Three Years Later

Guys, I look back at my past posts and see so much hope and determination in them. Yes, I talk about my struggles. Yes, I talk about just how difficult things were for me. But I was always able to end with the belief and knowledge that things would get better. That I would get better.

It's been three years since my ex-fiance was arrested and to be honest, I'm still not okay. Not even close.

And I look back at those posts and read about cutting myself slack, not putting a timeline on healing, trusting in the Lord and His will and timing, etc. and they're so true!!! But man oh man, those things are becoming harder and harder to implement as time goes on. And I really struggle to cut myself slack. And I really struggle to understand why Heavenly Father is allowing this healing process to drag on and on. And I really struggle to not constantly ask myself what I'm doing wrong.

Okay pause.

I wrote those first three paragraphs on a night that I was really, REALLY struggling. And every word is true and I feel/think those things on a regular basis. But I stopped writing there and I've been thinking a lot about the past three years and where I was and where I am now.

And yeah, I get extremely frustrated when I think of who I was before my ex's arrest vs. who I am now. I often still feel very broken and confused. I wonder why I can't seem to heal, why I still haven't been able to hold a job or get back into schooling. I beat myself up because I know things that would help me (eating better, exercising, getting on a sleep schedule, etc), but I can't seem to get myself to do them.

BUT.

I also have been thinking a lot and trying to see the ways that I HAVE made progress. And sometimes those things are really hard to see. But I think especially about how I was when Jonathan and I first got married vs. how I am now and I really can see so much progress!

When we first got married, panic attacks were a very regular occurrence. I was easily set off by triggers like school buses, police cars, or physical intimacy, but also by simply being startled or something small going wrong in my day.

I struggled to disassociate my ex from love in general. When I thought the words "I love you," his name followed after those words in my head automatically.

I still struggle with plenty of anxiety and depression. I still get triggered occasionally. I still very much struggle with the abuse mindset. But it's better than it was.

Let me say it again.

IT'S BETTER THAN IT WAS.

And that's what I have to hold on to.

Because it's so easy to get overwhelmed when I get triggered when it hasn't happened in a long time. It's so easy to see all of the things that I still can't do. It's so, SO easy to feel like I'm not getting anywhere at all and like I'm stuck in limbo. But it's not true. All of my baby steps have amounted to something. I am a little bit better at the end of year three than I was at the end of year two, or year one.

In year one, it was a literal miracle that I was able to date one of my best friends, even if it was for only a short while. In year two I got engaged and married! And in year three I'm going to bear a child.

I still have so, so very far to go. And yeah, I'm still going to get frustrated and feel stuck, and get in my own way at times; but I am getting better. And no, it's not nearly as quickly as I'd like and there is still so much fear and uncertainty and bitterness at times. But I'm getting there and I will continue to make progress because I refuse to let my experiences with my ex keep me down.

I wish that I could say that in a year I overcame all. But I can't. I can't even say that it happened in three years. I'm likely going to be fighting aspects of these demons for many years to come. And that doesn't sound very hopeful and it does sound pretty discouraging but it's true. The important thing isn't how long I fight though. It's that I keep fighting and never, ever back down.

If I can do that, then next year I'll be better than I was. And the year after that I'll be even better. And even more so the year after that. And that's what this life is all about. We're not expected to be perfect right away. We're expected to try our best and keep trying our best until the very end. And then guess what? We're STILL not going to be perfect! Because we can't be on our own. We're expected to live our lives the best way that we can and then give the rest up to the Lord. HE is the one who will make me whole again. I just have to keep pushing forward until that day comes.

Three years later, I'm still pretty much a hot mess. But I'm better than I was and that is something to be proud of.

What Am I More Afraid Of?

I was talking to a friend today about recovery, whether that be recovery from addiction, recovery from trauma, etc. and I realized something about myself;

The biggest reason that it's being so hard for me to recover is because I am just as afraid of recovery as I am of not recovering.

Let me see if I can explain.

I don't know exactly how to heal, but I do know a lot of things that would help. Eating better, getting on a decent sleep schedule, exercise, doing a hobby, working with a therapist, bettering my personal study and prayer habits, etc. And I think that I've talked before about how the things that will help the most are the things that PTSD and chronic illness make most difficult to do, but I want to delve a little bit deeper into that idea.

Recovering is really hard. It takes a lot of hard work and it takes a lot of pain.

I have had a handful of people suggest that I try the therapy method called EMDR. The gist of what that does (as explained to me by my EMDR-trained therapist) is that it is moving traumatic memories from the emotional side of the brain to the logical side of the brain. I won't try to explain how they do that because I only kind of understand, but I have talked to people that have been majorly helped by it! However, one of my friends that suggested it did say that going through that process made for a very difficult and painful few months. Nevertheless, I did seek out a therapist that could do EMDR with me because I do so badly want to recover and get into a better mental/emotional state of mind.

I absolutely LOVE the therapist that I worked with in Ohio, but I only ended up doing EMDR a couple of times. We did it two sessions in a row and then we weren't able to do it for various reasons for a few weeks. And then I just never picked back up on it because life was really, really hard last year and I was struggling enough with the NOW issues and couldn't bear to try to handle the THEN issues on top of it.

And that's when my fear of recovery took over.

I knew that continuing EMDR would likely be very helpful for me, but I was terrified of the pain I also knew would accompany it.

Honestly, even just starting up therapy again is super daunting for me, because when I had to start over in Ohio, it brought back anxiety and triggers that I hadn't been facing in a while. Clearly I hadn't healed of those things or else they wouldn't have come back with so much force when I had to start therapy from scratch. Just talking about my life without EMDR was enough to send me reeling emotionally. So then when things got so hard in my life after I finally DID start EMDR, I felt that there was no way that I could possibly handle the additional pain and suffering that EMDR would bring. But that also meant that I wasn't going to be achieving the healing that I have so desperately wanted and needed.

We just moved back across the country and I'm going to have to start all over again. And life hasn't stopped being really difficult in the here and now. And starting over is going to be that much harder as I go through these last few months of pregnancy and then onto motherhood with Liam outside the womb. But as terrified as I am of the pain of the recovery process, I am equally (if not more) terrified of not recovering.

I have been in recovery from abuse and trauma for just about three years now and I feel like I'm no closer to my goals of getting back to school and finishing my degree or being able to hold a regular job again. Some progress has been made in some areas of my recovery, but many others have been left untouched because of fear and the feeling that I simply can't handle the hard work that it takes to recover.

But I don't want to keep feeling broken. I don't want to keep feeling weaker and weaker. I don't want Liam to be raised by a broken mother. I want to be better for him. I want to be better for my husband. I want to be better for me. I've felt so, so tired of being broken for so long, but I have been unwilling to re-break so that things can be set properly (think of a broken bone that has set incorrectly and has to be re-broken in order to be put into the optimal healing position).

Guys, I'm terrified. I'm terrified of starting over. I'm terrified of adding more stress and pain and exhaustion (both mental and physical) to my already stressful and painful and exhausting life. But I'm MORE terrified of not moving forward. I'm more terrified of remaining stagnant, which is to say, regressing.

Recovery from anything is not ever going to be an easy road. Recovery from addiction is going to involve withdrawal, retraining your mind, breaking down barriers, etc. Recovery from a wound may require the sting of antiseptic, the excruciating pain of physical therapy to break down scar tissue or injured muscles in order to strengthen them back up correctly. Recovery from trauma is going to include facing painful memories, increased depression/anxiety, the return or triggers and nightmares, the complete debilitating exhaustion that it all brings. But the healing is worth it. I have to keep telling myself that. Being able to be a better wife to Jonathan, mother to Liam, and daughter of God are all worth it. All of it. Every single moment of distress. Every single terrifying moment. And I need to remember that as terrifying as recovery is, NOT recovering leaves me in a horrible place while recovery will, in time, lead me to a much, much better one.

The only person that can dictate my recovery is me. No one else can make me recover. No one else can force me to do the hard things. No one can face these fears for me. I have to decide that not recovering is scarier than the difficulty of recovery.

And I'm trying guys. And I've been trying for three years. But I haven't been trying hard enough. I've been trying my very best, but I haven't been trying hard enough. I need to bite the bullet and do every single thing that it takes to heal. I deserve to heal.

And so do you.

No one can recover for you, but you are also not alone in this.

My friend that I was talking to said something to the effect of "recovery requires connection." Not that someone else is responsible for your recovery, but that we need other people in order to make it. People to love us, people to support us, people to be accountable to.

We are not in this alone. We were never meant to be.

Heavenly Father sent His Only Begotten Son down to earth for this exact reason; so we would never, ever go through tribulation alone. Because we can't.

I can't do this alone. I can't heal all by myself. The responsibility for my recovery rests on my shoulders, but I have a God who has sent people into my life, Christ being one of them, to not carry the burden for me completely, but to lighten the load. Christ is here to be equally yoked with us, taking our pains and our struggles and our fears and shouldering some of the weight of it all. He can't take it away completely until we let Him. But that takes difficult, painful, terrifying work.

And He is there for every moment of it.

PS- This is the same quote as the picture up top. It's been the background of my laptop for as long as I've had a laptop and I love it, but I feel like it looked a little bit too cheerful for the message of recovery being excruciating, so I found a different one. But I wanted to share this one too because recovery is also what gets us to a higher, holier, happier state of being.

PPS- It was actually seeing this on Facebook that spurred me writing this post right now: