Imagine, if you will, getting stabbed in the back. Physically. And let's just say this attacker missed all your vital organs, but it was still a pretty hefty gash. So you go to the hospital to get stitches. The doctor threads the needle and starts poking little holes in your skin in order to help the larger hole grow together. Which is weird when you think about it, right? But it works. Which is weirder.
*Extended Metaphor Ahead*
Bear with me. It'll pay off.
You'll remember from my first post--and if you didn't read it, I'm about to explain it anyway--that I was married a year ago. I got married at 20, and I was married from March 2012 to March 2013. My marriage was what most people might call toxic. Think Chernobyl, but with people. My former husband was abusive in two or three different ways, and even more than that, we just weren't good for each other. Pointing fingers has never been a game that I like to play, so I'll just say that there were things that both of us could have been better at.
Long story short, four days before our first anniversary, my ex asked me to vacate the apartment (so to speak), or he would. So I obliged. And things just sort of unraveled from there. Before I knew it, I was living back at my parents' house, right where I'd started physically, but not mentally. Mentally I had some pretty serious wounds, not to mention the fact that I was quite literally in a state of shock. I have virtually no memory of the first 24 hours of the day I came back to my parents' house. In fact, I have virtually no memories of the entire year I was married: just the occasional glimmer that surfaces from the murky depths of that particular memory bank.
Don't get me wrong: I'm glad I'm no longer in that relationship. I don't particularly want to remember the year I was married. My point is: I don't have the memories, but I have the pain of what happened. Because even though that relationship was toxic and I'm glad I'm not in it, at the time I wanted it to work out and I was brokenhearted that it was failing. I felt like I was failing. I felt like the abuse and vitriol that came out of him towards me was entirely my fault, and I was ashamed that I wasn't good enough to make it stop.
So there I was, just 21, backstabbed. Metaphorically. And just like with physical healing, mental healing is a series of lesser wounds--the poke of a needle to help the jagged edges of my mental and emotional state grow back together. Going to therapy. Poke. Getting a diagnosis of PTSD. Poke. Seeing my ex at school. Poke. Getting a lawyer. Poke. Going forward with the annulment. Poke. Getting a sealing cancellation. Poke. Falling out of love. Poke. Going on dates. Poke.
I mean, the scars from psychological trauma are no less real than physical scars, and they're even more dangerous because you can't see them and therefore you don't know how the healing is progressing. I still have about five different irrational fears from being married that I haven't fully been able to shake--fear of intimacy, commitment, letting people in--all the garden variety stuff you'd expect, but fed some sort of plant enhancer until they resemble the mutant plant from the Little Shop of Horrors.
So, a year to the day I was asked to leave, I heard that my ex got engaged. Which I had been expecting. What I hadn't been expecting was for him to get in touch. He asked me about the progress of the sealing cancellation, and at the time I hadn't heard, which I told him. I thought that was the last of it.
About a week later, starting on Easter, I started getting calls from him. I ignored most of them--talking to him still does regrettable things to my head--asking me for information that I thought he would have been able to get from his bishop. Finally, his bishop contacted me and told me that in order for my ex to get remarried in the temple, I had to write him a letter granting him permission.
Imagine that a few of your stitches get busted and you have to go back in to get them fixed. Now you have to start all over again; avoiding getting it wet, not doing any jumping jacks, trying not to rely on ibuprofen but damn, it hurts.
Asking me to do that was very nearly a coup de grace. I was mentally bleeding--at the engagement, at the injustice of having to write a letter granting him permission, at the indignity of now having to go panhandling through the swamp of memories. My feelings for my ex had long since gone the way of the dodo, but anyone who's been in a relationship with a messy ending can tell you that doesn't make things any less painful.
I wrote the letter. Poke. I kept it short and respectful, and I hope that's the last I hear of it--which, incidentally, I said in the letter. I don't wish him any ill, but his life and his choices are no longer my business. And if I want to heal with minimal damage, his life can't touch mine in any way any more.
As strange as it sounds, I'm proud of myself. I don't think I'm brave, but I'm proud of the fact that I was able to stand up for myself. I think that's a pretty good sign, don't you?
Signing off for now--life's calling.
You are brave and I'm proud of you too.
ReplyDelete