Kat's Corner

There’s a lot of power in telling our stories.  There’s even more power in not telling our stories – not the good kind mind you, but power nonetheless.

For many years I have been both telling my story and not telling my story – sharing pieces and parts but not the whole, at least not to everyone.  I struggle with this part, because my story is my own and is not owed to anyone.  And yet, there are parts of me which feel like I want to share more.  That’s the ultimate question I ask myself: “what do I owe myself?”

For so long I told myself that I owed things to others: I owed them my silence, their comfort, my energy, my attention, safety from embarrassment, buffering from pain. The reality was that what I was giving them was Codependency. And then, as I worked my way out of that, what I got was emotional abuse. I didn’t realize it at first. That’s part of the wonders of Codependency: emotional abuse can feel like love, or like you just haven’t found the right solution yet. If I just try harder, work the solution better, hang on a little longer, we’ll get there. And then, like any slippery slope, it isn’t clear when the ultimate line has been crossed from “this is okay” to “this is not okay,” because so many lines have been crossed or moved or whatever. Hell, I helped move so many lines. When I started learning that moving the lines was hurtful not helpful, and I stopped moving the lines, well, things escalated. But, you know, not so much that my Codependent butt would just let it go. Oh no – I held on, TIGHT.

Fast forward years and things had to get PRETTY CLEAR in order for me to realize that we had shifted into “this is not okay” territory.  And at that point, I left.  Looking back, I don’t regret staying for as long as I did, nor do I regret trying all the things we tried to figure it out.  Knowing me, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.  If I had left earlier, I would have wondered if I had done all that I could to save the marriage.  This way, I KNOW that I did my best within the relationship – my best wasn’t good enough.  It exploded.  The ending was TERRIBLE.  A true “salt the earth” situation.  It is not what I wanted, and I tried for it to not end that way, and yet it did.  There is no going back.  Ever.  And with that, Codependency left the building.  Completely – or at least I hope so.  If I get a slight glimpse of it now, I try to rip that weed out as quickly as possible.

When the break up first began, I made a clear decision not to share my side of the story. There is a lot that happened which most people – even my closest family and friends – do not know about. Some people know some pieces, maybe two people know as close to “everything” as anyone outside of the couple can know. Most people know very little, and some people I am sure know alternative narratives; I know this based on some very specific responses I received immediately after I left. I suspect, although I can not confirm, that most people have filled in versions of stories with their own assumptions. It’s human nature – in the absence of a story, people tend to make one up based on their own experiences or what they have learned in the past. The assumptions say more about the assumer than the reality of the situation. I’m a person – I’ve done it too.

I resigned myself to the fact that closure was going to have to come from within, and that I would have to become fine with the alternative stories, twisted truths, and straight up lies being said about me, because I simply wasn’t going to share my story. It wasn’t safe for me at the time – I was just trying to make it through my divorce and keep the situation as calm as possible. And honestly, I was still functioning as a Codependent – I was still protecting the person who hurt me.

I’m done with that now.  I experienced emotional abuse and neglect for years.  I don’t think that it was intentional, and at the same time, I know that she didn’t intentionally tend to the concerns when I brought them to her attention.  She has hurts and wounds and she took those out on me, repeatedly.  She chose not to tend to those hurts and wounds, and I suffered because of it.  For my part, I saw her pain, I recognized it as such, and I played the perfect part of the Codependent — feeding right into it and, at times, not holding her as accountable as a partner should. That isn’t to let her off the hook for her part or to unnecessarily beat myself up, it’s just to own my part – there is power in owning where you saw and dismissed signs of distress in the relationship.  At times I could have sent her a message of “you can do this” and instead, through doing things like “protecting,” I unintentionally sent the message of “you aren’t strong enough to do this” or “I don’t believe in you.”  My anxiety grew and so did hers; the tension grew; we didn’t find our way back to each other.

Over the past few months three people have re-entered my life in the form of random communications, presenting opportunities for external closure that I never thought I would receive. The first was a newsletter from my former partners’ first divorce lawyer, sent strangely enough to my office email address (a place we never communicated); the second was an individual who had violated a professional boundary; and the third was a friend who had been in the middle during the break up. Each place: legal, professional, and personal had been a place where I felt violated and unsafe, and each place was a spot I still held a secret story – this hidden hurt. It’s not that I felt I needed to share the whole story of our relationship, but rather that holding some level of silence still felt like holding some level of shame for me. And so I shared my hurt each time the opportunity presented itself.

I’m 10 months post-divorce and more than 2 years post leaving the house, and I feel like that little ghost of shame has lifted.  I still don’t want to go and hang out in my old neighborhood – it doesn’t feel like a happy place anymore.  A lot happened there and it means something different to me now.  At the time of the separation, I saw some neighbors staring at me and watching me as I returned to retrieve my things.  One stared, locked eyes with me, and then ran into his house.  This was someone with whom I had been friends for years.  I waved, I smiled, he ran.  Someone called my former partner and alerted her that my mother was there too.  The purpose of that call, I have no idea, but I definitely heard about it.  And the point was made – I was being watched.  That neighborhood isn’t mine anymore, and it never will be — but at least now neither is the shame ghost.