After Burn

"Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it’s supposed to feel. Their parents did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful—something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for. Obviously, that’s not what love is all about. Loving behavior doesn’t grind you down, keep you off balance, or create feelings of self-hatred. Love doesn’t hurt, it feels good. Loving behavior nourishes your emotional well-being. When someone is being loving to you, you feel accepted, cared for, valued, and respected. Genuine love creates feelings of warmth, pleasure, safety, stability, and inner peace." — Susan Forward, Toxic Parents , p381 I found someone who became an escape valve for me from this kind of toxic behavior, but I was too broken to fully escape. I am left wondering if I will ever find a way to not be so broke...

I got a notice in the mail yesterday that the court date for the final decree of my divorce is set for November 28th. She told me she would let me know when she set the court date, but clearly that didn’t happen. I am just so..I don’t even know the appropriate words. I just can’t wrap my head around how or why it came to this so quickly. My cousin Jennifer is not even a full three years older than me but as of today she is the mother of a 20 year-old. She has eight children in total ranging from the oldest being that newly minted 20 year-old to the youngest born in just late February of this year. Our last family, a 5 year-old cat named Lucky, has been missing for just over 24 hours now. He is both an indoors and outdoors cat, but he is never out of sight for this long as he comes in to eat and sleep often. And he doesn’t stray too far from the house when he is outside because he is a ‘fraidy cat. An exhaustive search this morning and periodically through the day has not given any ...

My mom was bitching about something I posted on Instagram. For a moment I considered blocking her, but then I just decided to delete the app from my phone. Just the app, not my account. So my selfies will be have to be unfiltered/edited trash for the time being. Also deleted the damned Facebook app as well. I’m always teetering on the edge of having no memory on my phone. Hope I can keep away from both of those for a while. Feeling very bad today. Wanted to get out of the house, but had nowhere to go and nothing to do. Tomorrow I will be stuck with family at an event for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. I wish I cared more about it and had the energy or desire to be more involved. I’ve been a few times, but not in the last few years. It can be overwhelming. So many sad stories. I didn’t raise any money for the cause. I don’t need to be made anymore aware of the epidemic of suicide and mental illness in this country and world. I live it everyday. I just wish all thing...

I feel guilty when I bitch and moan about not having a good support system. It’s not necessarily a complete indictment on my friends and family because I’m equally culpable in the reasons why my support system is flawed at best. My parents have a deeply dysfunctional co-dependent marriage. My relationship with them is unhealthy and it is essentially ground zero for why I don’t have the strong & healthy supplemental relationships with my other family and friends. I recognize and have a desire to address & mend the flaws in my relationship with my parents, but I myself am not healthy or strong enough on my own to take on this tough task. I lost my younger (and only) brother 13 years ago when he died. I lost my wife (and the person which I had been most intimate with in my life) earlier this year when she decided to divorce me. I deeply struggle with not having either of them in my life as my main support system currently. And for reasons mentioned earlier I don’t have anyo...