The Den Community Group
Pull up a chair and put your feet up. Lie down if necessary! :)
I was taking a nap and woke up remembering a time at Christmas shopping with my ES. We used to shop and sit at a side table to eat. I cried like I haven't in a long time. I don't understand why this memory came to me now. I just want the pain to stop. I thought I'd moved on. Does it ever end??0
I too thought I was past all of the pain - and every so often it sneaks back up and gets me again.
They are people we dearly loved - and to have someone, who we so loved, turn their backs on us is terribly painful. We all try - and I think we're doing a very good job at dealing with these EC's that we no longer even seem to know.
Something that has helped me get over these sudden sad feelings - was to make a list of all of the things my son said and did that were very disrespectful and hateful. When my brain starts to go back to the good old times, and to when he was my little boy - I get that list out and remember - he is not who he used to be and there's nothing I can do about that. I tried for years to do something about what happened, and it did nothing but make him mad. Reading my list helps me remember what I could no longer deal with - and why I walked away. That helps my pain sort of magically disappear.
I'm so sorry this pain came back to you - the cool thing is that we are finding ways to let it go.
Big hugs to you,
LJ
I have had the same experience when remembering the good times I had with loved ones who are now gone and also my ED and estranged sister. It is sad that we can't have those good times anymore and sad that people have to die and also sad that estrangements have to happen.
Well it is worth a good cry but you can cry for the good times that are gone but don't forget that the bad times are gone too.
August and jbcdc have good advice. Allow yourself to remember those times for what they were... Allow yourself to have a good cry now and then if you need it. It's not a setback. It's normal... Just don't let it consume you. LJ has a great way to move past it...
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{ BIG HUG }}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
LJ has good advice, there. For the past few yrs., my eldest ES had me so freaking confused as to our "status-friend or foe", & i was very distracted with what was going on with my younger ES (who wasn't an ES then, o' course), that if i wasn't a person who has "journalized" for decades, i'd still be on his hamster wheel. About a yr. ago, right after i found these sites, i followed the advice of listing what was troubling, and keeping it handy. I was amazed, going back through just the notes i had since coming back to WI, how many instances of broken word or insult or lies were on that list. I was...and still am TBH....very shocked at how much crap from him i had "forgotten"...deleted from my mind and not being used in my judgement of what this being labelled my "son" was doing to me.
& had been doing to me for YEARS!!!
Once i started compiling, i was appalled not only at him for doing this to me (&others, but i was keeping my eye on just interactions between he and i, for my decision making, as best as possible), but i was mad at myself, for being a psycho's doormat yet again, this time, the psycho being my own son.
But...it got me to see what a threat to my well being he was/is...getting very close to getting a hold of my pin numbers and such "in case of emergency"...which didn't and won't happen....
& is he MAD! I did my official "walking" from him during an exchange a cpl. of wks. ago, and he did every trick in the playbook to keep me in line and, when that wasn't playin' out, he went for the throat...twisting words and insulting me and anything i care for, any way he could. My last word to him was just, "wow". He was coming off so nutty to me that's all i could respond with. Still can't come up with anything else, and now it's all out and clear and done. Thank goodness!
With me, i had to see things written out, in black and white, and i had to take some time to deal with the sore head i kept getting once the remembering started. While amazed at how much was "forgotten", i have been just as amazed at how much a person can remember once given the quiet and aloneness needed is given and self permission received. It is a pretty physically demanding thing, and you're never the same after, but, i liken it to cleaning out an attic. Box by box, memory by memory, things are brought to fresh air and looked thru and sorted out. Once i really took the time to list all of the actions of this "son" that led to my decision to end our "relationship", it was a "no brainer", once "maternal feelings" were taken out of the equation. He's lucky i had them when he was under my care. I'm just glad to have this figured out before i ever needed to be under his! "Mental/emotional/verbal" abuse was already his standard...and i figure the physical would have come once i couldn't fight back or he had me completely isolated from anyone else....
Anyway...i too recommend listing instances of all disrespect, etc. you can think of, and be prepared for much more to surface once you begin, and it is sad and hard work, but worth it in the end.
GOTTA "keep it real", no? {{hugz}}
GL's!
{{hugz}} Cheers!