Primal Anger and Self Preservation

I suppose it's not news to anyone that, for the last year, I've been in a very dark place. For the past 3 months, it's been even darker -- sometimes dangerously so. I wonder, if I had kept writing, if I wouldn't have been able to keep my head above water. Occasionally I've been able to come up for air, but most times I find it much simpler, somehow less painful, to close my eyes and relax into the abyss - that quiet place where no one can touch me.

Is it lonely, you ask? Sometimes. But, sometimes the benefit of self preservation is greater than the risk of loneliness. If you can't see me, if you can't touch me, you can't hurt me.

Then, there are days like yesterday. Days when someone penetrates my shell and hurts me anyway. Hurt me in a way I can't ever recover from. The relationship will never be 100% ever again. It reached the point, that while I someday might be able to forgive enough to avoid the risk of living with bitter hatred in my heart, I will never forget. I will never grant that person access to my heart again.

I'm usually not a violent person, but yesterday, in that moment, someone touched that primal nerve and unleashed something in me I haven't seen in a long time. The words were more violent than anything I physically did. I said things I couldn't take back, things I'm sure I didn't mean, and I said them on purpose. I said them "with" purpose. That primal urge burned the bridge beyond repair. Not for me. I was already at that point. I burned it beyond repair for "that person". That need to self preserve won. I "fixed" it so that person would never want to be close enough to me to hurt me again - so I would never have to risk trusting them again.

Someone came into my life about a year ago. That's when the dark place came. It took me months to start to find peace with it - to begin to feel like everything might be OK. Then came the gut punch. The realization that it was all a lie. That I had been deceived in such a huge way...

The last thing that hurt me this way was when J's dad walked out of his life without looking back.

My mother and my husband have each asked me, "Do you really mean that? It will never be ok? What if "person" makes a huge change and is apologetic?"

I really mean that.
It will never again be ok.
I will never believe the apology. It's clouded by lies.
I will always hear "what if" in the back of my head.
I will always be hurt by the sight of that person.
I don't know what else to say about it.


.......