Day 5 - Struggles

TODAY'S NUDGE: What is something you struggle with? What battles are you fighting that most people know nothing about? What's something about you or your life that makes you feel weird, or different, or isolated?



If you have been with me for a while, you are familiar with a lot of my struggles.  The ones of not being enough or too much.  The ones of feeling unworthy of all the things.  The ones where I struggle with titles like "Artist" and "Writer" because I am not consistent, where I feel like my work isn't good enough to claim those titles.

The struggle in which I long to be out from under the "not soon enough to be ex".  In which I struggle with my identity, because I still legally carry his name and I have to hide on social media for fear that he or his sister will find me.  Hell I don't even know what would happen if they did now exactly where I was. I don't know that if they did find me online or on social media if they would even do anything at all now.  Maybe I am just afraid of shadows, a dog that is all bark but no bite.  Maybe the fear is real and I have good reason to be afraid.  I really don't know.  He is a narcissist and so is his sister.  

I struggle with my girls having chosen to stay with him.  Was I not a good enough mom?  Were friends and his feelings more important that the sanity of the three of us?  If they had come with me, would they not be dealing with things like anxiety and depression?

I struggle with what is turning in to chronic pain, I am suspecting I have early stages of Fibro.  The doctor would not give me a positive diagnosis because I did not have severe pain in all the trigger points at the time of the exam.  But I have the pain that never goes away, it gets duller sometimes but it's always there.  The brain fog, the feeling like I never get enough sleep. I've had anxiety issues for years.  I have headaches more frequently than I ever have and migraines have almost become a monthly occurrence.  When I look at the trigger points, I have pain either daily or on a recurring basis in everyone of the points except the inner elbows part.  I was just reading that Fibro is not a disease, it's merely a syndrome. And then another site says it is a "real" disease.  

I struggle with PTSD, I know I have it.  I think really that more specifically I have CPTSD, but that isn't widely recognized as of yet.  Living with narcissistic parent and an alcoholic one. Being physically abused, assaulted at gun point and again at knife point by the same individual, not to mention he raped me in the early part of the relationship.  Going from one narcissist relationship to another.  Marrying a narcissist.  It fucks you up.  A LOT!  It's been almost 30 years since I have seen my rapist-abuser.  But I still have triggers that set me off.  A noise, a smell.  

So yeah, I struggle.  Big things, little things.  Some easier, some harder than others.  We all struggle.

They don't make me feel different or weird too much because I know I'm not alone in many of these struggles.  But I do feel isolated.  Some of it self imposed as a form of protection.  Some by distance.  Some because it makes me too much to deal with I suppose.  

But as the saying goes, It is what it is.