Six Months

I'm finding it a little hard to believe that my daughter and I moved to our new home 6 months ago!  In those 6 months, I've found employment, dreaded my way through plenty of legal crap, bought my first car, enrolled my daughter in school and involved her and myself in many other resources throughout the community.  I feel like she and I have both found this time to be emotionally healing.

I've always been the brush-the-dirt-off-my-knees-and-start-fresh kind of girl, and I've struggled a lot in recent weeks with the realization that it is going to take me a lot longer to heal than I expected.  I wanted to believe I could pack a bag, hop a plane, and start over in a new state like nothing ever really happened.  In the first couple months here, I felt like I was coming so far that I would be over "it" in no time.  I certainly made a ton of progress when I first arrived, but I still have so long to go before I'm feeling like a whole person.  Maybe I will never feel whole again, but I have to try.

It seems like every hurdle I pass, I will find a new hurdle just ahead of the last.  At first, it was simply the enormous and impossible hurdle of simply getting away.  It took heaps of help to manage that.  I thought I would be able to get out with just my parents' help, but it led to a list of people that included about 6 lawyers, 10-15 social workers, 2 judges, a safe house, several weeks in 2 support groups and one key person who inspired me to stand up for myself to begin with.

I still don't understand how I became so entangled in my past life.  I know why it happened, and I know who is responsible for what, but I'm not sure I will ever understand myself enough to know why I let it go on for so long or why I was too weak to stand up for myself until others empowered me.  Where before most of my thoughts stuck to fear and attempts to overcome my anxiety, terror and flashbacks, recently my thoughts seem to return to a new place : How do I achieve the happy medium between standing up for myself and being a little over-zealous, getting myself into more, new predicaments.

After just shy of 10 years spent being controlled, manipulated, isolated and tortured, I am so adamant about not falling into the same trap twice.  That's great; I need to feel empowered to be able to protect myself and heal, but I think recently I am crossing the line between normal and over-the-top.  I got myself in a bit of trouble at work a few nights ago because I "kirked out" on someone I work with because he was crossing the boundaries I've set up in an effort to protect myself from being walked all over.  Also, lately in my personal life, I've been over-protective of myself to the point that it's interfered with my relationship with J-E.  He's the last person I should be afraid to let my guard down around, and I feel pretty rotten for lashing out at him.  He doesn't deserve to be bombarded with every emotional state I cross through as I try to navigate my way through the emotional torment I've been living in since my ex began abusing me.  I feel like such a volatile little entity these days, learning for the first time how to be my own person and protect myself from the dangers of this big, wide world.

Every day, I struggle to find the happy medium between protecting myself from all the bad people in this world, and letting in the few good ones I come across in life.  I lost my faith in the idea that everyone is inherently good.  I am so convinced, after everything my own husband put me through, that most people are just malicious souls who will tear you apart and take you for everything you've got if you let down your guard.  It's not the outlook I wish to have on life, but it's the outlook I have to have in order to protect myself, at least while I try to heal and find myself in all the debris of my past life.