Opening of a New Chapter

I was sitting at the bar at my favorite hang looking into the mirror on the back wall. Featured in the reflection, was a person I barely recognized, as he was happy. After the initial shock wore off I thought back to where I was 2 years ago and how far I came to get to this point. It took lots of work to walk away from a life that never suited me and became literally unbearable the last 10 years as I became aware of that fact. In my past memory, I would have been home at my old house with the first of the 4 quadruple Evan Williams and Pepsi's I drank each night. This time of night dinner would have been made for the family (ex wife and kids) and everyone would have retreated to their corners leaving me alone. It was strange as house with 6 people sure was a lonely place and nobody wanted to hang out together. In hindsight, I realized everyone was hiding from my ex wife and her nasty comments about what was being watched on tv that night. You couldn't even tell she was watching as she was either doing homework or staring at her phone.

On the surface it looked we had an idyllic marriage, high school sweethearts and 3 kids. My ex was jovial, funny and put on a good mask in public. At home, she was incapable of completing any task without summoning me and frequently abused me with the silent treatment. Pretty much the whole marriage she was never on my side and always pushed me toward everything I wanted nothing to do with. It seemed like things would be good for a while, then she would ignore me/or emotionally abuse me and when I would get mad and have enough so she would be nice again. The rough part was, I could never have a disagreement with her that ever lead to resolution of any issue. Every argument was hours long and always was my fault never apologizing for any misdeed ever.
Looking back now I realize I gave up a lot just to have a few days of her being nice to me again.

I feel a hand on my back and the flashback subsides. My new girlfriend shows up meets me at the bar and as I turn around to face her I see the beautiful blue eyes I fell in love with. One thing about her is she looks me in the eyes and never with holds affection. 6 months in and at times I still wait for the other shoe to drop and the games to start. The learning about true love and trusting is difficult after being conned for a quarter century. Maybe I knew deep down I knew was just staying in it for the kids with my ex, but I know I had delusional hope that things would get better one day. Now I don't have those concerns with the new woman in my life and I needed to figure out how to settle down the low hum of thoughts about the past that won't go away.

A Day in my old Life

I am writing this as a reminder of how my old life was while I was still married to my ex wife.  This will be a nice reminder if I ever start to wax nostalgic about the past and set things straight. Every day was lonely and extremely dissatisfying. She would ignore me most of the time and choose to interact with me only when she needed something. The entire time, I drank to cope with the lonliess, abuse and infidelity. In the last 4 years we were together, we had like 2 days where we hung out and had fun. The rest of the time was being ignored and ordered around.

I think about now and how I know the waitresses at several restaurants I like to dine at.  Not possible then as she was always on some stupid diet where she was weighing peas with her scale. I am guessing too she knew I wanted to dine out and spend time together. Of course doing anything I liked wasn't allowed as she got off on my misery. It must be so exhausting for her now to actually have to go out and hunt for her next victim. Now she has to stay out late instead of going to bed at 8pm on a Saturday night.

A day in my life then was waking up between 4 and 6 am. Then I would get out of the house and get to work to avoid her in the morning. In the evening , I would get home and fix dinner. She had homework which she conveniently started as soon as I got home. Good thing she got to nap all afternoon/sext her affair partner. After dinner I would clean up and start mixing some drinks to cope with the anger and frustration of my life. Then I would retreat to a room opposite of her and watch netflix till I fell asleep. Then wake up early and start again early. 

Flashbacks and Dreams

I am growing wary of processing the trauma from my marriage. It comes back in dream form or it overtakes me during the day and I am left reeling from it. I think it all started when the ex approached me with a fake apology and promises to change. I was doing really well with gray rock technique for several months and was moving forward. That conversation with the non apology reeled me back to how awful I felt during the marriage.

I wonder if the trauma processing came up as a defense mechanism to finally allow me to feel anger toward her and distance myself for good. Now after many nights of bad dreams and flashbacks I feel the anger others feel when I tell them my story.  For so long I denied myself the right to feel anything just to make time go by. Also, I had to still deal with her for a year after filing for divorce to get my youngest graduated from high school. 

I even went back twice to try and reconcile with her. That meant forgetting about all the pain she caused me and pretending like nothing happened.  She still talked to her affair partner the entire time and I felt gross and used again. She always had a perfect excuse to justify her actions too, so once again there was no getting her to feel any empathy for me. 

Even as I busted my ass to get the house sold, my son moved to his apartment and keeping up with my job she was no help. She went to a biker rally one weekend to escape responsibility, took a shower while we moved furniture to her mothers house and when she was painting the living room at the house she left to go shopping. At every turn she was worthless and contributed nothing to the household. Getting away from her has been a net gain in every way for me. 

So if I know empirically that she was awful for me why do I think about her all the time? Its so frustrating and I want this all to pass so I can focus on the present which is awesome btw. There were so many things I buried over the years and it seems I get to feel years of trauma in less than a month. Surely this has to be ending soon.  

Nightmares

I have been having nightmares where certain traumatic events from my marriage come up and get replayed. It goes back 6 years to when I still had hope that things were salvageable and I feel like I did back then.  The sadness, emptiness and lonely feelings come back and wake me up. Now that my present is good, I realize what a hell my old life was and it scares me that I tolerated that treatment.

I want to move past this trauma and feel normal again. I did everything in my power to get away and improve my life. Just tired of these dreams bringing it all back. The main theme in these flashbacks is the hope I had that was foolish. I thought one day things would finally be good with my ex wife and there was something I was doing wrong that kept derailing that.  

In this case, my hope was a source of trauma for me and kept me bound to an abuser. The things I hoped for are freely given in my new relationship and I don't have to feel like my needs are a pain in someones ass. When I go back to how I used to feel, I want to hug and counsel my old self. How tragic this was and how much I suffered trying to have a relationship with a toxic person. Hoping now that I know my hope was toxic, I can start to let go the past more.