As I woke up this morning, I felt my body flood with adrenaline and become activated as my brain did a full inventory of this new reality that is my life.
“She’s gone.”
I feel panic, disgust, sadness, anger, hurt, disbelief, shock, despair, disappointment, and a myriad of other emotions. I want to go back to sleep and never wake up. This reality I am in is just too painful, there’s too much hurt here. As I type this, autosuggest emojis and words keep popping up, having always been there, through almost 4 years of texting and messaging each other.
This cant be real. This is a nightmare that I will wake up from. This. Is. Not. Happening.
As, yet again, I start to turn it all inward and begin the years old routine of blaming myself for causing yet another rupture, this new voice deep inside speaks. A voice I don’t recognize.
“Why do you feel so guilty? For breaking a promise? A promise to always protect her, and to shield her? To keep the promise you made to protect her from her fears, and to care for her, and care for the inner child that is inside her, the inner child that needs protecting and care?”
And then I start to feel it again.
The anger. The frustration. The hurt. The bile starts to come up at the back of my throat again.
“Why the fuck do you feel even a modicum of guilt for not keeping your promises to someone who chose to not keep their promises to you? Why do you STILL want to protect someone who did something they promised they wouldn’t do for a second, third or fourth time, something they KNEW would hurt you so deeply and completely that they lied to you about it and tried to keep it from you? Someone who keeps doing the very same thing that they promised they wouldn’t do? Why do you care so much about the feelings of someone who just didn’t care that they would hurt you?”
Over the last almost 4 years, she has been my closest friend and a romantic partner. Someone I devoted my entire self to. Someone I virtually NEVER said no to. Someone I gave everything to and did anything for. Any time she needed me, I was there. And all I ever asked in return was for her to not lie to me and to care for the most vulnerable and broken parts of me. Parts that SHE taught me were there, and how it would effect me if I didn’t face it and heal it. Long buried and closed off parts that as a therapist and counsellor, she helped unearth and helped me see and recognize. Parts of me that were going to take a lot of work to hold and to heal. I trusted her with those parts of me like I have never trusted anyone to even SEE, let alone know.
Time and time and time again, when caring for that wounded part of me became inconvenient, she chose to deepen the wounds, further the damage, and add to the scars. She lied, deceived, lied some more and broke her promises. Then she found ways to justify it, create alternate truths, and gaslight me into believing that *I* was the problem, that her actions were my fault.
Her website says “As a therapist, I believe that trust and safety are foundational” and later, “I believe that all humans deserve to experience safety (&) respect“.
To read that really hurts, deeply. Why didn’t I deserve that foundation of trust? Why do I get lies and deception while everyone else gets a foundation of trust worthy of building an entire business on? Is the message here that I am not human? I don’t deserve to experience safety and respect? Why do clients and strangers get all those things I don’t? Don’t I deserve that care too?
I guess I didn’t. And if you ask her, she’ll tell you it’s entirely my fault I didn’t get it.
~R
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