Becoming aware of your triggers and keeping NC!

So many posts today have me thinking about my NC. About the triggers I have had that send me reeling.

This isn't just about the disordered one. The triggers and the NC is about me.

I had to ask myself why I'm struggling with his phone calls within the last two/four weeks, that have abruptly stopped. My lack of response in answering the phone, as well as the abrupt stop of the calls is his SILENT TREATMENT, punishing my lack of response. When you think about how ridiculous it is, well, it's also really predictable. Never again will I say that he won't try to do something STOOOOOPID and unpredictable in playing these kinds of games. He played them during our entire relationshit, why would he stop NOW? I was a poison container investment for ten years and took all of his abusive shit. ALL OF IT. Well, no more of that....

So why did I feel so upset about it all? Well, not only is it intrusive to me, and anger provoking, it's also reminding me of loss. The loss of the fantasy. The dream. I took that to some depth today too. What is creating this crazy anxiety about wanting to hear from him, but not wanting too?

It's not about him. It's about feeling lonely. It's about being almost 48 years old and asking what I've done with my life except birth babies and sit in shitty relationshits with no career, no job skills. I've done NOTHING with my life, that furthered my personal growth, including employment. Yes, I've been going to school FOREVER and I'm almost done now. But I'm scared. Who the hell is going to hire a 48 year old woman whose just graduated from college and has no experience? I'm mourning, as well a bigger dream that has come and gone. I will never own a home. I will never have the happy family, husband, wife scenario, enjoying children and grandchildren. My dreams were pretty simple really, ones I never had as a child. I wanted what I never had, but was ill equipped with the tools of a healthy upbringing to make it happen. Instead what I've had is thirty years of abuse and PD's. No different from childhood.

I feel ugly, although I'm not. I feel frightened that I'm not intelligent enough to go out into the world and put into practice what I'm doing at school. I'm afraid of people now too. Not people I know, just fear authority figures in general, psychopaths. I don't know how I will handle that in the event, particularly if it involves my employment. My self esteem has really taken a nose dive after all of this.

I'm taking steps to move forward, but it's painfully slow. I'm seeing my vulnerabilities, and that's painful too. I'm owning how I got into these relationshits. I'm afraid to own the bad stuff of me. I'm not sure where the good stuff of me and the bad stuff of me begin and end, particularly with this last relationship.

I'm mourning the wasted years. Loving a man dearly only to realize that he wasn't at all what i believed him to be. He presented a fantasy to me of his home life, which only added to the confusion. One minute it was great and I couldn't figure out why he was with me, and the next it was an abusive hellhole where his wife was doing this or that and "hassling" him as he would say...

I wanted the fantasy he created when he said it was good. The evil was in the intent to let me know I would never have it. They truly do...know what you want, and they know it comes from a deep place. He reached into my spirit and my heart and pulled out my childhood dream and beat the shit out of it, nearly destroying me with it.

But I'm not destroyed. My dream has to change now. I'm not sure what it is going to be anymore. I have never felt so frightened with so much uncertainty. For the first time in my life, I'm alone. REALLY alone. No one can save me but me. I don't know how to do that, except just doing what I'm doing...moving slowly, making decisions..about new things and grieving the dream and now coming face to face with the darkness that is me too. It's the most painful, frightening part.

I wonder if all of this is part of the process....