hey,
i read your reply in may and it home so hard i couldn’t even respond at that time. it’s what you say about the safer place that is only possible because they stay clean. sometimes it feels so precarious for me, it’s been 16 months now and it’s good, and overall improving. yet, some days are better than others as my husband still behaves like an addict sometimes and it is very triggering. as time goes by the more you realise it’s always going to be there in the background.
what you wrote earlier also hits right in the heart, I’m still only at the relative beginning of this journey but i have clothes, pictures, shoes, rooms and places in this house, towns and even a country(!) etc that i cannot even look at or think about without being transported straight back to those dark times. it is full blown ptsd. have you maybe got a bit of ptsd going on?
like you when triggered i do go through a thought pattern and keep my head focused in the present, what else can we do huh!?
but sometimes it gets me bad!
eg… watching bgt semi-finals with the family… on comes a group from the 2020 version. they formed a lockdown choir…. my brain immediately remembers how dreadful life was during 2020 (his worst year of using/horrific behaviour)… remembers how lonely and frightened i felt, how it felt like all the families i knew pulled together while i was trapped in the most horrible circumstances without even my best friend (him)… he then remarks he saw them on youtube when looking up music videos… my brain then remembers he has since told me he was sat there on his computer using very, very, frequently… you get the picture… then more stars from 2019 and 2020… more memories of how we’d sat as family and as it turned out he was on the drugs…. by this point feelings over ride the calming routine… tears in full flow but i blame it on the programme ..however i get it down and we watch the program and kids go on their way… and I’m tidying the sitting room up to go to bed… he is standing by the door … it all floods back like a tsunami!!!! plus more… again from those days … i would tidy up… he would get shirty about some nonsense… go on down… obviously use… id do all the work…. he’d come up and moan, then go off… obviously use again… then pick a fight! push me/yell/whack something etc… go off and use, we’d then go to bed and he’d fidget round and have to keep popping off *to the toilet *… I’d eventually drop off and he’d wake me up fidgeting and disturb the whole house going up and down the stairs (going for a hit).
All that memory dump because he stood by the door and my defenses were weakened.
All i can do/we can do is (an official technique apparently!) is … remember the memory when it comes, don’t shut it down, feel the feeling and process. talk about the memory and how it feels. that’s the only route towards closure.
i don’t think we ever get closure from this, but we can get some small amount of peace from our memories.
i also strongly identify with the waking in rhe night. it’s when the memories are loudest.
i don’t know if it’s the same for you guys but the worst things happened in the small hours. the most amounts of drugs consumed, the craziest behaviour, the most terrifying fights, the lying awake wondering where things went wrong. looking at this stranger who was in my husband’s skin. also after i found out, not being able to sleep at all because of being so utterly distressed… any time i wake now my brain has to be kept on an extremely tight leash or thoughts will very quickly spiral.
i know im safe now, sort of but the memories and feelings are branded into every part of my being.
xx