More Revelations

It’s strange how life puts circumstances in your path and what seems like such an insignificant occurrence becomes an eye opening experience. At work I was presented with a letter I needed to type in order to notify an organization we would be making a financial contribution to a fundraiser. I was also handed their information package to peruse. It turns out this is for a woman’s resource center, and it would seem they are geared to helping women (and their children) who are being or have been abused. As I started flipping through their pamphlets I was literally struck by what I read. Realizations I had never made before just kinda floored me for a few moments as it sunk in.

One pamphlet was about stalking and criminal harassment and it listed a few examples of behaviours which now seems so obvious, but at the time I chalked it up to my ex not being able to let go. For reasons I’ve already mentioned, my judgement was cloudy, and so I didn’t see that he what he was doing constituted stalking me. Up until now I didn’t see that. The day I got married it all stopped, because then I had my husband Sean living with me, but from the time Sean and I dated until our wedding he would often show up at my door unexpectedly, or call and say he had just been hanging around outside my apartment door but never knocked. He did the vandalizing thing. He made threats, not to physically harm but harm my reputation, my relationships, my career. I would get calls in the middle of the night, from a blocked number, just breathing on the other end. My number was not listed, very few people had it, I knew it was him. And I would just hang up and go back to bed, never confronting him on it, pretending it wasn’t happening. I actually hid it from Sean, or so I thought, because I didn’t want a confrontation, however just the other day we got a call in the middle of the night and Sean immediately suspected it was him. As I grow more aware of my past, I also grow more aware of how much this must have affected Sean, and how stoically and silently he has dealt with that. He’s shown so much restraint that I am only now aware of. He never stops trying to protect me, even if it’s sparing me from adding his burdens to the ones I already have.

The other thing that blind-sided me while reading this literature was a fact sheet on Traumatic Stress Disorder. To me, this is something people who have experienced horrific events suffer from. Not me. But as I read the information about how it’s an anxiety disorder, one triggered by living through frightening or stressful experiences, it dawned on me. As I slowly began to get over our break up, it seemed I should have been getting healthier, but for about 6 months in 2000 I considered going to a doctor because I just couldn’t handle my anxiety anymore. I had a lot of nightmares about my ex. I stressed out and got angered by very miniscule issues. I had quite a bit of tension that manifested only when I slept. I remember Googling anxiety/stress disorders and realizing the kind of distress I was experiencing was lasting a lot longer than it should. I was having minor panic attacks, I constantly worried about every nuance of my life, always expecting the worst outcome. The strange thing is, I just seemed to get over it. I don’t know if it’s coincidence or not, but right around that time is when I started having feelings for Sean. The anxiety just seemed to disappear and I don’t remember giving it a second thought until today.

I still don’t feel like that woman who needed the services of this woman’s resource center, even though I obviously did. I sometimes wonder why the obvious wasn’t so obvious to me. It certainly would have been nice to see the obvious when I first dated him, but maybe the same oblivion that got me into that mess also spared me from a victim mentality. Looking back it would seem my naivety of my situation allowed me to move on without a lot of anger, guilt, and pain holding me back. It’s a miracle that I came through what I did as healthy as I am, especially with no counselling. Sure, those emotions have surfaced since my ‘wake up call’ but I am in a much better place to deal with them now. God was definitely looking out for me and working all things for the good.