This is really long... sorry. Don't feel the need to read. I just felt the need/desire to share...
I'm having this odd ish kind of experience in the past week of having a lot of things "unfold" I guess... and at other times in my life I might have lost it, been a mess, then gone into denial mode and done the same old same old...
I still feel all sorts of a mess inside but I am facing the "stuff" head on and as I do it lessens its significance and helps me let go just a bit more each day...
A few ex/
Fired my lawyer about a week ago. Got 2 separate 5 pg letters from him last week blasting me for being unethical, asking him to do things that went against the code of conduct for a lawyer, telling me I, not my AH ought to have been arrested, told me that mine was NOT a case of dom violence bc it wasn't as if AH had punched me in the face... The accusations of misconduct projected on me are all things he did, suggested I do/say in court etc... I have no way to prove that though. My first instinct was to defend, reply, argue, show how he was painting me in an inaccurate light. Then I stopped and thought, this is a lesson. This is the same insanity I lived with with AH and what good did defending myself EVER do with him? I haven't responded, but I get urges to and when I do I remind myself that in replying I am giving him (lawyer) space in my head that takes away from my peace. I asked myself what was going to bring me peace-- replying and getting into a circular debate with someone who has serious problems or letting it go and letting him believe what he believes and knowing what's true myself and being at peace with it. I am still upset with his letters but I threw them away and am not replying to him and I feel good about that. For me, that's huge!
Then as I shared I found a letter from AH from 5 yrs ago that made me realize I have put up with, accepted and subjected my D's to his behavior for years. It blew my story that this has been bad for only the past yr out of the water and made me realize that I've been in denial with out consciously intending to be. I'd blocked SO much from memory and since finding that letter, talking about it with my therapist and on here, I've been flooded with memories of a LOT of insanity over the years with AH that I'd buried so deep I didn't even realize they were there. It HURTS a lot to have these memories swirling around in my head but I am letting them be there, am acknowledging how much they hurt and had an amazing therapy session yesterday where I broke down and stopped feeling I had to be "strong" even there and a LOT of the pain of those memories has lessened.
Lastly, while looking for clothing for D3 that D5 had outgrown, I found (this is where HP stuff comes into play I think bc why am I finding all these things so randomly?) a box of legal paperwork from something that happened to me in college. I started to look through it and found documents I'd never opened. I opened one of them and it was a deposition from my dad (who I lived with at the time but haven't been in touch with in years bc of a lot of sickness that I got tired of dealing with from him). In the deposition he admits to something that he has lied to me about for years. The short version is this: I was raped while in S.America studying abroad by a member of the host family I lived with. I called him and the study abroad coord from the hospital (I was beat up pretty bad as well) and said I needed to leave and come home. My father told me for years so sincerely that the delay (I had to stay for another 3 weeks) was bc of the study abroad coord making it difficult... It never made sense but I bought it. So, the under oath deposition from my father, that for some reason I never read, says that he was the one who told the study abroad coord to delay my return bc he'd just moved in with a new girlfriend and they needed time alone and he deserved that. I've been feeling guilty for being NC with my father for about a year now and I read this deposition and felt sick. Not only did my mother blame her abandoning my siblings and I for hours on end on me bc she "needed a break", but at a time of great need, my father did the same thing.
It hurt so much to read this, to connect the dots, to accept once and for all that my parents both were/are so ill with their own issues that they not only couldn't be there for my siblings and I but that they went out of their way to hurt us.
I realized that I married someone exactly like my parents. Someone unable to be there for me and someone who I have tried in vain to "make" want to be there for me and when he hasn't, I've blamed myself.
I blamed myself as a kid for my mom disappearing, I blamed myself in college for being raped and not wanting to stay in a foreign country afterwards and blamed myself for the palpable resentment I felt from my father when I returned, I blamed myself for my AHs treatment of me, I blamed myself for asking him to help with D3 when she was a newborn and he screamed at her as a 3 day old, I've blamed myself my whole life and I'm finally seeing "the light" I guess and it hurts like hell but it's also so freaking liberating to finally "get it" that it has NEVER been about me. On some level I guess I believed this at times in the past, but then I'd say, "well how could EVERYONE else be the problem-- that makes no sense.. the common denominator MUST be me". It made more sense. It was easier to believe.
But after the "discoveries" I've made this week- I just can't lie to myself or blame myself anymore and I'm almost afraid to admit how good I feel about being able to say that!
This is more or less how I'm feeling-- a combination of awe and shock and feeling like I am seeing things as they are for the first time EVER.
