Group Hug Guest Blogger
“The Physics of the quest : A force in nature governed by the laws as real as gravity”
If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter old resentments and set out to a truth seeking journey either externally or internally and if you truly regard everything that happened to you in that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are ready to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you. I can’t help but believe it given my experience.
Elizabeth Gilbert – Eat Pray Love
What happened to me…
I do not know how many times I watched the movie Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert… The first time I watched it, I was still married. If you have not seen the movie, it begins with Liz waking up in the middle of the night – telling her husband that she does not want to be married anymore… I knew that I was feeling the same as I did not want the big house either…I wanted to travel too!
My story of grief and bereavement – community member true story
But I did not have the guts to do what Liz did. I was living in the prison built for me over the years. Besides, I had three children- two of them twins! Although I was never maternal.
I stayed married long after I watched that movie the first time and was made to believe that living in the big house in the suburbs, driving the big car and going on fancy holidays was what life was about.
I was being controlled and manipulated, without realising it.
Who I was before the wedding….
I was always a high achiever, ambitious. The big white wedding or life in the suburbs with 2.5 children (well I overachieved that target with 3!) was never my dream. I was very career orientated and climbed the career ladder very fast in banking. I was young, single and almost rich then.
The only problem was, I was approaching thirty with no ring on my finger! Alarm bells were ringing, so I got married to the “Prince Charming”. Literally… Everything was perfect. Little did I know that in years to come, I would be an expert in pathological narcissism!
After the wedding bells stopped ringing….
Things changed very quickly, pretty much after we got married and moved to London. Prince Charming was still very charming to the outside world but he was nothing like that inside.
There was only emptiness, a big void in our relationship. I could not exist as I was; I needed to be someone else.
I did not like that version of myself, but I believed in sacrifice and I sacrificed myself and I wanted to believe that was love, but actually it was abuse…
The big little lies we tell ourselves
I’d lived a lie for a very long time and although I was comfortable, I was dead inside; a zombie. My career was gone and I had a very small social circle, limited to so called fake family friends. I was lonely and isolated. There was no communication, feelings were never shared in our marriage. No matter how much I tried, nothing was getting through to the other side! The silent treatment was the worse…
I cried, I shouted, I screamed but no one was hearing me. Then I stopped. I stopped crying, I stopped screaming and fighting. And the worse of all I stopped feeling. I was numb.
The divorce….
My life was not even real! It was made up with lies, manipulation and control. I did not even pay a bill. I was a trophy wife!
Divorce: How to protect your maintenance payments
But sometimes when you cannot decide, life happens and forces you to make a choice and after 17 years of marriage and three children later, we got separated. Leaving a narcissist is never easy and believe me the next few years was nothing but easy! My divorce was the most unamicable divorce in the history of divorces. Ask my lawyers if you do not believe me…
How “why” realeased me from the narcissist – another true story
I no longer live in a big house or drive a big car, but I got my life back. I’m doing what I love and living the life I love. I am ME and I am FREE.
There is no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what and what destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die…
My life like all lives mysterious, irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present so very belonging to me.
How wild it was to let it BE
Cheryl Strayed – The Wild
Written by the lovely Hulya Gunay who features in The Hug Directory
Thank you for sharing your story x
The Group Hug
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