A life half lived is a life not worth living??

[Anonymous]

If this is true, then why do I continue to live half a life destined not to fulfil my life’s goals. I’m not even sure what they are anymore.
Once I pursued only happiness. To love and be loved to feel a contentment that I felt I could find. Yet now I sit and write my story existing to live a life not fulfilled. I feel hollow and empty as I am trying to identify with who I am now. The person that has been honed by a life half lived and desperate to find the remainder.
In my pursuit of happiness, I have found only misery and very little contentment, finding that the only things that have truly made me happy are my children and so I have lived and continue to do so for them. Yet I find myself seeking solace as they grow older and will eventually come to a point where they leave home and I am left alone. Then where and how do I begin to live my life?
So, in desperate need of clarity and some semblance of hope for the future I write out my thoughts in the hope that answers may come. I leave each day to its end and make stern plans that I will better myself and do things differently yet the motivation that I require fails me. This then I need to find. We all require motivation in our lives I only seek to find mine once again before consumed by an empty house and heart and wonder how to start over.

[KIP.]

A life half lived is your motivation to live that other half. Google trauma bonding. I felt exactly the same as you. Weighed down by abuse and living in survival mode. Brainwashed to always put his needs first. That I was never worthy of a life and thoughts of my own. Never good enough. It’s abuse that keeps us in this FOG. Fear, Obligation and Guilt. Women’s Aid are your way out. They can support and educate you on the dynamics of abuse. That confidence and self esteem that is eroded by abuse is still underneat it all and when you find them, it makes sense. I was decades with my abuser and I fought my way free. Oh what adventures we can have when we are free. You cannot go back and change the beginning but you can change the ending x

[Anonymous]

I dont know where to begin though. I have been several years away from my abuser yet still go round in the same circles of depression and isolation. When does it end. I appreciate what i need to do i just cant seem to get there and have run out of alternatives. Counselling, PTSD therapy throwing myself into work, allowing myself to be manipulated by another and yet here i remain alone and isolated and looking for ways to move forward.
My abuser resides in prison yet i feel like i serve that sentence too entombed in walls created by myself for protection against the world paranoid that if i let my guard down then someone else will repeat the cycle or not enabling them to get close enough that i will eventually push them away in fear, not allowing myself to live and not knowing what i need to do to feel whole again.
I have so many thoughts of what i would be like if this hadnt happened to me or even if i could erase the memories of what was done to me who would i be then but i never have answers always questions the what ifs that life so keenly likes to throw at me.

[KIP.]

Have you had some good counselling? I found a brilliant specialist Psycological therapist who helped me deal with my trauma and move on. I also threw myself into changing the system for other women to make it better. It gave me focus x

[maddog]

Counselling is not equal. There are some very good therapists out there, but a whole lot of really rubbish ones. I know what you mean about looking behind all the time and feeling that there is no future. For me it’s a big one. I find it really hard to look ahead when I am up to my neck busily treading water hoping to see land.

As KIP says, you can’t change the past, but you can change your route. I have been treading water for years and years, and it is now only with the help of WA and Rape Crisis that the ground is really beginning to shift. It’s terrifying but better than what came before. It’s good to be believed and to finally speak to other women who understand the kind of things I have never spoken to my friends about. Far to ashamed and embarrassing.

You are so not alone.

[Serenity]

Oh Anonymous, I wish I could see you in person and give you a great big hug. I so identify.

I was doing so well: I’ve had a blip where my health has taken a downturn and I have been struggling. But I accept it’s part of the course- peaks and troughs.

I’ve read so many articles and quotes: my continuance has depended upon a mishmash of inspiration. But I suppose I could condense it to the following :

Of all the many quotes I have read, the one I love the most is “And I shall bloom from the very mud you buried me in.”

This doesn’t say I will merely survive, it says I will positively thrive; and it doesn’t say I will heal from distancing myself from my experience- it says that from that very experience, I will thrive. I will turn it on its head. What he thought would destroy me, I will in fact use to strengthen me and others.

It’s a radical acceptance of the horrific things that occurred- but a rebellious refusal to let it diminish me.

Another quote I loved was that which said that maybe the lesson is to unlearn everything that isn’t you- and to return to who you were without all the fakery.

I tell myself that I knew who I was before I met him. I am going to return to that. For example, I used to love being creative and artistic. It gave me peace and an identity. He quoshed that. So in an act of rebellion, I have returned to my artistic life that I had before I met that weasel.

I also tell myself that, although the pain was indescribable and I felt completely undone by the abuse, that we keep a part of ourselves safe from the abuser, when we realise we are entrapped. We self-edit to please our abuser; but our real, beautiful, true core self we keep locked away. We can excavate this core self with therapeutic activities and support.

I remember telling my ex that I didn’t want a half-baked life. I meant that my life felt half-baked with him, because he wouldn’t let me express myself honestly, he wouldn’t let me reach my dreams. He wouldn’t allow me to reach my potential.

Without him I have a chance. Though PTSD hosts things at times, and a chronic illness, anything is better than being wrecked by him. I have a survivor’s spirit.

I believe you do too x

[KIP.]

And I shall bloom from the very mud you buried me in…..

The lotus flower blooms most beautifully from the deepest and thickest mud.

[Author]

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