Hello, everyone,
This is a fantastic website, and the message forum seems great. I am so glad to have stumbled upon you all this evening.
About 18 months ago I finally broke the thick sheet of ice around my heart and had a spiritual awakening. I was about to turn 30, and had spent the previous 15 or so years solidly living in separateness from god, and being angry, resentful, and hateful. I spent all my time dwelling on my difficult childhood in an alcoholic home, taking it out on others, hating my parents for hurting me, and with my pattern of destructive relationships, boo-hooing to each new abusive partner about the previous abusive partners. I secured myself a marriage with a perfectly miserable, alcoholic, anti-religious narcissist (with the baggage to justify it). I was miserable, and loved being miserable and so did he.
Until I became a mother. Right after my second child was born (I have two girls 14 months apart) I began to reassess my feelings about spirituality and began to flow with a positive energy, recognizing and remembering something undeniable from deep within. I began to develop it, cultivate that loving side of myself. My husband slowly began to respond to it positively (mixed in with the occassional resentful comment).
It wasn't long after that I had a near fatal car accident with my two babies in the car (ages 5 mos and 19 mos at the time). I was forced off the road by someone passing in my oncoming lane and, to avoid a head on collision at 65 mph, I veered off to the right, and somersaulted my chevy prism about 50 feet down the side of a steep hill. We flipped three times, landed upright against a tree, narrowly missing landing upside down in a creek. We came out of it shaken but seemingly unscathed, and went on with our lives. I realized I wanted to make a change in my life so I did some soul searching and decided to pursue a PhD in my field and got accepted with a full scholarship. I start in 4 weeks.
Again, the accident was 18 months ago. About two months ago, my husband and I were on the brink of divorce. I was discovering the concepts of narcissism and seeing them in my husband (and his mother!) and losing hope for our future together. Among other things, he doesn't help out enough with the kids, the bills, or our home. I do everything by myself, full time career, kids, housekeeping, etc. He's been argumentative and overly assertive, hateful in response to my pleas for emotional and financial support. I stayed in the women's shelter a couple nights. I dug up an old psych eval done on my husband for custody of my stepson and it all but labels him as a nar., using all the right terminology and descriptions without actually calling him out. He had dramatically reduced his drinking 6 months ago and his N and ADD behaviors, and my frustrated reactions, were reaching an intolerable maximum.
Then I took a nasty fall down the steps. I went to have x-rays and discovered I still have residual injuries from the car accident, a dislocated upper rib (in my chest), spinal degeneration in my neck from untreated whiplash, compacted vertebrae in the base of my neck, a twisted pelvis, and a fractured bone in my foot!!! All of this from the accident and the fall just aggravated it.
I've been walking around for a year and a half with severe musculo-skeletal injuries and pain and didn't even pay attention to it. I was too busy taking care of everyone else. Now that I am being treated and recieving physical therapy, I am SOO much more aware of the pain and how handicapping it is, as these kinks in my body are getting worked out. I just kept ignoring it for so long because of all the responsibility resting on my shoulders and I couldn't let my kids down.
It's like the stiffness of not only a year and a half, but the stiffness of 30 years is getting purged out of me. Finally experiencing this pain after denying it for so long is like an extremely painful yet purifying cleansing, a "letting go". It's like, WHY didn't I pay attention to what my body was telling me all this time? It stimulates deep emotionality to do something to take care of myself. I never allowed myself to do that, just push, push,
pushed myself til I could go no more. Acknowledging this has left me incapacitated, but i know I will get through it, like a virus, it has to run its course.
I have decided not to decide anything about my marriage for now. With these developments in my health my husband has rushed to my side to support and assist me. It's too bad this only happens in a time of crisis. Either way, I need that so much right now. All I can think about is getting better, and releasing this physical pain. It feels good to have someone take care of me.
Anyway, thanks for reading my introduction, nice to meet all of you, hope to keep gaining insights here.
Prosperity
