Change

I wrote about change in the inner self on another blog when I read a journal that I kept when retiring from state employment in 2002. I have since worked, but that was the last full time job in an otherwise unbroken line of employment since my teenage years. It was a difficult time in which I had been planning for all of my life but not for the years following retirement.

I did not realize that I identified so much with my job as I did then. It was as if the lifeline of so many years was simply not there anymore. I had no idea that this was the case. I looked around and I had criticized men for having this mindset and never realized that I had it too. I had plenty of things to do. I just did not know what to do with my identify or with the intense amount of anger that I had for that work site and for all of the work sites that I had over the years. Writing about it in a journal helped more than anything as the Veterans Administration was not very helpful during that time; but I did not want to push myself there as there were too many veterans with far more serious needs than I had. I knew I had resources they did not have.

It took some time to survive that time, but I did. There were many other trials and tribulations yet to come. I am surviving them. Now, I am on my way to a new situation although I find myself in a better place than I was then. I am surprised. I thought moving away from this house that I had loved dearly would be a great source of pain for me. It is not. The injuries of what was done during my absence in Korea by my oldest son and his father lessened the ties this house has for me. I am ready to go.

I don't even know why I changed or even how. I just know that I did. I am less ruled by fear now. I tend to believe myself now than before. When my son in his last ditch effort to convince me not to move from this house, said that I was imagining my reasons it hurt me and scared me, but I still stuck to the vision that I had of the situation. I have more faith in myself now. That was how his father kept me in check for so many years. I am walking ahead. My youngest son who was the source of some of my greatest sorrow is now helping me with what I need to do. I am hoping that he is learning to live with his fears too. They played games with his head too.

My oldest son and his father are bullies. I love both my sons but that is what they are. I also know that bullies need victims and are lost without them. I remember a conference I attended for a book I was writing in which one of the characters had suffered ritual sexual abuse. The conference was for survivors for ritual sexual abuse and some of the abusers were at the windows of the church they were using for the conference and were looking at the survivors with longing. They were not allowed in. Some of their victims were inside trying to get better. Even the ones that could get in had bought dogs in and were asked to leave as they were trying to scare those inside in order to see their fears. Abusers, bullies and those who prey on victims need them. They did not care for them as lovers but as narcissistic, egotistic people who need victims for their fix. This is their form of love. They have never know anything else.

I now see that my ex-husband needs me for the victim I was for all of those years. I learned to be one in my family of origin. Without my cooperation, he would never have been able to do what he did to me and teach his sons to do the same. I am not giving him permission to do it anymore. I am walking away to another life. I am finally healthy enough to do it. It was through writing in a journal that I came to realize this. Spring never looked better.