Deeper down the rabbit hole part 3 (fighting with hubby)

Continued from part 2…..and I still am going with that trigger warning, mostly for suicidal ideation. Im posting this because I am okay now. Most of these feelings have passed, now, and Bea is aware of how I was feeling. 

Sunday, hubby and I fought some more, and things were worse feeling. I needed to get away, and so I left under the guise of going grocery shopping. I ended up sitting in the grocery parking lot for the better part of two hours. I realized I wanted to talk to Bea. I wanted to call Kay, who had dealt with my bad feelings like this before. But Kay is more of an acquaintance now, a person who really doesn’t even want to think about me, let alone talk to me. I thought about calling Reagan, but didn’t want to bother her, when she had just dealt with my nonsense the night before. It sucked, because I realized how alone I really am. Yes, I’m married, but I have isolated myself, and cut myself off from so many relationships in my life, including one with my husband, that I was just really alone right then. The person I should have been able to turn to, my hubby, was the source of my pain, and was not someone I was about to turn to. All I could do is write a letter to him in my journal; a letter that won’t get sent.

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Dear hubby, 

I need you to go to therapy. I get that you are stressed out and that grumpy days happen, but I can’t keep doing this. I love you and I want us to really be together, to have the kimd of relationship where we ca talk about feelings and be open and vulnerable because it feels safe to do so, and right now, for me at least, it doesn’t feel safe to have any feeling except “happy”, “joy”, “love”, “calm”, “peace”. But that’s not life. And it really is not life as a type A, anxious person with PTSD who doesn’t feel very safe being attached to others or being in the present, or feeling emotions or somatic reactions. There’s a whole wide range of emotions and anytime I seem to display one of those emotions, you shut down, you emotionally abandon me. It’s just a repeat of my childhood and that emotional abandonment is sure to trigger all kinds of bratty destructive behaviors. I react badly because I’m hurt and scared and don’t trust that it is safe to talk about my real feelings. 

I think you need to work on communicating. You are so shut down and closed off from even your own feelings you don’t know when you are mad or grimly. But with tensions just coming off you and me asking you several times today if you you were okay or mad or whatever, I think at one point I even used the word grumpy, and you assured me “no, everything is fine.” And then later, really communication is needed because if you can not even state to me you want us all to go out to dinner as a family, well, that is a problem. I am not a mind reader, and “do you want White Castle?” does not mean go out to dinner as a family to me. I don’t even eat White Castle! I should not be expected to know what you meant, to translate your words, and I should not be punished for not reading your mind. 

The thing of it is, you want pre-therapy Alice back. You want miss perfect, in her bubble, with no feelings, who was just numb and zoned out. But she’s not coming back. Messy Alice is what you get. Messy and real. Life is messy. Add trauma to that and then a kid and it’s very, very messy. And that is not going to change. You need to find a way to accept the messy, to make your peace with it and love the messy me. Because waiting for Bea to “fix” me? Well, I’m more “fixed” than I’ve ever been. It just so happens that you don’t like this girl, this messy me. Maybe you can learn to. I don’t know. If you can’t, I guess we need to figure some things out. Because I’m so done with this. Every single time you abandon me emotionally, you set off these massive series of triggers because you are literally re-enacting how my parents chose to to react to me. It’s worse this time, because I’m already triggered from some crap Bea dredged up, and Bea is gone and the one time she was on vacation is was not good, so I feel pretty left by her, and now you, too. So I’m feeling really bad and scared and not okay, but the response I have is to act like a brat, be mean and loud and push harder because I felt you leave, and then I feel guilty and like a terrible person, when you become angry with me. And when you won’t talk to me about it or you split your attention to your phone when I’m talking as though what I’m saying is unimportant, I only spiral down more. “I’m awful, I’m terrible, I screw everything up, I’m the worst, I’m ruining everything.” And then I just want to go away, and disappear forever. I end up crying and hiding and hurt and fighting myself because parts of me feel so low they see no point in being here, and their solution is to swallow pills, cut my wrists, hurt myself badly enough that I disappear. It’s not easy. It’s a serious fight to not do those things. Kat is my motivation to not do those things, and so when you say how I’m screwing up as a mom, too, how I am as bad as my parents or worse, well, you take away the last bit of motivation to live. So good job, hubby. You didn’t want me around anymore, you wanted to leave. Well, you found the recipe. One of these times it might just work, and you won’t have to leave me, because I’ll be gone. Because I have no one. 

~Alice 
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I ended up calling Reagan on my way home from the store. Some of those suicidal thoughts were really strong, and, as I said in part one, there is a part of me that is determined to survive. We talked off and on the rest of the day and into the evening. When I exploded at Kat, yelling and having a meltdown, I called Reagan, and cried to her about it, and then told her I could not think clearly enough to figure out how to repair the fight with Kat. She gave me the words to use, told me I was okay, a good mom, and made plans to meet me in the morning for breakfast. 

To be continued………