I believe in miracles.
Not the rock your world, holy saints and rising apparitions kind of miracles. But rather, the light shifting, change your life, in this moment kind of miracle that takes you by the hand and guides you home. The kind of miracle that awakens you to the truth that this moment is all you’ve got. The kind of miracle that says, grab me and run with me or lose the miracle of your life forever.
I know about miracles like that. I got one on a sunny May morning five years ago when I had given myself up for dead. Well, not dead-dead, but rather, the walking breathing dead kind of living that leeches all energy from your body and leaves you without hope of ever finding a way back to the land of the living.
My miracle appeared in the form of a blue and white police car driving up and arresting the sociopath who had been lying and cheating and manipulating and abusing me for the length of our four year nine month relationship.
When first we’d met I thought his name was Prince Charming. I loved the view of the short cut to happiness he promised me and jumped onto the runaway train of his promises of happily ever after. I never expected to find myself lost in hell, in cahoots with the Prince of Darkness and praying for a miracle I didn’t believe I deserved, to set me free.
But then, that’s the funny thing about miracles. They don’t come looking for believers. They just appear, like stars in a darkened sky coming out at night. It’s not that they weren’t there all along, it’s just lost in the pit of despair, we lose sight of the miracles around us. Too frightened to open our eyes in the blinding light of day, we shut out the world and crawl into the cave of desperation, shutting ourselves off from belief and hope and possibility and even miracles.
It was a miracle the police found us. He was hiding out, trying to escape the country, and I was hiding behind the smile I’d pasted on my face, pretending to be the person he told me to be, or else. The miracle saved me from finding out what the ”˜or else’ might be.
Looking back, it was a miracle I was still alive. I had seventy-two cents in my pocket, a few clothes and my beautiful Golden Retriever, Ellie, who had travelled that rocky road beside me, faithfully keeping step to my faltering footsteps as I travelled further and further from life as I knew it.
I don’t know who said this, but I find it very powerful, “Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.”
On that day in May, five years ago, I knew I didn’t get a miracle to live in pain and sorrow. I knew I got the miracle to live in joy. But, in the process of losing myself on the road to hell, I had become someone I didn’t recognize, someone I didn’t love. I knew I had to change. I feared I didn’t know how.
Change is always possible. Ending something that isn’t working for me requires me to change what I’m doing. When I awoke from that relationship, there was very little that was working in my life. So much was broken, so much was in disarray.
To change my life, I had to surrender my disease and embrace my ability to heal. To heal, I had to change the anger into forgiveness. The sorrow into laughter. The hatred into love. I had to let go of who I had become on that journey and fall into love with who I could become in healing by letting go of my fear of falling and learning how to fly free from the pain of the past.
And so, on that morning in May when my world changed and I began to see there was light beyond the darkness, I grabbed my miracle and set out to recover my joy. Step by step. Moment by moment. And, in the process I uncovered the greatest miracle of my life. Me.
I believe in miracles. I am one.
The question is: What do you believe in? Do you believe you’re some big cosmic experiment gone awry in one hopelessly lost human being, or a miracle of life, unique and magnificent, a shining example of the best of human being, full of possibilities, endlessly in love with the wonder and the miracle of being you?
Okay, my pity party/temper tantrum of “It’s not FAAAAIRR!!!!” is over, for now.
Thanks for the indulgence and aid.
Am going to try to keep dating, even though it shoves me out of a comfort zone. One foot in front of the other, right?
Oh, Aloha,
“Informed denial…” WOW, what a great phrase!!!! How TRUE, how TRUE!!!!! I like that….”informed denial.”
I went to see my psychiatrist today, she is a great gal and one I had worked with for several years before my husband died in the plane crash. We talked about all sorts of things, including the Rapid Eye Movement Therapy that my therapist had been doing with me, and the fact that I think it seems to have very much helped me cope with the PTSD and the crash, but also the psychopaths…we got to discussing psychopaths in general and how to deal with them. I am fortunate that she is a great woman as well as doc who DOES GET IT.
In fact, one of the things we talked about was the fact that I KNEW (INFORMED DENIAL…YEA, I LOVE THAT!!!!) and yet didn’t ACT on my knowledge….and she said the same thing that several of us have said, “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, but maybe in the end it has been a blessing.”
I feel very blessed to have this insightful woman “on my team” professionally and also as my friend as well. That’s a difficult line for any professional to walk, but she had done it with grace in all aspects. Calling a spade a spade, yet being very compassionate as well.
I sit here and laugh, remembering her calling me “Nurse Rachett” because I didn’t take any crap off administration or the narcissistic physicians either! LOL and smile
Orphan,
You’re right, it isn’t FAAAAAIRRRR and I don’t likek that either—YOU at least get to date, and if someone asked me out, I think I would FAINT dead away—LOL —I haven’t even been asked to a DOG FIGHT in 3 years! Maybe I should consider going down town in the capitol city and seeing if I can find a wino. LOL JOKE JOKE JOKE!!!!
OxD, you always make me laugh. I wish I would land on one side of the fence and stay there. You know, he did have a lot of good qualities. And somehow I think it’s worth remembering that. Not everything is cut and dried, black and white. Very little is.
And I can be extremely immature. Remember the arrogance discussion? Well, this is what I mean when I say I am arrogant. I was so SURE we were meant to be together — so SURE since 1997 or so that he was the only person I really wanted forever, that when I bought the house I had this flash of a vision where we were living in it together. Not a wish flash, but like a premonition. And I held onto that thought in the face of everything, even when he did things that seemed mean or unfathomable, even when he said he didn’t love me I still want to insist he does and keep thinking he’s going to come back. Arrogant and pretty silly in the face of not hearing from him for four months.
I’m not without my own serious flaws, and that is one of them. I can’t give up on people even after they’ve given up on me or done things that hurt. Worry too much, assume too much blame for everything, am stubborn, don’t communicate well, am way too vigilant from years of worrying about my brother coming after me with knives and guns or jumping on my back, so everything startles me. I attribute good motives to bad deeds and sometimes bad motives to good deeds.
For instance, tonight I found out that my parents have done something huge that hurts my brother. It helps me, ultimately, but it’s going to be World War 5000 in the family. And I feel guilty that I’m going to benefit at his expense — this person who made most of our lives miserable.
Go figure. I’m really not as tough minded as most of you, and wishing doesn’t make it so. If I had a single dollar for every wish to just not care about people who don’t show the same concern, I’d be typing this while sitting on big piles of money in the Cayman Islands.
Thanks for the laugh. And no, nothing is FAAAAAAIR. But here it all is anyway.
Great job on the itals, Free!!! 🙂
LOL on Carrie from Sex in the City. Not even close. Dating was never my thing, even though I did a lot of it when young, before getting married. I’m trying to date other people but it feels really hollow and somehow “wrong.” The “wrong” is what I’m trying to put my finger on…why wrong?
The dating thing at the moment just doesn’t FEEL right. It feels like I’m forcing myself rather than letting it happen organically. Am a smart enough woman to know to follow instincts and intuition (not doing that brought a host of these issues with the Wolf, in the first place) and this doesn’t feel instinctual or intuitive.
So the dates, which are supposed to be pleasant, feel painful and actually hurt more than help me heal. These are very nice men I’m meeting. Under any other circumstances that could be me at any given period of time. They deserve someone who is fully in a good place. That is not me at the moment. So I feel like I am lying to them or doing something wrong to them.
Free,
Love the Fairytale!! That is now me. I divorced the evil man last Friday and since then have felt this peace come over me every now and then.
I no longer have to believe anything that comes out of his mouth, about myself, about life, about what he’s doing, anything. Deep down I do still feel love for him since we shared 13 years together, and had two children, but I am healthy, and he is not. I have to keep reminding myself that he is mentally ill, character disordered, just not right. This has nothing to do with me. Yes, I allowed myself to be sucked into his crazy world, but, eventually, I was smart enough to get out.
I love reading all these posts, and all the different points in the healing process we are all in. Everyone here is so strong, and we just sometimes need reminders of how strong we really are.
I am FREE TO BE ME! Although I still get a bit confused as to who I am after being told for years who I was. But, I feel good. My kids are happy and healthy, a bit confused at times, but happy all the same.
I went on two dates with one man recently – very attractive, charming – why do we fall for these men?? And, he ended up being a very arrogant ass, but at least I caught on quickly. We are all so much wiser than before all this trauma hit us.
I think our FOOS can’t help but be an INFLUENCE on who we are, both geneticly and environmentally.
Our FOOs are where we learn about the world at an early age, andn some of these ideas, stick there unnoticed and influence our lives later, unless we notice them about ourselves, take them out, examine them and then either decide that those ideas are worth keeping or tossing.
These ideas that we gleen as toddlers actually are very necessary things to our survival in the world, because they tell us how to act, who to trust, who not to trust, and what is “normal” vs. what is ABNORMAL.
I’ll use my cattle as an example again. Cattle are prey animals and in general when a “strange animal”approaches them it is likely to be something that wants to eat them, so they run away.
When my baby cows are born, their first instinct at a week or so old is to run like hell when they first see me walk up to the herd. But they notice that their mommies, older sibs, etc are NOT running, so they sort of come back. All the time they are watching me, but they are seeing if mom is scared or if she will run away or not. They don’t know what I am or if I could be dangerous, but MOM isn’t affraid, so their fear subsides. Before long they will be sneaking up carefully to smell me.
We as humans are also somewhat prey animals and so as small children we observe how our parents and sibs respond to certain actions, and if mom and pop stand there unafraid of a “situation” we learn not to be afaird of that, to accept that as “normal”–even if the situation is ABnormal to anyone outside our FOO and of course we incorporate more and more complex things as we grow up.
Occassionally, I would have a calf born “emotionally unstable”–I had one that I named Bambi, because she would panic and run headlong away from any human, sometimes running through fences, across highways, etc. she never observed what mom was doing or the rest of the herd, she just TOOK OFF in a blind panic. At weaning I would get the calve sup and put a halter on them, teach them to tie, and lead and to be brushed (if they weren’t intended for the meat locker) and she never did tame down like the rest. In the last few years there has been quite abit of research ab out the inheritability of this attitude among cattle as it is very inconvenient not to have docile cattle even if you intend to butcher them later rather than make them breeding stock.
They don’t gain weight as much becuse they are constantly anxious, etc. and much more dangerous to handle because of their blind and constant fear of humans.
A child who grows up in a family where there is chaos, violence, etc. is more apt to accept violence, abuse, etc. as the NORM, and to not be afraid of it, and in fact, to practice it both as defense, and as offense. But there is always teh “odd man out” in some situations.
I learned in my FOO that you have two faces, one is a PUBLIC FACE, and the other is the PRIVATE FACE–AND MINE WERE TOTALLY DIFFERENT. I was expected to tolerate anything from the family and “pretend it hadn’t happened” but not expected to tolerate abuse from those outside the “family” so if someone had been accepted into the “family” (close friends and associates as well as blood relatives) I would tolerate the abuse, but not from those less close. Certain things in the way of abuse directly to me I made up my mind not to tolerate even from a man I was married to or dating (physical abuse) but the other abuse was what I was taught to consider “normal” and just part of living.
Publicly, I had a “reputation” as not tolerating any crap, but within the family I tolerated a LOT of crap from my P-son, and other relatives, because if I didn’t, the “family peace maker” (who was ANYTHING but a peace maker) would punish me severely.
Even after I “figured this out” I was still in INFORMED DENIAL (Thank you Aloha that is a great one!) and continued to LIVE the LIES in spite of knowing it was not a GOOD THING.
Blame my FOO? Yes and No. Yes, I learned it at their knees growing up, and accepted that was what was “normal” and since my family had two faces, Public and Private, I sort of “figured” that all families were this way…which of course they were not…but once I got out of the DENIAL, the family worked together to bring me to heel and keep me playing the family “games.” When I didn’t, wouldn’t, the stakes got higher, to the point that I had to be eliminated in order for the family to continue on the set course.
Factor in a P or two with this dysfunction and you have dyn-o-mite!
Learning not only who I am, but who I WANT TO BE! What behaviors are “normal” and “acceptable” and “good vs bad” is a big job because each of the “truths” I learned about what life, and the world, and people are, as a small child, have to be taken out and examined to see if I want to keep that construct or not.
Love the No Drama lyrics! I am spending this week going through my journals and writing a summary of how I was taken in by this conman, beginning 13 years ago. Lucky for me, I have kept a journal on and off all my life. It would have been so easy for me to forget so many of my feelings had I not written them down.
I am so tired of the memories and the deceptions popping into my head out of nowhere. I feel I have to get it all down on paper so that it’s out of my head. So that I can forgive myself for being conned. I just started looking at my journal from 13 years ago – when I first met him. How I was completely swept off my feet, how all the warning signs were there, how I completely knew what this person was all about, but chose to ignore it… I like the informed denial term someone used earlier. That’s exactly what it was.
As I go through all of these years, I’m coming to understand that I had these huge lessons to learn, and the only way I was going to learn them was to be put through this. I had to learn not to be so naive, I had to learn about boundaries, I had to learn that it’s ok to be without a man, I had to learn to trust myself and to love myself. I had to learn that evil exists and can be so well-disguised. I had a pattern of picking emotionally abusive men to be with. Perhaps now I have finally learned what a relationship should not be.
I am by myself really for the first time in my adult life, and I have some close girlfriends whom I love to spend time with. I wonder how many of us just felt we needed to be with a man, always. We needed someone to show us we were lovable. I’ve come to understand how we truly need to love ourselves before we can even think about loving anyone else. I know we’ve heard it a thousand times before, but I guess it didn’t mean much to me until now.
We all are so much better-informed for our future relationships. I’m finally feeling like something good is coming from all the hell I’ve been put through. I hope a lot of you out there are feeling that also.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could all get together for a night out?!
I like what I just read. If no one else believes it I DO. It is MY TRUTH. I am in the equation now, I matter to me. I am grateful for this sight because I know I am not alone. Reading how other women had the same experience as me helped me see what the hell was going on. The confusion from PTSD was staggering. I love myself enough today to stay in recovery. The pain disappates and clarity sets in with time and appication to my own recovery. I feel empowered that I can actually participate in my own life. Yeah, coming from where I was I’m a miracle. A living loving miracle….Enjoy YOUR DAY!!!
I am laughing at myself. I also have no more drama played in my home also. It’s nice to know I am part of the human race with a whole array of emoition unlike, a narrcissist. Our weaknesses are what make us human, alike it’s our strengths that make us unique. Strength for me comes and goes yet it is absolutly part of my genetic make up. The question I need to ask myself is how am I using this gift? I need to be there for the next woman, or when the women in my life are having a weak moment. Love one another. Be there for one another. Light beats darkness everytime. Sociopaths will be what they are and that used to keep me up at night. Not now. I found my way out of the darkness and into the light with the love and human spirit on my side.
Holy crap, OxD! Just read this and it is SOOOOO it:
learned in my FOO that you have two faces, one is a PUBLIC FACE, and the other is the PRIVATE FACE”“AND MINE WERE TOTALLY DIFFERENT. I was expected to tolerate anything from the family and “pretend it hadn’t happened” but not expected to tolerate abuse from those outside the “family” so if someone had been accepted into the “family” (close friends and associates as well as blood relatives) I would tolerate the abuse, but not from those less close. Certain things in the way of abuse directly to me I made up my mind not to tolerate even from a man I was married to or dating (physical abuse) but the other abuse was what I was taught to consider “normal” and just part of living.
This is part of the core issue for some of us, isn’t it?!?!
This is why we’re able to tolerate and accept so much more than the average person, why we can reconcile two or more completely opposing viewpoints or experiences and still find value in the good of it.
For me, this explains perfectly why I’m able to so easily dismiss anger and mistreatment, not stick up for myself, why I spent 8 years in a totally abusive marriage and why I’m BLOCKED.
I am blocked. This much I realized this morning. There is all this passion for life, all this love and joy still within me that I buried along the way, rejected because it didn’t seem possible or real anymore. There is also loads of anger, and I think the anger has walled-up all the joy — and I was feeling like a zombie for years! I could get angry about the world, angry about issues outside my personal life, but not allow for real anger with loved ones.
Part of that was because I was afraid, am afraid, of not being loved unless I am perfect. But I know I am not perfect. Nobody is. Nobody has to be. I see other people who are loved simply for existing, but I grew up with the idea reinforced that I must be perfect or I would not be loved. Even when I was as good as I could possibly be, getting great grades, doing everything by the book, it still went unnoticed because my brother sucked the oxygen out of every room. (He still does.)
And my parents are not capable of unconditional love with me. They gave all of that to my brother! Yet I always was, and give that to my own girls. It helps heal, but it does not even begin to address the very real need for me to be loved unconditionally, and to love myself unconditionally, and to allow myself the right to be ANGRY when someone hurts me!
That quote just jumped out at me. I’ve been trying for weeks now to figure out why I’m blocked. I can even feel the blockage in my heart, the big wall between who I really am that’s pretty damn terrific on its own and the risks I’m willing to take — which are really none.
My daughter told me that I am in a rut, have been for years and that I need to claw my way out. She’s right. To do it, I have to allow myself to rage, to pass through the anger stage.