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A story about recovering from relationship trauma

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a story about recovering from relationship trauma - must love crowsYesterday I ran into 2 of my ex-boyfriends. One online and one in real life.

The first one was via an email alert that said dude wanted to connect with me online for the third-ish time. And I was like, “Nawww dude. Nuh uhhhh. S t o p.”

See, this ex isn’t someone I want to connect with. Not necessarily because he cheated on me and treated me like garbage, but because for years I damaged myself even more than he did with his actions by taking ownership of the way he treated me.

I’m talking I thought up until a few years ago that it was my fault he was so awful to me.

The destructive narrative went like this: I shouldn’t have been so crazy. So uncool. He might not have dumped me and cheated on me if I’d acted and been different.

Time and self-love have taught me that you will indeed go fucking crazy if the person you love all of a sudden ghosts you. Like if he flat-out disappears from your life one day, and then shows up again weeks later, trying to get back together with you.

You will go another shade of crazy if you have prior abandonment issues from childhood that are triggered AF throughout this lapse of time.

The extra layer of icing on your so-called crazy label? When he follows up the mind fuckery by dumping you after cheating on you with a woman who has the gall to have drinks at the bar you’re tending after you find out. 🤯

Yes, all of these situations make it all the more likely that you will indeed get emotional as fuck, and people may throw the crazy card on the field in your presence (did I just make a football reference? I think so? I don’t know FA about football 😂)

Somehow, I got it twisted in my heart and head about who needed to take ownership of HIS CHOICE to be awful.

I made it about me, directing the shame about what he did and how painful it was to experience onto myself. And I carried that shame with me for years.

I made his issue my issue. And I tried to do what I was taught to do – be cool about how horrible he treated me.

I have a lot of experience with men behaving horribly and acting as though nothing happened. That everyone and everything is fine, and anyone who doesn’t feel the same way is irrational. With my experience with emotional and physical abuse in my pocket, I carried the shame of bullying myself for expressing how much pain I was in as a result of the abuse I experienced.

I stifled my feelings about how my ex behaved, to the point that I even tried to be friends with him afterward to somehow save face and disengage with the crazy label I was offered and took ownership of.

To be clear AF: I owned feeling ashamed of the strong emotions that surfaced as a result of being traumatized by the person I loved. When the person I loved abandoned me, both physical and mentally – when he abused me – I took responsibility for his decisions.

All that said, my ex is currently all, please connect with me online social and I’m all, hells no. ‘Cause I’m done with the enabling.

If I accept his invitation I’m enabling him.

This grown man is never gonna learn that what he did isn’t OK. And dude needs to learn and own up to his behaviour, ‘cause I wasn’t the only woman he treated like garbage.

He was nearing 30 years old when I had my experience with him, so there is no Oh, he was a young kid that didn’t know any better to use as an excuse.

Even if he was and is clueless about what he did, he doesn’t get a pass for being cruel. He is responsible for his choices.

An apology is required. And I’m not talking about a two worded “I’m sorry,” just so I can heal. I accept what happened and how it affected me. I don’t need his words to make me all better. I am my own healer.

What I’m talking about apology wise is that for the betterment of society and the healing of everyone, particularly him, he needs to get clear on what he did.

He needs to understand what he did and explain in detail what he is sorry for. So he can learn and grow from what he did, and realize it’s not OK to emotionally abuse someone. In the hopes that he will go out into the world moving forward and be a better human being.

All I can do on my end is focus on healing.

Part of that process requires taking stock of what I’ve done to cause harm to others and myself in the depths of my own inner tumultuous landscape.

I cannot and will not pretend I haven’t done some shitty stuff. But Lord knows that the answer to How do I forgive myself for what I’ve done? is not creeping on people’s facebook pages and liking their pictures, or asking the people I have harmed to connect with me without a conversation.

And two-feet-on-the-ground revelation: why is an ex contacting me, a married woman, anyways? What are your intentions, dude?

Unless it’s to have a conversation about what happened, there’s nothing pure going on.

If it’s anything like the dude’s from high school with zero boundaries who want to connect so they can poke me on FB at 2 am, my guess is there’s some dysfunction you want to hand-deliver me.

AND I DON’T WANT YOUR PACKAGE OR ATTENTION.

High school is where the other ex originated from. The heavy back story is that this guy is known for serially cheating on his partners. He learned to have no respect for women and run his life according to his penis. He learned to lie and cheat and minimize and manipulate. And I’m not going to enable him by pretending like we are old chums when he sees me in the grocery store anymore.

He never owned up to his cruelty. He never took ownership of his terrible behaviour. And without him taking ownership by exhibiting some form of understanding of what he did and how it harmed others, my door is sealed shut.

Dude hasn’t earned the right to be in my space.

He must understand that I’m not into being his friend by now because when he saw me yesterday he left me alone. A swift change from last year when he eagerly came up to me with the insecure cockiness of his 16-year-old self.

Or the years ago when he kept trying to message me, and I inherently knew it was an attempt to have sex with me, even though he was married to the same woman he cheated on me with in high school.

Straight up: dude’s don’t just randomly message their married exes. They wanna have sex with them. At least that’s been my experience so please don’t come at me for speaking my truth.

With all that heat in me and a commitment to protecting myself from people who haven’t earned the right to be in my life, I saw my ex walk out of the grocery store yesterday and the strangest thing happened.

I felt a tidal wave of empathy for him. I felt overwhelmed with emotion and almost started crying right in the store.

I pictured him as a little boy who was taught to be shitty to women – who was taught that cheating, shaming, minimizing and trying to manipulate his way into a married woman’s life so he can possibly fuck her is OK.

To demoralize the trust in a relationship, and lie, cheat and steal his way into feeling a sense of power and belonging in this hyper misogynistic world – that is his idea of normalcy.

And all I could think was how devastatingly sad he must feel inside, to feel compelled to act in such a soulfully wounding way.

So I let myself feel that for a minute and the shock of the significant inner shift from disgust to compassion. And when it was over I silently said to myself, “Thank you.”

Why thank you? Because I was so damn grateful for the reprieve from all the years of loathing him and all the men like him.

I have been incapable of picturing the little boys who learned to normalize shittiness up until now. And the sadness of empathy felt like freedom.

It was fresh air bursting into my chest cavity, cracking open my heart so wide that the pain of the betrayals, the shame, and the devastating humiliations and abandonments could begin to detach from my being.

I know the little kid in both my exes must be so scared and confused and hurting. You have to be all those things to not comprehend that what you did warrants ownership, not friendship requests.

You can’t be an asshole and be OK. Inside, your spirit is being starved.

Every single time you go out into the world with the intention to serve solely yourself, your ego, and/or your dick, you harm others. That is sadness incarnate.

And I know sadness.

I know how it feels to feel empty inside and try to fill yourself up with shitty behaviours because you don’t know how to survive the emptiness.

I know the fear and desperation very well. And I might not have a dick, but I know what it is to learn how to be shitty out of survival.

I also know how to unlearn it. I know how to own my pain and break the cycle of displacing it. I know how to call out the bullshit I was taught. And I know how to call out the men I used to love.

Because I’ve done the work. And it’s time for them to do the work, too.

A

Clarity on Freethinking

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There’s something revolutionary I’ve learned over the past couple years, and that is that an emotional reaction is not freethinking.

It’s insanely important for us to understand the need to separate our feelings from our actions. For example, I can say I’m freethinking, while ALSO being racist and void of empathy.

I can speak my mind, and attempt to house my inclination to do so under the umbrella of freethinking while ALSO ignoring the motivations for why I feel the need to speak my mind.

We get angry, annoyed, and frustrated with self-anointed freethinkers.

Case in point, a certain musical artist lighting up the digital sphere with words that appear to be so void of empathy, it’s mind-boggling.

A lot of people are pissed off, but I see his actions as a chance to access clarity. Not in regard to what he’s trying to say (Dude doesn’t need any more microphones right now) but in relation to figuring out what is underneath the disturbing, alt-right support he feels the need to lambaste the world with.

Clarity on freethinking is realizing that every action or word void of empathy is coming from a human being who is in pain.

This brand of self-sanctified freethinker doesn’t want you to think they are in pain. It’s not manly, powerful, popular, or societally accepted to show the vortex of fear that’s running his show. So out comes the justification responses:

“You just aren’t used to freethinkers like me.”

The wild and freeing thing is that People love Truth. They connect with it. It inspires them. So if a person in a public position like this dude is, dared to do the work to figure out where his drive to speak was coming from and then spoke to that, there would be many more open hearts than closed ones.

Hell, he might even be able to open up the seemingly permanently closed ones – that’s how powerful connection is. 

To be human is to accept that you are capable of being kind and lovely and compassionate, while also accepting that you are equally capable of being an ego-maniacal asshole in the midst of feelings that are difficult to process.

This means that none of us are immune to being assholes. We’ve ALL got it in us to be jerks. 

Now, we can look at the existence of a human being who feels the need to speak from that reactionary locale and call it freethinking as someone to fight against.

Or, we can recognize the little kid within that’s trying to play manager via statements like “I’m a freethinker!” and ask from a place of empathy, (because we all have experience with pain driving us to say and do fucked up things,) “What kind of pain is this kid harboring that is fuelling his need to say these deeply disturbing and damaging things?”

This opens the door to an excellent space of time to put our habit of making assumptions to use.

We can hypothesize about how the circumstances of his life might have steered him to act without concern over consequence, and label it as freethinking. 

These assumptions could be used as fuel to establish generosity in the face of a perceived generosity drought. Because we all need a little help in that department when someone is being an asshole. Generosity is tough to access when hate is easily accessible. 

So then the question or dare becomes: when someone is being an asshole, are you willing to take the hard road? Are you willing to accept that we are all capable of being assholes, given the right emotional parameters?

And are you willing to see how connection and compassion, even for the ones we are driven to hate, provides the power to heal?

Cultivating One Sided Kindness: It’s Possible

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I believe…in our ability to be kind even when someone isn’t kind to us.

Said another way:

I believe we can cultivate one-sided kindness.

I didn’t always believe this. I used to be trigger happy when it came to showing people what was up when I sensed a millimeter of fuckery being directed my way. I was addicted to the rush, and the subsequent high, of demanding respect from people who didn’t want to give it to me.

Until I started to see the correlation between stepping back from being a just under 5’3” fire hydrant of aggression and being happy (I have always felt the need to be very specific about that “just under” part. 😂)

I still feel the pull to react. It will always be there because it’s the result of my life experiences.

Defensiveness and vulnerability: I learned that.

But in reconnecting with the soul living below the layers of fear I’ve learned that strong emotions don’t need to be acted on. They can be given time to be felt without letting them screw up my sense of calm.

I don’t always get this right. I still feel slighted by people on occasion, and I still get pissed off, particularly amongst excessively unsupportive, contempt carrying people. It takes a bit of work to shake off interactions with folks like that.

But I’ve learned in recent years that much of the time people aren’t intentionally screwing us over – they’re just not thinking about us at all.

It’s the memories of betrayal that attempt to command us to take their lack of empathy personally.

So, varying degrees of supposed disrespect may actually be someone being incapable of thinking about how something might affect you. It undeniably sucks, but I know from experience that coming at someone like an emotional battering ram isn’t going to make them respect you or act the way you want them to act.

You can’t bully someone into being empathetic.

You’ll never get people to act exactly how you want them to act. But if you act last – that is, after you pause and allow yourself to process strong emotions – the whole scene will end in a less traumatic fashion than it will if you fly in with your emotional guns blazing.

🖤

A

Why Your Parents Are Jerks and That’s OK

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About 10 years ago I got arrested for being drunk in public.

Long story short, I was in a really bad state. I was severely depressed, drinking heavily, and couldn’t see past the bottle in front of me.

No one in my family was capable of helping during this time: they didn’t know how to deal with me. Neither did the psych nurse that came to see me in jail when I’d sobered up. She basically told me that if I did it again there would be charges pressed. No offers for counseling or help.

So it was all on my own shoulders, to heal and get better. It was like, “You’re fucked up and there is no reason why you should be because none of us are fucked up. So it’s on you to figure out your issues and get over them.”

Do I think I deserved better treatment? If I was eager to jump on the self-pity train I’d say yes. But I’ll repeat what I said previously: no one in my life was capable of helping me. They didn’t know how to deal with me. And I think I scared the shit out of them because I was like this volatile fucking rocket that was ready to go off at any time.

I learned a lot from my experience. One being that generally as a society, we lack compassion for scenarios and people we don’t understand. We get so scared, and default to simplifying and minimizing another person’s struggle.

So we say “You fucking loser drunk” instead of “You deeply troubled girl who doesn’t know how to love herself.”

And obviously, it takes less time and energy to call someone a loser, or a fuck up, and wipe your hands of them. No one wants to take ownership of a shitty scenario so they just blame it away.

Parents do it too.

And egos don’t like compassion or empathy. They are horny for power and control, and there’s a ton of that in the judgment process. So generally, our ego-dominated society digs judgment, because it boosts people up, albeit under dirty, false pretenses.

What am I saying? I’m saying I wouldn’t change a thing. I got better on my own and I’m proud of that fact. It didn’t happen right away – not even after that night in jail – but it happened. And through the process of recovering and discovering some love for myself, I learned a lot of stuff, particularly about my family.

I learned it takes two to tango. That just because someone does something shitty doesn’t mean it warrants them a lifetime of judgment and ostracization. And I’m not talking about myself here, though of course, it is relatable to my scenario.

I’ve realized that the avoidance of any and all responsibility for one’s actions causes great imbalance. I’ve long held one parent responsible for all the issues in our family, sheltering the other from any ownership. When in fact it takes two to create a shitty situation.

To capitalize on the other’s mistakes and use it as fuel, in order to dismiss ownership of the unsightly, and proclaim “I didn’t do anything wrong; I am innocent” is to create an imbalance that causes much discontent — for all parties involved.

Blame is high-grade procrastination — it’s like the THC in weed. It keeps you from seeing your own contributions to the discontent you feel. For whatever reason, my journey has entailed blaming others and outside sources for all the shitty stuff that went on in my life. I was taught how to blame away my problems, and now I’m teaching myself how to release the need to do that.

Because I am hyper-cognizant of the fact that blame is a recipe for suffering.

Truth: if you find yourself in a shitty interaction, you had a hand in it. You are not innocent.

However, This does not mean you are a piece of shit and unworthy of love.

It means that to say you had no hand in the events surrounding your discontent is to avoid the lesson. And I don’t know about you, but I WANT TO KNOW ALL THE LESSONS.

I want to make sense of the struggle, and come out of it like a fucking phoenix rising from the ashes.

I think my hope for what I wanted my parents to be was so intense that I couldn’t see who they actually were: flawed humans. 

That’s not a slight, it just is what it is. Yes, they have talents and abilities and positive qualities — but they are human, and to be human is to be flawed.

Part of my journey has entailed realizing that they will not always be right, or kind, or compassionate, or loving.

They are capable of being jerks, just like me and every other person walking the planet.

And they weren’t and will not be capable of being my saviors. They won’t be able to fix me or teach me to appreciate myself; they won’t be the ones leading me towards enlightenment. Though through their dysfunction and perceived failures, I have learned to love who I am, and function at a higher state.

So even though they aren’t good with apologies; even though they judged me and gossiped about me in the past; even though they may not consider the repercussions of their comments and behaviors — each moment of disappointment I feel is actually an opportunity for me to just accept them, as is, for who they are.

Because when I do that, I open the door for me to accept myself. 

xo

A

Why I Lost My Virginity to a Jerk

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Me, circa mid-90s.

I really loathe the phrase, “losing my virginity.” It’s not a sock or a set of car keys for crying out loud.

But then I named this article that so…. lol. “Lost Innocence” sounded overly dramatic – I wasn’t feeling it. Note to self: come up with a better term for doing the deed for the first time down the road.

I was 16 years old when the whole lost virginity experience happened for me, and there was nothing loving or romantic about it. No pleasant synonyms can be attached to it. It was all about a girl wanting to impress a boy, who she thought liked her, coupled with a sense of owing. This feeling of owing a guy sex wasn’t a one-off for me, and sadly, continued for many years to follow.

But back to the first time.

There was this guy at school who was good-looking and popular, and one day he started paying attention to me. Picking me up from work, giving me rides home. Calling me. I just assumed he liked me as a friend. Reason being, in the 90s, when it was all about being a conventional beauty, I was the opposite.

I looked nothing like Kelly from Beverly Hills 90210, and the prominent bump on my nose placed me in the not-so-hot category. The amount of time I wasted dreaming of a nose job and wanting to look like someone else – it was so sad. Not until three years ago did I finally learn to accept what I looked like, bump on the nose and all.

Anyways, back in high school, when this dude started wanting to spend time with me, I was happy but also completely glib to his motivations. To me, there was no way he wanted to be anything but my friend. My non-existent self-esteem, coupled with the fact that he happened to be close friends with my good male friend wouldn’t allow the thought to enter my brain.

The fact that I referred to this male friend of mine as good is also quite sad because as I would soon find out, he was anything but. At the time and for years after what I’m about to share, I thought he was good to me when in reality, it was a deeply toxic and dysfunctional relationship based on verbal and emotional abuse that I took part in for many years.  (Check out a poem I wrote about it on my Instagram.)

Back to Mr. Popular-Good-Looking, who paid a lot of attention to me for a while which I thoroughly enjoyed. I mean, what 16-year-old doesn’t like attention from someone who’s desired by other girls? In my mind, everything was going great, up until the night when I let him get what he wanted.

He had been giving me rides for quite a while, so one night after work when he made his move on me, I let him do it.

I felt like I owed him. I lacked the self-worth to say no. My need to please him and be liked overrode my need to like myself, or be comfortable.

I don’t remember a lot of the details, and wouldn’t get into them if I could. But when it was over I recall a deep sense of relief that it was done, because I wasn’t into it – At all.

Fast forward to the next day. The phone rings, and it’s that friend of mine I told you about earlier. He’s furious. Calling me a whore. Ripping me to shreds. He couldn’t believe I did what I did. Which is comical, because all I did was lay there while his buddy took what he wanted and left.

And Mr. Popular-Good looking? He went radio silent. Wouldn’t return my calls. Dismissed my attempts to chat in real life. Whatever interest he had in me vanished, and I was left contemplating the fact that I was the one who had caused all the problems, with the added bonus that I was now a whore.

I think this is about the time that I really starting owning the title “piece of shit.”

I wouldn’t go around saying that’s what I was, but the way I talked about myself and treated myself said it all.

Being self-deprecating became part of my identity. It made a lot of people uncomfortable, but it was my way of trying to take the power back.

I don’t think this scenario was the all-encapsulating moment I lost myself. I think it was a series of traumatic scenarios that helped me learn to hate myself and become the untrusting, deeply pessimistic person I was up until a few years ago.

That moment, when the guy I gave my virginity to decided I was no longer relevant and rejected me like a used toy, and when my “friend” decided I was equal parts useless and disgusting – those were scarring moments for me.

Though I used to feel all sorts of shame and anger about those events, I now feel an innate sadness and compassion for the little girl who went through them. In looking at it as an outsider, I am better able to release the intense feelings I have about what happened all those years ago.

But I’ll never forget what happened, as it will forever be a part of my journey and who I am today. The memory reminds me that I am worth more than being disposed of and being treated like a replaceable, only-good-for-my-vagina toy.

I know now that no matter what happens, I don’t have to put up with being verbally abused, and I don’t have to own a title someone else tries to give me.

Today I see myself as a victim of a madly egocentric boy, whose self-worth was tied up in how long his list of sexual conquests could get (FYI: he learned that from somewhere.)

His desires came before caring about other people’s feelings, and I was manipulated into thinking that I meant something to him. And the thing is, he probably doesn’t even realize what he did.

I saw him quite a few years back at a bar, when I was still drinking (heavily I might add), and told him that he took my virginity. I think he had a shocked look on his face, but it’s a hazy memory at best. Regardless, I don’t think he’ll ever understand how deeply the choices he made shaped and changed my life.

I don’t think many people understand the power they hold in the choices and decision they make for that matter.

We are all so much more powerful than we think, which is why it’s so important to focus on being kind.

If we get right with ourselves, we are capable of making better decisions, ones that consider the effects of our behaviors and actions on not just ourselves but on the people around us.

I could never have known back then the magnitude of the act of losing my virginity. In fact, for years I dismissed it as insignificant. But today I understand that act, along with the events that followed, created major cracks in my foundation. Cracks that, along with all the others that preceded and proceeded it, would become part of an emotional undoing and rebuilding, 20 years later.

I am who I am, right now at this moment, because of my desperation to be loved by others. That desperation told me to let a jerk take my virginity many years ago.

But because I let that happen, I am the woman I am today – someone I am so incredibly proud of.

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Shame and a Midweek Salad

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“Must be nice” is one of those irksome phrases jealous people like to use.

I used to be friends with someone who would say it to me ono the regular. I’d go out for lunch  during the week, and she’d say, “Must be nice.”

She didn’t get to go out for lunch mid-week, so to her, it was a luxury that others shouldn’t be afforded.

She wanted me to feel bad. Over a salad.

I knew she wasn’t happy with her life. She didn’t like her job and felt stuck in her career. And she didn’t like seeing me with the freedom she so intensely desired.

Feeling shitty about something is totally legit and worth acknowledging. I’m all for allowing a moment of silence for the fact that things haven’t gone the way you want them to.

But being unhappy isn’t an open-ended ticket to shaming people for being happy with their lives. And you can’t expect other people to join your celebration of pity.

Plus: it doesn’t get you any closer to the life you desire and it severs the ability to connect with other people.

Connection = health and wellness. 

I was miserable for years. I had horrible jobs that made me feel an inch tall. Bosses who thought the only useful thing about me was my chest size. I was an addict, loathed my existence, and found it extremely painful to look at myself in the mirror.

I was minimized and belittled by my own beliefs for far too long.

But I have risen. And I have earned my mid-week salads, and then some. No amount of attempted shaming is going to make me feel bad about eating them.

There is nothing wrong with taking some time out to treat yourself.

And for the love of plant-based, no-gluten or dairy living, there’s nothing wrong with having a midweek meal with a loved one.

You might experience a person like I did, someone who will call you spoiled or entitled, or my least favourite of all the assumptions, “lucky.”

To you I say, don’t take ownership of the shame.

It’s not about luck or being spoiled or entitled – It’s about working hard at changing the beliefs that tell you you deserve to be unhappy. And if you’ve experienced anything similar to me, it’s about breaking into a million pieces, followed by years of rebuilding.

It’s the hardest work you will ever do. And damn it, you deserve the right to have a mid-week salad afterwards.

Anytime you want for that matter (Well, as often as the budget allows for it.)

Shame can only exist if you allow it to. People can fling it your way, but it only sticks if you choose to believe it.

None of us are owed shitty feelings. Even if my life had been a series of fortunate events from the get go I wouldn’t deserve to feel bad about it. I deserve the right to feel good, case closed. And so do you.

Moral of the story: Don’t play along with people who are into using shame tactics.

Apparently that scene still rattles me. So thanks for listening to my venting/lesson-learning session. 😳

Now, I wish everyone prosperity and abundance and love. Even the shamers – They are the ones that need the well wishes the most.

xo

A

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