It has been just over six years since the man who promised to love me ”˜til death do us part (and took the ”˜til death part way too seriously) was arrested. In the intervening years, I have grown and healed and cried and slipped and stood and leaped and wrestled with truth versus fiction. I have sought to make sense of his nonsense and dropped my need to understand him as I’ve struggled to find my one true self beneath the debris of his torturous ride through my life.
And I have survived.
I have stood up tall while the sky was falling down around me. I have turned sour grapes into the heady bouquet of sunlit days of wine and roses. I have uncovered lies. Torn away the darkness and peeled back time to find my truth within me. I have been drawn by courage to face my own culpability in all that happened. I have faced my fears and asked for forgiveness. I have forgiven and been forgiven. I have asked for strength and found the truth of who I am. For in the end, truth has overcome his lies. Triumph surpassed the tragedy of his abuse.
In the years since his arrest, escape from prison, stalking and subsequent re-confinement to eventual release I have ridden the rollercoaster of my emotions, sometimes confident in my knowledge that I would be okay, sometimes terrified I would never find myself again, never know peace of mind. Yet, through it all, I have breathed gratefully into the joy of being free. Of the gift of living without his lies poisoning my mind, without his deceit blurring my vision and undermining my belief in who I am. I have embraced the truth that I deserve so much more in life than him. I deserve all of this I have today, and everything better.
It has been a journey of self-discovery. A voyage into the wonder of being me, in all my laughter, tears and fears and sorrow. It has been a journey into self-acceptance, forgiveness, humility and self-examination. And through it all, it has been a journey of love. A journey of knowing, this is my one and only life. It is up to me to make it a life worth living. A worthwhile life. A life of joy and laughter. Love and beauty. It’s up to me in how I live it up — or let it slip away. It’s up to me to be all that I am meant to be, dancing in the light of my beauty, warts and all.
It is the greatest gift of that relationship — the wonder of knowing me. Of knowing I am okay, exactly the way I am. That I have all I ever need, or want, or desire, right here within me. That I am free to love without fear, to laugh without tears, to cry and spill my heart out. To walk away or walk into open arms knowing, no matter their embrace, I will be okay. Because I am a woman of worth. A woman alive. An enlivened woman, dancing in the rain, splashing through puddles, leaping for joy at thunder crashing and lightning flashing. I am okay, however I am, whomever I’m with, because I have me, myself and I. Fearless. Uncompromising. Honest. Caring. Kind. Beauty and the beast. Yin and yang. Sunlight and sunset. Dark and light. And always loving.
In my journey from the darkness of those days where I believed his lies and abuse were all that I deserved, I have learned to accept myself, just the way I am. To let go of regret and to give into hope. To let go of anger and fall into truth. To let go of fear and surrender to love.
I have learned that the past is only a memory — and I decide its value in my life today. That what someone does to me is nothing compared to what I do with my experience. That someone else’s lies are not my truth, unless I choose to believe them. That there is beauty in this world around me. That I can trust myself to know the difference between false hope and honest possibilities. I have learned that I have courage, that I can stand up and turn up for me without fear of falling under someone else’s assertions I am too weak, or stupid, or short or tall or fat or skinny.
I have learned that I am not measured by my past, but by how I move through each moment of today. I decide if I create harmony or discord. Love or hatred. I have learned that each step I take is determined by the foundation under me — and I create that foundation with every breath, thought, word, action I take.
I have learned that I am me. Unique. Special. Magnificent. A human being of immense worth. A wondrous, luminous child of God. Filled with the greatness of my human being. Capable of falling down and courageous enough to stand back up and take another step and another and then another. My journey is not measured in the falls I take. It is built upon the hands I reach out, the steps I build towards creating my higher ground where I become my best me yet. My journey is measured in the love I give and receive.
I have learned that being me, perfectly human in all my imperfections, is the greatest gift I can give. I have learned to create value in all things in my world. My value is in everything I do. In how I treat myself and those I love and the world around me. My value is not measured against what I have. It is created in who I am in this world of wonder when I live this precious life in the rapture of now, without fear that I am not enough.
I am enough. Just the way I am.
Dear Maria Lisa,
Ah, I doooo love flattery! LOL
Learning to NOT give away our trust is a big thing, and I have had to work hard at learning that lesson, because every time I give away trust, it BITES ME IN THE BUTT big time! EVERY time.
In nature the animals that do not give away their trust are the ones that survive. A horse or cow is a prey animal with a nature that does not give away their trust and we must gain trust with each new generation of animals born. Humans because we live in a society where most people will NOT hurt you and most people are good natured, we learn to trust humans in general as “good” when in fact, that is NOT THE CASE AT ALL.
My dog trust ME. He does NOT trust YOU just because the humans in his world so far are trustworthy, but when you become acquainted with my dog, he does not immediately trust you. You have to earn his trust.
My donkeys, by nature are very distrusting animals, and they never fully give their trust to a human, unlike horses will. Their survival has depended on their instincts for self preservation. In the wild, horses are not likely to be very trusting either, which allows them to survive, but through domestication and breeding animals that are more inclined to be trusting we have taken some of their instincts away and they are more likely to trust ANY human once they have learned to trust ONE human. they are not smart enough to make a distinction.
My donnkeys on the other hand trust me to some extent, but if you are a New person to them, they do not trust you at all until you have proven trustworthy but even then, they keep their eyes on you. CAUTION.
Just because most of the people we come into contact are good people does not mean we should think ALL people are good, because if we do, we are leaving ourselves open to being used and abused.
I am as smart as my donkeys and I am going to USE those smarts with other humans and not trust any one person until I have seen that they are trustworthy.
Yes, I actually had 3 dates, but my beau has returned to his home in Georgia so I don’t know if I will see him again (he has family who has lived here for 30+ years a mile or so away) but if so, fine, if not fine, it was fun while it lasted and at least I can say a man asked me out! LOL But I have found that I am happy to just be ME and I don’t NEED anyone else or a partner to make me whole. NO ONE can complete me if I am not WHOLE. It is a do-it-yourself task. If you depend for your happiness on others, you will always be sad or on the verge of sadness. We must put our TRUST in ourselves first of all.
Oxy….Im afraid what youre telling me is Im a horse.
WHAHAH!
But for real, Im afraid Im a horse. BUT a paranoid horse, who gives away her trust and at the same time afterwards is paranoid about having opened up and such….
I LOVE this animal analogy. I forgot how interesting the animal kingdom actually is.
Do you truly feel whole now? Can you make yourself happy? I have my days…but I live in a city and everybody my age is starting families and I have a very busy life with lots of people in it but it can get pretty lonely, certainly when superficial contacts dont satisfy and lets face it this world is getting more superficial by the second.
Dear MariaLisa,
I am getting to where I feel more and more comfortable by myself (no partner) and after my husband died, I was bereft and felt so old, fat, ugly, undesirable etc. and sure enough along came a psychoopath to tell me how wonderful I was—-and I was sooooo happy, for a WHILE…then the devaluation started. It was 4 months of bliss, 4 months of questioning and pain, then several months of grief all over again.
I kicked him to the curb in 2005 in late November. So it took a while. I have examined myself during that time, and found that after my husband died, I had not fully completed the grief process for his death, so I was very needy and vulnerable to the psychopath’s come on and the carrot he held out to my mouth that HE would make me “happy ever after”—when the truth is NO ONE CAN MAKE US HAPPY. We must be happy within ourselves.
I do understand how you might feel when everyone around you seems to have moved on with their lives and others are starting families and so on. Keep in mind though at statistically, 50% of them will be divorced before 7 years are up, and many of the women will be single parents, struggling to work and make a living for the kids, because the man doesn’t pay regular child support or stay consistently in the lives of the kids.
I am sure right now, from your point of view looking in, those relationships seem magic and you might thing, “Oh, I would be so happy if I had someone to love me” but the thing is, being a healthy and good couple is more than just outward appearance, it is each person being complete in themselvers and SHARING a life together. In fact, in many relationships each one depends on the other to make them happy, and no one can make another happy, so it ends up that NEITHER is happy.
Any of us can get a husband/wife if we set our sights LOW ENOUGH, we could go to the local wino shelter and come home with a “mate”—but I am sure you see the humor in this that I am intending, as we would not want one of these “winos” but we want a good man/woman etc. and so we don’t go pick up a loser because we are lonely. But too many times someone who really IS A LOSER comes along and tells us some lies and we believe them because we want so badly for someone to love us that we don’t examine the “gold” that they hold out to us—but it may be shhiny but it is FOOL’s Gold….not the real stuff. The Psychopath has conned another one.
Oxy,
Thank you for this. And its true too. Ive said that many times to people, that I ( and thats true) I couldve been married and have a kid many times before, but looking back if I would have chose for it in those times, I would be off pretty bad now…Thank you for remembering me. I am craving love but God knows I crave more to be alone than to be in any kind of unrealistic or demeaning relationship. I feel relieved when you say this again. I must say thought that the country Im from and the people who are in my surroundings truly dont end up taking care fo a kid alone. I have seen people get divorced and such but as far as my direct friends and family are concerned, no woman had to take care of a kid alone. ALTHOUGH they did need to take more of the care and responsibilty when their men turned out to have gone their way n their lives having a good time on the side. SO yes I think number one for us women ( certainly those who have been through this craziness) is to have ourselves a life we are comfortable with and feel are worth living. I am blessed in a lot of ways, but I think this is a road for me. I feel quite lost creating such a life most of the time. My sociopathic ex lured me in when I just lost my father. I dont think I need to explain how vulnerable I was and what ideal prey. Still makes me pissed off beyond belief. He would keep on saying: we’ll be tgether forever, ill never leave you, well take care of eachother til death yadiyaidya. Anywho I felt I wanted to live for others. It made me more fulfilled. I dont have a clue yet what it means to live for oneselves when I only feel alive when validated through others…I know how pathetic this sounds. I only mean validated by people who I love and are close to me.
So Oxy what makes you fulfilled nowadays, like what do you do for yourself that makes you feel like your living life for you? Everybody needs love right, my therapist says you give yourself love by being kind and warm to yourself…
I have a coffee cup with the saying “Happy Being Me” on it, and the picture of Eeyore on it. I had to look at it to remind me of that fact when I worked for a year with almost everyone against me because they were in the web of the narcissist even though she fled the scene. But I have been growing since then, and I wanted to share some things I heard yesterday. People tend to hold on to forgiveness until they think the someone who wronged them will make a statement of sorry or reconciliation. But you are in fact harboring the evil like a poison when the narcissist or sociopath doesn’t deal with those types of feelings. They quoted a writer who said- “not forgiving is like taking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die”. You don’t have to hide the fact that they did some terrible misdeads, but let it go for your own self. She said imagine you are on a bus and everyone that did you wrong is on the back as a passenger. She said visualize stopping, opening the doors and letting them off, giving them to Jesus. But naturally you do this, and the next thing you know you look back and there they are again at the back of the bus. Well I guess you didn’t really let them off. Hopefully I didn’t butcher the good advice given.
teacher. that is a great post. I completely agree with you. There have been two times in my life where I literally felt like I was taking on poison and waiting for the rat to die just like you describe. The last time, I remember describing it to a friend, as a tangible lump of blackness, of poison in my chest, the event had passed but I still had this ball of toxic material within me, slowing me down, slowly killing me. I got rid of it (I cant remember how now so I am going to meditate on that).
I watched a program on tv and there was a discussion between victims and relatives of victims of terrible crimes. two of the parties described , just like you have, how it felt to be poisoned by not forgiving and how they had managed to free themselves , and one of the parties described how he would never let go of the anger and hatred he felt for the perp. The interviewer suggested that as long as this person was still ‘tied’ to the crime by these feelings, the perp STILL had power over his life, STILL had the power to CONTINUE to destroy it without even being there. I think the man had righteous anger (towards the monster who murdered his daughter) but in nurturing it he was allowing the monster to murder him too. Its not about saying ‘it’s alright’ its about not allowing these monsters to continue to destroy our lives.xx ( I think I just butchered it and tossed it on the BBQ;)x
Teacher,
Thjat is GREAT!!! “Taking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.” That is soooooo GREAT!!! Yes, that is what BITTERNESS does for us, it is like US eating the rat poison because we want the rat to die!
As for your bus story, sometimes WE need to get off the bus, and let them roll on out of our lives…we need to take a different route. Head in a different direction. We need to DRIVE our own bus. Or WALK even.
In the end, we must determine our own direction, where we go, how fast, and over what roads.
Blueskies, your examples are GREAT, you didn’t butcher it at all, you are right, if we allow the bitterness to CONTAMINATE OUR MINDS FOREVER, they have murdered our souls.
The Bible tells us to forgive 70 x 7—but it is NOT for the sake of the bad guy, it is for OUR sake. Bitterness of soul ruins US, just like the Rat poison Teacher spoke of (BTW that is such a great analogy!).
You know, the Old Testement had hundreds of little commands about what the Jews could eat and what they could not and all these things that jdidn’t make a “bit of sense” to most folks, thety could eat this bird, but not that, and this fish but not that,, and so on….but every one of these DIETARY rules was important, ,not just arbitrary, at that time the “prohibited” animals carried diseases, this was to PROTECT THE PEOPLE. The rules on bathing and putting people with certain diseases “outside the camp” WERE PUBLIC HEALTH MEASURES for the benefit of the people.
The “rules” in the Bible for how to treat others are rules not only about being kind, but about taking care of yourself, avoiding bad company, teaching your children. someone said that calling an act a sin doesn’t make it bad, it is called a sin BECAUSE it is bad for you.
The Bible is as much a social guide in how to treat others and how to treat yourself for a good, peaceful life as it is anything else—for believers and non believers as well. FORGIVING the bad guy (getting the bitterness out of your heart) is for US not them. It is letting the past bad thing be the PAST and not keeping it in the PRESENT FOREVER. Amen
no, blueskies you said it just right.
Thanks teacher, for bringing forgiveness to the forefront of our attention.
The mind is an amazing thing. What you focus on is what gets manifested in your life. If you focus on how you were wronged, then they have slimed you with their own evil envy and shame. THAT was their intent all along, to make you feel as bad as they do. Knowing this brings out the pity in me (again).
This group of people at LF are the HEALTHIEST, wisest, most loving people I have ever observed on a forum or anywhere. How is it that we got sucked in to the P-crap?
I tried a different forum before I came here and the posters were very phony with their “love” -even using N tactics of seeding envy.
BTW, has anyone heard from ANewLily? She seems to be MIA.
had a pity party for one yesterday. i hate the fact that i’m sitting at home, starting over, creating a new life…The P is out on the water, mingling w/people, playing, partying with the gang. he’s already in his new gf’s beach house…with the boat dock…so he doesn’t even have to pay for boat storage. life seems so sweet for him…here i sit, starting over again. so many choices. the slate is so clean, i can’t see anything right now. i’m sad. yes, i do know it will pass, but damn it when. i did nothing wrong. what to do?!?!??
Oxy, the Bible says to forgive 70×7?
great because that means I’m done and don’t have to forgive any more!