2dissonance | Recent Entries

Newly Engaged: A Story of Divorce

I met my fiance on a dating app when I was bored during quarantine at the end of 2020. We announced our happy engagement this December, two years after we met. Right after announcing our engagement on social media, my daily divorce dreams ensued. I knew they were coming. I was divorced in 2018 and my parents divorced two years later. This post is a long time in the making. If any of you are wondering why I'm thinking about my divorce so much when I'm newly engaged, think about how humans work. If you had a major car accident and you're driving again, you'll probably have a lot of flashbacks about the accident. Before you judge, learn about psychology. My fiance is secure enough to honor that this is part of the process, and I love him for that.

I get fired up about this topic the more I read about it. My first marriage wasn't a mistake. I didn't marry the wrong person. My first marriage could have worked, if the circumstances were different. I don't believe that every relationship that ends is a failed relationship. I do believe that the character traits of my current fiance mix well with my character traits and that we have both done enough self work to know how to communicate with each other. But I don't believe he is my soulmate or anything, because I don't believe love is enough to make a relationship work. I love my ex, I always will. If love were the sole definer of a long-term relationship, we and many others would still be together. When I read about other people's divorce stories, I struggle with some of the cliches I read. "He just wasn't my person," I hear. "He was toxic." "I deserved better." Maybe that's true for them, but it's not my experience. I have days when I still encounter strong feelings of regret and sadness, and I think that's normal, but when I'm in my wisest mind, these are the conclusions I consistently draw:

1. CAUTION, BE WARE! Generational Trauma Ahead
Young couples don't realize that they exist as a product of the generations before them. When my ex and I got engaged when I was still not even of drinking age, we brought with us the unprocessed, unrealized subconscious baggage of our parents, and our parents parents, and the generations before them. For instance, I didn't know that I had a disorganized attachment style, meaning that without mindfulness and constant attention, I push and pull. I alternated between craving closeness and fighting for closed-off independence at a rapid, disorganized rate. I didn't know how my dad's addiction affected me. I didn't know I had repressed trauma. Combine that with his baggage that isn't mine to tell, and you have yourself an interesting combination! Could it have worked? Yes. But we didn't know what was happening for quite some time, nor what conversations to have.

2. Mistakes are Inevitable, Accept it.
My fear of making mistakes kept me paralyzed. I feared hurting him so badly that I hurt him really badly. I feared his anger and conflict so much that I created more of it. It's no wonder I feared conflict so much. My internalized beliefs consisted of some of the following:
"Conflict is bad."
"Your opinions don't matter."
"The able bodied man is always right, who are you to challenge him."
"You're being dramatic."
"You're a piece of crap."
I didn't know how to talk about anything without freezing, crying, focusing on other relationships, making jokes, scrolling youtube, or doing anything to avoid. By the time I started to learn how, I had such a massive inferiority complex that even looking at my spouse set me back.

So why do some marriages make it and some don't? Why couldn't we beat the odds? I made a choice. Was it the right one? Is there such a thing as the right choice? Can we humble ourselves enough to live in this grey space, in a space where decisions aren't necessarily "right" or "wrong?" I made the choice to end the relationship with good intentions. I didn't want to hurt him anymore. I wanted to figure out what was going on. I was scared. I was not in my right mind. This is my experience, and I am just one person. Surely others can relate. Most breakups are explained by a painfully gray space in which no one is truly at the center of fault. Squarely blaming yourself or someone else is a way of deflecting from the painful reality of generational trauma and fear of conflict.

My siblings and I have looked each other squarely in the eyes and committed that we will try not to repeat the mistakes of our past, and the mistakes of our parents' past. We will talk to our partners. We will promise honesty above all else, yes even above love, because the alternative leads to even greater pain than the thing you are trying to conceal. The alternative to honesty is infidelity, addiction, avoidance, repression, and trauma, the trauma that generationally creates these problems in the first place.

I leave you with marital advice. Take it with a grain of salt; who am I but a newly engaged 31 year old divorcee. TALK ABOUT EVERYTHING. You are not just marrying your partner. You are marrying their scars, their pride, their shame, their guilt, and the trauma of the generations that come before them. You may be in love, but you are also your scars, your pride, your shame, your guilt, and the trauma of the generations that came before you. Humble yourself. Commit yourself. You are worth it.

Today I'm focusing on relationship myths, things I used to believe that I'm constantly working on not believing anymore. It's so hard when you saw dysfunction, an dyou there aren't clear signs on what relationships that are healthy should look like. There really is no "should" and I know that, but anyway.

1. Conflict is bad.
I was taught that if you bring conflict up, you're dramatic. Your job is to suck it up. My parents never fought really. I thought that was a sign that they got along so well that they were super healthy. It was the opposite. They never talked to each other. They ignored conflict until it exploded and now they hate each other. When you have two people in a relationship, that's two personalities, and if those personalities are being vulnerable and growing together, there are going to be different emotions and experiences that come up.

2. My opinions are probably wrong and it's better to let the other person lead.
I got so many messages growing up that I should shut up and listen, that I shouldn't cause problems, that sighted people were better than me, that my brothers were better than me, etc. etc. I felt like my ex husband was better than me. I've walked around with an inferiority complex. I don't need to have a superiority complex. But in every situation, I have my thoughts and my feelings and they are just as relevant as someone else's.

And that leads me into another challenge, what's the purpose of my romantic rlationship? I used to believe that the purpose was to worship God together, and my spiritual beliefs have changed since I believed that. I believed that intimate relationships were supposed to help the people in them feel better. That's not necessarily true, I'm not in a relationships to help me feel whole, there's a weird false misconception that relationships are meant to fill us. I think the purpose is to support each other, as whole individuals, through life. We can support each other and care for each other, as intimate friends, and also as whole people.

Current Mood: sad

Sometimes, when I'm feeling reckless, or perhaps passive, I think about the life I thought I would have at this point, and I miss who I thought you would be, and who I thought I would be, and who I thought we would be together. But then I quickly heave a sigh of relief that I'm not that person and that I am who I am. And then sometimes I notice Ed coming out and listing the things I should feel guilty about, especially on my days off, and that same part of me starts to go down some nihilist track of thinking, like what does it all mean? We all get up and do the same thing every day and then eventually die. And then I think about how grossly incorrect aht is, because we essentially get to create the person we want to be, and keep creating that person and keep growing that person. And today I've been feeling particularly compassion fatigued, I know it has been coing on for a while, it usually does about this time every six months or so, especially since my last time off was during a family reunion so not exactly calm. So that means my last time off was...when? Ahh, when I moved in June. Yeah, that makes sense that I'm starting to feel it, I usually feel it every six months or so. I think it's time for me to walk my dog.

I suppose it makes sense, that in the depths of my chest there’s a heavy, dark cloud I live with. Some days it’s stronger than others, but it’s still there. Sometimes when I’m honest with myself I feel like so much of the life is gone from me, even though evidence communicates very strongly otherwise. I still got that spark, I feel it in my laughter, in my energy at work, in my love and care for others, in my jokes, in my running, in my willingness to sit down and write this paragraph. But I still say, IT makes sense.

I have a hard time referencing the things I’ve been through, because I know people have been through much worse. But I tell clients not to compare pain, that pain, much like joy, is vastly unique in its presentation. I’ve survived some things, I suppose, and I’ve done that well, but certainly that survival has come with scars, so I need to be patient with that process. Self judgment and ridicule became my best friend growing up in an alcoholic family where my family didn’t confront issues. It became the best explanation for the contradictory low and high expectations placed on me. You are blind, you won’t amount to much. But while you’re at it, make sure your waistline doesn’t exceed a size 4, and hop on the scale weekly. It became a simple explanation for why kids didn’t want to be my friend in school, and why I might as well have allowed one of my only friends to repeatedly sexually harass me as a price for being my friend. It was a viable explanation for inexplicable ghosting/cheating from boyfriends, friends, and most recently, my father. It was an ally for me in my 20’s while I participated in a triangle of psychological abuse, involving a rigid husband, a manipulative friend, and my then insecure, self loathing, and terrified self. I’m doing so much better now. God, I’m doing so much better now. But for goodness sakes, it makes fucking sense that I still feel it. Yes, I have been physically safe, I have never been in poverty. I have essentially never been physically abused, I have been sexually harassed and I did have a boyfriend shove me a few times…But is that even the point? Is the point to count scars? Or is the point to accept they are there and grow through them? Isn’t the point to thank my body for trying to keep me safe when it sends me glimpses of the dread, the harsh self judgment, the deep suicidal hopelessness that in essence helped communicate to me that something was not right? Because without that nagging feeling, without the self judgment that tried to help me make sense of the inexplicable, I would still be there. I would still be there. And I’m not there. I will not ever be there again. So, nagging feeling of dread in my heart, thank you. Self judgment, thank you. You were there for me through so much. And to be honest, I no longer need you, because I’ve learned to keep myself safe without you. But I understand why you feel the need to stick around a while. When you feel ready to relax, I got you…But for now, I’ll keep feeding you and carrying you with me

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: bedroom
Current Music: supertramp, bloody well right

What do I have? Does it matter? Was my psychiatrist right? Why can't I be on no meds? Can I be on no meds? What is the perfect combination of meds for me? Why can't I just be normal? What's wrong with my brain?

These are the types of questions I work with people on answering all day five days a week. I sit with them while they explore, but today, I am wrestling with them myself. I tell clients all day not to cling too much to the "flavor of the week" diagnosis they may have at whatever given point. Brains are just piles of pink mush anyway, right? But I can sympathize with the frustration of clients when I tell them to Elsa the diagnosis and focus on the treatment.

I'm a nice little bundle of Unspecified, as are most people. I had an unspecified eating disorder, a hair pulling disorder which is the most black and white thing I ever got, an unspecified depression disorder at one point, unspecified anxiety, and the latest was unspecified OCD, which I think fits me the best. If my psychiatrist pinned my brain down as correctly as he did my sleep disorder, I should be on 20 milligrams of lexapro for the rest of my life. I never was on that amount. I refused it when he suggested it. The highest I was ever on was 15 during my divorce. I cut down when I started feeling buzzy, and my psychiatrist asked if I had bipolar. Literally asked me that at the end of my yearly appointment one day and then signed off. By the way I don't have bipolar lol. Anyway, I lived on 10 for multiple years and was functional and happy for the most part, but I was afraid I was missing something. What if there were human emotions I wasn't experiencing? When my pharmacy fucked up I took that opportunity to get off the meds. It was then that I remembered why I got on them, but I assumed maybe it was just withdraw. I don't consider myself emotionally weak. Surely I could push through, me, a mental health professional with all the tools in the book. But my fixations were so loud and disruptive that I finally compromised on 5 mg. My brain fixated on everything, if a toenail wasn't exactly straight, I kept having the intrusive thought that it needed to be straight before I could continue with my day. I'd randomly have intrusive suicidal thoughts, I knew how to navigate them but they were loud and disruptive. I fixated on hairs on my face, cracks in the sidewalk, perceived tones from others, etc. etc. And don't get me started on cleaning, every surface was a landmine of fixations, every piece of dirt sent my mind around in circles. So 5 MG it is. And that's where I've been. I don't know... Things are still mighty loud in here. A few minutes ago, my limbs were made of lead for a while and I had to push myself to stop pulling my hair and go do notes instead. Then right after I did that, I noticed crums on the counter and found myself berading myself, so I redirected that train of thought and brought myself back to notes. It's like driving a school bus where the children on it want me to stop at every little thing to yell at my driving. Thank goodness it has not fixated on food, although when I caught wind of my weight a few weeks ago I had a few intrusive thoughts about starving myself and my brain berated me for eating meals for a while. It is an interesting bus ride. Sometimes I'm anxious, sad, and focused all at the same time. Is my brain normal? I know enough to know that isn't a thing. I know not everyone is like me though too. Not everyone assumed their parents died every time they left the room when they were five and made contingency plans for their death. Not everyone woke themselves up multiple times throughout the night to make sure their vocal chords still worked. But some people did, and do. So I'm back full circle. Am I on the right dose? There's no such thing. This question is another opportunity for my brain to fixate. One thing I really appreciate is I've been journaling more. When I thought about Dean recently, I cried, not a major cry but a little. I appreciate that. It feels more like me in here. And maybe the answer doesn't need to be black and white. Maybe for now 5 is working, because I have the time and energy to drive the bus and navigate the children when they insult my driving. And maybe at some point, I won't have that time and I'll want to increase again. And who knows, maybe at some point I'll throw all caution to the wind and take 0 again, although based on my last experience that seems ill advised. I feel better after writing this.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Location: home
Current Music: no tell lover

Between music I find appealing and music I find atrocious. For instance, something about Stuck on You by Lionel Richie, as absolutely sappy and cringy as it is, resonates with me becuase it creates an image in my head of two lovers running toward each other after pushig each other away for years. But in the same breath, I think Mike + te Mechanics are terrible. Same genre. Same type of music. But I can't stand it.Funny how that works.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: my bed,
Current Music: Megan thee Stalion. Love her