Hey guys

I have not been on the site for a couple of weeks or more, but tonight I visit to share my experiences of this last couple of weeks, and to get your feedback. Or I think I will go mad. Is the insight I think I have developed around my own situation possible, true, a reality, or baloney?

Those of you who have read any of my entries will know that not only am I four months out of a 13 year relationship with a sociopath who was physically and verbally abusive to me, but that also I have had a total of five years of hell, challenges beyond belief, losing my entire family in a period of three years, my beloved sister to a tragic drug overdoes, my business, my best friend to cancer and was then diagnosed with cancer (lymphoma) myself and spent a twelve month period fighting it, with six weeks in hospital where the Intensive Care Unit had to fight for my life for a solid seven hours when a clot shot from my lung to my heart, and then start my heart twice after that, deal with a serious chest infection, draw fluids from my lungs and deal with my liver spiking sky high. All the doctors and nurses were amazed I made it through as they all thought I would not, were certain I was going to die.

Of course the cancer made me a very sick woman, I lost all my hair, 18kg's, and any ability or inclination to interact with the outside world. I had to have chemo every three weeks and luckily did not suffer side effects from it, but I isolated totally and one side effect I did have was that somehow I could not walk properly, I would shuffle, and shake, both of which have improved since I am in remission, which is now a period of four months too.

The morning I got up to go to the hospital to get my results around my huge scan to see if the 9 months of chemo had worked and successfully eradicated the cancer, I was a mess. I could barely stand for the fear of what I was going to hear, would I live or die. I was shaking like a leaf and vomited twice before getting into the car with Simon (the ex) and driving there. He did not once take me in his arms or soothe me with words, he was just silent all the way, almost displaying what a hassle it was to have to drive to that fucking hospital with me again!

My relationship with him really ended long before the end was officially announced by him, I saw it ending before my eyes before it was put into words. But I got to the hospital and sat and waited for the doctor to come and when she did, a doctor I had not dealt with before, not my oncologist, she said to me you are clear pendra, it is gone. And I just fell into her lap, my head on her knees and cried my eyes out. This is the first time I really cried in the whole cancer period, I suppose the rest of the time I just held myself tight and kept myself contained - had I not done so I would have fallen apart completely. That said I did fall apart, I slept for about four months, did not get out of bed - it was a safe and comforting place. I would go for up to five days without bathing, stay in the same clothes, I smoked like a trooper. Finally after four months in bed I forced myself onto the couch where I either slept some more or stared into space - I could not read and could not watch tv, could not concentrate - I was completely immobilised - it was like a 9 month meditation. I would just sit and sit and sit, and watch the clock - I watched the clock waiting for Simon to phone, or to see how many hours were left in each day - how many more hours it would be before Simon walked through the front door. He would be up at 4am for work and back around 8pm at night so it was a long wait, and they were long days that stretched into infinity. The only company I had was my dogs and very few people phoned and one or two visited. At this time cancer was the cherry on the top of all my awful and relentless experiences before that, and of course my ongoing drama of abuse with simon and the messiness of our relationship. Most friends had long tired of me and could not handle me or the strain any longer and so had walked out on me, I ended other relationships, and I simply did not leave the house. I was absolutely totally terrified at the time, convinced I was going to die. I had nothing to offer anyone - I was not one of those sprightly cancer patients who was enormously positive and who fought with all her might. i hardly ate. I just did not care.

I share that with you because it has relevance in what I am about to say. Most recently I am going through a period of deeply missing Simon, as crazy as I know that is and as normal as I know that is. As the months pass its almost like I think to myself, it could not have been that bad, I start to forget what it was like, and how it will always be that way. Today was a bad day around him. Those of you who have followed my sharing know he has my beloved dogs and he will not let me see them and though I own them officially I am not able to go and claim them because in starting my life all over again, I have no where to house them with me, give them a primary home with me. So they stay with him and one thing is for sure and that is i know they are safe, he idolises them and walks them and looks after them. He is holding onto them with all his might, something has become of them where he has become fierce about his attachment to them and will not even let me see them, I even got to the point where I contracted a lawyer and letters were sent, a summons was sent, and he totally ignored it all - he believes he is above the law. Not seeing my dogs is utterly devastating for me, I adore them too and they are my family, all I have left, and they bring me joy and comfort. In my five years of hell and then when cancer struck on top of it all, I swore to myself, made a promise to myself, that I would take on more and more if it came, endure more and more, but one thing was for sure, I would never lose my dogs. Now I have lost my dogs though I understand that the future does lie ahead and there is a possibility I can claim them later on, first I have to get strong and well.

And I am not strong and well. I keep crashing. What my intelligence tells me is that I am suffering from prolonged grief about the last five years, losing everything, crashing my entire life, that I am healing from a 13 year abusive relationship with a sociopath and grieving over how fake it all was, how dangerous, how in fact what I thought was love could not have been love because love does not sit as a companion to abuse. I am grieving over the lost years, those lost 13 years, and over the fact the oncologist has told me that my particular cancer has two outcomes - I will either achieve a complete cure, or have five years to live. Right now the side of my body where my cancer was has been sore for some time, and yet I have totally missed my check up and refused to go - I am 12 weeks late with it and I know that is irresponsible - but I cannot bear to go in case I am told it is back, because I dont know if I would be prepared to undergo another 9 months of chemo, lose my hair again - and who would look after me, I would not be able to work, and I dont have family - Simon gave me a roof over my head during the last cancer period and paid for food for me, but I dont have a single friend or family member who could look after me, or look out for me.

In the past four months I have been in hospital four times. On two occasions I got to a private hospital by taxi at night having massive panic attacks. Then after losing the second job I got after leaving Simon, where they retrenched me and I struggled hard to perform, perhaps put myself into too big a position too early after my cancer, I crashed again. the fact being i have no one to look out for me, I have to work to earn to live to put a roof over my head to get back on my feet, and I have lost a lot of confidence and my energy levels are not great. When I crashed, a friend took me to the public hospital emergency ward and I told them of my circumstances and that I had also increased drinking to numb myself, and even used drugs on a couple of occasions. This dear friend was also restarting her life at 60, whereas I am 50 and was working so hard to do it - she is one of my oldest dearest friends and we were a support to each other in our similar circumstances - no one else can understand what it takes to start all over, the strength it takes to get up each day, never mind after the effects of a sociopath, also after the effects of cancer, and the living daily with utter regret and disappointment in oneself, knowing or feeling my life was not meant to turn out that way. In that first crash at the public hospital, they insisted I stay overnight in the emergency room and I had no idea that when you admit yourself into the emergency room you do so involuntarily and only the doctors can discharge you, you may not pull yourself together and say ok I am leaving now. As a result after my dear friend left I had to spend the night in emergency sleeping on the floor with a dirty blanket and I thought to myself it is not possible my life has ended up like this, on a floor, all alone, surrounded by indigent people, heartbroken and scared and full of anxiety. My friend came to see me the next day when they had put me into a temporary ward where the walls were dirty and the staff fierce and I now had a mattress on the floor - and this is an elegant successful beautiful refined me we are talking about - or thats what I used to be. Diane, my friend said to me you are going to stay her until you get better pendra, it is essential, you are not coping and you are not well - and i said to her I will do whatever it takes Di, just please dont be another person to leave my life because of my circumstances and the fact I am not well right now and it is therefore a strain - and she said of course I am not going to leave your life, but weeks before had said to me pendra, three strikes and you are out, about me not coping and using alcohol as an anaesthetic, to self medicate. I didn't pay much attention at the time.

They kept me in hospital for three days and then the head psychiatrist called me in and said they were discharging me because they did not have enough beds and it was time I went home with medication. And so I came home. For a while I was fine and then I crashed again and this time could not get out of bed for five solid days, did not bath, dress, all I did was feed my cats. My room in the big house I share was dirty, my fingernails were dirty, I was desperate. The panic attacks continued. And by this time the dear friend Diane had walked straight out of my life with not one dot of explanation, nor any response to my calls or emails. When she discovered or I told her I had been discharged (had not discharged myself), she instantly bailed on me - that must have been the third strike she had referred to as mentioned earlier. The fact is I could not have forced the hospital to keep me - they sent me home. This time another friend (and I have only three) took me to the same fucking hospital to the same fucking emergency room only to have the same fucking psychiatrist give me absolute hell for being back there, and finding myself once again on another fucking mattress on the fucking floor with fucking fierce staff around me. Excuse my language. And this time Elaine said to me Pendra you have got to see this through one way or another, you cannot keep crashing and burning, you need help, you are not coping etc etc. 2 days later they discharged me again, and it was arranged I would go from the hospital to a care home. By this time Diane had long stopped all contact with me and Elaine arranged the care home. I was delivered there at 5pm and taken into a small room with a single bed and joined the other 'inmates' for supper - they were all horrifically indigent, no teeth, weird mannerisms, a man with torets syndrome who made a loud pronounced and repetitive sound every second, I was horrified. I ate some dreadful marmite pie dish and went to my room and cried my eyes out - this is where I had ended up. A friend of mine in the USA was paying for it. This is what my life had come to. Thankfully the next day Elaine called and said the friend in America was not prepared to pay and so she was coming to fetch me to bring me home, that instead he would pay the lesser amount of my rent at the house I shared and that I was to go for counselling ongoing with Cape Mental Health and also to an outpatient rehab to deal with the fact that I had increased my drinking unacceptably, was using it to self medicate.

When I got to the hospital on both occasions they asked me why I was there and I said because I believed I had had a nervous breakdown and was also using alcohol (and on occasion drugs - cocaine) to numb my reality and that I had just been through too much for too long and could no longer endure it. That is what my soul and body told me. They told me I had a personality disorder. And though it is possible, I dont agree. They even wrote down the word psychosis with a question mark next to it. Fuck them. You might disagree with me but I find the thing about doctors is they perform in an entirely theoretical world, using statistics and theory to diagnose, and not once did any one of those doctors even lift an eyebrow when I told them what I have been through over the past five years, the relentless hell, that I was heartbroken after the break up of my long relationship, that I had been abused and allowed it, that my life was in pieces and I was starting all over again, that I had no family, that I was broken. Nope - this one - personality disorder, administer these drugs. And that is what psychiatrists do, they administer drugs - they are not therapists - they measure up the symptoms and put the person onto medication and then discharge them.

Simon's impact on my life has been immeasurable - catastrophic - and I am going through a phase where I am missing him so much, am so sad, am so heartbroken, am so shocked that no strategy of my own can get him back - when I know intellectually that him leaving me, him ending it with me, was the biggest gift I got for my life - because now I can't go back, he does not want me back, I can't revert to the old pattern, he is absolutely done with me, I am discarded as is typical of them once you no longer serve them. I am finding it soul crushing and ego crushing to deal with being discarded - plus he appears to not only have discarded me but also developed an absolute hatred of me, a total dislike, no recognition of me in any way and of course there is not much about me to admire right now, my life is a mess, in pieces, i live in a large house with 7 other people one of whom is a prostitute, I have hardly any friends left, I have good days and bad days, more bad than good, I am trying to access consultancy work so I dont have to return to a nine to fiver environment, my two cats are with me thank god, I now haven't seen my dogs for four months and I feel like an absolute fuck up. But I am maintaining. Last week I was able to say to myself on two occasions this was a GOOD DAY, there are some days I dont even think of him, but others where I crave him, his attention, need him to see me and recognise me, acknowledge me. But of course that is impossible. Tonight I have stupidly sent him a stream of emails saying this and that - asking him for closure, for a conversation between us where we can discuss why he stopped loving me, how he just discarded me, if it could have been different, and of course the more I craved the smaller and less significant I felt, the more worthless I felt about myself. He finally phoned and said to me Pendra stay out of my life, stop contacting me, I want nothing to do with you, dont you fucking get it. And I said to him as long as my animals are in your life Simon I am not going anywhere. But that does not mean I have to contact him. Instead the smart thing to do would be to be patient and just focus on getting stronger, stop crashing. I had a massive issue with my cousins the day before yesterday, a day I called a good day where it came to my attention that they were all breaking my confidentiality, and at one point I felt like crashing again but I fought against it hard, I told myself I do not want to be back at that hospital, or in that care home, and that I have to dig deep to find some strength in myself and distance myself from all these circumstances and events, and just pray - and I got through. But I know I am extremely fragile.

Lastly, the insight I refer to before all this stuff I say here is that I have this feeling that someone like Simon, or perhaps other Sociopaths target beautiful dynamic successful intelligent wealthy etc women in the first place - because they serve them as a source of food and also because they borrow the womans strength to fill up the holes and weaknesses and fears and shame they have inside themselves, their own pathology. I am no expert and have not been reading as much as I should be but I think they suffer from a deep feeling of inadequacy and of self loathing - and that when they borrow the shining parts of the women they target they temporarily feel good about themselves again, intact, more steady, and of course the beautiful intelligent etc woman serves as a reinforcement of their own worth as he carries her on his arm as an accessory. Is that possible???

What I have learnt in my life in these last five years is that somehow, where we have wounds, whether from our family of origin or whatever, the gods and the universe or life itself will always make us revisit those wounds through experiences and relationships so we have an opportunity to awaken to them and stop using strategies to hide from them. Once we see them and awaken to them, we come into a more conscious space about the wound, whatever it is and whatever pathology it has become and so do have the opportunity to heal them, or of course we repeat the same patterns to re-enforce the woundology and remain a victim of it. I know when I finally succeeded in leaving simon 12 months into the relationship, an exit from him that only lasted five months - during those five months I was presented time and time again with new and different abusive situations as if the universe was saying to me look at this look at this look at this - see it, recognise it, change the pattern, exit the situation quickly - and I started to do that, started to see how subtly abuse can present itself and how I was attracting it time and time again until I learnt the lesson and no longer allowed it in my life. I became able to recognise it pretty immediately, in its various shapes and forms, and instead of taking 13 years to remove myself from the situation it was present in, I got to do that way quicker, sometimes in an instant. For example, Diane, my friend who just walked out, after a 30+ year friendship, with not a word, is no longer acceptable to me, you do not do that to friends, endings and how one manages them are just as important as beginnings, they should be handled with grace and the person being left's feelings should be respected. You dont hurt people and you dont let them hurt you.

I say this about returning to the wound because I think the sociopath can't heal, he or she does not have the capacity to in that they dont have the insight into their pathology and their strategies and instead rely on these as if their lives were at stake without them, all their strategies and how they manifest are their identity or confirmation of an identity they seek that makes them feel stable, powerful and in control - inside themselves they are a wreck. And because we always return to our wounds to have that opportunity to heal them, the sociopath breaks down the strong beautiful successful or intact woman until she is a reflection of what he the sociopath is inside and takes him back to face himself, but he can never do that, he can never face himself. He is too sick. I suppose I should be grateful that no matter the torture of the last five years and my time with him, I do have the capacity to use insight to face my issues and so heal them, and I am prepared to. And I am writing tonight because I can see there is a part of me seeking him again, his confirmation that I am worth something, grasping attempts to reverse how he discarded me, a desperate need to be acknowledged and understood. and of course by trying to get something from him cannot give me or has lost interest in giving me never did give me, I am finding myself self sabotaging and re-enforcing my own issues of feeling inadequate and worthless, and I am going to the very source that makes me feel like a piece of shit. He doesn't read my emails, he doesn't even relate to the words, he doesn't give a damn, I am over for him - my dogs, bugger my feelings about them, he has claimed them and has no interest in my begging, legal action, demands threats or anything to see them and have temporary co-access to them, he has no interest in whether his actions are contributing to or have been a major factor in how sick and unstable I am right now.

And last point, it in fact serves him for me to be sick and unstable - because then, fresh out of an abusive relationship with me, where he was the abuser and I have been vocal about it, he gets to say to the world out there - look at her, she is unstable, she is sick, she is in and out of hospital, they have said she has a personality disorder, she is toxic, see how all her friends have left her - and so hide brilliantly behind his mask whilst he highlights me as the person who fucked up his life because I am so fucked up myself. Because I am such a mess - he gets to say can you believe I had to endure her and her illness for 13 years, she is psychotic and dangerous. I do think a sociopath will go to all lengths to hide his pathologies and what he does to his mate behind closed doors - the other side of his personality and if he can use his victim, me, as a demonstration of how stable he in fact is by comparison, everyone gets to sympathise with him, and completely not believe a word I say about what I faced at his hand, for 13 years. And this is what has happened, most people dont believe a word I say about it, they think I am a seriously unstable person, and I have become a seriously unstable person - is that normal after enduring 13 years with a sociopath??

I want to get well, I really do and I do have good days and somehow since I have come out of the hospital this second time, I do feel stronger because I had to ask myself, do you want to be back in hospital pendra, do you want to be sent to the serious psych hospital in town, or are you going to dig so fucking deep to find your strength and make a decision to get through this somehow, to fight this fight and overcome the battle and the experience - and that is now what i am trying to do. I also recognise that whenever I engage with him or try to, about the dogs or anything, whenever i am so stupid to think that I would just like to talk to him, my old mate of 13 years, tell him how I feel, I am being goddamn stupid and reckless with my life and stability, with my emotional and mental health, because the result with always be the same now, one word - rejection. He will also instantly re-enforce my current instability by saying you are fucked, you are mad, you are sick, you have to stay away from me, etc - so I leave the encounter (telephone or mail - or silence) feeling more fucked up than ever, so worthless, so rejected. And each time it happens I almost can't believe it, cannot believe that a person like he can exist, so heartless and so cold and so hard - it is as if I never ever meant a thing to him and he absolutely cannot stand me now, and that there is not one dot of nostalgia or feeling toward me from him. All that is left in him toward me is pure hatred, coldness, detachment, disinterest, and disrespect. He will say to me stop harassing me, I will get a protection order against you, leave me alone, stay away from me, i want nothing to do with you, what the fuck do you want, dont you get fucking familiar with me, oh there you go again using emotional blackmail, your usual manipulative behaviour. And I am left reeling - am I this person he describes, am I this worthless, am I so fucked up, do I have a personality disorder. What will become of me. Will I ever ever see my dogs again. How far can this man take this. And I posed that question to him - what am I supposed to be or become or present as in order to see (get your permission) my dogs. I realise that as long as I remain attached to him because he has my dogs I am going to take longer to get well, and he will continue to impact on me - it is just abuse and control outside the relationship instead of inside it, using the dogs as a tool - complete dismissal of my feelings and a demonstration of his power over me - and I said that to him tonight in an email - I said to him my insight is that whilst you present hatred towards me, you are still attached to me, you have actually not let go either, because if you have, you would not feel such hatred and you would not punish me by not letting me see my dogs, and continue to exercise control etc - you would be neutral. And I said to him its quite simple, you want me out of your life, you let me have co-access to MY dogs on a reasonable basis and by arrangement, until i can take them over completely. Until then i am not going anywhere, I am not giving my dogs up to you. That will not be your final act in my life, to have absconded with my dogs.

Why would he need to continue his role as sociopath in my life using the dogs when he has discarded me - what I have read is that when they discard they literally do, throw you to the roadside and move on - why is he still attached, why is he continuing his strategies with me and using the dogs to do it, why has he not moved into a neutral state as he is supposed to as a sociopath. I know he adores those dogs and is dependent on them like a drug - is he just bearing me until he is sure I will give up and let him move away with them, get so low that I am forced to give them up, to let them go entirely - is this the level of power he thinks he has - that he is just entertaining my requests, demands, legal threats, and more until I tire of it, or he thinks I will tire of it. Any other normal person would recognise that given they are my officially owned dogs, and i am their 'mother' I am entitled to see them, any reasonable person would put a co-access agreement in place, any mentally intact person would realise that during this time whilst I am so sick and unstable that seeing the dogs would be healing for me, and refusing that I see them is damaging for me because it represents all the levels of abuse that he exposed me to in the relationship, in the form of the creatures I love. I know for sure that he has not let go, and that is a conundrum because sociopaths do let go when they are finished with you - he is presenting an unlikely sign in a sociopath, a continued connection to me, or maybe I am quite wrong. Maybe he is literally determined to take away from me the last thing I own, my creatures, strip me of absolutely everything, and is consciously over powering my ownership of them with intent, simply waiting for me to give up the fight, and fuck off.

Sorry this is so long, thank you for listening. I dont know what to do, I know I am supposed to have no contact with him forever. I know that it would be advisable that I completely leave the dogs for now, they are safe and he does look after them brilliantly, and focus on getting strong myself, which means absolutely no contact with him and forgetting my dogs for now. I know that my focus should be entirely on my own survival and I feel I am at a cliff edge, and that I can only have faith that one day I will be back on my feet and can go and claim my dogs. but that too fight him when I am so fragile and raw is not possible, he is too determined and I am way out of my depth. I have to somehow make a survival decision, or I am going to keep crashing, drinking, end up in hospital after hospital and break myself down more and more. I need help right now and know in a way I have written the answers that you are all going to give me. How is it possible that one person can have such an effect on you - and I am particularly raw and emotional tonight, there ARE days I dont even think about him, or the dogs, and then others where I obsessively try to engage him in a conscious and reasonable conversation about them, not remembering that they are not conscious people, not reasonable people, that anything I say is ignored and goes right over his head, he doesn't give a shit, he believes he is omnipotent - it serves him that i am sick and fragile and in and out of hospital and it is no doubt with delight he hears i have a personality disorder because then he can say to his community, you see, i told you, this is what i had to live with for 13 years, this is how sick she is. It also serves him because as long as I remain sick he knows i will not have the strength to fight for my dogs or find a place of my own to move into and take the dogs from him. so keeping me sick remains one of his approaches and strategies.

Thank you it has helped me to put this stuff down. I know what I must do - its just doing it that is so fucking hard. Experiencing this person is just simply terrifying. How is it I still haven't got it, and that I am still in shock four months later, still in disbelief that a person like this can exist, still think that if i just write this email with these words or those words, I will get him to come around and let me see my dogs, or in a moment of sheer madness, get him to see me, to come to me - thats like a death wish. I am self sabotaging but if ever I had an addiction (and I am drinking too much) it is him. Sometimes the cravings are way out of control.