Two months into therapy I find I am not healing or heading in the direction I would like. Yes, I am making strides toward being the mother and wife I believe I should be. Yes, I am able to understand what taking responsibility of my actions means now. Even still, there are things resting beneath the surface that seem to hold me back from the happiness I've so desperately sought and - darn it - deserve.
While reading through Kim McLarin's Jump at the Sun I stumbled across something that struck a chord. It was a simple sentence, taking little to comprehend, but it resonated within me. Like Grace Jefferson, the book's lead, "I realized... I slept much better alone in bed. I slept better untouched."
And I did.
But lately I've started to worry that this kind of behavior will be devastating to my children, and already is to my fiancé. When he and I began dating I'd often invite him over to spend the night. Part of me afraid, and the other part alone, I longed for the warmth my college cohorts flaunted while wearing their boyfriends' sweatshirts and Tees.
I did not have a steady college beau, nor a high school sweetheart for what it's worth. I did not play the bases in a slow, calculated way and it backfired in a series of unhealthy involvements. At times I felt lonely. Other times I was completely okay with spending a significant amount of time with myself.
The bulk of these indifferences were intimate involvements that sometimes became emotional malice. My on-and-off again relationship with one guy finally ended in a violent mess that left me hyperventilating and frantically crying. Dramatic, but impersonal just the same. There were suitors who I shied away from for countless reasons. If I longed for comfort strongly enough, I might have let them into my sacred place.
In the case of my fiancé, I tried to forge a love unlike those I had known. Much of the connection we had formed during late fall and early winter. We spent hours on end blanketed in my queen-size bed, snuggled beneath covers and up to our ears in affection. He held me close at night, and even closer when my flashbacks came, sending me into a childlike, regressive hysteria. The nightmares from my sexually abusive childhood brought us together in ways I never would have imagined.
It didn't last long, though.
I ran to the arms of that same ex when my doubts about the existing relationship
Fast forward to the present, where I sit on the sofa with netbook in hand and toddling child nearby.
While reading through Kim McLarin's Jump at the Sun I stumbled across something that struck a chord. It was a simple sentence, taking little to comprehend, but it resonated within me. Like Grace Jefferson, the book's lead, "I realized... I slept much better alone in bed. I slept better untouched."
And I did.
But lately I've started to worry that this kind of behavior will be devastating to my children, and already is to my fiancé. When he and I began dating I'd often invite him over to spend the night. Part of me afraid, and the other part alone, I longed for the warmth my college cohorts flaunted while wearing their boyfriends' sweatshirts and Tees.
I did not have a steady college beau, nor a high school sweetheart for what it's worth. I did not play the bases in a slow, calculated way and it backfired in a series of unhealthy involvements. At times I felt lonely. Other times I was completely okay with spending a significant amount of time with myself.
The bulk of these indifferences were intimate involvements that sometimes became emotional malice. My on-and-off again relationship with one guy finally ended in a violent mess that left me hyperventilating and frantically crying. Dramatic, but impersonal just the same. There were suitors who I shied away from for countless reasons. If I longed for comfort strongly enough, I might have let them into my sacred place.
In the case of my fiancé, I tried to forge a love unlike those I had known. Much of the connection we had formed during late fall and early winter. We spent hours on end blanketed in my queen-size bed, snuggled beneath covers and up to our ears in affection. He held me close at night, and even closer when my flashbacks came, sending me into a childlike, regressive hysteria. The nightmares from my sexually abusive childhood brought us together in ways I never would have imagined.
It didn't last long, though.
I ran to the arms of that same ex when my doubts about the existing relationship
Fast forward to the present, where I sit on the sofa with netbook in hand and toddling child nearby.
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