Tag Archives: bad night

{heavily filtered} Triggers

Can I say that I'm getting fucking sick to death of how the word triggers is used?  Mostly I hear it mean: 'So this person is crazy and reacting to ghosts… it's not my problem that they are over-sensitive but I guess I can give a lame-ass "I'll try to respect your 'triggers'" line.'  Fuck you all.  No really.

I'm kind of tired of having people throw it in my face that they are trying to be "sensitive" to my "triggers".  Bitch you don't even know what the fuck that means.  By the way, I'm kind of angry.  Apparently having a trigger means that someone does the same asshole thing to you that someone else has already done.  Or at least caused you to think hard about the previous time and consider how you want to react this time.  People are so dismissive of "triggers" because it is a good way of saying, "You were already hurt here so it's not my fault you are hurting now."

Actually, an asshole act is an asshole act.  Lying is lying.  When you negotiate extensively for activity A and you instead engage in activity B… that's not a miscommunication and that's not about me being triggered.  

You want to know the "trigger" part?  My gut-level response to this behavior is to go sleep in a different bed and cry and assume there is nothing in the world that will change it.  Because that kind of lying is something that people just do.  I should stop listening to what people tell me.  There isn't a point.

Things that were effective coping mechanisms during your childhood are hard to abandon as an adult.  When someone lies to me, I have to withdraw trust.  Fast.  I have to shut down affection towards that person.  I have to stop being vulnerable because if they smell blood… I'm dead.

I suppose that triggering me means acting like my family.  So that I have to act like I do with my family.  It's not about a set word or phrase or experience.  If you act like my family… I have nothing for you.  

My family would set terms on who you can know.  If you had the audacity to want to be friends with someone they didn't like… well… that's going to result in nastiness, name calling, threats of abandonment (that aren't followed up on because the piece of shit bully is dependent on having you around to kick), and of course threats of suicide.  

Wow.  That all sounds like what I say and do when I tell Noah that I don't like him dating.  Ironic.  No wonder I feel like I shouldn't be saying no, no matter what.  Because I have this gut reaction of not wanting to be like them.  It's bad to say, "Actually this behavior is toxic to our marriage for 'x, y, and z reasons.'"  Because then I'm trying to control him inappropriately.  My adult spin on not wanting to be this person is to think that I should start shutting my mouth and putting my head down.

My family would rewrite history.  Oh, it's not that anyone lied.  We just miscommunicated, that's all.  No one ever has to be accountable for their actions.  That's why I have a scorched earth policy.  Someone who is going to lie to my face and then go behind my back and do something else all the while maintaining a dialogue with someone else that perpetuates a lie… wow.  I need to run, not walk away from that.  You want to know what a trigger is?

It's the sure knowledge that a liar is poison.  Someone who will lie to me… I can't know.  I can't be vulnerable with.  I can't pay attention to them.  I can't worry about what they want.  I know it will be a facade and I'll never know them anyway.  As soon as you lie to me, and then tell someone else that we "miscommunicated" well…  Yeah.  Ok.  The solution to this "miscommunication" is for me to assume you are lying going forward.  Sounds great.

I lie too.  I lie compulsively sometimes.  I say things in the heat of an argument that aren't true no matter how you look at them.  And I hate myself for it.  That makes me want to run too.  Because these topics are things that I can't be honest about.  So I'd rather not discuss them.

At any other point in my life this kind of behavior would be cue for an abrupt turn on my heel and exiting the premises permanently.  I would much rather leave than try to fix something like this.  My life is complicated now.

I understand a lot of things differently as life goes by.  I think about why women stay in domestic violence situations.  I think about why my mother and my sister are the way they are.  Why do they lie compulsively all the time?  They were taught to.  That's what hanging out with liars will do.  It teaches you to lie.  

The problem with being married to a sociopath is I am never sure if his vision of enlightened self-interest lines up with mine.  My best-interest is considered to the extent that he wants to manipulate the correct
behavior out of me, preferably while volunteering as little as possible.  Because the less he volunteers, the more control and power he has.  There are cracks in my Stockholm Syndrome.

It's hard having such extreme opinions about Noah.  Mostly I feel better about/toward/with him than anyone else on the planet.  And then sometimes I don't.

(ETA: the formatting is weird and I don't know why.)

Sentry

Right now I am sitting sentry duty next to my elder daughter’s bed. Her beloved bed. You see, it is a Big Girl Bed! She even climbs a ladder to get into it. Picture an overly intense cherubic blond haired blue eyed german ploughhorse. She’s stocky and perky and deliciously incongruous. She wants people to love her so much. We shower her with love constantly. I carry her until my arms give out and then I put her in a carrier and keep going even now that she’s my big 30 lb going-on-three-year-old. Even while her baby sister is on my back. I do this because I remember that agony of need of assurance of love. I remember feeling no one in the world would ever love me enough and desperately clinging to my mother. I was so very attached to my mother. On MDC they think that is a good thing but I’m not so sure it was good for us.

I think of my beautiful child. And I think of my mother. And I think of the power she had over me. The power I have over my beloved, adored, forever wanted Shanna. I begged God for her. I named her and wanted her when I was 13 years old. To think that my mother most likely received the exact same blind absolute trust and love. My mother saw that in her child’s face and let a monster violate her. I can feel my whole body quake with hate and fear and rage. Most of the muscles in my body alternately cramp and flex. This hurts so bad. I hate her. I think if I drove to her house right now I would honk the horn until she came outside and run her over. Oh god. I’m trying to calm the panic attack closing my throat. You fucking bitch. I hate you so much. You did this to me. At the end of the day you stupid bitch. This is all on your head. I hate you. I hate you so much.

Why didn’t you love me?

And that question will never be answered. And no matter how much terror I feel. No matter the nightmare I face sitting next to her bed, my baby needs me to be happy. My baby needs me to take in her love and return it to her as joy. It is so hard to appreciate her like she deserves. I wish that my sweet girl didn’t have to show me her remarkable empathy so often. I wish my baby didn’t offer me hugs and kisses to feel better.

And every time one more person tells me more reasons that who I am or what I am doing is bad or wrong it just makes it one little bit harder. Like what I am doing is not hard enough.