Better in Time

In a comment left on my last post, I was described by one as having been broken. And to that observation, I would agree … up to a certain point. It’s true, and I agree, there was a time when I was broken, but once broken in this way is always broken. This kind of break doesn’t mend.

I understand this now, after living through it and its aftermath. I see it in me now when I am quick to recognize a lying manipulator. I’ll be honest with you, it does anger me … in those moments when I am faced with how guarded I am. It’s not always the liars or the cheaters who stir my awareness, though. I thought about this very thing when I was walking to the library the other day. It was a beautiful day … just a bit too warm, but the air was free of that nasty humidity, and the breeze was soothing, almost inspiring. It occurred to me, as I was walking with my group members, that I was actually enjoying my time at school. I was thinking how much more friendlier people seemed to be this term as compared to those I was with last term. Then I realized that many of these friendly people were in some of my classes last term, and it occurred to me then that it was me … I was the difference. I’m different because I’ve removed myself from the person and the things that broke me. I had to learn to be in the company of others again, and I understand now that I have healed enough to do this.

In the very same comment that described me as broken, there was something written that is very significant to life and the part of it that makes it cruel.

“It would be so much easier if we could just forget and be able to leave the memories of being let down and abandoned on the steps of those that did the harm.”

And this quote brings me to the crux of this posting. I promise you, that if you want to forget, you can, and through the process of forgetting is how “time heals all wounds”.  Sometimes, the hurt is too much to carry, and the only way to survive is to forget what caused the hurt.

The most amazing thing I’ve learned this past year is that my story is not unique at all. I literally wasted five years of my life. I sat at my PC, stroking the ego of a narcissist, and I did this knowing in the back of my mind that nothing about any of it was healthy. I shunned my friends and family. I resented my job or anything that required me taking off the headset and moving away from the PC. I might as well have been living in a cave on a deserted island. Life was passing me by, and I allowed this to happen, because the person I fell in love with was telling me we would have a “real” life together “one day”. And yes, I know how insane that sounds … how insane it was.

When I discovered that everything that had been told to me was a lie (and can you imagine how many lies can be told in a period of five years?), and when I woke one day to “a stranger” with that familiar sounding voice trying to convince me that I had imagined everything, including our so-called relationship, I knew that I had to put an end to the insanity, and I knew that getting through the worst of it was going to be the loneliest experience of my life. There are no words to adequately describe to you how painful it was. The betrayal was more like a raping. I paced the floors at night,  shaking and unable to stop crying, thinking about all the most intimate places of myself that I shared with this person and feeling so ravaged and humiliated, thinking how those intimacies were treated with such lack of respect …  with such carelessness and cold manipulation … the tender moments of my life were viewed by one as nothing more than  bits of ammo. And there I was, defenseless, abandoned by the one who had become my entire life, and all the lies were ripping through me, and the only place I could go was to myself, but I gave that away to someone who didn’t care.  I felt completely and desperately alone … like no one would understand, because no one else had gone through anything like this.

But I was so wrong about that. Once I chose to leave that twisted life behind, I dove into life head on. The first thing I did was to start traveling again, and I got back in touch with my family and rebuilt my relationships with them. Then I went back to school, trying to put meaning back into my life … to give it some purpose or direction, to take care of me for a change. And through my journeys, I have met so many people with similar horror stories, and many of those stories much more frightening than my own. And what all of us know is that we can’t leave all this hurt at the steps of those who caused the harm, because, one … those people who dish out all the hurt don’t care that they hurt others and wouldn’t notice any of the hurt left at their doors, and two … we know the best thing, the most healthy thing we can do for ourselves is stay as far away from these miserable beings as we can.

But we CAN forget, and forgetting sometimes is all we can do to help us get past the hurt. If you really want to forget, you can, and the more time that passes, the more you will forget. But, you have to want to forget. There are hurtful things we choose to remember, because we don’t want to forget the person. But I promise you … there is no reason to hang on to memories of people who aren’t worth remembering. The process is very simple, and if you give it time, it will work for you. Simply … when a thought of someone or something associated with that someone starts to form, tell yourself to stop it! Any time I start to get a memory of “that person” or the things we shared together, I literally say to myself, “Stop!”

I have been using this technique for a year now, and I am at a point where someone has to ask me a direct question about the incident or I see the person’s name in order to have a thought about any of it. And I know in time, it will all be gone … as if it never happened.