Yesterday my voice quivered while talking about my dad and a couple tears dropped, which I hid from the phone camera. So my ex said "You seemed better last week."
I need to stop talking to men. Truly.
Men taught me that emotion is bad and must be suppressed, but anger is somehow not-an-emotion, and therefore fine for them to express as loudly as they wish, but if I ever express anger that wouldn't be okay at all.
Every day I feel more empathy for what my mom went through with my dad.
Yet I apologized to my ex (for letting a tear slip out). (Shit, sorry.)
To comfort him I gulped down cannabis ghee in lemon balm and passionflower tea and it tasted as terrible as swallowing an emotion i'm not allowed to feel to prioritize the comfort of someone who doesn't show the same compassion to me.
I was emotionally supportive when his dad died. I was there with him every visit, I was there in hospice by his side every week, I watched the coffin go into the ground, I watched him not cry at all and then go home and verbally attack me every day for the next year. I was there when we went to counseling for his grief, and he told the counselor that he's not grieving and everything is my fault.
The day of the funeral, I hugged him and said I'm here for him if he needs to talk, and he said, "I'm not sad. I'm already over it." Before the funeral he followed me around yelling at me literally from the time I woke up until the moment we arrived. He had made me cry all morning. He showed no emotion other than anger.
My dad told me to never make decisions based on emotion (a couple weeks before his yelling tantrum happened.) I get the feeling his advice was really for himself. The things he yells at me about are very much autobiographical confessions of his.
There is one man I'm genuinely looking forward to hugging today though. Last week the Unalcoholic squeezed me and said: "You're crazy, I love it." Ordinarily I wouldn't consider "crazy" a nice thing to tell a woman. But he said I love it. This is an important detail. This is acceptance and appreciation. This is the opposite of how my dad made my mom feel. It means I love you as you really are. After 8 years of battling through each other's traumas together, that means something. He pointed out that we handle conflict a LOT better than we used to. He's right. We learned and grew together. There are definitely some fears and immaturities I was able to outgrow through our conflicts, and his traumas shed light on things I needed to heal in myself.
I've read that we choose partners with which to reenact patterns from childhood that we are trying to resolve by doing it better this time. I like this way of looking at it. It's resilient. It acknowledges trauma, and it acknowledges that we can become better people.
Today I am grateful for authentic love, resilience, cleansing tears (and not being afraid of them!), feeling supported in myself, yoga nidras before bed, the new archery game I'm already addicted to... Grateful for the cherry oat thing I lovingly baked for myself with a dollop of bulgarian yogurt. Grateful for all the times I didn't stoop to someone's level to react badly to bad behavior no matter how triggered I was. Grateful for all the times I paused and asked myself what I need or what I'm feeling. Grateful for just enough space to dance in.
I want to improve my dance area with a better mirror situation and rearrange a little now that I'm there all the time. I think that will be my winter project.
9:02 a.m. - 2021-11-15