Today was a better, easier day today. I’ve settled from the interruption my ex’s message caused me and I’m starting to move forward again in my healing and learning how to live.
Ever heard the phrase 2 steps forward and one step back? Yeah, that’s kind of the blueprint for how my healing is going. I make huge strides and have another, almost equally as big set back. But I’ve continued to get up, where before I didn’t even have the will to anymore. The message my ex sent, if it had been sent to an older version of me… It would have taken a couple weeks to recover, I think. But here I am, just a few days later, calm and level headed…
I’ve seen some of the lingering wounds of my abuse today, this time not a physical one, but an emotional one. Because I was never allowed to express negative emotions unless it served my ex (example, being angry on their behalf), I’ve gotten to where I just don’t show or acknowledge any negative emotions until I can’t ignore them any longer. Which, unfortunately, leads to outbursts. I had one this morning because I was overwhelmed by my dog, Moss (fake name).
They were being very vocal and high energy, which is totally fine, moss wasn’t doing anything wrong, but it worked me up. I got overwhelmed and snapped at Moss. At first I went through my guilt and self loathing, really beating myself up about snapping at them, but I told myself to calm down and step back for a second. I calmed myself down and evaluated the WHY, and it was pretty simple. I had unmet needs.
My unmet needs were that I hadn’t eaten, I’d forgotten again and at this point, it’d been over 18 hours since I’d last had anything. My blood sugar was low and I was irritable. Now, does that excuse my behavior? No. But it shows me I need to better maintain myself if I want to be my best self. Moss was just alerting me to their own needs (food, water, attention, ect) and I reacted inappropriately because I hadn’t taken care of myself FIRST.
This may sound like I’m over analyzing this interaction with my dog, but what this does for me is help me remain accountable to heal not only the things my ex did to me, but also to heal the way I had to cope to survive.
I had to not feel my emotions for a lot of years to survive my marriage, not be my true self, I learned so many unhealthy coping mechanisms because it was the only way id live through it all. But now, it’s time to deconstruct those. That’s what this helps me do.
The rest of my day was easy, just getting groceries, running errands, cooking, cleaning, setting up for work tomorrow.... Ive found a sort of peace in my quiet day to day life. Im still learning how to be a human, I don’t know what to do with my time or how to manage it yet, but even still, my life doesn’t feel like a hurricane 24/7 anymore so thats enough for now. IM enough for now.
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