FRACTURES

The realization of the changes that have happened to me during my time in my relationship with a narcissistic abuser is starting to take on life. Two days ago, I had to re-splint the finger he'd fractured some time late last year. When it originally happened, I left it untreated, and thought it would heal on it's own. There were his apologies, his tears, and his guilt, so I determined to make the injury as conspicuous as possible.  Not talking about it made him feel better, and I pushed it out of mind.

Every once in a while came little reminders that it was still there. Slight twinges of pain. Sharp jolts, if hit or moved in just the wrong way. Manageable pain. More important to me was that the source and memory of it were neatly wrapped and tied, and stored way down below. If I could manage what was on the surface, I wouldn't have to look at what was waiting just beneath.

But by nature, it was stirring, left untreated for so long. Growing tender, and breaking it's way into my conscious. The pain was becoming constant, no longer tolerant of being ignored. When I picked up a mid-sized box of water, hoisting it up in my palms to get a better hold, and jarred that very finger, I went reeling back to the moment he'd grabbed me and bent it back.

I hadn't wanted to peer into the depths of the physical aches and spasms that had begun to coexist with me. But finally deciding to splint my finger pulled me down into the other fractures, bruises, and tears of my body and my life.

What's there?

The slow, painful process of withdrawal since leaving the narcissist. Deep chasms of despair and loss. Emptiness, dark. Overwhelmed with the loneliness and silence that he once filled with a presence and control that had consumed me. And my eyes slowly opening to all I've lost of myself and what I've become.

What's there?

Fractured fingers, sprained hands and wrists.

Fractured cheekbone

Fractured Rib

Memory loss, mind sluggish

Nightmares

Wanting to stay isolated

Indecision

Panic over simple things

Digestion fully halted

Massive weight gain

Hair Loss

Face change

Wanting to end it all.

Unthinkable mental, emotional, physical traumas. Leaving behind complex post-traumatic stresses.

I wasn't like this, before him. I hadn't felt these things or had these things done to me, before him. My life and my being had not been so severely altered, before him. It was meeting and falling in love with a man high on the spectrum of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. A man who cycled through the stages of narcissistic abuse quickly and severely, for years. Ravaged to such a degree that I now look and feel unrecognizable. Think in alien ways. Struggle every day to move amongst a world of people and events, without knowing who or what I really am.

Yet Hope is not lost. I know I'm in a better place than when I first left. The Spirit in me would not allow me to stay lost, no matter how much I want to.  However incremental, movement has happened. From being flat on my face to sitting upright, most days. It is movement. I'm sure that at the end of it all, eventually, I may fly again. But that's very dim, and far from view.

Right now, I am fractured everywhere, I am different everywhere. It's a difficult thing to know and see.