DAY 452:
DAILY OBJECTIVES MET:
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Dailies | Self-Care Completed:
Self-care is not an indulgence. Self-care is a discipline.
Morning routine / Verbalized my feelings /
Journal / Daily talk with hubby / Regulated my sleep.
3 Things I am Grateful for Today:
1) Recovery.
2) Music.
3) School days.
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Last night, we didn't talk too much. I vented my frustrations about a weird phone call from my doctor at almost 8 pm, then we went to watch TV. He gave me a really comforting and soothing foot rub which I really appreciated.
Today on the
7 Good Minutes podcast I listened to “
Stop Wishing and Create the Life You Want”, in this episode, Jim Rohn talks about how to stop wishing and actually create the life you want. Remember, we must learn to be happy with what we have while in pursuit of what we want.
This morning, hmm well, started out okay but turned for the worse rather quickly. So, we dropped off the girls at school, then stopped by Dunkin to pick up some coffee's before we drove down to the mall for our usual walk and talk. At Dunkin, I headed for the restroom and he went to order the drinks. As I was walking out there were two women walking in, so I had to wait, then walk behind them in order to get to the line (where Wade was already by the counter). One of the women was his 'prime type' and triggered me. I tried to contain my trigger as best as I could, tried to ground myself *breathing in and out* and put it behind me as best as I could so that we would be able to listen to a podcast, talk and go on with our day as usual. We get into the car, turned on the newest BAE podcast, which actually sounded interesting, it was called "
Why Does It Hurt When the Addict Says I'm Beautiful?" and began driving/listening. The podcast was essentially about how sometimes to the betrayed, words are cheap coming from the addict, and it is not easy or even pleasant for the betrayed to embrace a kind or sweet word/compliment from him after so much trauma. We usually have a difficult time believing, how can something be true like "you're so hot, you're so beautiful" (as they claim) when there is nothing by way of action to support such a statement, based on x amount of years teaching us the exact opposite? I know this mixed bag of feelings all too well. Anyway, we didn't get to finish it this morning, maybe tonight. So, we got to the mall and Wade starts giving me various compliments (ironically) telling me how I'm starting to turn him on, mind you, I'm triggered, but I'm also aware that I never let him know I was triggered either, so he is being playful, and me all of a sudden having an attitude would confuse him, so I decided to be upfront and tell him I was triggered - that's when shit hit the fan. As soon as I said I had a trigger, he looked surprised and said, something to the effect of: "I didn't notice anyone there who'd trigger you", I thought to myself, (1) yeah right, he didn't notice anyone, in the whole store, the whole time we were in there and (2) why would I tell you I got triggered, if I didn't get triggered, for fun or to start drama? but I thought to myself "whatever, let's just move on", I told him to go ahead and turn on his headset, so we can continue listening to the podcast and instead of dropping it, he says "was it the blonde with the blue jeans?" which was equivalent to someone throwing fuel on an already burning fire, because BINGO, he randomly did end up noticing her, while not noticing her, oddly enough... all I heard in my triggered head was "you just said you didn't notice anyone, however, you actually did! in fact, you noticed your prime, what a total coincidence! to the point where you were able to describe her hair and clothes, impressive for someone you didn't notice...
*hmm* -- so then I bring that up and we had a whole back and forth about it, he went on the defensive and as he kept going and going, he kept throwing in random details and changing/adjusting his story, from not noticing, to seeing her from his peripheral vision when she walked in, but totally missed the frumpy woman (also blonde) directly in front of her and me walking right behind her, that he must have looked at his phone and then saw her and then looked back down. So then he noticed or "didn't notice" his prime but if he remembered her hair and pants, was I invisible to him? since I was right behind her or was I not interesting enough, so he decided instead of noticing me too, to look at his phone?
food for thought. I don't like evolving stories or trickling out truths, I asked him to drop it, we could agree to disagree, but instead, we had this back and forth going for almost two hours. He also kept implying why would he lie about this, when he tells me about things like Facebook when he could easily hide it, which annoys me too... because that's no way to earn my trust, it makes me feel like anything he does, he expects me to keep score and tally off "good behavior" vs "bad behavior" and then base my feelings towards future actions, dependent on what he has or hasn't come to me with before. If that is the case, then I should never give him the benefit of doubt for anything, because 12 years of lies beat 1 year of honesty.
What's frustrating is, I was upfront with him about being triggered for a reason, in order for myself not to shut down (one of my self-care goals) and for him to know that if I am snippy or in a bad mood, that is why (one of my relationship/honesty goals, also self-care). There were a few ways he could have handled this, without setting me off further, one would have been to just stop, think and instead of automatically dismissing my trigger with "I didn't notice anyone there that could trigger you" (aka invalidating the fact that it took so much out of me to admit I am triggered and obviously I did not pull it out of my ass, so someone did trigger me) he could have said, "I see, I'm sorry you were triggered, are you talking about the blonde in the blue pants?" OR if he honestly did not see anyone, as he initially claimed, he could have just held my space and empathized with me for a minute. He could have said, "I'm sorry that you were triggered, it must be difficult not knowing if someone can walk in and ruin your day at any moment, but thank you for letting me know, so if you aren't being yourself, now I'll know why". Like, it's not always easy for me to listen to and process his shame, but I've learned to be patient, understanding, I don't interrupt or judge him, I don't jump in to fix it or blame/accuse him of anything, I listen and then help him break it down and rationalize it, so we can figure it out, for some reason he just can not do that for me. It just makes it really difficult for me to want to be forthright about anything, because what's the point? it only makes it worse for me, it's better to just keep it to myself and avoid the full-scale escalation and stress of dealing with his hours-long right-fighting.
What I liked about myself, today:
(I am trying to find one positive thing to "like" about myself and make a mental note of it, every day. No matter how small or insignificant)
Stopped myself from shutting down, multiple times.
#Motivational
Jim Rohn: STOP WISHING for the Life You Want
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Recovery Setback Dates | Inconsistencies or Lies
5/25/18 | 6/08/18 | 8/18/18 | 9/19/18 | 1/09/19
1/19/19 | 1/21/19 | 1/24/19 | 1/27/19 | 2/08/19
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Wade, asked me how I was, once we got in the car, if it was bad for me there and I told him that I tried to distract myself and keep it stuffed down as much as possible - but what else could I do, it's not like I could leave before my daughter got her award anyway.
