by AlohaTraveler
Today, July 3, is a significant day for me. On this day, three years ago, I left the Bad Man. Let’s take stock of that moment in time:
- Total cash = $700
- Debt = at least $16,000
- Job = None
- Place to live, bed to sleep in, a clue = No
- Plan = None
- Me = A total wreck.
Between May of 2005, when I moved in with the Bad Man, and May of 2007, I have moved 10 times. This includes one move back to the islands in September 2005 and then back to California again on November 29, 2005. My car has 7,200 nautical miles on it and it shows. It looks like it’s eating itself. Cars aren’t meant to go to sea and mine crossed the ocean three times between July 3, 2005 and November 29, 2005.
Below is the Reader’s Digest version of my trials and tribulations.
Movin’ movin’ movin’
- Moved in with the Bad Man for one last hurrah after having been apart for 4.5 months. What was I thinking?!
- The great escape: Moved out from Bad Man while he was at work.
- Moved from one friend to another.
- Moved back the the islands.
- Moved out of the hotel and into a condo.
- Moved back to California again.
- Moved in with my employer as a live-in nanny.
- Moved in with friends who took care of me for four months because I was a WRECK.
- Moved in with another friend after four months of rest, armed with a new plan. Finally.
- Moved in with my dear friends, Eric and Jen. This is where I live now and have been living for over a year.
Jobs, jobs, jobs
Between July 3, 2005 and May 2007, I landed and lost six jobs all for various reasons.
- North Shore Resort: Resigned and left Hawaii for a second time. Finally, a good choice.
- Internet start up: Business went under
- “Wellness” company: Fired by a narcissist
(Noticed right away that the boss reminded me of the Bad Man. Shortly before she gave me the ax, I was told that it was suspect that she had narcissistic personality disorder. Upon hearing this, I had a massive anxiety attack.) - Internet company: Not the right fit
- Live-in nanny: Not the right fit again
- County job: Contract ran out.
Where I am today
I have a place to call home and have been there for over a year now. Shortly after I moved in, my friends gave me an old dresser. It’s big and heavy and feels like an anchor, a welcome anchor. I unpacked my suitcases for the first time in nearly two years. That night, as I lay in bed, I stared at my “new” dresser and I cried. Since I have been here, life has finally started to stabilize for me.
My symptoms of PTSD have subsided. Occasionally, I have a strange choking, coughing sensation in my throat when I have a distressing thoughts but I don’t have anxiety attacks like I did before. I smile more. I laugh more. I sleep better. I don’t think about the Bad Man and worry if he really was the one and if it really was me that messed it all up. I fully embrace and accept that he is a pathological, not fixable, person and it has absolutely nothing to do with me.
I have two jobs now. I have been at the first one since November of last year. I have been at the second one since March of this year. They are both in the area of social services and are an extension of the county contract I did last year. I have applied for grad school for an MSW and I am waiting to hear if I have been accepted.
I have paid off over $11,000 of that original Maui debt. Keep in mind that since I have been home, I have been unemployed off and on for at least 10 months and have worked for long periods of time for just $10 an hour.
I have started to date. At times, it feels like stepping out on thin ice, but I am doing it. I have started to rejoin the activities I loved in the past, such as sailing and baking and LAUGHING!
The road leads to you
I believe we will recover at the rate equivalent to the degree that we are committed to telling ourselves the truth. Now that you are here at Lovefraud, the truth is available to you and right under your nose. Will you accept it? It’s up to you.
Whatever it is you have lost, you will eventually get one thing back if you keep trying. Life might not ever look like it did before you crossed paths with a pathological partner but if you are open, it can look better. And at the end of the road, you will find YOU, and… another road… and maybe an old dresser.
Sitting in my “Big Girl Panties” today
- Debts = under control.
- Jobs = more than one
- A safe place to live, warm bed, and a plan for my life = check!
- Me = a whole lot wiser and not a juicy pick anymore for a Bad Man.
Dear Aloha, I hadn’t tought a obut the initials for Bad Man being BM—boy is that appropriate! Sorry—my sick nurse’s sense of humor and scatalogical thinking! LOL
No, haven’t seen orphan in a while come to think of it. Hope she is well and will get in contact.
SS55125, welcome to a healing place, sorry we have to “meet like this” but you have come to a good support network here and lots of stuff to read and learn. The more we know about “them” the more we see how they are ALIKE. Even how WE are alike, vulnerable.
The pain of the grief we all go through also has patterns and the biggest one is that you are NOT alone. There are people here who do understand because we have all been through the same wringer–somtimes I think we have all dated the same guy! LOL
This was a wonderful 4th, no “celebration” or fire works, and didn’t even BBQ but there was NO CRISIS today, all is well. My son just left to go back to his summer job, after being home a week while they were closed down. He and I accomplished a great deal, in a relaxed sort of work schedule, but both ofr us are bolstered by the progress we made in the Herculean task of cleaning up this mess that has accumulated over the last 4 years.
July 14th is the anniversary of my husband’s death in the plane crash, and though I have him on my mind a lot, it is peaceful and loving, not painful. My home is starting to feel like HOME again without th big black cloud of pain hanging over it, and I am still cautious but not living in terror!
Yea, Peggy, a lovefraud cruise would be nice, but unfortunately the Ps left a bunch of us having problems paying the rent so might be out of the reach of the majority of us so maybe we could meet somewhere in a nice state or national park were we could camp out or get hotel rooms that were reasonable so everyone could afford to come, it would still be wonderful to get together and see each other’s faces.
You’ll recognize me, I’m the 61 year old that looks like I did when I was 20! LOL NOT!!! ha ha But I do have a SMILE on my face that would light up a stadium today! Have a happy 4th everyone! Hope your days are as peaceful as mine is today! We all deserve some peace in our lives!
OxDrover:
Yeah, sad but true that a lot of people may have some financial issues due to the BM. Happy for you that you have found peace. The meeting place is irrelevant, the healing and connections are what is important.
PS
ss55125
Judge Mathis? You go, girl! I’m impressed with your preserverence. How many people “win” when they go up against a P or an S. I’m glad you got some money and “won” something after all. Now, you can go about your healing.
Do you think the Judge got your “defendant” was an S/P/or whatever? You have more courage than I do; I couldn’t have gone on tv but I’m giving you a high-five right now…or my snappy new favorite from someone here…
a high-five, two finger snaps and a hip bump…plus a big wink!
Hi Peggywhoever. Yes What happened to LilOrphan, somewhere in my psyche, Im missing her??
Happy 5th of July – I am getting a late start today, we were invited to a party yesterday and had a blast! Turns out people do care about us!
I think of it this way, THE MINUTE my creep is away from me, it creates a vacuum and almost immediately something comes forward to fill it.
I just have to trust that – and continue to trust that if I am open to these new things and let go of the creep and the DREAM that I held onto that we would have a life together (sometimes I still find myself delusional, but it is becoming less often. YEA.)
I can change my dreams anytime I want to. They are mine.
Anyway, in the shower this morning, a little epiphany hit me, as it usually does there. (Maybe it has something to do with washing dirt away?)
During my five-year nightmare with the creep, twice I was suicidal. Once I sought help and medication, I was desperate.
The other time, I knew what to do, I started talking and asking questions to find out if the lies the creep was telling me about myself were true.
I turned to the creep, crying, pleading with him to let up on me because I wanted to die. His response? He told me I was selfish.
Nice guy.
I always thought when people contemplated suicide, it was because they felt life wasn’t worth living.
I didn’t feel that way. But for a long time I couldn’t say exactly why I wanted to die.
This morning in the shower, I put it together.
My life was worth living, but for the five years we were together (except for the times he left me to ‘punish’ me for misbehaving) he drilled into my brain.
His message again and again to me was:
You cause the people you love pain. Just your existence hurts people you love. You hurt people you love just because of the way you are.
He had me convinced that again and again, I caused him pain. That just my normal, everyday behavior, or just me wanting affection or attention caused him pain.
That when I cried when he hurt me, it caused HIM pain. That I was wrong to cry.
When I grew angry at the way he hurt me, it caused HIM pain. That I was crazy, out of control and dangerous.
He applied that to my entire life. He said I caused my friends pain.
He told me I caused my son pain.
He told me I caused his family pain – so much pain that they would not allow me on their property – all because I was the way I was.
All because I cried. Or wanted him to treat me better. Or because I got angry when he would make my son and I spend Christmas alone because we were banned from his family’s Christmas dinner.
I was the problem in SO many peoples’ lives. I liked my life. I wanted to live it. But he convinced me that my existence just caused others pain.
I wanted to die to stop hurting him. To stop hurting my son. To stop hurting our friends and his family.
I thought I caused all the pain in everyone’s lives. That I was the reason this guy would break his promises to my son to take him places.
The creep would tell me again and again – ‘I would do everything with your son, I love your son. But you are the reason I don’t, your overreaction to things, the way you are keeps me from spending time with your son.”
“Your son would be invited to Christmas dinner, but he isn’t because my family can’t stand you,” he’d say.
When I would cry, he would say I was too depressed to be a good mother to my son and actually once threatened to call the authorities to have him taken away from me, for my son’s own good of course…
So be careful people. I believed what he told me. But deep inside I knew I was a good mother. I know my son is happy, I know I am a good person.
But he used what I knew were my strengths to hurt me. He took the things I was proud of and twisted them into things he said I did horribly.
That’s how he did it. That’s how he did this to me. He almost had me believing it. I almost died. My son would have grown up without his good mother.
I must remember this. I must never, ever forget he did this.
Eyesopened,
*a high-five, two finger snaps and a hip bump*…that was ME!..haha…chattin with my fellow veggie sister, Free.
Am I grandstanding? Yay, me! Tis a first so allow me to bask in my own creative glory…haha. jk.
Glad I made ya smile, and maybe giggle a bit…heehee
Lilygirl,
I care for you also, as I’m sure all the lovely ladies and gents (Henry, James, Southernman, etc) care deeply also.
I think you’re moving along splendidly in your healing & recovery. And I personally will never listen to the vicious lies, the foul vitrol that spills from the evil lips of a predator ever again! I KNOW right from wrong, up from down, salt from pepper and I have made a solemn oath to myself to literally shun them from my presence the very second my beloved intuition warns me. She is on, on, on all the time now. We are the bestest of friends and I won’t ignore her again.
**Hug to Lilygirl and her son**
Dear Lilygirl,
Boy can they twist the truth! Can they make us believe black is white, or white is black—-that all the problems of the world are because of us, we are so bad, so evil—but that being the case, why do they want to be around us “evill folks?”
Lily girl, never never NEVER let someone invalidate you, or twist your truth. Don’t listen to their words, look at their actions. Okay, they say “You’re no good” “you cause others pain” etc.—Well, mr P (you say) I’m so glad you pointed this out to me, thank you very much for making me aware I am a worthless piece of crap, and because you have done me such a FAVOR, I am going to remove myself from your life so I don’t cause YOU ANY MORE PAIN. Bye now, have a good life! LOL
I no longer need anyone in my life who thinks I am a worthless piece of crap—no matter who they are. If they don’t like me, BYE BYE, have a good life! I don’t mean I think I am perfect and never make a mistake, but if they think my CHARACTER is BAD, then obviously it is either bad (they are right) or it is NOT BAD (and they are wrong)— but I am what I am. Let’s see now. I don’t steal, I don’t cheat, I keep my word, I care about others, I’m not mean to animals or people. I’m funny and talented, smart and well educated…I make my own living, I don’t owe any one, I give to charity—yep, that makes me a BAD CHARACTER and I must obviously be EVIL—N*O*T—-SO, having validated myself, and decided that their OPINION is wrong, that I am NOT an evil person causing everyone in my environment pain from my evil meanness, the question now becomes, do I want a person in my life that thinks I am EVIL? NOPE. Sure don’t. No sense in trying to convince them otherwise, they have obviously made up their minds already.
Other questions. Am I responsible for the happiness of everyone in my environment? Does everyone have to like me or approve of me? Whose opinion of me is the most valid? Mine (who knows me) or someone else who says these things? Do I have to be perfect to be acceptable?
Answering these questions also shows me that I don’t need in my life anyone who is so obdurate toward me that my association with them causes both them and myself pain. We would BOTH be better off parting ways.
If you don’t like me, get out of my life.
It always surprises me just how much time is needed to re-coup and heal from this types of dysfunctional relationships. I believe many of us could lay down this type of time frame and find a lot of similarities (time wise) between us. But what really surprises me is that it doesn’t take long while being in the company of a sociopath to take on so much damage! Some would say they were only with them for a couple of months, still other’s years. Still the “damage” is always great and extensive.
AlohaTraveler
I too saw my life like a “bouncing ball”. They must love to keep us on this emotional roller coaster for as long as they can. Only when we “cried” quits do they then move on to yet another victim. Only when we tell them NO MORE! Albeit money, emotional support as well as our very hearts and souls. Will they then get really for yet just another “move” all be it a person, place or thing! If we could look at their “time frame” I question myself and ask me. What would that look like? What would I find there in their day by day, month by month and year by year “time line”??? Or do I really want to know?
Thanks for sharing!!!!
James:
Think about what is really going on from this theory.
Go back to your childhood. Your parents taking you to church. You learn different scriptures taught to you and everyone in your community, Sunday after Sunday. Your parents instill right and wrong into you as a child, your teachers do the same, your family unit, aunts, uncles, neighbor’s … everyone has something to do with your spiritual growth. You’re young and impressionable. You accept things as TRUTH and incorporate right from wrong in your brain’s data bank. As you mature … grade after grade, your teachers are still instilling morals into you and your classmates. So where all in agreement our society instills morals and ethics in to all of us as we grow. What’s the difference between you and them? Where and why did they veer off the path? Now lets put the immediate family into the mix. You have siblings. How many? Some families come with at least 4 siblings, some 3, some two, the proverbial girl for mom and boy for dad. Then there’s the only child doted on and pampered by both mom and dad. Then you have the parent scenario. Did they marry for love? Or, did they marry to leave their parents home. So this reasoning comes into the mix. Keep deducting it from what your family unit is all about versus her family unit. Your upbringing, versus, her up bringing. The theory for a healthy marriage with one child is Dad is the positive polarity and Mom is the negative polarity. Both polarities are equal in strength (not a negative connotation). Child is born into family. Positive and Negative polarities hold child directly in the center of them. Both strengths contribute to the love and care and nuturring of the child. Dysfunctional scenario of a family. One of the polarities is stronger than the other and the child dangling in the middle of both polarities gets pulled towards the stronger polarity. Breakdown is caused by the egos of the stronger and weaker parent polarity … filtering this dysfunction off to the child. The egos of the parents are working full time instead of what and how we were to live by following God’s word (teachings from the Bible). Child, instead of staying humble and learning the scriptures (the word of God and how God wants us to live) says in their child’s mind, what the heck, my parents are no longer teaching me from scriptures … they’re getting off the righteous path … why shouldn’t I. So the child starts learning from their EGO instead of the righteous way of the Word of God. (EGO equals Erase God Out) versus the Word of God (what our country was founded on, the teachings (scriptures) of God). The parents are living from their egos, venturing off the righteous path, listening to their own EGOs instead of the Word of God (God’s plans for how we are to live). Then with this mix going on in the family unit, and the breakdown of the church and the real teachings of God (the church has hidden a lot these days if you are up on reading the papers for the last 40 years… allowing ego minded priests to hide behind the robes of the elders). Then there’s the split of the state and the church. Taking God out of the schools (thanks to the atheists of the world, and my question to atheists is MAKE ME A FLOWER, A TREE, A SUNSET, THE RAIN ON THE GRAINS ACROSS OUR COUNTRY, MAKE ME A CANYON, THE SEAS, THE SKIES? – Make these several things I listed and then I’ll see where your viewpoint is coming from, other than that, shut up with your egos). So when you’re dealing with someone in your life that burned you. You are dealing with a person who is living in their ego instead of living humbly the way God wanted us to live, by his Word.
And that James. Is the truth. If you can figure out another scenario, let me know. This is my theory and I’m sticking with it.