I’m a little surprised at how much of a stumbling block my little laptop “unidentified network” malfunction is for me. I keep thinking that I should reinstall Windows, but the fact that I’m not the most computer savvy is making me pause. Also, we just had Christmas, and that’s a good excuse to not try anything new.
I have a desktop computer that works fine, but something about sitting at a desk is more than I want to bother with.
So, essentially, I haven’t been blogging because I simply couldn’t be bothered to get out of my recliner.
Writing wise, I’ve decided not to use anything that I’ve written for Runemaster over the past two months, and instead I will rewrite it from Malachi’s perspective. It was too slow paced and awkward — too reflective of a life turned upside down and a mind turned inside out. It will be easier for me to write in the steady voice of the mentor.
Malachi isn’t just any old character. He’s existed for 20 years now and has had countless adventures written about him. He might just be the source of wisdom that I need.
It’s hard to keep momentum going with joint custody. The routines between days with and without the kids are so different that I haven’t yet found a good rhythm. I am sleeping much better than I have in years though, so it’s a matter of time.
I finally figured out how to change my HVAC filter; better late than never? I suppose that I won’t tell you how much time I spent staring at the furnace, trying to will it into giving up its secrets… in my defense, I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was looking for until I finally found it. And it was camouflaged. Then had an old water heater placed in front of it. It was not easy. 😅
I think that I can handle independence well enough.
Over the weekend, the kids and I watched K-Pop Demon Hunters at grandma’s house. All of the sudden at the end of the movie, this song began (massive spoiler alert, btw):
“My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like.”
For years I was a liar.
Before y’all gasp and clutch at your hearts with betrayal, I told the most lies to myself. Lies like, “This is normal”, “I don’t need more”, and “I’m fine”.
I repeated the lies that he told me, even when they didn’t feel right. Lies that protected his image, even when they cost me my happiness.
But the truth is …
I was always terrified of how he’d punish me if I outshined him. He knew how to criticize and nitpick. He knew how to start arguments when I needed to be at my top game. He knew how to casually drop, “You do have a big nose,” in the moments when I was feeling vulnerable. And I knew it. It didn’t matter that he’d say that he didn’t feel threatened by my success, because underneath the words in the spaces where real life clashed against dreams, I felt sabotaged. Not supported.
Deep inside I knew that he’d find a way to make me miserable if I was successful, which is why I never tried to push beyond my tiny bubble. I didn’t want to see what was behind that door.
I felt it when The Scion Suit was mildly popular on Reddit — a story that I began entirely on my own while he had been at work, and it gained recognition without his stamp of approval. Behind the scenes, he grew pushier about where he wanted the story to go, to the point where he wrote the ending himself. I edited it as heavily as I dared to, but I always hated it. I thought it was nauseatingly pretentious and not remotely on-brand for me. I even slipped in how much I hated the scene when I added the sentence, “She hated it when people gave roundabout answers to direct questions”. Yup, that was me commenting on the entire scene through the character, hur hur.
I broke into a million pieces, and I can’t go back But now I’m seeing all the beauty in the broken glass The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like
K-Pop Demon Hunters: Come for the music, laughs, and popcorn, stay for the life changing affirmations.
Apparently.
I’ve always felt a light inside of me, and I’ve always wanted to share it with others. So, this is me, giving it my all. No more lies. No more fear. No more holding back. I want the Truth in me to reach the Truth in you, and we’ll both find our voices.
I’m also going to include this song, because it’s just plain fun to dance to:
I want to try, so that I don’t inadvertently paint the picture that you just move on and live ever after. So, how do I explain how the demands and criticisms pushed me well past the point of discomfort, and landed me in crisis counseling? How does one describe the injuries of abuse that never left any bruises?
Psychological sadism.
I once sat hidden in a car and tearfully told a complete stranger, “I’ve realized that I will never be broken enough.” There was no end goal. No stopping point. It was only ever going to get worse. I couldn’t eat or sleep, and I was fading away. My body couldn’t carry on in that situation.
I only got out because people helped me.
I didn’t put the TV in the front room with the big window of my new place. It feels too exposed and unsafe. I hate how frequently the motion sensor of my doorbell camera goes off, because I don’t like how it makes me feel. I like feeling hidden when I’m at home.
Sometimes I just want to sit and binge watch random shows while doing nothing. Sometimes I don’t have the energy to get up or think. Sometimes ordinary tasks feel like a big accomplishment.
As I’ve been healing, I’ve been realizing how bad it was, and that hurts in a totally different sort of way.
I was so stressed out that I was vomiting and I ended up losing 20lbs in two months. I also spent a month in crisis counseling.
I also learned how to reach out and open up, to tell the people around me about what was going on. I discovered that people are a lot more supportive than I expected … and that the truth of my situation was a lot more visible than I had been led to believe.
And now here I am, in a better place. Quite literally, too. I have a great view of the sunset from my new home, and I’m in walking distance of nature — I like to take my dog out and have small chats with strangers.
I also still have anxiety when my doorbell sensor goes off. The occasional bad dream. Triggers that lead to quiet meltdowns … in a nutshell, PTSD.
Not exactly the life I dreamed of. I keep going round and round in my head, asking, “Can one person really cause this much damage?” It seems so unbelievable, that a person can hurt someone this much without it being a crime. Yet it happened. I know it every time I step on the scale and see how much weight I have yet to gain back.
The far more important question now is, “Where do I go from here?”
I often wonder if my fantasy life — the way I imagine myself getting up and spending the days if everything was perfect — is achievable or not. I have a clean house now, with white walls. Day-to-day life is running more smoothly than it has in a long, long time, and my thoughts are feeling more alive than they have in years. So maybe, just maybe, I can achieve my dreams.
I’m definitely not getting bombarded with criticism and demands the way I was not too long ago.
Let’s work on baby steps.
I want to be a writer. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. So let’s write. Casual. Small. No pressure sort of writing. Free writes. Story snippets. Totally random stuff that has nothing to do with anything.
Then one day, I’ll pick my bigger projects back up and start self-publishing novels again.
You ready?
I’m not sure if I am.
But I can’t spend my life always waiting for the next crisis to hit. I want to take charge and make my dreams come true.
I have lots of moments throughout the day when I’m overcome with the surreal thought of, “How is this my life?”
I’m not sure how much I should publicly share. Parts of it make me think of the line, “Lawyers clean up all details / since daddy had to lie” from the song End of Innocence by Don Henley, and the title itself feels apt enough.
There are days when it’s easier to lose myself in a list of things that have to be done, and not think about the big picture of what I’m doing. My heart stops every time the doorbell rings, and I wish that this wasn’t my reality.
Events are traveling through the neighborhood grapevine faster than I would have ever expected, but by now I have surrendered my pride and laid everything bare. People are more supportive than I anticipated, and I like how they periodically check in with me. I don’t really care if it’s morbid curiosity or genuine concern, as long as I have people surrounding me through all this.
I still feel hopelessly lost. I keep wondering when that feeling will fade, when something will come together and start to feel solid, but instead everything under my feet keeps crumbling.
And I don’t even know how much I should share, because it’s moved into the legal sphere now.
For all my life, I heard divorce talked about like it was an ending. In reality, it’s a beginning. Sometimes people take it as permission to punish you, to erase you, to make your life as miserable as they can. After all, why should they care? They’ve already moved on to their new partner, and you’re just a loose end and a failure. An object that no longer serves a purpose.
But I’m not.
I will not be erased. I will not surrender my life just because someone thinks that my existence is inconvenient now.
And the legal sphere is where I still have rights and a voice — where my story still matters.
So as much as I wish it had never been pushed this far, as unreal as it feels to be going through these events, I will not surrender. Not with everything that’s at stake.
I’ve been channeling my inner Paula Deen and indulging in Southern comfort foods. Banana pudding and lemon curd pudding? Yes please! Chocolate popcorn, potato salad, beer can chicken (though I used apple juice instead) … It’s feels really good to throw off all concerns about sugar and fat and just indulge in the fuel of life.
Besides, I was never the one who cared about reading ingredient labels anyway.
The weather is nice and I’ve been getting out a fair bit, going on nature walks and identifying bird song using a handy app I downloaded. I like how I have a better understanding of the world around me, not to mention the excitement of hearing a bird that’s marked as “uncommon” or “rare.” My kids and I also keep our eyes out for fish in the river, any other critters that we can spot, and plants that are interesting … I enjoy these excursions quite a bit.
I patched a hole in the back tire of my daughter’s bike. I haven’t done this sort of thing since I was a kid, so it was satisfying when I got the bicycle put back together and it worked … especially with getting the chain back onto the gears, since that was rather tricky for me. I like discovering this inner reserve of handiness that’s gone untapped over all these years, and it’s really boosting my confidence. It’s not that I couldn’t fix things, but rather that I was never allowed to before.
Occasionally, after all of these busy days of outings and improvements, I have days when I feel completely unmotivated to do anything. I’m doing my best to frame these as days of rest, and not judge myself by their existence. I’m rebuilding a lot right now, and it would be unfair to expect myself to keep doing so much every single day.
It is surprisingly hard to write about myself. The internet is full of people who go on and on about the ordinary things that they do, while here I am struggling with summarizing my weekly activities. I don’t believe that I have the “it” factor, so I’m not going to gain any attention through journal entries, but this is something that I want to do for myself. I grew up in a shadow, then married into a different shadow, and now I want to feel like I have the right to shine with my own light. No permission required.
You know perfectly well the bravado with which they present themselves to the world — it was the first thing that you saw about them, and probably what drew you to them in the first place. But as time passed by, you began to sense that fragility inside of them. The bragging and exaggerations began to seem more and more like a coping mechanism, to hide how easily they could break inside. There was so much about ordinary life that they couldn’t handle.
And you never wanted to break anyone.
So you helped to maintain their public image. After all, most people were complete strangers that you were likely to never see again, so it would be mean-spirited to demean someone you cared about over an exaggeration. You picked up the slack at home, taking on all the chores and obligations, while they seemed to spend so much time socializing and engaging in leisurely activities. Sometimes you resented them, but their fragility kept you from acting on it; you were the stronger one.
You can’t lash out at someone who’s so weak and vulnerable.
So you endure.
And the more you know them, the more childish they seem. Instead of equal partners, you’re the parent, constantly cleaning their messes and boosting their self-esteem. They even cry out, “Look at me!” and you reply, “Wow, good job!” Only you don’t feel it inside, because you know that they aren’t a child. They aren’t growing, and they won’t ever become anything more than what they are. They don’t take your words of encouragement as motivation to improve — they insist that they’ve reached perfection already. You tell them “good job” because it would break them if you didn’t.
You aren’t a mean person.
They never look at you. They never tell you “good job.” You work hard, you miss sleep, you devote every moment to trying to build them up, and they never seem to notice. On the other hand, they have huge reactions for every moment when you slip — and they extract every last ounce out of you without any forgiveness or leniency. You feel ignored and scrutinized at the same time. You have to be everything in your loneliness, and sometimes you wish that you were a literal robot free from your own emotions. It would be easier if you didn’t feel so much.
But you can’t leave, because they’re so fragile. You imagine them sitting in garbage and mold, wasting away without someone there to care for them. Who else would put up with this person once they learn the truth about them? You aren’t heartless.
You feel like a bad person for thinking that way.
Until the day when they tell you that they’re bored of you. They tell you that you held them back and wasted their life. They tell you that you abused them by being a separate person from them — but inside you know how much of yourself you lost to them. You know how much you sacrificed in trying to protect them from their own fragility.
It hurts. Deeply.
You then learn how many manipulative games they had been playing to keep you off balance. That time when it took them months to make you a copy of the house key, claiming that they kept forgetting because they were busy? Or when they went through that phase of talking in a quiet voice that was difficult to hear, only to insist that they were speaking normally? You begin to wonder if they were secretly hiding dishes then returning them to the drawers and cupboards, just to make you feel like you were losing it when you could never find what you needed. Maybe there was more truth to those paranoid moments of doubt than you realized at the time.
They’ve thrown you away, and you’re left wondering who you really are. You don’t know what’s real anymore, and you’re scared to think anything good about yourself. You feel drained and damaged. You don’t know what you want out of the future.
You learn that it’s called “narcissistic abuse,” and that there are a lot of other people out there who have gone through the same thing. For the first time in a long time, you no longer feel alone.
I find it encouraging that my fiction writing is still performing the best in my blog statistics.
I’ve been working on overcoming the memory of that smug voice telling me that my writing ideas were cliched and immature. Despite that proclamation, I continued writing my ideas. Alice and the Warden? Me. The Scion Suit? My interpretation of a writing prompt. The Black Magus? Yup, that was me. I enjoyed writing my ideas immensely, and others have enjoyed reading them as well, so it doesn’t matter if they were “cliched” or “immature” — it isn’t about being the best of the best, it’s about personal satisfaction and having fun.
It wasn’t really my ideas that were the problem. Rather, it was the seed planted in my brain that made me feel like I had to seek a stamp of approval before I could write them. That deep insecurity and fear I always felt when I started a story that hadn’t been given the “green light” by someone else.
Yet that person who had propped himself up as the Gatekeeper of Quality left.
It might be difficult to understand if you haven’t been through this, but when someone deliberately inflicts an emotional wound so that they can provide the “cure,” that wound is still there after they leave. Real healing takes time and is very difficult, especially when you feel the withdrawal from the false cures they fed you. It hurts severely to acknowledge that they weren’t trying to help you improve, but instead deliberately keeping you dependent.
Despite knowing better on a cognitive level, it’s been terrifying to write without that stamp of approval.
I’ve switched back to writing with a pen in a notebook, but unfortunately my handwriting muscles aren’t what they used to be (I blame the years spent typing). It reminds me of being a teenager, secretly filling page after page with my characters in novels that will never see the light of day, though now my end goal is to publish. I haven’t given up on my dream of being a professional author; it’s always there in my mind through every moment of every day.
All I need to do is write without holding anything back.
I’ve been feeling really good about my physical appearance lately.
I find it very affirming that divorced me has healthier coloring and less bloating. Divorced me is more confident in my own body. Divorced me is better at socializing with complete strangers.
Not that I’m claiming rampant improvements across the board. I still haven’t figured out a huge portion of my life, so being able to smile at my reflection in the mirror feels like a small win.
I think that I’ve been doing a lot of internal improvements, particularly with rewriting my internal self to embrace the idea that I don’t have to be invisible. I’ve been working to join the “warm social world,” and have been pleasantly surprised at how many people respond positively to my comments about the weather (and other various small talk topics). Instead of being constantly self-critical and internalizing far too much, I just aim to be friendly and curious, and let everything else be as it is.
Awhile ago I mentioned that I’ve been trying to emulate what I think a strong and admirable character would do in my shoes. I admit that I feel plenty of pressure to throw myself out there and pursue success (why haven’t you found a real job yet?), but I think it’s important to fix the parts of me that led me to rock bottom, so to speak. Otherwise I might end up playing out the same story with new costumes.
And when I think of myself as the bleeding heart who was terrified of the spotlight, I realize how inevitable my fate was.
Not that I want to stop being empathic and supportive. Rather, I know that I need to do a better job of letting people go when I get bad vibes from them — something I witnessed in myself more recently when I kept a conversation going with someone who I strongly felt like they had huge red flags surrounding them, and I absolutely hated talking to them. I probably should have ghosted them, but I kept feeling guilty every time I didn’t reply.
So I really want to internalize the idea that it’s not wrong to protect myself from people who clash with me. It’s not wrong to prioritize people who make me feel safe to be around.
I don’t have to be the one who’s always understanding. I don’t have to be the one who’s patient and never gives up. I don’t have to be anyone’s savior — and I have learned to acknowledge the hubris that drives that particular ideology in the first place.
Phrases like, “No one understands me” are red flags, not challenges. Don’t try to be better and prove otherwise. Save the empathy and support for someone who appreciates it.
Recently I watched the anime movie, Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, and at one point someone offers their sage advice to the main character to let the fabric she weaves tell her story and weep for her. Or something like that. I confess that this is one of those movies that hits me right in the “feels” and I spent the entire time crying, so my memory of the exact conversation is probably lacking. But, you know, close enough.
That idea got me thinking. I also enjoy weaving, and while I don’t have the ability to literally encode messages into the cloth I make, I can still pour my intentions into it.
So I made a “story cloth” for myself. As I passed the shuttle back and forth between my hands, I meditated deeply on all of the events of this past year, so now it can always hold the truth of my experiences. It holds my story for me, so that I can let it go and move forward to create a new one.
I’m a bit of a metaphorical person, but we already knew that. The funny thing about being a genre writer is how it bleeds into reality, and I have a touch of that magical thinking in everything I do.
The yarn is Lily Sugar n Cream cotton, and I hand-dyed it myself. It’s small enough to fit neatly on the top of my dresser, with plenty of room for … all those other things that seem to end up on top of dressers, lol. The hand-dyed colors combined with plain weave make me think of crosshatching with colored pencils, and it’s especially pleasant to look at from a distance.
I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to take a moment to share my two cents:
During my class on domestic violence, there was a time when the teacher gave us the assignment to do something nice for ourselves during the week. Most of the other women said that they were going to do things like giving themselves more patience, more compassion, more understanding, which are all very good things. But the problem is that when one is eyeballs deep in stressful situations and in the process of healing from emotional damage, it’s hard to remember abstract ideals like patience. Plus, how do you measure if you’re giving yourself “more”? How do you know if you’ve succeeded?
My belief is that it’s better to tie those ideals to something physical. Whatever you chose should be very individual and personal, but an example could be a bead necklace, and every time you catch yourself fiddling with it, you tell yourself, “I am worthy of patience. I am allowed heal at my own pace.”
You see?
Or maybe acrylic fingernails that serve to remind you that you’re worthy of feeling beautiful. A sweater that helps you feel comfort. A ring that keeps you grounded whenever you twist it on your finger.
Something. Anything. The objects themselves don’t matter as much as the thoughts that you tie onto them. The point is to remind you to think the sorts of thoughts that you want to be thinking.
Of course, my disclaimer again is that I’m not perfect. This is something that has helped me cope so I’m sharing it with you, but I am by no means an expert or a therapist.
By Autumn Rain 