Repeating self-destructive patterns from the past

A dark cloud has rolled in tonight–it’s wrapped around me like a cloak I can’t break free from. I’m not sure why the sadness has hit me like it has, but I’m trying to allow myself to feel it. Trying to reach out, slowly touch it and examine what exactly it is and how I can move through it.

Some of what I’m feeling are emotions I’ve stuffed deep down inside me for the past 4 months. Almost like the way you smash the wrappers and cans into the kitchen garbage so you can crowd more junk and garbage into the container–cramming it all down so you don’t have to take a trip to the can outside, alone, in the dark.

The emotions I’ve avoided are unhappiness–both with my family life and my job. I was miserable for quite some time, but I trudged through the discomfort and went to work everyday and left my family and felt as though I was failing in all areas. I swaddled up the pain in chocolate, caffeine, sleep, and shutting people out–all typical coping tools that are unhealthy and irresponsible. I haven’t been working out. I haven’t been going out. I haven’t been laughing or exploring or challenging myself. At all. I’ve buried myself in being busy–ignoring myself and my pain.

It’s landed me in a familiar place. A place I know very well from my first marriage. I’ve given up things that make me happy: working out, going out with friends and being creative. I saw a photo of myself my son took last weekend and I didn’t like what I saw. I know that woman–that’s the woman who went on auto-pilot for years in her first marriage–numbing the pain and unhappiness.

Reaching out to my husband was my first step at finding happiness again. Quitting my job was the second. Now, as I write through my sadness, anger, and frustration tonight, I know the third step is to begin to love myself again. Eating healthy again. Working out again. Putting myself first on the list again and believing in the woman I am. I want to cry because I’ve allowed myself to get lost and veer so far from the path I found after my divorce. It makes me angry at myself and wonder how I lost my way. In one year, I’m disoriented in the forest again.

A friend of mine helped me to see that my job was a large reason for my unhappiness. My work situation had put me, once again, in a place where a man in my life wasn’t listening or validating me or my needs. I was “checking out” as a coping tool. At first I thought the idea was a bit “out there,” but it’s true. I was in a “relationship” (a work relationship) with a man who didn’t listen. He didn’t listen to my ideas. He wanted to always control the decisions and wanted to see everything I did (sound familiar?). Once I saw the unbalance in my life and the effects on my emotional health, I made my needs very clear–telling him I don’t work well at the last minute (working til 2:00 am multiple times to launch websites etc), and explaining that I had many initiatives on my plate and his lack of follow through on the items I needed from him were causing me frustration–the needs were ignored and disregarded and he continued to work the way he was used to.

I’m sad I followed the pattern I’d learned in my first marriage–allowing myself to be unseen and unheard. I’m even more sad that the only way I new to cope was to detach from myself. I still have much to learn. And I still have more healing ahead.