PTSD. There’s no other way around what I’m dealing with, and it’s a pretty extreme version. I can’t wake up without feeling fear, and I can’t get through the day without sensing that I’m constantly in danger. Too much has happened, and I’ve simply lost too much in a short amount of time to truly feel that I’ll be able to recover and once again feel content, a feeling I’m desperate to feel again. Not necessarily happiness, but contentment, or even numbness. Anything but this fear, this anxiety, this sadness. Anger, betrayal, loss. I’ll never unravel the not to figure out where one ends and the other begins.
I miss my ex very much, and yet she was the worst thing that happened to me. She was so cruel, so dismissive of my feelings in the end that it was essentially a death blow after a series of growing minor wounds that she caused me over 16 years. She was a good person at her core, but she was not necessarily good to me. At times she could be so sweet, so caring, and I could see her trying. At others, she was dismissive, cruel, and completely uncaring towards my well-being. She told me that she wasn’t responsible for my happiness. She told me she couldn’t help me when I was still mourning my father’s death. She had an affair 10 months into my grieving, and discarded me as if I was her worst enemy, smearing my name and turning everyone against me when all I ever did was feel sad. I’ll be the first to admit that I’d withdrawn, but this was due to never feeling safe with her as far as my feelings go. As an extension, I had withdrawn from everything, had become so suppressed in my day to day life that I’d closed myself from most human interactions. Subconsciously, I had put EVERYTHING into getting approval from her, of getting affirmation, of craving her confirmation that she cared. It never came because, in part, I could not talk to her. When I tried, she didn’t give me what I needed, often compounding the issue with suggestions on how I should “fix” myself, when all I wanted for her to say was “I’m so sorry, that must be so hard” and maybe to hold me while I dealt with the pain. Such a simple request in my mind, but one she was unable to provide. Worse, the feeling that she was simply annoyed, the feeling that she felt I should simply move on, to toughen up. And then the ultimate solution to her problem (a sad husband) was to go after the first alternative that came her way, a stranger that she’d known for only a few months, yet one who was enough to justify her actions. An affair, cruel half-truths and outright lies about my actions, twisting of truth to play the victim and gain everyone’s approval. hiring a lawyer to pressure me to sign the dissolution papers, turning her parents on me to the point where they attacked me on social media and via text messages with statements based on what were clearly lies on my ex’s part.
She did her job: She destroyed any notion that we could ever work it out, made me look like a monster to the point where she defined me as such in her mind to console herself when she felt regret. No apologies, no looking back, just a total and complete discard. Like a dead body, like a digested piece of food. Then pictures online with her new boyfriend, surrounded by the friends that she’d rallied around her in lies about her marriage, about me. A life that I thanklessly helped build while sacrificing so much of my own.
I did so much for her. I took her to Hawaii, bought her thousands of dollars worth of jewelry, moved 7 times in pursuit of her work and paying out of my savings each time. I sacrificed having children, thinking it worth it simply to be with her, the one who was unable to have children. I was kind and thoughtful. tried my best to bring issues to the table and talk even though she was so incredibly hard to talk to. I worked on the marriage and myself, suggesting counseling, attending counseling on my own and managing my moods with drugs that compromised my health and energy. I bought gifts for her family while she was at work and too busy to put thought into them, spent weeks alone at the house while she went off to work events, and suffered alone after the deaths of my two dogs and father, each event followed by her leaving for a week to go to her events and be surrounded by her people while I was left alone.
Now, she has a new person, one with built in children, one that works with her and is in her industry. It will fail in time, but most likely that won’t be for many years, as she’ll be too prideful to let it fail due to what she threw away. She will be right, regardless of the consequences. She will be the winner. No matter how many times others tell me she’ll regret it one day, I don’t think she’s capable of feeling regret. She only knows how to come out on top, if only in her mind, as she crafts a false image for her harem of followers who have likewise fallen under her spell.
And yet, I miss her. I hate her. I love her. I’m angry, but feel bad for her. I want to never see her again, but want to protect her. I need her help, but I’ve never had help from her. I want my brain to change, I want it to wake up to the truth, but it isn’t happening. I want closure that will never come. I want a new answer. I want to feel happy, content. I want to feel nothing.
What I feel is ache. As soon as I think I’m feeling just a fraction of an amount better, I then find myself wailing on the floor and begging for someone to help me. I cry, and I cry, and I cry. Every single day I cry. I’m so very hurt, so wounded, and the knife was delivered by the person I thought loved me, the person I loved more than anyone, the one I thought to be the love of my life. I have been betrayed. I have been broken.