Living in Fear

I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was living in a state of complete fear.

Every morning began with me taking a shower and vomiting uncontrollably, my body was in shock and overwhelm. The shower allowed me to let my walls down a bit, tears would come, and I would feel my body shaking as the sobs began to rise. It was awful but it also allowed me to offload the heaviness a bit and prepare myself to struggle through another day.

I felt like I was operating on auto pilot most of the time, just doing what I needed to do to get through each day. Surviving one step at a time, almost one breath at a time some days. What I didn’t understand at the time, is the impact all the trauma was having on my nervous system, on my physical body. It was in complete overwhelm and had no space to rest and I had no understanding of how to soothe my body or even that that is what was needed.

My mind became dominated with thoughts of how I could ‘fix’ my husband. Surely if I could fix him then everything would be ok? If he would stop gambling and just be well then life could return to ‘normal’ and we could be happy again?

What I now know is we CANNOT fix, save, rescue anyone except ourself. If I had truly understood this back then I would of saved myself from so much unnecessary suffering.