This week I saw a quote on Facebook that spoke to me loud and clear “Keep shining, beautiful ones. This world needs your light” — because it immediately made me think of everyone here on Lovefraud. I imagined each and every beautiful person who reads and contributes to the site, and as I did so, my heart warmed and prompted a smile”¦ and moist eyes.
Why did I think of this community? Because I truly believe that our experiences ultimately help all of us to shine more brightly as a result. At the same time, I fully appreciate that this notion may still seem to many to be a long way off, or even an impossibility to some people here — perhaps that was what prompted the tears? Well, that together with an overwhelmingly strong (yet clearly unrealistic) urge to reach out and show those people the future. A future where you are reclaimed and reconnected with your beautiful true self — and burning brightly as a beacon of hope that helps others find their way out of the darkness.
Blessings In Disguise
For three and a bit years since I realised that my ”˜dream’ relationship was a nightmare in disguise, I have come to the place where I view my encounter as a blessing. Blessings that, at the time, were heavily camouflaged… absolutely. Painful beyond description… heck yes. Soul-shatteringly destructive, leaving me broken, exhausted, humiliated, knocked out, wiped out and on the floor… yep, you got it. Words, it appears, particularly now as I look back over what happened, seem totally inadequate when describing the hollow darkness of the weeks and months that followed my own discovery.
Like so many of us here, how can any living person be expected to function after their soul has been ripped out, stamped on and thrown out with the rubbish — whilst at the same time realizing that the architect of their downfall has been smirking during the whole process”¦? When explaining my own experiences, people have asked me how I survived. I remember asking myself the same question myself at my lowest times — I also remember sinking so far down that I even considered the alternative to survival”¦.
The thing is, though, I have come to realize that if people can live through such horrendous times (and all of us here on the site are indeed living — although some days may actually feel like ”˜barely hanging on by a thread’) then surely”¦. surely”¦ as we come through the other side we must come to truly appreciate the strength of our spirit, and be proud of who we are? Surely we must reach a place where we can recognize the energy, focus, determination and love it took to come through”¦?
The Inner Light
I have noticed that there is a light that comes from people who have successfully overcome adversity — in any shape or form, large or small, physical or mental. Yes, they also carry the battle scars, of course. But the thing that speaks most clearly for me is the determined light that shines from within. It shows in their eyes, and it can be heard in their voice. There is something subtle, inviting, and thoroughly human about these people that cannot help but inspire.
We only have to look at the upcoming Paralympics to recognize the shining light of determination and passion in every athlete who has worked to overcome physical difficulties. On the other hand there are countless newspaper stories about people who have survived murder attempts, wars, violence and all manner of human cruelty. People who have subsequently gone on to live fulfilling lives and who quietly encourage others in the process. Then there are the ”˜everyday angels’ — people who put themselves out to care for others who are in need. There are also survivors of life-threatening diseases. Then there is everyone here in the Lovefraud community — and others like us. People who are in various stages of waking up to the nightmare”¦ and journeying through to the other side.
It’s true, I know, that not everyone makes it this far — so already we are the lucky ones. And as we continue sharing our stories, supporting and guiding each other, and helping to educate others”¦ so we continue to heal and we continue to become brighter. As I said in last week’s post, we are the ones who know, who ”˜get it’ and who are already reaching out to others facing confusion and pain at the hands of a disordered personality — whatever the relationship.
It was reading though the countless posts and comments on this particular site in 2009 that helped me to make sense of the madness. That helped me realize I was not alone. That prompted me to find out as much as I possibly could about the little understood subject of sociopathy. Even though I could feel the pain in so many of the comments, at the same time I also felt inspired that people were able to share their experiences, and reach out to others for help and support.
It was this very community who, three years ago, played a major role in saving my life and easing me back on track. Your lights were shining strong to me then — your examples showed me the way, and you continue to shine today. Thank you.
I am deeply grateful for being a part of this community. And I know beyond any doubt that we are all beautiful. I also know that in our own ways each of us are indeed already shining our light, helping to brighten a world that is crying out to awaken from the darkness.
So…. Keep shining, beautiful ones. This world continues to need your light.
With love, light and gratitude to all 🙂
Hens,
I’m sorry for the news about your client moving, but it’s nice to hear validation from others. Sky said it best, just sit back, give rope and let the marine spath hang himself in due time.
Thruthspeak,
You’re so right about ‘fear’… Just this week I had something happen. Darwin is at my parents’ for the moment, since packing and movers and workers stomping around the old apartment and my new present home is no good thing for him. He’s a scaredy cat to begin with, let alone having to move with workers calling every day to do this or that. I don’t even have doors to seal off a room for him. Anyway, so he’s there at my parents and my dad had come home with the car and automatically opened the garage door without checking whether Darwin might have been in there. My parents searched the house at every hiding spot and couldn’t find him. So my dad came to my new home to drop off stuff and pick up rubbish and only at the end of his visit he suddenly told me the problem and told me I needed to come to their home in order to call his name in case he was outside, because he wouldn’t respond on theirs yet. I understand why he waited so long to tell me, but the fact that he did made it so serious that I got this huge knot in my stomach and huge fear. What if he had run outside? His hiding behaviour is such that he won’t drink, won’t eat, won’t respond to a call, won’t move… mom needs to know where he is, grab him by his scruff and haul him out. Before long I was a blubbering fool trying to be discrete for my dad, knowing he’d feel guilty already on his own. At some point I could locate the exact physical position of the knot and started to breathe and mentally make that knot relax. By the time I arrived at my parents’ I asked my father whether the office door had been open or closed at the time of the disappearance. My dad didn’t remember, but still I instinctively went in, didn’t even look in the office, but went straigh to the laundry and boiler room behind it, and looked behind the central heating installation. I saw a shadow, put on the light and found him. It was weird, it was as if I knew where he’d be, even though it’s the first time ever he hides there. But my intuition couldn’t have worked properly with all that fear knotted in my stomach before that.
Darwinsmom, the fears that I have experienced are often paralyzing, particularly lately.
When the colleague and his g/f are out of the house, both my son and I are able to breathe a bit easier, but when we hear that car door slam, the rustling of the shopping bags, and the door open up, both of us experience a gut-based reaction of dread and anxiety, and I am simply unable to manage this, right now.
We are living in a constant state of dread, and it’s making me physically ill, now, and I know it’s having a terrible effect on my son, as well.
How long have you been Darwin’s mom? It’s painful for me to see an animal in distress because we can’t “speak” words to them that would help them process their fears. Even soothing vocal tones don’t help very much.
Poor thing….I’ll bet you can’t wait to get settled and take him to his new home.
Brightest blessings
Truthspeak, I indentify with your fears..it’s like you are at the mercy of their kindness, and you also sense they want you gone. And your stuck, that is not healthy for you or your son. But hang in there, something will change for the better. I feel that fear with the Marine that see’s me as competition I guess, when I am not competition but only his GF’s loyal employee and have always treated them both with the upmost respect. But if my livey hood is in jeapordy, so be it, I will not put up with his abuse. Thanks for your input to my situation, it seems so trivial as compared to yours..you are in my thots……hug
Darwins, I indentify with your fears as well, if one of my wiener girls goes missing for more than 30 minutes I go into a panic and have an anxiety attack, it’s down right embarrassing how I react. And thank you as well for your input…hug
hens, gotta say that i am so glad that you are actually bringing your fears to lovefraud, and letting the us offer support and care. I am given to panic also, and i am thankful for the people I can talk to about it. xo one joy
1steprs .. there was a meteor shower last nite between midnight and 4 am….I was out catching falling starz and sending cyber energy to all of ya’ll…hug
hens: did you see it?
we had monsoon clouds over us.
you are sweet – thanks for the cyber energy.
mwahhhhhh! xxoo
Dopey
((Truthspeak))
I know what that kind of ‘pressure’ feels like.
I am sorry you have to come through this.
When it gets to the boiling point, get out…
take a walk; just something to get it off you.
Even for a little while. It helps.
I just spent the past five years walking a tightrope
and I am convinced that my medical issues now,
(ie: heart attack, etc.) can be directly attributed
to the stress of my prior situation.
Be careful. Keep the stress levels down.
They will gobble you up if you let them.
Prayers and blessings…
Dopey
Watching meteor showers is such a nice way to spend time. Watching the physical and biological universe always reminds me that I’m part of something very beautiful.
Thruth and Hens, yes I was absolutely paralized for about 10 minutes. Luckily I drove my own car behind my father’s, so I could cry from fear at heart’s content. Then I started to say, “NO! I don’t want to lose him!” a couple of times and then told myself, “Now calm down and something please help me find him. If I’m not calm I won’t be able to look for him.” And I was calm halfway to my parents’ home, and knew I needed to look in the house myself, not outside. And as I stepped in the office I even said to myself, “He’s not in here, don’t bother to look in here.” I walked straight on to the laundry and boiler room.
Darwin is a little older than 4 years, and at the start of September I adopted him four years ago.
Ex-spath used to do that… He’d leave the front door open of the studio-appartment, though I explicitly reminded him to close it and I had explained that Darwin cannot survive outside, because he’s stuck in a tiny kitten survival stage. I couldn’t understand why he could be so forgetful about it. One time I came home and the door was open to the general shared hallway and I couldn’t find Darwin at his usual hiding places. I totally panicked and ran off the stairs, out of the true front door on the street. Meanwhile ex-spath said “I’m sorry” couple of times. Pretty sure he was loving it though. Darwin was hiding in the closet behind clothes. He feared the open door, so he hid behind something that felt closed enoug for him.
Anyway this is Darwin’s history: His parents and siblings and him were put outside when their owners moved. The mother cat disappeared at some point, but it must have been an early stage of their kittenhood. They were lucky the tomcat provided and cared for them. But a tomcat has no instincts when it comes to teaching kittens. He probably aped the mother’s behaviour after she was gone.
When kittens are still very young, and the mother has to leave the nest to hunt for her own game, the kittens are first taught to be absolutely quiet and still until the mother returns and physically makes contact. The only way they’re allowed to leave the nest at that time is by being taken by the scruffs. Darwin is stuck in that phase.
When my parents go on holiday I used to catsit at their house (they have a cat as well, Midas). Darwin was 1 year then. And after two weeks in their house I ventured out with him in the garden on a cat leash. Something frightened him and he escaped the leash, jumped over the back fence to where I didn’t know at that time. I immediately printed out some pics and notes for the neighbours of the block, asking them to peek under bushes and in sheds, because I did suspect he probable would hide somewhere. I called his name over and over going round the block. I even slept outside on a garden bed in the garden and every hour would call for him softly. By almost the next afternoon, the neighbour behind us checked his chicken coop and alerted me that Darwin was hiding in there. He actually had raced straight into the chicken coop, and hid in one of the cots right next to the chicken entrance, which was 1 m away from where I was calling him all nigth and day. He didn’t run away or anything anymore. I only needed to get the cat basket, grab him by the scruff and hoist him into the basket. When he was back home he started to purr instantly.
So, it turns out I named him after the man who came up with ‘survival of the fittest’ while he has no survival skills at all, except for hiding like a kitten.
The interaction between ppath and cats/kittens has always been quite devious. I think they find them easy prey for their most primal of inner instincts to destroy. I think that is why they pick on them the most. They are able to draw the cat into their spell and then when the cat least expects it, they strangle them.
X ppath has been accused and openly admitted before to choking cats to watch them die. At first, I paid no attention to the statements because I felt perhaps it was a strong bravado speaking and that surely nobody would mean the things he was saying; right?
Then a couple years went by and I heard, from his own lips, how he had been accused of strangling a ‘friend’s’ (minion) cat. He swore he didn’t do it, to me, however, I don’t trust a single word that utters from “ITS” lips. that was almost a couple years ago now.
It’s chilling to think that I survived a close encounter with a full fledged dangerous, blood thirsty, soul sucking psychopath. I have been trapped in this hell for almost 11 years, although I do have to admit that the past 11 days has been very quiet. There has been no stalkings by phone and/or internet. It has been absolutely quiet. For the first time in almost 6 years, I can relax and thank my lucky stars, all the Angels in Heaven, and the friends who have stood beside me, for the peace I have been experiencing the past 11 days.
SURVIVAL of the FITTEST is absolutely right.
Underneath their rough and tough, vicious exterior,
resides a coward. A shy, introverted coward who
hates us because we are stronger than they are.
If you look, you will see the jealousy radiating from
them. It’s one of those things you will come to see.
One of the ‘red flags’. If something in a relationship
is not right. Chances are probably pretty good that
they aren’t. To protect yourself and those you love,
the best thing is to get away from that relationship.
If it doesn’t click right in the beginning, you should
listen. If I had listened, to my own inner conscious,
I could have spared myself all of this torture and
torment. But it’s not easy breaking free from their
hold upon us because they use our own virtues and
better graciousness and compassion as well and
our conscious’ as weapons against us. They find
it quite amusing. Love is a joke to them.
The best thing to do is to get it away from you.
I have been on NC and off NC six times. Including this last time. All you are doing, when you open that door again, is allowing the back up from the ‘cess pool’ that is their life, to come thrashing through your windows. It never changes. THEY will never change. They are who they are and there is nothing that is going to change that.
But, WE can change ourselves.
We give ourselves time to lick our wounds and heal our scars and when we are stronger and gaining balance back in our lives, we will move on. They are not worth worrying over because they were only using us by trying to suck our very souls out through our nostrils.
Funny thing about cats; hm?
They are very mystical at times.
Dopey
dupey – i didnt see a shower of meteor’s but did count 9 in a hours time, nothing like the hundreds per minute the media was talkin about. I am so ready for fall, cooler temps, some rain and a freeze to kill the skeeter’s..has been a miserable summer here,,,I need a change to lift me out of this funk..