Lets Faith It

learning something about things in the present that trigger remembering of stressful unresolved issues of the past. tonight i was taking my turn doing kitchen duty. i had a trigger moment so i went in the other room to talk with Greg. there is always this urgency to my voice when i have these moments. as we talked and listened it came down to realizing that i was reacting to a time when i was 20 years old. married, had a child, living with parents apart from husband who lived in another state. We had made decisions not to accrue any kind of debt whatsoever, and as a result I was left to live in an abusive situation (abuse was happening to me from my father) for another 14 months. At the time I believed my husband was responsible for providing a way for me to come live with him. I did consider my father another resource and asked several times for his help only to hear him say horrible things about my husbands inability to care for me and that i would be better off staying where i was. At the time those are the only choices I believed I had. Eventually, my husband found a way to pay for me to leave, but I never resolved the emotional stress that situation caused for me.........fast forward to today. I use certain situations in my life to recreate these feelings of being held hostage against my will and outside of my ability to do anything about it. I've pretty much been doing that for all these years. Situations have changed over the years but in all of them I have found some capacity to perpetuate essentially the same story. While it is embarrassing to realize the ridiculous lengths my mind and life has gone to perpetuate the hostage story, it is also a relief to realize and say that's what's been happening. The best thing i can do about it now is to first, weep. cry. accept the insanity of the abusive situation. and then say no more fooling around with it. Breathe and love. Let the love for myself come in and let the shame and guilt disappear like uninvited guests to my lifes party. I have hurt others in certain situations where I have used others and their lives to a certain point to recreate the story, for that I am truly regretful, but I have seen those people move on, some in very happy and productive ways. It is nice to finally feel the possibilities of that for myself.