There is this fine line I have found between feeling like someone isn’t understanding or validating your feelings and having a difference of opinion or sharing their perspective of the situation with you. I can only assume that C-PTSD and anxiety are my reasons that I tend to lean towards the side of feeling invalidated and misunderstood. I’m not really sure. It will most likely be a question I will have to ask myself after my reactions to certain situations. Unfortunately, there are times that I react first and continue reacting, and ask the question well after I’ve given an awful triggered reaction Regardless of when I ask, it’s still good to know so I can try to reevaluate my outlook on whatever the situation was.
I have been pretty bad about asking for or even accepting help from others. I don’t like asking because I feel like I’m bothering someone and if they say no…it irritates me even though it shouldn’t. My “live, laugh, love” leader (aka my therapist) tells me that I don’t accept help because when I do I feel out of control. I like to have control of the situation. If I do it I know it’s getting done and getting done the way I would do it. My rules, my playbook. They also said I don’t like accepting help because it allows me to play the victim and use my “busy and stretched too thin” persona as an advantage in other areas. I can use it as a reason I’m in a bad mood, as a way to get out of something else or avoid dealing with something else, or I can simply just feel the need to have attention that comes with being the mom who does everything all by herself and doesn’t need anyone’s help. Then after I’ve decided I’m going to do it myself, I decide to b!tch about how the other person should have forced me to accept the help. Phew! That was a truth bomb I didn’t know was coming. That bomb exploded my way of life. When the next day came around, I immediately reached out to the PPP (aka my partner in crime & life) and asked for help. I also took it. I was proud of my little step towards becoming more comfortable asking for help from those around me.
Last week happened and I fell into this funk. I was understandably (or I thought) upset and working through the separation anxiety from 2 and the complete loss of control. When I was forced to seek help and admit her to a long term facility to help deal with her mental illness. That happened Thursday by Sunday I was not peddled the perky positivity from my PPP as I have grown accustomed to. He was throwing another truth bomb in my lap and forcing me to deal with the explosive aftermath. I was doing exactly the opposite of what 2 asked of me before she left for her long hospital admission -“momma, no crying, stay positive, you can’t let me being gone be your negative everyday. 1 and 3 need you to stay strong. I need you to stay strong.” He quite bluntly told me “Like my mom always said: Sitting on that pity potty isn’t getting you nothing besides a ring around your a$$!” I was livid! How dare him! You are going to look at me and all I have been through these last few weeks and tell me basically to “suck it up buttercup” and move on and be happy? That got a big f-you salute and a lot of name calling about him being an extremely insensitive a$$hole and being a d!ck who couldn’t possibly understand what I was going through. I felt he was completely invalidating my pain and not allowing me to work through my feelings. I was RIGHT! HE was WRONG. I believed it to be true and I was ready to fall on that sword and die because I knew I was that right. I fought him for hours and it didn’t get better. The name calling ceased and my anger simmered down, but I was so hurt. This man who has always been right there picking me up if I fell and had stood by me through all the other extreme ups and downs over the past year was all of a sudden saying these mean and cruel things about pity parties, losing my fight, and making it about me. Me! Me? I don’t throw pity parties, I don’t sulk, I don’t give up, and these past six weeks haven’t been close to being all about me!
The more I thought about it the more upset I became. I was shocked. How did the man I love and who had loved me so well without ever giving up on me all of sudden be this hurtful. We’ve fought and I’ve gotten my feelings hurt before, but this fight shook me. It reminded me of my past. It hurt in that deep, raw, cutting way and it made me doubt everything he had ever said to me that was positive. How could he say he loved me one minute and make me feel awful for feeling awful the next? How could one day I be the best person and most amazing woman he had ever known and the next I was a selfish, sulking, pity party throwing woman who he didn’t recognize as the woman he loved. I couldn’t make both things exist so I chose to see and even began to agree with the latter. I began to question if I even should continue our relationship. Should I let my C-PTSD win and the anxiety ravage my mind as I had let it done thousands of times before. Was I even healthy enough to have a relationship? Am I toxic? Could it be possible that I was the narcissist in my past relationships? I didn’t have the answers, and now I didn’t know if I even wanted them. I was scared that I had always been the bad guy, but always just blamed the other party because that’s what toxic and narcissistic people would do. Maybe I would never be capable of being truly happy. I was destined to be a negative, cynical and insecure person. I wasn’t sure how to proceed.I just didn’t think I was going to ever see his side of this argument. I wanted to, but by the time I had reached the point of genuinely seeking to understand the why behind the motive he had shut down and it was only intensifying my feelings of failure and of not meeting the expectations of my family. I slept and prayed to find a way to resolve it.
“Then the bomb exploded and it blew up how I had been interpreting that writing on the wall.”
“The Writing on the Walls and the Truth Bombs That Make Them Fall” My Threefold- M
I woke the next day and was still completely unsettled. I felt insecure in every possible way. I was anxious about needing to return to work because even though I knew my boss was understanding and compassionate the PPP had made it seem like I had missed so much that I was in jeopardy of losing the only place I felt completely confident in every aspect. I was anxious about our relationship and still pretty hurt. I found myself still so incredibly upset. Didn’t he see the tired? Didn’t he realize how much pain I was in. He apologized multiple times for how he approached the situation and I apologized for name-calling, pushing away, and being completely unwilling to try and see things from his side of the situation. However, even with my apologies I was unable to reach a solution to solve any of it and desperately felt I needed to prove I was right that I wasn’t a selfish, sulking, pity party throwing baby that had given up all hope. I got stuck in the bad and stuck in my intense need to be right and truly have him validate that feeling without sarcasm or passive aggressive dismissive repetition of the same false narrative and apology. I wanted a genuine apology with remorse and love. I spent that day wondering if I had ignored the writing on the wall that we moved too fast, that he was going to be dismissive of my feelings and my bad days, that maybe we weren’t meant to be together like I had originally thought. I felt like the apology he gave was simply because he didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want to deal with it. That he wasn’t actually sorry and didn’t see any of the things he did that hurt me. As I sat, I was so negative, I was oozing it. I was so exhausted in every single way exhausted. I was so upset. I was so hurt. I was so missing my 2. I just felt like I didn’t have anything good going on at the moment to be positive about. I just wanted to cry and sleep and shut away the world. Then the bomb exploded and it blew up how I had been interpreting that writing on the wall.
As I was wallowing and sinking further into my negative, irrational and catastrophic thoughts, it hit me like the wall that all the writing was on had just fallen on top of me. He was right. I was wrong. Did I just want to type those words? No! This is a real talk moment so I got to speak the truth. Some of you may be calling home the exact same things I did that night, but hear me out, please. Yes, I absolutely had a reason to be upset and was obviously going to have up’s and down’s during the adjustment and the chaos and the exhaustion. I was definitely deserving of allowances and time to come to terms that 2 was going to be away for a long while. I probably will be on an emotional rollercoaster for the duration. The difference in opinion and perspective came in where he saw me living in the bad. If you have read my previous blog posts you would know that the PPP (Perky Positivity Peddler) was known for moving past the negativity and looking for the “silver linings” as he so often refers to them. It’s one of the many reasons I love him so much. He can always flip the situation. Even our fights always end with a reminder that “this situation is only teaching us how we can be better for one another, we are meant to be this is just a speed bump.” I may have been hurt and angry, but one bad night against a forever of happiness was worth it. I decided I had to choose to be happy as he had told me and quit looking for the bad. I needed to be grateful for the good. I needed to put in the effort to be more positive and go back towards my positivity journey even if it got off course. He was right. I was stuck in the bad. I was focused on how I felt not on how anyone else felt, not 1, not 3, not him, not BK, not my family, friends or coworkers. It had started from a general place of worry, pain and sadness for 2’s extended time away, but had evolved into a self centered expression of my own feelings and how this was affecting me, and only me. I was in fact having a selfish sulking pity party. This realization changed my trajectory the remainder of the week.
I know myself enough to know that I can easily kill all of my positivity with my anxiety. I know that my overthinking will allow me to quit and that I’m not getting what I want out a working on a certain thing any longer, especially if it gets difficult or feels like I may fail. I’m quick to start and quickly quit doing anything that inconveniences me, makes me uncomfortable or doesn’t have the desired effect. I know I’m capable, but I can also admit I get lazy, bored, and unmotivated if I feel it’s not working out or producing any results. I fight as long as I can see what I will gain from my efforts. If I can’t envision it or lose focus I will sabotage myself so that I have a reason to quit. Yet another truth bomb. I’m very aware that I’m impatient and that I want what I want when I want it.
There is honestly nothing I love more than a challenge and someone thinking or telling me that I can’t do something, because then I have an intense motivation to prevail. I’m just competitive even if ultimately my competition is myself. I’m just built with a hardcore desire to show my capabilities and can honestly admit I love pushing myself to be better than others at whatever I’m going. Not because I’m stuck up or snobby or holier than thou. It’s because I want to succeed. I like the feeling of being good at things. The PPP knows these things so I’m sure a large part of his “you’re not fighting” approach was to spark that fire in me, not to intentionally or maliciously hurt me. In that moment, I realized he knew me, he knew that I hadn’t been buying any of that positivity peddling, so instead he hit me with truth bombs that forced me to re-evaluate my perspective. He knew all along that sometimes the truth hurts, but he also knew if he could just get me to look at what my threefold was seeing, and face myself in the mirror of truth that would change my direction and reignite the fire I had to be the best version of myself. And yet again he was right.
