Every other week I participate in a ‘one word’ blog carnival. This week’s word was ‘grief’.
Grief. A tiny word. Five letters. ‘i’ before ‘e’. A story of precedence. What comes before grief? Love. Friendship. Familiarity. Hope. A belief in tomorrow. A belief in another day. A better day. A different time. A time for endless hello’s to fill our day with promise. A time to love.
And then death sweeps in and robs us of that time. That moment. Those endless hellos punctuated by good-byes that do not mean, never more, but rather, until later, until we meet again, until the next time.
In death’s embrace we fall and grieve for the one who was lost, for what was lost, for time lost and never to be recaptured.
In grief there is no next time. No better time. No later. Grief consumes all time and steals all hope of a better tomorrow.
Grief.
When love ends, we grieve. We grieve the passing of what could have been, should have been, might have been, if only. We search for ways to give meaning to our pain, to explain the sometimes inexplicable causes leading to loves demise. Sometimes, we talk it out. We make arrangements on how to separate, how to divide loves spoils, how to survive loves loss. We draw up agreements, outline custody and visitation arrangements. We divvy up assets and liabilities, arrange for payment. We divorce and move on with our lives, sometimes poorer but always richer in experience.
When we have loved an abuser, love cannot die. Love never existed. There was no mutual agreement to love honestly, truthfully, respectfully. There was only the abuser’s mask hiding his or her intent to deceive. There was only the lie we did not know existed.
In love’s vanishing out the door slamming behind their last words, we hang our hopes on one more chance to say, ‘good-bye’. On one more time to see their face, hear their voice, be in the presence of the love we believed to be true.
In our grief we plead for one last time. We pray, he will return. We pray, he or she, the one we loved, will come back if only to give us a chance to secure the elusive closure our empty arms yearn for. We want to say good-bye on our terms. We want to have the last word, to make them hear us, see us, feel our pain, witness our anguish. We want to know they understand the harm their passing through our lives has caused. We want them to ‘see’ how much we love in the hopes that the one we loved, the one we believed to be true, will return. We want one more chance. One more time. One more good-bye.
And so we plead with time to give us this one last chance so that we can come to terms with their good-bye. So that we can steal the time to learn to grieve on our terms.
And that is the lie we tell time. Give us a chance and we will make them hear us, just this once, so we can grieve freely.
It never happens. It can’t. Because grieving an abuser is the greatest betrayal of all. In having loved a lie, we can never grieve what never was.
With our empty arms and broken dreams, we must give into grief and mourn for the one who was lost. The woman who was abused. The woman who was lost. The woman who fell. The woman who was betrayed and who betrayed herself. We must mourn for the one we must love the most. Ourselves.
Once upon a time I loved a man who was untrue. He never really existed, though I searched for him between the lines he spoke that were all lies. Between the pages of my journal where I wrote of love ever lasting and promises of happily-ever after. I searched for him in every nook and cranny of my mind, desperately trying to make real the unreal. To make sense of the nonsense that was his passing through my life. I searched and held onto the hope that the pain, the turmoil, the sorrow was all a lie and he would turn up and be true.
It never happened. It couldn’t. He was the lie.
And in my facing the truth of his deceit, I grieved. I grieved for the dream that could never be, the love that never was. I grieved for the woman who was abused. The woman who lost herself in the arms of an abuser. I grieved for the pain she endured, the pain she caused. I grieved and cried and wished and hoped and prayed upon every star that the pain would cease, the tears would dry up and my heart would be healed. I prayed for the past to be erased. The lies to be vanished. The horror to be undone.
Nothing can undo the past. There is nothing that can be changed in yesterday.
Grieving a love that never was is part of the illusion of loving an abuser. We look for meaning in our memories and come up empty.
On either side of grief is love.
Grieving for the woman who lost herself in the arms of an abuser, set me free to fall into the arms of love.
In grieving for all that was lost, all that was forgotten on the stormy waters of his lies, I embraced all that was possible when I set myself free to sail upon the sea of love that surrounds me, sustains me, and lifts me up.
Love has no limits. Love knows no bounds. Love is my answer.
Stand in love. Grow in love. Be love.
In mourning for the one who lost herself in the arms of a man who was untrue, I found myself. I found myself and fell in love with all that I can be when I set myself free to live this one wild and precious life free to be all I am when I let go of grief and fall… in love.
It’s not important the label. Toxic is toxic.
Their behaviors are erratic….depending on what type of control they need over you……and what ‘works’ for them…..
punishments etc….
I suggest you go back and spend time reading and reading articles and comments…..there is a wealth of information, and we all tend to go on overload with all the journeys and bloggers experiences that we can relate to….
Just remember….it’s a game to them….
We need to understand them….their behaviors and moves….what makes them tick and what is their weak points…..
AND COUNTER CONTROL them….
But…..you must ALWAYS be in control of YOU…..
You will sometimes need to pull on yur ‘inner sociopath’ and do what he is doing…..to counter control him……
The more you know about him, you can keep him off balance….by using his crap on him…..
No contact is essential….and make it YOUR choice….who gives a crap if he won’t speak to you…..YOUR NOT GONNA SPEAK TO HIM!!!!!!
There is always a way through the courts, ways to expose behaviors to a judge…..but you must always be in control and tenacity is a huge friend.
Your in for the long haul……
NEVER, eVER lose your cool…..
Fake it till you make it!
Iwonder Get rid of any and all triggers, anything that brings a thot of him, no matter how exspensive – give it away, throw it away, burn it. But new furniture, paint the walls. New towels he hasnt touched, new dishes he hasnt eaten out of. If that doesnt work move…but the energy is in your mind not the house. The evil is in them and goes with them, You got him off the deed didnt you? So the house is yours – open the windows and let his stinch out…say hoke us poke us abra cadabra you are gone evil one poof poof go bother somebody else you have no power here…have your own cleansing ritual – then hang garlic outside the front door and sprinkle salt around the house and u will be fine…
ps. you must wear a pink tootoo with yellow high heel shoes during the cleansing ritual..let us know how it goes…
I think, naked, with stilettos, and one oven glove. How cool is that? Gem.!!XX
Wanttomoveon, if you are obsessing, it’s because you’re not finished with something. We mull over things, turn over memories, stew in anxiety, bounce from resentment to resentment, wring our hands about what they might do to other people, because WE are not finished turning this mess into its real meaning in our lives. Extracting the gold that makes us stronger, smarter, more confident and positive.
So, it sounds like you’re still a way from that happy ending. It takes most of us a number of years to move all the way through it. But here are a couple of things you can do for yourself to help yourself along.
1. Understand that you are in a natural healing process that is designed to leave you well (and better in many ways that you were when you met him). Be patient with yourself and your moods.
2. Trust that your darkest feelings — anger, grief, anxiety — are trying to tell you something important. In the early stages of healing, it really is hard to stop obsessing over them. But make a plan to give at least part of your day to listening to the feelings for what they’re telling you about yourself. Especially what you expect, need and want in your life, and what has gotten in the way of that in the past.
3. Put your thoughts to work on learning from the experience. Forgive yourself for anything that you think you might have done wrong, and then look back at what you wish now you had done differently. Find those pivotal moments when, if you knew then what you know now, you would have said no, drawn a hard line, found help or left. So that you begin to create your better boundaries and defenses for the future.
4. Listen to the critical and self-hating voices in your head, and see whose voices they are. Who has taken up residence in your thinking. You may not be able to shut them up immediately, but you can recognize and discredit their sources as being misguided, manipulative or simply not recognizing that you’ve grown out of them now.
5. Work on a list of personal needs (respect, dignity, compassion, appreciation, support, etc.) that you want included in your future relationships. Then start becoming what you want to attract by treating yourself that way.
6. Explain gently but firmly to anyone who is impatient with your healing or pressuring you to change that you are managing your own healing process and you know what’s best for you. Seek compassionate support from the people who understand and can give it willingly. Do not share or look for understanding from people who are frightened by your healing or bent on learning their own lessons without your advice.
7. To reiterate the first point, understand that you are in a deep and powerful learning process. Getting free of the continual reinforcement of painful and diminishing experiences is a first step that gives you a chance to heal without having to constantly react. Now, you’re in the process of understanding what happened, what it means about the world and about you, discovering what is true about your values and needs, and reclaiming your life. This is big, possibly the biggest thing that ever happened to you, much bigger than the unpleasantness that caused it. Have faith in the process. You were made to the do this, and it is a good thing.
All the concern and aggravation you are living with now will change as you learn through this. As hard as it might be to believe, the power to change what is going on resides in how you look at it. This man is a nuisance, an obstacle to the happiness, peace of mind and productiveness of your life.
You recognized that in the legal work you’ve already done. You will come to recognize it in the day-to-day experience of your life. And when you do, your attitude, thoughts and behavior will all reflect his diminishment of importance. You will simply stop supporting him and anything to do with him, because he keeps you from what’s more important to you.
I can’t tell you how that will relate exactly to everything you’re dealing with now. The change in your relationship to all of it will be gradual, and not related to him as much as to other things that become more important to you. I can just tell you that it will happen.
In the meantime, take what’s going on inside of you seriously as a healing process. That is really what’s going on. And you’re doing fine. You’re on the path. All the symptoms you describe are part of it. You are learning and growing.
Welcome to LoveFraud. I and we are so glad you found us. This is a great place to share and learn.
Kathy
Wow…Kathy….this is such a great post….thanks for posting for her…know it is helping me right now as well.
I know this was written for another person, but I want to thank you for it Kathy. I have been doing, on the whole a lot better but tonight looked at something I shouldn’t have and suffered lots of dark emotions as a result of it – I was measuring my own self against his outward signs of success and felt less than. I posted about it on another thread. I have had a bit of time to reflect now and feel lots better about it now – the pain was fleeting.
I just need to remind myself that his outward signs have no substance and even if others think he is wonderful, this should have no impact on me because I know he is not wonderful – he is empty – devoid of a soul and inhuman. That is to be pitied more than admired (I am aiming to have no feelings towards him at all eventually and realise pity is another hook they use). I mean pitied in the general sense – not as a practical rescue effort to save him. I may have very few friends, low confidence and self esteem and feel battered and bruised at the moment, but I have a bright future ahead. I have my heart and soul and I have the opportunity to learn and grow from this. It is not an irretrievable position – I can make it good. My problems may seem insurmountable at the moment, but if I tackle them calmly one at a time, then I will get through them – creative solutions may be required for some but I can think creatively.
I just can’t let that tidal wave of overwhelm and grief wash over me – it feels like drowning. I need to keep kicking till I get to the shore. He would like to pull me under and watch me drown as he uses my body as a flotation device. I may not have an outwardly successful life at the moment, but I am proud of the inner landscape and how quickly it is transforming after so many years of abuse from him. I am starting to think clearly and get in touch with long stuffed down feelings. I am being given the best opportunity yet to heal childhood hurts and see for the first time ever who I really am with all the trauma stripped away and all the compensating and people pleasing behaviours gone. Who am I to say he didn’t love me in his own way ? It’s not a traditional concept of love but it has given birth to this enormous journey into the self that I wouldn’t have undertaken otherwise.
I am very up and down at the moment and recognise this pattern in other regular posters as well – guess this is part of the healing process- one step forward and two back sometimes.
Kathy I want to say I really respect what you write. You think carefully and word messages that just hit home and show great compassion for people in pain. The messages aren’t always easy to read, but they call us to our highest self. Thankyou for using your own experience to grow your life and for showing us a path to do so as well.
pollyannanomore:
after seeing your posts to kathys…i want you to know i am myself going thru the same thing you are now…mine just happened in the last two weeks (as far as realizing what he was about finally) and i have been doing fairly well last several days that ive been bz with family etc…but…i too am having a difficult time this morning because he hasnt made contact which isnt normal for him..(nothing is) …
i just keep reminding as someone said on here to me before…all of it was lies! they were right..
i obsess about his words ..all those loving words and now i have to realize that im really not losing anything…im letting go of a toxic person so that healthy can get here quicker.
he actually said that he cheated on me because he wanted to hurt me for hurting him?? even that is such an unhealthy frame of mind…that it is never going to make sense. he doesnt make sense and im not making sense at times…but i will soon.. this man professed to love me to no end and the day he asked me for thousands of dollars was at the airport to go visit the OW. who does that? a sociapath…that is who..
i know in my mind that this is what has to happen because of the way it is ..but my heart is slower at catching up.
its hard when our best friend turns out to be our best enemy
In all my recent thinking I am realizing .. that this man that talked constantly about love has made me lose faith that there is love.
I was always a believer. I believed in true love between a man and a woman.. that no matter what horrible things that I had experinced with a man previously that someday there would be a man for me and we would share that kind of love…
This man because of charm, kindness, spirituality and the things that he said made me wonder if this was him.. so I let him in and waited and watched… I almost bought his dream.
Not totally because there were things about him that didn’t ring true and were too good to be true. And his circumstances were not of the level that I want in my life.. but hey, I gave him every benefit of the doubt. Because love isn’t perfect … right?
Now, I don’t believe in it any longer.. I can’t believe that I am saying this, but it is true.. I have been hurt so much and he knew this and even my father told him that I had been so hurt and to be careful with me.. two of my friend told him “Do not hurt her. She is a good person.” And he responded… “I won’t.”
While he was setting me up to care for his dysfunctional kids and while he had no money to care for a wife or to set up a home. While he talked his big deals.. and spirituality and showed off his used of words and ‘intellect’. While I cared for his mother, cooked gourmet meals and gave him a home to come home to. He brought flowers and chocolate and took me out .. and he did chores around the house.. but he had no ability to make it go froward in anyway that was of benefit to me. He was all talk… dreams and ‘hope’… I felt more and more hopeless and drained .. while giving him stabilty.. he took mine.. Now I wanted him gone and am glad that he is.. but I am left …I feel left… the dream is no more..
and that is what I miss.. the man that talked of love love love.. took love away from me. The ability to dream and to love. He used promises, love, romance to get what he needed at the time…it was all for him..and his needs.
Then blamed me when it wasn’t like ‘he’ wanted…
I asked him.. “Do you ever think of me and what you are doing to my life?” No answer…
that is not love..
I was the one that loved, gave, cared..
he talked about love to get what he wanted…
now.. I feel that I don’t believe in love… I don’t know of a man that has it…
except maybe, my father for his children…
It takes a long time to unwind totally and I will never be the same.. because in many ways he appeared so wholesome..
Now, any man that I talk to.. I look for their angle.. I trust me not them and I can’t imagine opening myself up to their lies and con.. I have never met a man that wasn’t lies and cons on some level.. it is not in purity that they come after a woman but in sorted neediness…. either sexualy, emotionally, financially, looking for their mommy to fix them and to make them feel safe.. and it leaves the woman exhausted with their neediness and insecurity… That dream of a man loving a woman is gone for me..
All I hear is how pretty that I am.. that is not love..
It’s all about looks to them.. ego..
I am sick and tired of men…
but the energy of them attracts and can lift a woman up and make her feel womanly…
Man, I am confused… I can’t get close to a man unless I have feelings of love.. and now, after my experinces with men… I don’t think that I have the ability to love any longer.. they destroyed it…
this last one just took it away… I didn’t really love him.. I had love for him.. but he has annilated my ability or desire to ever get close to a man again.
Geez!
I was alone for six years after another bad break up then I meet this con… and the last one was screwed up…
I have never met man that wasn’t severely distorted in his actions with a woman.. oh, they can fake it to get what they want but it is all fake..
pollyanna and fahrahi, I know what you’re talking about, extreme shifts of feeling and focus. You probably will read a post I just left on another thread about avatars. That kind of perspective may not be particularly helpful to you right now. But here is something that might be more relevent.
I think that we have a number of levels of consciousness in our minds. People who study brain function talk about how different parts of our minds manage different parts of our skills or experience. Likewise the chakra theory talks about different “centers” related to different aspects of awareness and mastery. There are lots of models like this, but they all come down to the same idea — we live with a lot of different aspect of ourselves, all active and contributing their perspectives at the same time.
As I was going through my healing process, and trying to figure out what was going on with me, I came to realize that this relationship and its recovery was largely about a battle between two sides of myself. One of was the “rational,” rules-based side that was “taking care of business” for my survival. And the other one was a powerful, much younger, demanding voice that just wanted what it wanted. And what it wanted was him, and its idea of all the good things he brought into my life.
I guess, beyond those two, there was a whole other aspect or layer that was more philosophical and trying to manage the whole healing process from the highest level of thinking that I could access. That layer wanted it to come out so that I was not only happy and well, but also understanding and forgiving, and able to move forward in my life with the ability to love and trust again. And that part was part of the war, too, because the broken-hearted child and the deeply anxious rules-based survivor didn’t want all this philosophical crap. They wanted to obliterate him from my life or to get him back, no matter what the cost.
I’m describing all this to you, because there may be something here that helps you to stop feeling so buffeted by the inside of your own mind. Each of these aspects has a reason for being, and is part of the whole and healthy you. All of them are working on something they think is important for you, and they are demanding your attention. And they all have their own ways of getting it. The rules-based survivor will hit you with major anxiety attacks. The younger self that wants what she wants will make you feel intense longing and grief about losing something that is deeply important to you. The high-level manager will drive you toward anger, reminding you that, as long as you are at war, you wasting your best energy and creating your own hell.
These are all my models, and they might not be accurate for anyone else, but they might give you ideas of how to work with these feelings. Most of us have good everyday knowledge of the rules-based survivor (although this healing process will inevitably cause us to explore that aspect more deeply at some point). But the demanding, out-of-control aspect that wants, no matter what the cost, is not as familiar to most of us. This is also the part of us where the pain is emanating from, and its a good aspect to explore. (The manager is just the manager and it’s character will evolve through the healing, but you don’t have to worry too much about that. It create trust issues for the other parts, as it nudges us toward one thing or another. But we don’t have to worry about shaping it or managing it. It’s just the highest and best self you can imagine.)
Once I realized this battle was going in inside me, I tried different techniques to understand it better. I wrote out dialogues about the arguments. I did mirror work (climbing into bed with a mirror and having conversations with myself). I drew pictures of the battle, and imagined tapestries with the different influences as they appeared in my past life. But mostly I deliberately spent time with the pain, trying to understand what that part of me really wanted. And what this unbreakable “love” I felt for the horrible ex was really about, in terms of what I wanted in my life.
Later, much later, when I went down into my rules to discover why I was so self-defeating in this relationship and in my life, I discovered that the biggest and worst rule — that I had to suppress my own feelings and needs in order to be loved and protected — had been learned about the age of three or four. And that insight suddenly made sense of the inexplicable childishness of the voice that so desperately wanted this guy in my life. She was the same part of me that so desperately wanted all the other strong (and wrong) people I’d gotten involved with in order to make me feel loved and safe. But she was also the part of me that remembered who I was before the terrible lesson and the self-defeating rule was created. When I felt entitled to ask for what I wanted, to feel my own feelings, and to expect support from the people who loved me in growing up and accomplishing what I wanted in my life.
I hope I’m not being terribly confusing here. I’m telling you about my story, only my story. But what I did discover in going through it was that a lot of the confusing stuff in early recovery was actually very logical. That the pieces did come together in the end. The demanding voice, when I finally paid attention to it, had the most imporant information for me. (And was willing and joyful about growing up, if I’d just remove that rule that was keeping her down.) The rules-based survivor, which is really a function, not exactly a personality aspect, changed as I changed my rules of living. And the high-level manager turned out to be much higher and smarter than I ever knew. She not only drove me toward new standards in my life, but introduced me to my real potential and then finally got me in touch with the real self that was much more wonderful and inspiring that I ever imagined, when I was still dealing with all the internal battles.
But first I had to do the work of healing. And possibly the biggest part of that was changing the focus of mind. Instead of just living with the battles as background noise, and thinking that my problems were about what was going on in the world. I had to turn around and pay attention to what was going on inside of me, and question why I had to live with these battles.
pollyannanomore, it sounds like this is what you’re working with now. fahrahi, you’re just coming into this process, but you’re clearly working on all of these levels already.
Before this relationship, I had been through other major traumas, One of the things I learned was that sooner or later, I’d feel better and even stronger than I was before. And I did learn a few things along the way. But I didn’t learn the huge thing I learned from this experience. Sociopaths really, really challenge us. Not just to survive, but to dsicover huge new resources that we didn’t even know we had. Hopefully this post explains a little bit of how that happens.
Kathy