Hi all. I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse which was very violent and involved some beating and repetitive drownings I was also abducted regularly off the street by the perp and taken to a basement for my what I consider torture. The effect on me after the first attack was when I got home to my parents house and went to bed I had a number of grand mal seizures and went to the hospital for a week. They loaded me on medications to control the seizures and sent me home.. but the attacks continued after I got back and was playing out on the streets. This was around when I was 9 or 10 years old or so. Well I had all the symptoms of trauma and ptsd throughout high school and we had moved to another state.
When I finally got the doctors to take me off all the meds for the epilepsy (I don't have epilepsy) my brain started functioning again and my grades improved. I also was a huge music fan and played guitar all the time. My parents didn't know apparently what had happened to me though they saw all the symptoms of the trauma I experienced.. fits of rage and anger and what not. When I finally told my mother what had happened to me she just asked me if I was gay and that pretty much destroyed me.. not just because I wasn't but that was what she asked me... no tears.. no "Oh I'm so sorry how can I help you" or anything like that. It was utterly devastating to me.. I was in so much emotional pain when I was telling her that I was hallucinating.. then to hear that Ugh.. just destroyed me. I became a big drinker after that.
Anyways fast forward about 4 years from my telling her and I fell deeply in love with a girl who went to the same college I did. She did too... we both had found our "true love" with each other. She knew it more than I as I had just scattering of relationships prior but we both felt it. But that intimacy and emotional connectedness set off all kinds of triggers in me and I couldn't shut off the triggers. To make a long story short, I scared her off from my life by almost killing myself in a car accident. She didn't finish her masters' degree and moved back to her parents in another state and I floundered my way to getting my degree and moved to the other side of the country. It was, by far, the closest I have ever felt to another human being when I was with her.. we were so similar but different in a beautiful way and we both loved music so much. By the way, I never believed much in the "true love" thing till lately. We did communicate and saw each other once for about a year and half after parting but it all sort of fell apart still.
Fast forward again 31 years and I had been in an unhappy marriage for 20 years. My stepdaughter got
murdered by her boyfriend back in the 90's less than 2 years into the marriage and the wife stopped working while I worked and worked to pay off debts she really was good at generating and supported her and her father and brother after we left the state. I guess I couldn't leave her as she made herself utterly dependent on me for financial support and the debts were so high I couldn't barely keep myself from going under even though I made pretty decent money. I fell into a financial trap even though I was the one who earned the money.. it caused endless anxiety for me as she refused to go to work even though there were no kids to care for though the other stepdaughter was grown up and living on her own (I didn't want any of my own).
Last year the stepdaughter moved back into the house with her drug dealer boyfriend. I worked so much as the time demands were so overwhelming I had to rent an apartment to be close to work (commute way too long) so only went home when I had two days off in a row which was only occasionally. Total hell broke out in the household and the stress escalated to heights I've never known in the house.. doing their drugs.. useless.. arrogant.. daughter and mother yelling at each other... general insanity. Step daughter got pissed at me because I called her loser boyfriend a liar to his face.. he is.. he's also a complete and utter leach... uses anyone and anything that allows him to. But the stress in my job was overwhelming too... long, long hours and all kinds of stuff... sleep deprivation ... I started to fall apart and having heart palpitations from all of it.. never had such things before and I used to be quite the athlete and what not. I was told my resting heart rate of 42 beats a minute is olympic athlete levels by a doctor .. but I laughed about it as I was not getting any exercise because of work demands killing me.
Well then BAM, my girlfriend from college so many years ago contacted me. She had lost her only daughter to a drug OD (saw it had happened 2 weeks after the event) and her marriage had been non-existent emotionally for years (she married a narcissist Ugh) and she had separated for quite some time and was ready to just check out but wanted to say something to me because she still loved me. Well.. I had never stopped loving her...it was my PTSD that had destroyed our relationship not anything else.. we parted with whimpers not fights or anything. The impact on my life from her contacting me was almost immediate.
I pushed back on the demands at work and made my lazy coworkers start carrying their weight and emotionally detached myself from my stepdaughters' and spouses insane behavior and I started just feeling happy again. My roommate saw me change completely.. my stress levels dropped off. I lost 28 lbs and started feeling great. My spouse saw a change in me too..she must have sensed something was wrong because I was happy again... though I hadn't even seen my former girlfriend as she lives on the other side of the country. My wife filed for divorce within 6 weeks after 22 years of marriage.... 3 weeks later I met with my old girlfriend and had the most happy week in my life on vacation. I felt pure LOVE and it felt great! It's like my soul mate walked right back into my life when I needed it so desperately. I have finally pulled myself emotionally away from my marriage and see my wife had been financially abusing me for YEARS upon YEARS.. she used my sympathy and empathy at the loss of our stepdaughter for YEARS to have me work while she sat around doing nothing and contributing nothing to the marriage either financially or emotionally.. she knew I suffered from PTSD but also knew I have a caring heart. It caused me constant anxiety for years and it was so subtle I didn't even recognize the root of it.
My girlfriend from college actually has enough money for us to live on whereas, being a guy who used to make decent money and paid all the bills all the time (laid off from budget cuts), I am being taken to the financial wood shed by the 'justice' system as she plays the innocent helpless wife who supported her husband so altruistically all these years game. What she did to me all these years is extremely painful for me to think about... always a big fight whenever I asked her to go to work and contribute. I have to move as I can't live in the area of the country I live in without a job as it is f'g expensive here. So I am moving across the country to live with my soul mate and my only true love of my life...she is doing everything to get ready and wants to move with me to another state altogether to start fresh. The love and sex is all totally awesome.. we had both been dead inside ourselves for years and then it all comes alive again and with passion and we're not spring chickens anymore but it sure feels like it. Love comes alive after laying dormant like a butterfly in its larvae for 31 years. So weird and wonderful it sounds like I am writing about someone else's life rather than my own.
It isn't as though the PTSD has just gone away but the girlfriend has it too from the trauma of finding her only daughters' body and it is a totally profound and overwhelming thing for a parent to experience. So I plan to focus on healing these things within myself and help her with her healing from her profound loss. I don't know about this 'one true love' thing but I feel happy and hopeful for the first time in 20 years and there is someone counting on me joining her soon to move forward in this life to the best of our ability and we have hope and some joy and that is strange to me but been so long since I felt it am still trying to adjust to having it. I don't feel we have enough time left in this life to do the "make yourself totally whole and loving yourself before trying to love someone else" thing that is so commonly written about out there. It might be correct but I'm not tossing true love away because what someone else thinks is the best thing for someone. The cruelty of such of thing would just kill me.. so I refuse. There is no turning back now and am going forward to see what love and thoughtfulness and educating ourselves about our ptsd and emotional reactions to triggers can be reduced, minimized and or hopefully someday eliminated and the joy of life is able to flow. It may be a dream but it sure feels real and its important to keep the nightmares of PTSD from stealing our dreams
When I finally got the doctors to take me off all the meds for the epilepsy (I don't have epilepsy) my brain started functioning again and my grades improved. I also was a huge music fan and played guitar all the time. My parents didn't know apparently what had happened to me though they saw all the symptoms of the trauma I experienced.. fits of rage and anger and what not. When I finally told my mother what had happened to me she just asked me if I was gay and that pretty much destroyed me.. not just because I wasn't but that was what she asked me... no tears.. no "Oh I'm so sorry how can I help you" or anything like that. It was utterly devastating to me.. I was in so much emotional pain when I was telling her that I was hallucinating.. then to hear that Ugh.. just destroyed me. I became a big drinker after that.
Anyways fast forward about 4 years from my telling her and I fell deeply in love with a girl who went to the same college I did. She did too... we both had found our "true love" with each other. She knew it more than I as I had just scattering of relationships prior but we both felt it. But that intimacy and emotional connectedness set off all kinds of triggers in me and I couldn't shut off the triggers. To make a long story short, I scared her off from my life by almost killing myself in a car accident. She didn't finish her masters' degree and moved back to her parents in another state and I floundered my way to getting my degree and moved to the other side of the country. It was, by far, the closest I have ever felt to another human being when I was with her.. we were so similar but different in a beautiful way and we both loved music so much. By the way, I never believed much in the "true love" thing till lately. We did communicate and saw each other once for about a year and half after parting but it all sort of fell apart still.
Fast forward again 31 years and I had been in an unhappy marriage for 20 years. My stepdaughter got
murdered by her boyfriend back in the 90's less than 2 years into the marriage and the wife stopped working while I worked and worked to pay off debts she really was good at generating and supported her and her father and brother after we left the state. I guess I couldn't leave her as she made herself utterly dependent on me for financial support and the debts were so high I couldn't barely keep myself from going under even though I made pretty decent money. I fell into a financial trap even though I was the one who earned the money.. it caused endless anxiety for me as she refused to go to work even though there were no kids to care for though the other stepdaughter was grown up and living on her own (I didn't want any of my own).
Last year the stepdaughter moved back into the house with her drug dealer boyfriend. I worked so much as the time demands were so overwhelming I had to rent an apartment to be close to work (commute way too long) so only went home when I had two days off in a row which was only occasionally. Total hell broke out in the household and the stress escalated to heights I've never known in the house.. doing their drugs.. useless.. arrogant.. daughter and mother yelling at each other... general insanity. Step daughter got pissed at me because I called her loser boyfriend a liar to his face.. he is.. he's also a complete and utter leach... uses anyone and anything that allows him to. But the stress in my job was overwhelming too... long, long hours and all kinds of stuff... sleep deprivation ... I started to fall apart and having heart palpitations from all of it.. never had such things before and I used to be quite the athlete and what not. I was told my resting heart rate of 42 beats a minute is olympic athlete levels by a doctor .. but I laughed about it as I was not getting any exercise because of work demands killing me.
Well then BAM, my girlfriend from college so many years ago contacted me. She had lost her only daughter to a drug OD (saw it had happened 2 weeks after the event) and her marriage had been non-existent emotionally for years (she married a narcissist Ugh) and she had separated for quite some time and was ready to just check out but wanted to say something to me because she still loved me. Well.. I had never stopped loving her...it was my PTSD that had destroyed our relationship not anything else.. we parted with whimpers not fights or anything. The impact on my life from her contacting me was almost immediate.
I pushed back on the demands at work and made my lazy coworkers start carrying their weight and emotionally detached myself from my stepdaughters' and spouses insane behavior and I started just feeling happy again. My roommate saw me change completely.. my stress levels dropped off. I lost 28 lbs and started feeling great. My spouse saw a change in me too..she must have sensed something was wrong because I was happy again... though I hadn't even seen my former girlfriend as she lives on the other side of the country. My wife filed for divorce within 6 weeks after 22 years of marriage.... 3 weeks later I met with my old girlfriend and had the most happy week in my life on vacation. I felt pure LOVE and it felt great! It's like my soul mate walked right back into my life when I needed it so desperately. I have finally pulled myself emotionally away from my marriage and see my wife had been financially abusing me for YEARS upon YEARS.. she used my sympathy and empathy at the loss of our stepdaughter for YEARS to have me work while she sat around doing nothing and contributing nothing to the marriage either financially or emotionally.. she knew I suffered from PTSD but also knew I have a caring heart. It caused me constant anxiety for years and it was so subtle I didn't even recognize the root of it.
My girlfriend from college actually has enough money for us to live on whereas, being a guy who used to make decent money and paid all the bills all the time (laid off from budget cuts), I am being taken to the financial wood shed by the 'justice' system as she plays the innocent helpless wife who supported her husband so altruistically all these years game. What she did to me all these years is extremely painful for me to think about... always a big fight whenever I asked her to go to work and contribute. I have to move as I can't live in the area of the country I live in without a job as it is f'g expensive here. So I am moving across the country to live with my soul mate and my only true love of my life...she is doing everything to get ready and wants to move with me to another state altogether to start fresh. The love and sex is all totally awesome.. we had both been dead inside ourselves for years and then it all comes alive again and with passion and we're not spring chickens anymore but it sure feels like it. Love comes alive after laying dormant like a butterfly in its larvae for 31 years. So weird and wonderful it sounds like I am writing about someone else's life rather than my own.
It isn't as though the PTSD has just gone away but the girlfriend has it too from the trauma of finding her only daughters' body and it is a totally profound and overwhelming thing for a parent to experience. So I plan to focus on healing these things within myself and help her with her healing from her profound loss. I don't know about this 'one true love' thing but I feel happy and hopeful for the first time in 20 years and there is someone counting on me joining her soon to move forward in this life to the best of our ability and we have hope and some joy and that is strange to me but been so long since I felt it am still trying to adjust to having it. I don't feel we have enough time left in this life to do the "make yourself totally whole and loving yourself before trying to love someone else" thing that is so commonly written about out there. It might be correct but I'm not tossing true love away because what someone else thinks is the best thing for someone. The cruelty of such of thing would just kill me.. so I refuse. There is no turning back now and am going forward to see what love and thoughtfulness and educating ourselves about our ptsd and emotional reactions to triggers can be reduced, minimized and or hopefully someday eliminated and the joy of life is able to flow. It may be a dream but it sure feels real and its important to keep the nightmares of PTSD from stealing our dreams
