Past Trauma Never Goes Away

Past trauma is something you can never move past completely. God knows I’ve tried. I try to not think about it or push it out of my thoughts. But deep down, all those insults and jabs linger in my mind.

When I am feeling good about myself, something I rarely do lately, my mind immediately reminds me of everything my ex said about me. He would call me “shit ass” like it was my name. It all started as a joke. Then he stopped using my name and just calling me by junior high insults like jerk-o -saurus or fuckface. And yes, these names were what he called me during my children’s growing-up years.

He only hit me a few times, but what lasts longer in my mind is the emotional abuse. He would blame me for everything wrong in his life. Something went wrong at the grocery store. It was my fault. Someone said something to him in passing. Well, that was on me, too.

The Never-Ending Blame Game

I carried with me for over a decade the feeling of I was making his life miserable. I’ll never forget a time when pregnant that I wanted to die. I didn’t want to live this way. He made me think if I died, my children wouldn’t miss me either.

I snapped out of it, thanks to my grandma. I had an open relationship with her and I told her of my feelings. I will never forget that call. She cried and said, “Doodle Bug (my nickname), you aren’t the problem. He is. You make mistakes, we all do. But you have good intentions.”

The toxic relations between us didn’t end with our divorce. He continues to rage at me whenever he wants. Thankfully, now he talks to himself because I blocked him. But the sad truth is, the damage to my self-worth will be a lifelong battle.

Past Trauma Sucks The Life Out Of Me

That brings up to the present day. This morning, my husband was in a bad mood. It snowed six inches last night, and the car got stuck in front of our house. He had to call for a ride to get to work. He blamed me for something small (no need to explain why) and it sent me into a panic attack.

It wasn’t because of anything my husband did, as it was just a minor thing. But for me, after the abuse I suffered, it sent me back to 1999–2015 when that was my life. It sent me to a time I felt trapped and useless to everyone around me.

Past trauma is something so hard to get past. I think I do well most of the time. But every once in a while, something happens and I will sit and think for hours about my past trauma. I replay all the jabs and what I did to deserve to be treated that way.

Let me be clear — I did nothing to deserve it. Emotional abuse is not okay. It’s never okay. My mind knows that. But the trauma is bigger than knowing I didn’t deserve it or forgetting all about it.

Thankfully, my husband is a good man, and he supports me even when I have an episode. I won’t say he wouldn’t like to knock my ex’s teeth out for damaging me this way, because he would. But we just stay silent.

Is Healing Possible?

I think I am doing better than five years ago. There were months I would cry daily about how he treated me. I’d cry over the fact my adult sons took his side and they have nothing to do with me. They didn’t see how their dad treated me, only I kicked him out and forced their dad to be homeless.

I can live without my sons. I don’t want to, but it is possible. However, I cannot live with having an abusive ex having any say in my emotions or life. I really hope the more time passes with no contact and hearing everything I did wrong that led us to this resolution, the more I will heal.

Is healing from narcissistic abuse possible? I don’t know. I know I want to try. I hope for the day that someone will mention his name and I won’t feel anger and resentment about everything I’ve been through.

Subscribers, do you think you can move past narcissistic abuse? Or will it be a lifelong battle?

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Originally published on Medium.