By Ox Drover
Yet Being Someone Other is the title of one of my favorite books and sometimes I think that title applies to me as well, at least since I recognized the post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that has become such a part of my life these last six years. Now I’m “someone other” than who I used to be. I’m not the same person at all. I no longer think like that other person did, that FIRST ME as it were. The NOW ME is different.
This was a very disturbing thing for quite some time as I had to get used to things being gone that I had depended on previously. I had to make adjustments to the changes in myself, sort of like a teenager has to make adjustments to larger feet and longer legs, and for a while becomes quite clumsy as they learn to use these appendages which have suddenly changed in dimensions. I felt very clumsy for a while, and still do to some extent. In other ways, I feel like an amputee that is having to relearn to walk with only one leg, or to use a prosthetic leg. To me, this is quite unsatisfactory. I want the old me back, the familiar me.
Worst of all I think, is that my mind doesn’t work the way it did, and it keeps on changing. At first I couldn’t read at all, not even one sentence, as I was in shock and couldn’t retain the words from the first of the sentence long enough to add them to the last words of the sentence in order to make sense of it all. That was frustrating and scary. I’d watch a movie and enjoy it, and then put the same DVD in the next night and not realize I had seen it the night before until maybe near the end when some specific line would make me realize I had seen it. Then I would feel so stupid that I had watched it again, not remembering.
I talked to my psychiatrist about this and she reassured me, “It will get better, it will come back,” but I didn’t believe her, and even after six years, she is only partly right. It has gotten better, but I realize and finally accept that it will never be the same. I am Someone Other than who I was before. I still have word finding problems like a stroke patient, seeing the image of a tree in my mind, yet not being able to find the word “tree.” It is as if my brain is now made of Swiss cheese, with large empty holes at random within it. I stutter when I talk, trying to find the words I want to express myself, and sound to others as if I have the early onset of dementia. I apologize to them for not being able to find the word I am seeking, and explain why, or try to, but not really knowing if they believe me or not, or if they are simply humoring me to be polite. I don’t talk as much to strangers now, the New Me doesn’t want to have to explain. The Old Me never met a stranger, or was reluctant to exchange conversation with someone they just met.
I have found that for some strange reason the muscle memory of typing which the Old Me always did well, though not quite intact, is actually better for producing words and thoughts than verbally doing so. Though I now have problems spelling, and will use the word “here” instead of “hear” and not realize it until I read back through the typescript. Sometimes my spelling is so bad on more complex words that even spell check doesn’t know what I am trying to say to fix it, so I have to go back and find a simpler word that I can still spell, so my vocabulary has decreased by a large percentage.
Reading, which has always been one of my passions, is still a passion for me, but now instead of reading at breakneck speed, reading by phrases at twice or three times the rate most people read, I am again reading word by word at about 200-250 words per minute which is about average speed. I also know that my memory of a series of numbers, which was once quite extraordinary, can’t even extend to the seven digits of a phone number long enough to dial it.
Through the last six years the Now Me has gone through many changes, some quite painful, and has had to navigate through the rapids of multiple episodes of grief, make decisions while not fully functional as far as logic is concerned, and reinvestigate what my core beliefs are, and which direction my moral compass should point.
The feelings have been sometimes like that feeling of unreality you have inside a house of mirrors at the county fair! You end up holding out your hands in front of you to touch the things you think you see in order to navigate because you learn you cannot trust your eyes to navigate your way out. The Now Me must learn to use other senses besides sight to move by. Sometimes I’ve had to close my eyes and grope in the dark to find the path out of the maze because if the Old Me tried to find her way out by sight, she would confuse the Now Me.
Time has helped to calm the fears of things being different, of be being Someone Other than the Old Me. I’m learning to adjust, and to accept the Now Me and not grieve the way the Old Me was. There is really nothing in this life that is constant except change, and though the PTSD does seem to cause this change to accelerate at what seems like a breakneck speed, in many ways the Now Me has adapted well to these changes and is learning to care for herself in ways that the Old Me never was able to.
I saw a video a while back of a two-legged Border Collie working sheep at a dead run. One of the things I’ve learned in my years of having and raising collies is that they are a “can do” breed and ”working,” which to them is play, is very important to them, and if there is any way they can succeed in doing that, they will find it. I didn’t see that two legged dog sitting down whining on the side lines, but running as hard as she could go, doing what she loved. It was only when she sat down that she fell over, so I intend to keep on running and being and appreciating that the Now Me, while not identical to the Old Me, is still able to do what I really want to do.
Dear Fooledbyone, Welcome!
When I first found LF, it was like a breath of fresh air. There is so much to learn here and I have found that if I simply ask the question, someone on here has the answer/suggestions, whatever I need. I credit LF with helping me find my courage and strength. Just to KNOW I wasn’t the only one was a huge relief to me!
Delta 1 and others gave some excellent suggestions. To me, the biggest step to take is NO CONTACT. NONE. NADA. At first this is hard and sometimes we have a great need at first to talk to the ex. What I have learned, personally, is that the moment I hear his voice, my day goes downhill from there. Even with a son between us, the contact is almost nothing.
I also learned the importance of documenting everything, even if it seemed to be irrelevant.
Once again, welcome and at the same time, I’m sorry you’re here. It’s OK to share your story here.
KatyDid, I read your last post and I agree with you; telling her would not work and she would not listen. Whatever her participation is (and I’ve not read entirely through all the posts), trying to explain him to her would be a waste of oxygen. I can only speak from experience and I didn’t listen, nor did those I tried to tell.
Hugs!
Cat
Katy,
there isn’t an easy way through or around these issues. I was the other woman because he wasn’t honest about being legally married to another woman.
The DA refused to pursue bigamy. He will be loose again soon and there is nothing we can do to protect the next woman.
It cost me thousands of dollars to anull the marriage legally and the legal wife made no apology for turning him loose on society. Nor did she offer to contribute to the cost of putting his stuff somewhere away from her which contributes to her safety and distance from the SPATH. Legally, I believe the woman has more responsibility than she exercised. However, she did help me with the anullment proceedings and I am grateful for it.
Based on what came out of it, I am sorry fro what she endured although it makes no difference to my situation.
I don’t know what’s right. But I know that there will be a next and a next until he is dead.
What we all agree on is that these people lie and the mess they make out of other people’s lives is not deserved by anyone.
We were all targeted and victimized. We are all confederate in that experience regardless of where we fall in the legal succession of their relationships. They lie, they break the rules.
Responsibility sits squarely on the perpetrator of the lies and infidelities. Not on the victims. When someone is that determined to fool you, I don’t think there is a whole lot that can save you from it because of the chemistries involved in how people fall in love and bond.
Regardless of who we are or where we come from, if we are not disordered, then it can happen. Noting that the Spaths are frequently great lovers, because they love bomb and because they can emulate caring at least until the mask drops, we fall.
No one gets up in the morning and says I’m going to go find a relationship with a SPATH today. WE just don’t do THAT. And, until we know better, if we let the guard down, they find us.
Don’t be hard on yourself or anyone else. Accept that the man is disordered. And remember, these disordered tear apart the lives of all they come in contact with. They are indiscriminate about it.
You are in company here among others whose lives and hearts have been blown apart in similar experience. And its amazing how similar the experiences are. Almost as thought they were the same person over and over again. Its the disorder. Its how they are. There is nothing we can do to fix it or change them or regain who we were before the experience of them.
And its ok. We will be stronger. We will prevail. I know you will. You show over and over how hard you are working to understand what happened to you and to try to put your feelings and your life back in order. I wish I could tell you, or Erin or myself that there was sense to be made out of it.
I can’t find any.
I was fooled. I am not a fool. I may have been foolish in love but hindsight is like that and I was a victim of something which was intentionally evil. Not something I sought.
Nothing I can do but let go and move on. Like your said, we all have to forgive ourselves, heal and move on. To me, there is nothing more than that. There is no judgement after the decision to go No Contact. There is only living – in this moment, on this day the best we can for NOW.
I applaud your healing and my heart goes out to you as someone who is like me, walking wounded by the discovery of what has happened to her and working on healing from a deep and caustic wound.
Silvermoon,
An excellent reply to the issues that Katy raised.
Sociopaths exploit everyone. I was apparently the other woman and the wife at the same time.
My husband and I married in 1996. Two and a half years later, after he wiped me out financially, I discovered he was cheating on me. He had a child with another woman during our marriage.
I left him. Then, 10 days later, he married the mother of the child. Now, this was 10 days after I left him – not 10 days after divorce. I hadn’t even filed for divorce. It was the second time he committed bigamy.
But – he’d been seeing the woman since 1992! He continued to see her through his marriage to the woman before me (1995-1996), and through his marriage to me!
The mother of his child was with him longer than I was. So what does that make me?
Anyway, it wasn’t until 2007 that she found out the truth – her marriage wasn’t legal, because he committed bigamy when he married her. She contacted me, it was awkward, but I helped her get her marriage annulled.
We were all victims.
Dear Katy,
I hear your pain and your rage. You did what you thought was RIGHT, you acted honorably and yet you were USED, dishonored and abused. NO you did not deserve to be treated that way by your husband, and you did not deserve to be treated that way by the women who “admired” his bad behavior themselves.
The people who have no esteem for themselves, who have no honor themselves, who think that “taking away” a man from his honest wife is laudable, or raises their desirability, or makes them “better” or “sexier” or “more desirable” than the wife, DISHONOR themselves.
Just as my Psychopathic son sitting in his prison cell thinks he is a WINNER!!!!! He doesn’t even have the discernment to realize that NO ONE in the world except convicts like himself have any esteem for him, that any normal person in the world holds him in total condemnation as “nothing but a convict, and not even a convict smart enough to get away with it.”
There are some women/men who seek out married partners because of their own emotional mental or moral problems, but I think many times people who get caught up with married partners are ones who “believe the lie” that the cheating psychopath tells them.
So, in the end, there are some people I think who are themselves cheats without moral compasses who deliberately and knowingly go with married people, and there are those who believe the lies told by the cheater, and there are those who have no idea the cheater is married at all.
So not all “other women” or “other men” are the same “type” but to each of them they are responsible for what they DID know and the choices they made in continuing a relationships with a married person, but—-they are not, I think any more responsible than any of the rest of us, in the relationships we had with the psychopaths, because we did allow it to go on in spite of the red flags.
What we have to do NOW, today, is to forgive ourselves for the poor choices we made in the past (whatever they were) and to make better choices today and tomorrow and improve our lives, direct our moral compasses at the direction of the “light” and do good to ourselves. That is all that anyone can do.
I find comfort in some of the stories in the old Testament of the Bible, King David for example—from murder and adultery on down, David had done a variety horrible of sins, yet, when he realized he had sinned, he repented and changed his attitude and his behavior…..he was called “a man after God’s own heart.” WHY, if he had been so sinful with so many horrible sins and bad decisions? Because he recognized his errors and changed his ways. There is no “sin” so bad it can be repented of, or forgiven, we may still have the consequences of it, but we don’t have to repeat it again.
All of us (humans) make bad decisions, do bad things, but we can change if we recognize that we have done so and change our ways….the psychopaths COULD change their ways, but they don’t recognize that they have responsibility to do so, they don’t have remorse for the pain they caused others or even themselves, they don’t assume responsibility or accept blame. Therefore they cannot change. We can.
Life isn’t fair, and we aren’t perfect—-and some people are pure EVIL and enjoy being evil and hurting others, or at best just don’t care if others are hurt if they get what they want. But I would much rather be the kind of person who cares and who feels remorse and regret, rather than be a psychopath without connection to God or man except as a predator to prey.
I can only speak from the side of the wife, and up until now I’ve kept myself out of the conversation.
I found a note tucked under the windsheild wiper of my X hubs business vehicle that sneered, “who gives better head, the wife or the girlfriend?”
It was a competition I NEVER SIGNED UP FOR, but she sure did. She was not innoscent. She knew he was married.
What makes this all the more confusing and causes me even more conflict is she was 17 and he was 35….he was a recruiter for the Navy and she was a recruit.
I was home getting old, blowing noses and wiping butts, doing dishes and washing dirty socks, feeling unloved and unappreciated and the whole situation sucked.
I made myself feel better by telling myself that one day she’d be married and because of what she had done, she would never be able to trust her husband.
Don’t know what ever happened to her, but she’s probably about 39 now…..sucks to get old, don’t ya think.
We wives get triggered, too, and the attitude is what gets me….the self justification, and the victim playing, and the name calling, such as “fat and ugly” and the objectification in the repeated use of the term, “the wife.”
Is also seems to me that everything would have been just fine if he’d left his wife, and “you’d won” this rivalry you selected for yourself…how much thought would you have given her, while her LIFE was falling apart and HER HUSBAND was disgarding HER FOR YOU? ANY?
Sorry. Couldn’t stand it anymore.
Dostoevski wrote, “We aren’t punished for our sins, but by them.” It only works that way for people with a conscience, though…so if you have a conscience, it hurts, but it proves you’re human and can change, if you choose to.
My X broke my heart, and I think he was pretty Narcissistic, but I don’t think he was evil, only human, and he made mistakes, like we all do, and I forgave him, I’ve even forgiven HER, because I recognize the fact that we all have issues that sometimes cloud our vision, or cause us to chooae behaviors that hurt ourselves and others.
That girl probably had no sense of her value apart from her looks, her youth and her sexuality…All very sexist thinking and leads, ultimately to self-contempt. My hubands ego was his down-fall.
I’ve been irresponsible for most of my life and I’ve paid the price. Live and learn.
These are excellent insights. And carries into my personal philosophy, that there is NOTHING that is unforgivable if there is remorse. That’s the beauty of redemption, that we don’t have to carry our guilt into eternity. And it is SELF forgivenss that truly frees us.
I think some people confuse blame and accountibility. We are not to blame for being snookered. But the fact is, I ignored stuff I didn’t want to deal with, and while my head was down buried in the sand, a lot of people in addition to my s-path, kicked my pointy wide target. Understanding what I did, and forgiving myself for it, is what frees me. I had to come to terms with myself and OWN my part. By owning my part, and with that understanidng, I could find compasison for myself and self forgiveness followed.
There is also a difference betwwen excusing oneself and forgiving. Excusing leaves a person defensive. Forgiving grants us peace.
And I confess, the anguish I feel in this thread is that I can’t seem to get heard. That ONE word is extracted from what I write, a NEW meaning attached to it, and the rest of my post is negated, the post where I write of my abuse, my shame, my vulerability. NO compassion in return. Only an accusation of a mindset that is insulting and untrue.
My s-path’s rule towards me and the one that he enjoined others to follow: As long as you can make her the enemy, you can justify (excuse) anything.
Dear KatyDid,
I’m sorry that you feel anguish in this thread, but you ARE INDEED HEARD—maybe not by everyone, but sure by me, and I think by the above posters as well, Kim, Silvermoon, and Donna Andersen, to name a few. I know I feel compassion for you, for what you have suffered here, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
I agree too that SELF forgiveness is the most important part, at least to me. I forgave them much easier than forgiving myself. It goes back to expecting myself to be perfect, and anything less than perfection was not acceptable. Heck, even GOD didn’t expect us to be perfect. He knew we aren’t and made provision for that…He gave us examples of others, like King David, who were “men after his own heart” but were FAR FROM PERFECT, and if God can forgive us, we must also forgive ourselves!!!
You ARE heard Katy!!! (((((Hugs))))) and God bless.
Hiya KatieDid
I’ll say that I don’t always agree with everyone on LF’s views – but that I do respect that you’ve had hard times and have been in pain and deserve to feel heard on the site. So I’m real pleased at some of the posts above which have put better in words that I could.
It’s a bit my nature to play ‘devils advocate’ sometimes in my efforts to bring out new thoughts and find new ways of thinking for myself and heal – but I don’t mean any harm in it.
I’ve read all your posts carefully and though I’m not sure we’re always in sync – I do care about how you feel.
Just wanted to make sure you knew that.
Blessings
Delta 1 xx
My X is a skank.