Just a quick note to let you know that the protest against the AVFM Conference at the Doubletree in Detroit is happening right now. You can check the hashtag #NoMRA on Twitter for live updates. Here’s a Ms Magazine blog piece with more details.
I’ll have some thoughts on it all later.
Photo from @Katie_Speak on Twitter.
What Flying Mouse says!
Sleep is good. More sleep is better.
My husband jokes that my go-to advice is ‘get more sleep, drink more water ‘. Well, you may still have the problem, but you’re rested and hydrated.
Brushing my teeth and going to my appointment now.
I thought I was ready to go back to work today. I’m not. I imagine this appointment will beat the hell out of me too. I’ll probably come back to my friends’ place and go back to sleep. I am weak.
I’m glad you have such a nice friend looking out for you like that. You can’t go wrong with cuddling.
Good luck with your appointment!
@marinerachel: Therapy appointment can be exhausting even when you’re properly fed and well-rested and not reeling frim trauma. Do what’s best for you and only go back to work when you feel ready for it. You don’t want to make any fatigue-induced mistakes!
@marinerachel
i am glad to hear that you are going to your psych appointment. your first priority right now has to be YOU. along those lines, i would also suggest a follow-up appointment with the womens clinic that removed your IUD. follow up care after a miscarriage is just as important as continuing psych care. there are dire consequences to an incomplete miscarriage and this possibility needs to be ruled out by a medical professional. i mention this only as a voice of sad experience and not to alarm. it is important.
Marinerachel — you may feel despondent, but you sound like a strong woman who’s seeing him for the ass he was. Somewhere around “I will be heard”, I wanted to give you an honest to goodness “you go girl!” standing ovation.
So go to your appt (you probably have already!), go back to your friend’s, and soak up the cuddles, you deserve ’em!
Hey, how did your appointment go, marinerachel? (If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, too.)
I’m a little perturbed, not because it was bad – it wasn’t – but because today’s shrink seemed to have a very different take than the shrink I met in emergency the other day, who I fell in love with. The shrink in emerge was unimpressed with my meds. Today’s shrink thought they were pretty good but bumped up the dosage on one. The shrink in emerge thought I needed DBT. The shrink today thought I needed CBT. The shrink in emerge told me “You need counselling”. The shrink today asked me “What would you like me to do for you?” I really wanted to be told what I needed, not asked. I’m at a complete loss.
Anyways, he gave me a new dosage of my meds, saying he’d like to exhaust the possibilities with the drugs I’m on before trying something else. I completely agree. I started them today. I’ll see him again in three weeks by which point a therapy plan should be in place with a colleague of his. I’m really looking forward to letting down my guard and falling into a million pieces with someone who is used to and qualified to deal with people in that state. Coping is hard.
I feel terrible. I miss him and I’m so hurt by him. He treated me so badly so often and I gave him everything. The rejection is just killing me. Trying to suppress it for the time being and let myself experience and process the emotions in a healthy fashion. I really don’t know how though.
Honey, this is where you need to believe that It. Isn’t. You. It. Is. Him.
There is nothing broken or wrong with you to a level* that you “brought on”, or “deserved” this treatment.
The pain you are experiencing, at least some/most of it, is what all feeling people feel when this type of shitty thing happens. It fucking hurts. It will pass, although it doesn’t feel like it at the time.
The fact that you were so nice to him and he was such a shit to you says that you are a nice person. Who deserves way better than him. It also says that he’s a shit, and other comments you have written strongly suggest he is an abuser.
You soooooooooooo don’t deserve this. I hope you start feeling better soon.
*I think all of us are flawed in some way, hopefully in little ways like can’t make souffle, or mispronounces some big words. But no-one’s perfect. That is all that I mean by this bit.
@marinerachel: the hurt and the missing part sucks, but slowly you’re going to stabilize and you’ll feel less terrible. The trick is to be as kind to yourself as you can and to let your friends be there for you. Honestly, I think you’re doing great.
I’m glad to hear that your appointment went okay. Your therapist seems to be level-headed and cautious. Maybe staying on the same meds for the time being is not a bad idea: you don’t need the adjustment to new meds on top of everything else!
*hugs*
I’m back at the doctor’s tomorrow for another look at my uterus. There was a LOT of blood pooling in it last we checked and I spent two days bleeding heavily and cramping something awful. Today I physically feel good. Feel like complete fucking shit otherwise but, physically, feel good.
One poignant question the psychiatrist asked me today was “What do you do for fun” to which I said “Nothing, really”. How sad. He asked what I’d like to do for fun. I told him spend more time outside and in/on the water. He asked if I did so often. I said no. He asked why. That’s a good fucking question. Why DON’T I do the things that bring me joy anymore? Why did I stop playing music in my late teens? Why don’t I dance anymore when I’m so good at it? Why am I not working with kids in a summer camp? Why don’t I befriend neighbourhood cats?
Right now the answer is “Because I can’t enjoy anything”. Seriously, food is my one true love and eating it has now become a chore. Nothing else brings me any satisfaction or happiness. I literally take pleasure in and appreciate nothing. I just spend all day hurting. He’s stolen the ability to be happy from me. I hate him for that.
Even when my mood was a little better though I didn’t do things that contributed to my happiness. I just did work and gym and relationship and occasionally time with a friend. That’s not good. I’ve really neglected my duty to self-care. No wonder, once I got dumped, I was in a pit of misery. I have nothing else. I literally gave him everything aside from the teensy amount of time I spent with friends and the time required to eat and exercise.
My biggest problem right now is I have virtually no friends. If I desperately need companionship as I do now and one of them is sick and one of them’s at work, I’m SOL. That’s the position I’m in right now. One’s working and the other’s got a migraine and asked me to check in later so I’m left here all alone with my feels and I’m spinning the fuck out, digging myself deeper into this pit of despair. This is why I can’t be alone right now. This is why I can’t just take myself out for a walk to alleviate some of the distress. I need to be psychologically engaged in order to escape this fucking hole I’m stuck in.
I need friends who want to share in experiences with me. I don’t know how to make them. This is awful.
You identified some activities that you enjoyed in the past. At least some of them sound social (dancing, working at summer camp), and some others could be modified into being social (if you like reading, is there a book club near you, are there any baking/cooking classes you could take)?
It’s a lot easier to make new friends with people who have similar interests.
I’ve made all my recent friends through playing Ingress on my android phone (be enlightened! :)) https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nianticproject.ingress and we’re about to have a cross-faction dinner on Friday. We also have faction and cross-faction pub meet-ups.
One online thing I have been introduced to is http://www.meetup.com/ which is useful for people organising club gatherings, and a way of finding out what groups there are around you.
Good luck for what you decide to do. 🙂
God, I feel so weak. I did something stupid and reached out to him, letting him hurt me again when I felt this way yesterday. Suppressing my emotions isn’t working.
Hey hon, don’t suppress your emotions, they’re yours, let them out and own them. 🙂
Do you feel that you can work through your emotions without reaching out to him?
Is your physical health, e.g. the bleeding, okay now?
My physical health is excellent.
I don’t feel I can bear my emotions anymore. I feel like I’m going to explode without his love and approval. I’m still stuck on convincing him how wrong he is about me, how good I am. I don’t even care how badly he treated me so much of the time right now. I don’t care. I just want him. I want him to know he’s wrong about me, I am trustworthy, he can love me.
I can’t believe how worthless I feel without him, how wrapped up in his approval my self-esteem is. Were I in a good headspace I would run, run away from him knowing he’d just harm me again and realise I deserve to be with someone who wants to be with me but not now.
I’m managing for the time being with exercise and food. I’ve put my friend on alert though that I’ve had a big meltdown this evening and have concerns my mood is progressing in the wrong direction and I may need to go back to emerge tonight.
But you never had it, did you? You invested a year of your life with that bloke, who’s nothing but an emotional scammer. You never got anything good back from him. He deliberately put you into this dependent state of mind. You’ve had a year of this and you haven’t exploded yet. There’s no reason to think you will. However it came about, you are away from him.
Ouff. I have to go afk for a bit, my hips are aching.
“I feel like I’m going to explode without his love and approval.”
Kiddo, three words from someone who’s been there and done that.
It. Gets. Better.
No matter how bad you feel, and I know you feel just awful, in six months – no, in a month even – you will feel better. Life will be better.
You’ve just got rid of an emotional vampire, and you’re weak from emotional bloodloss (and the real thing too, maybe.) But your heart will heal. You WILL NOT hurt like this forever. We’re not designed that way.
So hold onto that. And also hold onto this – men like him aren’t accidental. They work at being manipulative shitheads and attracting the best so they can drag them down. You were a victim of a practised deception. So run away, even if there’s nothing to run to, apparently. A burglary victim doesn’t hang around a burglar. He stole your happiness (temporarily) and your confidence (temporarily). Don’t hang around. It’ll hurt, but it hurts anyway, and getting away is healthy.
“realise I deserve to be with someone who wants to be with me”
You do. You will. This relationship does not define you or your future. Many women have been with arsewipes. And many of us are not with arsewipes now.
It gets better. Believe it. I’ve lived a long and turbulent life, with abusive parents, abusive partners, men who’ve lied and manipulated and dominated. Even one guy who tried to get me sectioned (locked up for being insane) because I fought back against his abuse.
And I’m fifty one, and sane (most days 😉 ), and happy. And I am absolutely nothing special.
You will survive. You are surviving. You are not weak. And in a very short time, you will feel a lot better than you do now. Think of it as a bad case of the flu. The flu goes away, and so does heartache caused by shithead blokes.
Hugs to you.
@marinerachel: I read the posts you made last night, and I hope that you’re okay.
You’re a good, kind and trustworthy person, and he knows this. Guys like that choose their partners for what they can do for them. He spent the whole year gaslighting you to believe you’re not worthy so he could stay on top and control you.
Next time your mood goes out of control and you feel like you need to convince him of your goodness (and I can understand why you want this, because you’ve spent so much time loving him) you can tell yourself thaytche already knows. And it made no difference.
I’m glad your therapist had you thinking about you for a bit! I hope you get to do all the things you enjoy doing soon. Maybe you could start now! Even if you’re in a terrible state, doing things that normally bring you joy can help break the anhedonia.
*hugs*
I just want to say that you are not stupid, ungrateful, or perverse for feeling this way.
Motley contributed the following, which I do not think is very helpful, but she worked hard on:
——————hgjjjjjjjj“““1AS3~““zz;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;’rrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee fdedxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyycz
The Furrinati have communicated!
Some sects do speaking in tongues. We get typing in paws. 🙂
My cat’s new thing is to stand up on her hind legs and put her front paws on the keyboard tray while I’m at the computer, at which point I’m supposed to stop and pet her. She has an uncanny ability to know when I’m busy with something, and times her interruptions accordingly.
I experienced a ferret running across the keyboard, leaving this message on the screen: “HUG!” Capitals and exclamation mark and everything.
Awwww!
They do know how to be adorably evil. Or adorably annoying, at least.
Mads just comes and insinuates her tail around my ankles when I’m at the computer. It’s her morning routine: interrupt me, wind around under the tables, fling herself on the floor to have her belly tickled, complain about having her belly tickled, run away, rinse and repeat.