Huge Realization

I just had ONE of the worst weeks that I remember having since I got sober. After the last six days, I came to a realization that I have a lot more work to do on myself than I thought. I knew that I would always be working to be the best version of myself and that that was going to be a lifelong process, but I am less recovered than I had believed.

I began a new career this week and though I went in with high hopes and big dreams, I soon realized I had made a huge mistake. I felt emotionally and verbally bullied the first four days by my trainer and on the fourth day had unwanted sexual advances made against me by a supervisor. God is the only one who knows how I made it through the fifth day! The worst part about it is that I have to go back on Monday because until I find something else, I have a home and a child to financially care for. The thought of returning makes me want to vomit and crawl into a hole. To make matters worse, the way I reacted after this situation caused a rift between myself and another, whom I never meant to hurt but desperately needed in the moment. I didn’t go about it properly because per usual my actions were propelled by my emotions.

I learned that I have much work to do on my personal trauma and that clearly there is a great deal from past experiences that I have not properly worked through, or I would not have reacted in the way that I did. I was; in the moment of his advances, paralyzed and unable to respond in a way that defended or protected myself. Instead, I went somewhere else, to a time before and was frozen, many minutes passed before I was grounded back into the actual time and place. It was absolutely terrifying. I experienced flashbacks the entire rest of the day and intermittently since then which I honestly haven’t had in quite some time. My emotional and physical response shocked me because I really thought I was okay and had worked sufficiently on some similar past trauma, clearly I was wrong.

I realized as well that I have a great deal of work to do on how I reach out to people and ask for support, as well as working on an understanding that I may not always receive the response I want or believe I need. I found myself at the end of this experience feeling that I had done something wrong on so many levels and that everything that had happened was entirely my fault. I felt that my feelings were all wrong, my behaviors were all wrong, absolutely everything. I don’t think my feelings were wrong, but I need to learn how to appropriately ask for what I need and be specific. I think sometimes I assume that the person I am reaching out to knows exactly what it is that I think I need and nine times out of ten they don’t!

In moments and days like these when I feel defeated and hopeless, I often become angry. My anger comes from a gut-wrenching frustration that I had to raise myself and was never taught how to protect myself from harm, how to communicate with others, how to handle a wide variety of emotions, how to trust the right people and to whom I can reach out to when I need love and support. I have spent my entire life trying to figure these things out on my own and I have failed miserably. I have been abused more times than protected. I had learned that the only way to handle emotion was to bury it, so that’s what I did, buried my emotions in drugs and alcohol until I was dead inside. Throughout my sobriety I have had to sit with emotions I did not even know existed and it has been so very difficult. I find all too often that my responses to difficult things are very much childlike and that makes me incredibly frustrated because I am a grown woman. Parenting oneself is an arduous task!

I find myself today feeling lost and alone. I have been financially stable and independent for quite a while now and am faced with going back to a threatening environment to preserve that financial security while searching for new employment, as well as working through my food and sleep issues (haven’t eaten for a week, experiencing insomnia) while still juggling a home, children, grandsons and doing it ALONE. I don’t have a significant other or parents to speak of and so often feel that there just isn’t anyone to turn to when I need to talk or a shoulder to cry on. Maybe that is why I started writing again. It is an outlet for me and a way to get it all out of my heart and head and process.

I spent today working in my home cleaning and cooking and taking on some re-decorating projects as well as doing some reading, writing and listening to another fantastic podcast by the incredible Glennon Doyle. These things have done my heart well and although I’m still struggling to eat and sleep and still having flashbacks, I feel a little less hopeless today.