Yesterday, a friend who shared a similar past, and who was also a member of the infidelity support board we used to belong to, contacted me on Facebook.
She wanted to talk about a few things, including a family member she discovered was cheating on her husband.
So we got to talking about it. And through the course of the rather lengthy chat session, she went on to talk at length about her own experiences.
Which started bringing back memories of mine. And one after another, each thing she said would trigger another set of memories.
And I felt myself reliving it. Feeling the pain again. The despair.
I have worked very, very hard at trying to put all of that away. There is nothing I can do to undo it. Nothing I will ever be able to do to change what was.
I have been in a long process of moving on. The greater the distance, the more time that passes, the easier it becomes.
But every once in a while, something can set you reeling. It's like hitting "rewind" at full speed.
I'm better about it today.
But after that conversation yesterday, I was spiraling down fast. A mess of emotions and bad memories all swirling in my head.
I am not sure how to deal with these kinds of "triggering" events, except to do all I can to deflect them.
I don't really want to talk about infidelity anymore. I don't want to know. While I can certainly empathize with those who are there, or who have been there.
I'm DONE with it.
I spent 5 years helping others deal with the issues, the pain, the lies, the heartbreak. And in turn, I was helped by them.
But you reach a point where dipping your foot anywhere in that water is to have your whole body sucked in and under the surface.
This is another part of my learning process.
A selfishness, perhaps...born of necessity.
I can ill afford to revisit that place. To wallow anymore. To allow myself to get wrapped around my painful past, and live there.
And these kinds of issues and things are ripe with the ability to drag me back down.
I'm back on my feet today.
But yesterday was a visit back to hell.
I'm not going back there. I did my time.
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....for your advice on that other site people listened. You are moving and living the way you want and there is only one life we live, so do what makes you happy and move those thoughts that bring you down, far far away!!
ReplyDeleteThank you, and I am finding that I have to keep focused on the present and the future. It's the only way. Have to get busy living. I think we do reach a point where we realize that we've exhausted everything we can in anguishing over our past.
ReplyDeleteThe triggers are hard to deal, but I got used to it, it got sometimes really bad in past when something trighered a bad memory and I got all angry and basically had the post traumatic event kick in. People who ddidn't experience it will think like "WTF, why is he freaking out?" But if they experienced it themselves they would know why I was freaking out.
ReplyDeleteLeo, you express it well. If you haven't live it, you can't comprehend it. There are things that can jettison us in an instant back to the most painful times. And it takes all we have to collect ourselves and regroup. Such is life when you have experienced the worst. When you've been traumatized and beaten down. You keep pulling yourself back up. And once in a while, something can set you reeling once again. It's a cumulative effect. You can try to be free of it. But you never really are. You live one step away from the horrific and painful memories. And you try with all you have, to move past it all.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I never got out of it myself, you can work on trying to get hold of it, but certains events or talks do trigger it back and there's not much you can do at the moment it is triggered. It doesn't happen as often but it still does happen. Sometimes it seems as if I am caught in a timeloop, reliving it over again and again and not even living in the present if you get what I mean.
ReplyDeleteBy the way I have been wondering if you received a reply to the linkedin inmail, I sent the reply to your email adress, the non comcast one, but then again it might have been flagged as a spam, just wondering because you haven't replied to that.