You will!
I didn't have the same experience that brought you here but I felt the same from mine. I know when I was assaulted I kept quiet for few years. My life went on as I pretended it didn't happen & when I finally admitted it I felt I later found out because it made it real. So everything I should of felt that day I felt 2years later. My parents got me help, but I was always sad. Many years have passed & I am doing so much better! I'm still hyper-aware of my surroundings at night, but I'm not anxious in those settings. It's been 20+ yrs & ever so often something will trigger panic but years of therapy & honesty help me calm.
Your ex sounds mean & you sound kind- hold onto that kindness focus on the great things in life your daughter getting married etc. Also your ex had a hold over you for many years even though your not "with" him he still wants to test that. Hence the holding of payment it's his way of control. Have you thought about a restraining order? Also I'd definitely contact your attorney about him not paying
Stay strong, get stronger is my motto.
Idk if this helps but when your home & scared or anxious light candles, play music & sit back & imagine your in the safest place in the world
<3

Hi JL. Welcome to the forum. So far, so good on figuring out how this group works. It's pretty much a come from the heart party. If it works for you, it typically works for all.

Mine is a much different story --each of the stories here are unique-- but major life stresses intensify my symptoms dramatically. I tackle them one symptom at a time and yes, they do get better with patience and practice.

Gentle support while you find your relief. Healing happens. Hope it happens here.

Welcome aboard.

Yeah, that feeling that PTSD took over and I died was so strong that I did a big career change. Long story short, now I teach courses in death and dying to nursing students. Going over the 5 stages of grief for me is a great tool for dealing with this PTSD thing since it's chronic for me and not to be cured and happens over and over. http://med.fsu.edu/uploads/files/grieving.pdf

I can't speak to being whole again because I was a kid on a war torn mission field and was raised in chaos without knowing peace first. So I don't have a before/after set of memories. Instead, it's more of a "why did I never get a chance?" sort of hole I can fall into.

I dealt with lifelong PTSD until that moment it "took over" and I "died" when I came home from a support group meeting to find my wife used that weekly time slot for an affair. That loss turned me toward using the 5 stages of grief to process it, and then I became a hospital chaplain, a nursing teacher, and came here. It's been 17 years since my divorce now, I never thought I'd make it, and things aren't like they were but they're a lot better than 17 years ago.

Hello! Like others, I have no pre-trauma life. Learning *that* made me feel more upset than the PTSD diagnosis, because it was *true* and made me face things I reallllllly wanted to keep in the bin of Totally Repressed and Forgotten Left Behind Stuff.

We have eyewitness reports of abuse on me when I was 2 years old. i left that nightmare for college, and "re-made" me. But I did it iwth all that still in there, and... Well, a few years ago, it all came out, after a physical injury and some trauma related to it. I probably walked around with low-level functional PTSD till then. Since? Oh, working my way to "functional" is my *job*. (Or feels like it!)

But things do stay normal from one "lfie" of the self to the next. I'll always love to read, to draw, to be in Nature, so forth, and I use those things as reminders that I'm not dead, didn't really die (well, did have a couple near-deaths, literally, but...)...

The point is, we share as we can, what we can, and it's often messy, as my words show! And... I dunno. Soem of me is always adapting, shifting, to what life brings, good or bad. But I felt dead until I left home for college. I didn't really come alive till then. I couldn't. The PTSD dx made me feel like I'd lost, that my abusers "won", and that... Oh, that...

It hits everyone differently yet the same, in a way. My medical trauma nearly killed me for real, and then the PTSD from that brought up the zombies of my early life. And yet, some me-ness never quit, and here I still am, so... They say death is just a transition. So I try to think o fit as Transition. It's possibly self-delusional, but it helps me not give up.

Healing to you.

Welcome to the board jljl...... I'm sorry for what brought you hear but I'm glad that you've found us.... This is a great group to be apart of.......Gentle hug......xo

welcoming hugs,

Trigger Warning

i can remember feeling that it didn't matter either way, whether i stayed there or left, i was gone either way. but i was for sure dead if i stayed so i left finally, because i couldn't see for sure the other way.

when i was a kid i came to actually believe i wasn't real because nobody saw me or anything, i didn't seem to exist so i probably didn't. i even thought i was invisible and i didn't have to eat if i didn't want to, but i thought, i might as well if i wanted to. it didn't matter, i didn't matter either way.

it helps to be here. i have begun to find the me that never got to be when i was little. you have come to a good place, hugs

Walking on egg shells is a tight rope act and when you fall, you fall victim to mental, emotional, and physical damage. After years of buried trauma as a child unrecognized, your boundaries line of self preservation shift and you become what other's perceive you to be as a survival tool to not live, but to just exist. Shakespeare quoted in Hamlet, "To be or Not to be, that is the question". The character considered him alone and his silent outcry unanswered. Like a ghost, there feels no substance. My father was never a type of person to admit self fault so in near death instinct you go on the best way a young mind knows how. Because of my childhood abuse, I lost total recall of a year of my life and existed as only a shell to my former perceived self. A happy and fearless child never to rise up from the ashes from that past life. It is like waking from slumber with a benumbed mind paralyzed in obedience to the will of others. Like Alice in the looking glass, afraid to break free of the glass menagerie fragile in structure. Always existing on the edge of hope without a step forward. My childhood made me who I became and with that said, altered my reality in nightmare status. I felt no warning sign, I was affected in a harmful way. A child is innocent and perceives no danger and skips through pitfalls in life. So eager to reinvent themselves to the expectations of others without concept of self. Due to self esteem issues unrecognized I reinvented myself to the needs of the spouse. Without concept of likes and dislikes, I graft myself to his skin of life. The only life preserver keeping me afloat was my drawings, writing, and poetry. A shadow companion to my turmoiled internal struggle for release. I felt like I was in a catatonic state and awoken to a hostile environment with an instinct to silence my voice. I am divorced, but it was a good thing. An unhealthy relationship is a void of existence. Recognition is the 1st baby step to a rebirth. As of today, it is still a struggle and I fight against the urge to lay down and succumb to the tidal wave of doubt. Everyone has some type of internal struggles and know you are not alone. Reach out and your voice will be heard. As I look back on my life, I try to separate who I was and who the world wanted me to be. I chose to be Me! At 54 years of age, I am still taking baby steps to another path in life. The first step is the hardest but worth it.

I feel ya! I'm right about the same place you are. I was diagnosed with PTSD at 17 because my father was abusive because of his service connected PTSD. (He's beyond therapy at this point, but on his meds he's a whole different person.) Then jumped into a 10 year abusive marriage. Compounded...that's what the doctors tell me it did to my initial diagnosis. My anxiety stays through the roof and off the charts, the only thing that saves me, I think, is that I grew up like this so I learned how to function with it. It still doesn't change much though. I'm never really happy, I don't really have any friends, I don't really go out, I sleep with a firearm close in case I need it, I'm always on edge and I have these awful feelings of absolute rage that I seem to take out on the ones closest to me, and I struggle every minute because I have no idea who I am anymore. We've been divorced for 8 years and I still don't know myself. I wish it would stop or go away and sometimes I wish I could just go away, but I can't, my kids need me. And what makes it worse is that no one in the "real world" gets it. They don't understand me. They don't understand my feelings or my actions, and that only makes me feel worse.

welcome I am sorry to hear that you have gone through so much but I hope you find the support you are looking for here and a good place to vent. I am new here to. I am glad you got out of the abusive relationship.