Out of Pocket

When you were raised to believe you were smart but weren't good enough for anyone, your brain gets scrambled. Trauma responses are hard to manage. Self sabotage is real. It is difficult to accept they won't all be good days and have some compassion for each other. At least it doesn't come easily for me. I will fight against my own better judgement, just to be heard. But what good is fighting to be heard when it pushes the one you love away? It takes a lot of talking for me to figure out where the actual anger is boiling up from. On the surface it would appear that it was the heat of the moment. We don't notice the subconscious gears moving. Triggering (ugh, I hate that word) memories and emotional responses that seem reasonable at the time. But only if you look superficially at the argument.

He yells. I yell. Hurt ensues. Fight or flight breaks those rose colored glasses and you no longer see the one love across from you. There is a stranger sitting there. And you become one to them too, as insults are hurled through the air. A few inches feels like miles apart and is still too close for comfort. So how do you heal together? How do you mend what is broken while trying to uncover the root trauma? These are life skills I might have if I wasn't raised by a narcissist with an inherent talent for Neuro-Linguistic Programing.

I want to dive right in and talk about it. Like I did with my therapist before she left me. Okay that's a bit dramatic. She delayed her retirement to treat me for several years. She had lived a good long life and passed on from a stroke. It was still devastating for me since it was the first time I stuck with therapy. But I digress, it is the bad days I'm ruminating on, the arguments that feel insurmountable when stacked against each other. When we get so out of pocket that we look like we escaped from the nut house.

The only way I have been able to move on, apologize and forgive is to wade right through it. I need to examine the cadaver of our fight until I find the cancer that started each of us on opposing paths. I want to do this together. With or without a therapist. Still we find ourselves at odds and no ground is gained in discovery, forgiveness or healing. I feel talked over, unheard and broken. He feels insulted, hurt and broken. The struggle is real when you both love each other, but need to process things in very different ways.

So I spend countless sleepless nights trying to figure out a way to get him to open up. All the while losing hope and not looking for my own emotional cancer. Then I see the words right in front of me while doom scrolling at 5am on a Friday, "not every day will be a good day and not every day will be a step forward". To be able to remember that this is the person I want all my days with is hard when I do not feel heard or understood. I grasp the corners of my mind for the perfect words. They do not come. Love lingers in my heart and it keeps pulling me back to him. I can only hope that this latest wrestling match of self-sabotage isn't the last straw. That we can find a through and back to the same path. Together. As it should be.