenderness because it felt right. it felt sharp and angry and radical and i wanted to be those things. adulthood is the realisation that the world is already working to cut into you well before you learn how to do it yourself. caring for yourself and others is the real protest

Against some of my more rational thinking, i tried to see if I could find the woman on Facebook.

I think she has me blocked because I couldn't find her and I definitely found her before. Which means he would have asked her to block me. He must be afraid.

That gives me immense satisfaction.

A friend of mine saw him at the grocery store. That feeling in my chest is back, and all she did was tell me about it.

He was with a woman; we think it's the same woman he took on what was supposed to be our vacation ( the one I predominantly paid for). That means she's been around for a little more than two years.

I am really struggling right now with guilt. She's probably seen him for what he is by now. And I'm sorry for that. What if I had had a spine back then and told her. Does she need help now?

I feel I should reach out.