“I lost my mind trying to understand yours”
@joker_quotes087
I follow this account on Instagram mostly because the quotes or sayings they post resonate with me. They’re slightly edgy, they say what they mean, mostly they apply to my life, and let’s face it those of us without filters tend to like each other’s company.
This quote struck me this morning as raw, uncut truth.
The last year of my marriage I was intensely mistreated. Although he would tell you otherwise. He doesn’t understand all that he’s done. I think that is because he has been believing his own lies for so long. He truly believes that his “version of the truth” is the only believable or valid version. I think he must believe that though, or else he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.
I was manipulated into backing him up in situations I didn’t know one shred of actual truth in. For instance: I would be told that the Welding Boy had refused to do the weed eating around the trees. Welding Boy would cop to the charges adding he just didn’t feel like doing it…. So I’d back up the grounding. In reality I had no knowledge that: Welding Boy couldn’t have done the weed eating even if he wanted to; the battery was charging and we were out of cable. I was just never shown or told the truth.
I was gaslighted daily. He had conversations with other people or the kids, then told me over and over that I was an idiot for not doing something I had no idea I was supposed to do…. that I said I’d take care of something I had no knowledge of needing to be done…. that things I’d asked him to do weren’t done because he wanted me to believe I never asked him to do them. He would twist and manipulate what I actually said. Trying to create doubt in me, and in others, of my competency. Literally, if he decided the sky was purple, and I didn’t agree, the next day I’d be told how dumb it was that I had thought the sky was purple… Don’t you know the sky is blue dummy? I was left head spinning in confusion more often than not. After a while I actually started to doubt that my memories were real, or that I could remember anything properly.
When those tactics didn’t work he would project onto me. Consistently telling me I was unhappy, that if I can’t be happy, the family can’t be happy. He’d tell me all he needed was love to be happy; but that always felt like a slap to the face. Isn’t this supposed to be a two-way idea, not a one directional demand? All the while I’m trying desperately to figure out where he is getting this outlandish crap. Trying to discover why he’s miserable. At this point, I’m just a mom on the edge, confused, and trying to hold her family together.
Daily I felt like somebody in a washing machine trying to find the stop button. I kept searching for the reasons why I had to explain everything, why he seemed to think I knew things I didn’t know, why he was consistently accusing me of cheating on him, why no matter what I did it wasn’t appreciated, why I was invisible to the one person that was supposed to be my best friend. I tried to analyze his sleepless nights. I tried desperately to understand what was in his head….
Then came the day I learned about the betrayal, and I really lost my mind. It was a betrayal that shattered everything I thought I knew about my life.
Here I was being told that he loved me more than anything, but then being shown pure contempt and his utter failure to be capable of love. I had been blind to all the signs because I was trying to understand his mind. I was trying to find a way to fix his mind, show him I was there for him, and I was trying to fix our damaged marriage. All the while he was living a double life; he gave himself permission to discard me. There was at least one other woman. One that should have been out of bounds for him on every level. Eventually I would come to realize there were several other women in his double life.
Here I was, a 40 year old mom of 4 whom had been with him over half of my life, and my repayment isn’t loyalty…. It’s not even love or kindness…. It’s being discarded like an old tasteless piece of gum. The reality that I was nothing more to him than the dirt on his tires came slamming into me.
I wandered my house in a daze. Virtually blind, nauseated, ears ringing, tears flowing for I don’t know how long. I slid down the inside of the front door onto the floor. I sobbed more than I knew was humanly possible. My body began to ache from the sobbing. After most of the day passed with me still laying in the same spot, my inner voice found me:
This version of you is NOT what you need right now. You can’t kick ass this way. GET UP, KICK SOME ASS! Its time for you and the kids to THRIVE.
So I got off the floor, dusted off my tear soaked shirt and got ready to pick the kids up from school. Life was going to go on… our way now.
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