Self Counseling #2 (Anger & Bitterness)

My feelings of abandoment turned to bitterness, anger, and resentment over the course of 2010.

I felt horribly angry at my Parents...for dying. Well, more so for my Mother because she wasn't the sick one..she wasn't supposed to up and die out of the blue. I know her love for my Dad was stronger than her love for me, but couldn't she have just stayed?

As a Christian I fought (and still fight) a huge resentment towards God. He stripped me bare where I had nothing left to lean on. I found it cruel to expect me to lean on Him when he was the One that did 'this'. He didn't have to take both parents..he could have left me one..He knew my husband was leaving... All of the 'healing' and comforting scriptures felt like mockary to my ears, the songs of praise I used to sing...just words that I no longer recognized or could form on my lips.

I was bitter towards my uncaring co-workers who were so...non-nonchalant about what I was going through. Going to work and looking at them just pissed me off every single day. How dare they not come to my parents funeral, or send a card, or an effing plant. How dare they avoid me because they don't know what to say?

I became resentful of my best friend for not being there even though I knew she couldn't help it. I would watch life and living go on as I stood at my windows looking out, and wonder how in hell does that happen? Weren't we supposed to be best friends? To be there through thick and thin? Well, I was pretty thin and I needed her. I began to question our friendship and pull back.

I wanted to stand in my front yard and scream.....Didn't anyone know that I was encased in a self-imposed cage...that I didn't know how to open the doors to get out? The bars were too heavy to move on my own - there was no one to help me.

After a while I became bitter-strong...."to hell with 'them' - I don't need anyone to help me. I won't dare intrude on God, or my friend, my family or my co-workers. They are all obviously too busy!" I pulled myself further into my darkness, which only intensified my frustration - such a bitter cycle I was in.

When deployment ended I thought all of the anger would end with it; it didn't. It may have decreased in it's intensity, but it didn't fade away like I had hoped. I held on to the feeling that I had been robbed of a year of my life! I had been unjustly punished for some unknown reason and it was so unfair!

Today, I'm not nearly as angry, resentful or bitter though the taste still lingers on my lips. I still can not find my way back to my faith and I am working on my realtionship with my friend. The innocence of trust I used to have for God, friends, family, myself...it's still weak. The only one I can trust to be there/here for me is me.

Peace.

(I have turned off comments..I just need to be able to get 'this' out there in order to find a way to deal with it. Personal comments can be emailed to me)

Self Counseling #1 - Abandonment

I'm not even sure where to start other than one word at a time. It's no secret to anyone that 2010 was a difficult year to endure. It started with 2 very traumatic events - the death and burial of both of my parents together and my husband's deployment. Four days after standing in the bitter cold morning of January watching my parents' caskets being slid into their burial site, I stood in the bitter snow at the armory and kissed my husband off to 4 1/2 months of pre-deployment training (he came home for a week before deploying for a year). The grief and trauma of losing my parents was so great - then Rich left and I fell deeper into the black hole. It's this hole that I still struggle to come out of 2 1/2 years later.

I became sad and lonely during that year with no one here to lean on. My siblings and children were just as broken and traumatized that we couldn't even lean on each other. My best friend, next door, was consumed with her life: home, children, work, going back to school and studying in any free time. My co-workers were indifferent. As a NG family member, our unit is small and in different geographical locations - I couldn't turn to the FRG...I WAS the FRG leader. I wanted to be held while I cried. I wanted desperately to talk and scream through my pain to someone...anyone. I wanted to lean on my parents, my husband, my family, my friend; there were no shoulders, no arms, no ears to hear me. I was alone.

I was able to turn to my blog and blog friends; without that venue I just don't think I could have held on to the lip of that black hole for as long as I did (thank you).

After the shock of death and deployment began to wear off and my new reality began to take root, I felt abandoned and left to drift alone without any direction at all. I was a child abandoned by her parents, a Christian abandoned by her God, a wife abandoned by her husband, a friend abandoned by her closet friend and a family member abandoned by her family in a way. Nothing felt RIGHT, nothing felt familiar..nothing felt normal. I no longer belonged in my life. The sense of loss and abandonment from my parents, God, Rich, my best friend, even my family was so great. It didn't matter that it couldn't be helped...by anyone, the effects lingered and grew in to something more that I could shake most days.

I struggled to rationalize the unrational. Today I struggle with a sense of insecurity and fear that I never experienced before, that stems from that abandonment feeling. When I let my mind take me back to those long days and that long year, my heart races and my mind becomes hazy - the anxiety just grips my throat.


The feelings of abandonment led to resentment, anger, bitterness.


Peace.

(I have turned off comments..I just need to be able to get 'this' out there in order to find a way to deal with it. Personal comments can be emailed to me)

Back to What I Know..

I woke about 4:45 this morning and began to blog in my head. "Writing" word for word what I wanted to say and what I hoped to convey to myself. 3 hours later I wish I would've gotten up and put my words to blog. Now my thoughts are so jumbled and I'm not sure where to start...I just know that I have got to turn back to the one place where I can get my real thoughts/feelings/fears/anger out of my head..and that is here to my 'safe zone"...my blog

Several weeks ago my husband and I were sitting along the ocean shore, feet in the sand, just listening to the waves and the wind. It was so beautiful and peaceful, but inside I was a hot mess and have been for such a long time. I broke the silence and told my husband that when we returned home I was going to seek counseling to find ways to deal with the unresolved feelings (grief, sadness, anger, emptiness,..) that resulted from my parents' death followed by his deployment four days later (4.5 months away for pre-D training then deployment). I thought once he returned 1.5 years ago that I would automatically feel complete and healed from the trauma of both events, but in all honesty with myself and him, I'm not.

I have found ways to suck it up and keep going, I've found times of happiness and joy, and I've found ways to stuff the residual after-effects further inside my heart and head. There are days I can actually feel myself being pulled back to those empty days of deployment - when I was without my parents, my husband, my best friend that lives next door; my children and siblings so broken and traumatized too that we couldn't even be there to hold each other up....the sorrow and bitterness just lingers and stands in my way of finding solace and peace. I am no longer strong enough to head those times off on my own because I haven't 'dealt" with them.

After our Florida trip I check at my new job to see if we offered an EAP (Employee Assistance Program) - aka..counseling... we do not. I'm not affiliated with a church so I don't have a clergyman to turn too - then again, some of my anger is directed at God, not sure it's wise to turn to a minister.

The only place I feel like I'm left to turn to is my blog.

So, blog-counseling begins....

Peace