YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Hi. I'm Daisy. I listen to the podcast most days on my drive to work. It's so helpful hearing others' stories, how they deal or do not with their complexities. Paul Gilmartin, you make the day easier. Thank you. While I'm okay with so much about my life, I rarely let myself see this, and live it. I'm three years out of a seven-year-long abusive marriage in which I lived in a heightened state of anxiety and fear most of the time. My ex-husband was wonderful 85% of the time, and a raging Hulk the rest of the time (which, he says, I caused). Despite the blood and the broken glass, he couldn't acknowledge this part of himself, and so my doing so has been difficult. He rarely held a job, blamed me for every single failed endeavour he ever engaged in, and frequently denigrated me whenever I showed negative emotions. I was a confident, commanding woman 10 years ago. I'm now a shy, anxious, fearful, depressed, stressed woman with no idea how to be her old self again. I've let go of my need for an apology, but I harbour resentment and anger, and don't know how to let go of it. Somehow, once exiting my marriage, I found myself the other woman to married friend. Abused wife to other woman, and I can't decide which has made me feel worse. I've had only a handful of relationships and have always either been the other woman or the second choice. I feel like I'm good enough to fuck but not good enough to invest real emotion in. And the one man who did profess to love me could also hurl me across a room when I forgot to pick up my towel in the bathroom. Now, I sit around at the beck and call of someone else's man. It's murdering me. I feel like love is a facade, that everyone has an agenda, and that I'm sitting here just waiting to get used again. I don't know what it is about me that gets me in these situations. It's like life is only meant to be good in brief moments, then it's just a delusional, self-questioning ball of I'm not good enough for anyone. But I know I am. I'm highly educated, have a job I love, and have great talents I haven't indulged in since my marriage fell apart. I just don't know how to get myself back. I don't know how to get my creative impulses back. That's why I come here. I have a good support base at home, but I know no one who has been through what I have, and I don't want to suck my friends dry with this all the time. Okay, that'll do. So, that's me right now. Thanks for having me.

Daisy,
First off, Thank you! I'm flattered you find the podcast helpful.

I hope you find this forum to be a safe place for you to connect with other people who have been thru similar situations, or at least similar emotions. I think acknowledging that you are not happy is a great place to start. I hope you give your mental well-being the attention it deserves, and continue reaching out for help, especially with professionals. It sounds like your ex was an addict or alcoholic of some type. A 12 step program like Al-Anon might be a place to find support from people who have been in abusive relationships.

Paul

Daisy, I don't know if you still check this part of the forum, but I just read your intro and I found it quite moving. As Paul suggested, there are a lot of people out there who can sympathize with the strong feelings you're expressing even if they don't have exactly the same life experiences. I've never been on either end of an abusive relationship, but when you talked about a worry that you're "not good enough" for anyone to "invest real emotion in," it hit pretty close to home for me. I feel like that's got to be a lie that we tell ourselves. Listening to the podcast and participating in this forum have recently inspired me to reach out again for help, i.e. talk to a professional. Perhaps like you, I have a decent support network of family and friends. They would do just about anything to help me, but I think it's going to take more than just the sort of standard lay-person type of advice to get my life back on track. So I'm going to give my mental well-being the attention it deserves.

Dan