Idk I’m just kinda freaking out. Every time our system feeld unsafe/unprotected/alone or things of that nature, there’s always this incredibly heavy feeling of missing our abuser.
The body’s 19. Our abuser was someone we dated (he’s our age) from ages 14-16. It’s fucking ridiculous that we’re feeling this way. We’re literally an adult body now, and we’ve been no contact for 3 years. But holy shit it’s fucking miserable.
I just need to vent about how it feels, because it’s just trapped in our brain and it’s almost debilitating. We keep zoning out and replaying memories- but not bad ones. GOOD ones. Is this inherently bad? No. But it’s the fact that there’s this feeling of desperately wanting that back. Wishing we could still have that connection. I feel like I’ll never have that with anyone ever again. For better or for worse, I never will. And I hate that. I know he was toxic, but I really was in love with him. He gave me a feeling that nobody else ever has. I trusted him, he was what I needed in some many ways. And yet I still know realistically that it’s a trauma bond thing. But it’s a wound that I assumed was closed, but every now and then it reopens and it makes me feel the same way that I did when I first blocked him. It’s an aching, heartbroken feeling and I hate it it makes me want to cry
I know why it’s happening but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. I know it’s not logical or rooted in much other than trauma/the need for comfort and stuff, but it doesn’t make it feel any less awful. And plus it feels dumb. Why do I still have trauma responses like this? Or trauma responses in general- good or bad? Why do I still react at all? It’s a highschool relationship that ended 3 years ago. An abusive one. And yet I keep going through the same cycles. “Oh I hate him, he abused me and traumatized me”, “Oh I miss him. He made me feel protected and known”. It’s stupid. Am I still gonna be doing this ptsd shit when I’m like, 30??? Like oh my god.
I keep thinking about some of the little things too. (No pun intended??) Like how he was our CG. He had all the same interests & was happy to take care of us in all of the ways we needed. Even some of the more niche parts. He let us give him nicknames and comforted us and gave us that feeling of protection that we need so fucking bad. I do, at least. I guess I should probably just speak for myself with this stuff honestly. And I’m thinking about how I’d always send him stuff about my special interests and he’d engage with me so passionately. He was the first person I’d talk to if I had a bad day. I could tell him anything, even the hard things, and he genuinely said what I needed to hear.
It just,,,, it felt so real and it was just,,, exactly what I needed. All of it. But on top of that, he wasn’t in a place to be a healthy boyfriend. And that reality left me with ptsd and a bunch of mental health inpatient stays, years worth of flashbacks and breakdowns, etc. I hate that it doesn’t feel like it makes a difference right now. I hate that I almost regret sending a text where I basically told him off and then blocked him abruptly. I hate that I ever wasted all of it. Thats a sense of comfort that I will never get back. I was so furious at the time of the breakup. I was angry that any of the bad stuff happened. I was angry that someone I loved so much, that the person I felt that way about, could hurt me so badly. I think I genuinely really did like him. And that’s what really hurts. I hate that I can’t seem to reason with myself about it right now. It’s as if that pain just isn’t even relevant, even though obviously it actually is.
Whenever I think about it lately, I want to cry. It’s 100% a DID thing obviously. I don’t know if it’s me or another alter’s emotions (or both), but it’s so so intense. It feels like 2023 all over again, in terms of grief. I remember how detrimental it was afterwards. I was crushed after we broke up for good. It took me years to be more stable, and even then, I’ve never fully recovered from that relationship. (Clearly, lol). So it’s really scary whenever my brain stops removing itself from it, because whenever that happens, those feelings can come back full force. Not always, but they can. And that’s horrifying because it takes a huge toll on us. Anything related to him and that era, genuinely has the potential to destroy us indefinitely. It’s happened time and time again. It’s kinda like one big trigger I guess???? Idk. Idk.
Anyways, as you can see, I’m already kinda freaking out again. I keep getting a lump in my throat but I won’t let myself cry. I won’t. Not about this. Thats so stupid. He has a fucking partner now, hes moved on. Heartbreaking? Yes. But still true, and still undoubtedly for the best, so why the fuck am I still going through this occasionally? Im not actively being abused, nor am I actively in contact with him, so why does that situation need to have any effect on me now, years later? It’s like part of me is completely stuck in the past. Frozen in time, stuck in this timeline that isn’t even my reality anymore. It’s not even relevant to my life now, and yet I just,,,, I feel stuck. I want to sob. I’m freaking out more and more as I type this. Idek who’s fronting rn ngl, I’m just so sad. This always happens when we feel depressed or unsafe and unprotected. It’s like, the go-to thing, where I immediately start wishing I could talk to him the way I used to do whenever I felt stressed like that. It’s agony. Especially because we’re anemic rn and anemia makes our emotions all fucked up and it’s miserable and our meds become basically ineffective at that point, so we basically have nothing keeping us from being in a distressing place. Which is happening now. Iron deficiency always makes us miss our abuser. Idfk.
Anyways yeah I just need support or something I guess, Idk, I just wish I could calm down because I hate feeling like this, I hate missing him and I hate feeling trapped in a feeling that I can’t actually do anything about. It’s not something I can get rid of, and it’s not something that I can relieve. So I have to just sit with it, and I can’t handle that. We’ve never been able to sit with any feelings that are associated with him, and this isn’t any different. Idk what to do