Heartbreak and Freedom

In my Help a Sister Out post, KFL5 asked some pertinent and difficult questions, and you wonderful readers really stepped up to the plate to share your experience and hope with her.  Thank you, thank you, thank you. My finger's all healed now and I can type again, yay!, so I wanted to add a few of my minimal cents.

The question, "Anyone else deal with the heartbreaking feeling of abandonment when you are finally able to set some emotional boundaries?" was the one that really resonated with me; the one I keep going back to.

Oh, ouchie, I remember this feeling.  I had to dredge a bit to get back to it, combing through memories that feel like ancient history but are really just a few short years ago.  I want to start by saying that I don't feel this anymore.  Feeling abandoned required that I had ever felt like I belonged in the first place.  For some time, I DID feel this.  I'd always had the NFOO in my life and they did an excellent job of filling up my every waking moment with their demands and needs and convincing me that my worth was directly related to their happiness, so at first, absolutely, I was stranded on a metaphorical deserted island all by myself, or at least that's how it seemed.

Circumstances and force of will kept me in that lonely place, even when I was tempted to just give in and jump back into my previously allotted role within the fucked up painful system that was all I'd known as 'family.'  It felt, a lot of the time, like the wind was just whistling through the gaping hole in the middle of my soul.  Even the horrible something that we've known can be more comfortable to have than the emptiness of uncertainty.  I feared the void, but not quite enough to want to fill it back up with the awfulness that was the NFOO.  Almost, but not quite.

Still, I was shocked and wounded that these people who'd claimed to 'love' me could turn on me so easily, so quickly, so thoroughly.  Even worse, their abandonment was made worse in that it proved to me that the feeling I'd always had that I would be dropped like a hot rock if I didn't do exactly what they told me to do was fact.  I couldn't chalk up my insecurities to my own overactive imagination anymore (and after all they'd trained me so well to do so.)  Their abandonment of me made me realize what was true; they really didn't love me and I was just their scapegoat, object, pawn - not even a person, just something to be used at their convenience and to their ends.

The isolation that they imposed after my stand was nothing short of what they'd always threatened.  They refused to speak to me rationally, they refused to be civil, they made it a point to reach out to every single person that we knew mutually and rally as many of those people as they could against me.  Effectively, I said, "This is what I need to feel safe, this is the space that's acceptable to me, this is the way I'd like to communicate."
And they replied with attacks on my character, attacks on my mental health, attacks by proxy through my children, attacks on me behind my back and to my face and to anyone with half a minute and the ability to hear the attacks they manufactured against me.  Attack, attack, attack.  I asked for space and they launched the armada.

It was awful.  It was heartbreaking.

But, the last thing that I had in common with the NFOO was this: we both underestimated my strength of character.
I'm certain that they are still, five years later, baffled that I haven't come crawling back to them.  When I met with NM in my counselor's office in June, she let her expectations of my behavior slip out between the lines of her carefully crafted speech when she stated (talking about NSis) that "some people in our family are more willing to forgive than others."  She - and therefore they, let's not forget that the NFOO follows the whimsy of NM, always - can't understand a Vanci outside of her own framework.  In her mind, I am wrong and it's only a matter of time before I seek her absolution for my sins.  The twisted logic and warped mind behind that particular curtain is fucking mind boggling.  Incidentally, when I called her on this bullshit, the conversation went South FAST.

I underestimated myself, too.  In truth, it was their actions that pushed me further and further in my resolve to stop the abuse and break the cycle.  The crazier they got in their need to control me, attack me, win at all cost, the clearer I became in my boundaries.  Every time they crossed a line, I drew a firmer, bolder, tighter circle around myself and the FOC.  Bet they never saw that coming!  (And I didn't really either until I did it!)

So, that deserted and abandoned feeling abated in direct proportion to what became my choice to live a life apart from them.  It is, after all, impossible to feel abandoned by something that one's chosen to leave.  And the longer I stayed away, the more difficult it's become for me to see how the hell I ever stayed there in the first place.  There's truth to the saying, "Once known, a thing cannot be unknown."  Sometimes I think they're like a black hole; get too close to the vortex and it'll suck you in; try to get away and you'll discover that it takes an awful lot of power to get out of proximity.  The best plan once you've got a little distance is to lay on the warp drive and never look back.

And that's what I feel now.  Not abandonment, not heartbreak, not even sadness most of the time.  I feel... free.  I feel like I took a lot of bullets but somehow managed to dodge the widow maker that had my name on it.  I feel like a hungry shark swam into my legs and then got distracted by something in the opposite direction.  I feel like I missed the launch of the Titanic and got left on the dock with my ticket in hand.  I feel like I somehow, someway, got a pass and a chance at a whole new life, one that is only possible without the Crazymakers in it.

Cause this life I've lived without them?  It's so, so, so much better than it ever was with them.  I had to get some road behind me to see that, to feel that, to be able to embrace that, but it's the truth.  I had to go through those awful feelings of loneliness and heartbreak and abandonment to come out the other side with the innate, deep-seated knowledge that people who love me don't seek to make me feel those things.


And once I had that under my belt, it became easy to look around and see the large group of people that were by my side all along rooting for me and holding their arms out to me in genuine concern and care and love for me just the way I am.  Now that's freedom, baby.

I'll close with this:
It gets better.
It gets so much better.

Love,
Vanci