I’m grateful for…

A recent breakthrough with my mom where I stood my ground and respectfully set boundaries and remained authentic to myself. It’s never happened before. But me being me, I’ve found a way to make this anxiety-inducing with the “in-law” dinner coming up. It’s not my place to let them know Cubu isn’t Christian, but because he’s lying I kind of have to cover for him and it really goes against the authenticity and boundaries I’m trying to build. Firstly, Cubu crosses a boundary by asking me to lie for him and lie about my life for him, but I don’t know how to express that without causing a panic. Secondly, it feels good to be myself and I resent having to lie about what I do and what I believe, have to let them trod on me because he won’t be honest with them. 

Having fallen back into my finger biting habit HARD. After years of working to get rid of it, this SIA stuff has put me back. I have 4 slivers of fingernail, the other 6 are shredded halfway up my nail bed, and all but two fingers have been picked bloody in the past couple days. They burn all the time on their own, not to mention when they get wet (every time I wash my hands), or put pressure on them (anytime I use a finger?). I’ve begun putting on lotion then plastic gloves during the meetings, since that seems to be some of the worst picking-times. 

Wondering if this practice makes me more negatively minded? I think it’s good to be giving time to the hard emotions, but I think I need to give equal intentional time to the positive ones to even it out. Otherwise it kind of feels like I’m unbalancing myself. So I’ve started a new gratitude practice where I do this but the opposite in my journal and hopefully that makes the difference, but it’s a lot of extra work.

 A text from Ludvig’s wife (talk about synchronicity) explaining why she hadn’t replied to my letter and asking to have coffee. It seems all well and good, and I’m grateful that she’s reaching out, but I can’t tell why. She has a pattern of wanting me around in difficult situations so the twins have an extra adult around. I get the feeling she might be reaching out because her parents are ailing and she needs another person at the helm with her, and I hate that I have to wonder if that’s her reasoning. Also I’ve grown so much since Ludvig died. Even before he died I had grown enough that I was uncomfortable with the way she treated me but didn’t know how to set boundaries yet. Now I do (or at least I know when they’re being crossed) and I’m even more grown. I worry that she won’t accept who I am if I don’t let her push me around. Or if I lapse into old ways and act like someone I no longer am. Or that she resents me for taking Ludvig’s death and using it as a catalyst for a lot of healthy things. In many ways, Ludvig’s death was the one of the worst AND the best thing that’s happened to me, and I’m terrified that she’ll hate me for the benefits I made from it. For context, my mom has a best friend that has also been the largest bully of mine all growing up, she was merciless and personal about it. Mom knows this and as a teen I’d beg her, crying, to not tell her friend about my life. Finding a new and very recent way that my mom betrayed me. I realized last week that my mom would have told her friend about my CSA. There’s no way she didn’t. And today I confronted her about it and she told me she had. I literally cannot think of a person on this planet that deserved to hear that truth less than her, that I would be more hurt by them knowing. And it was shared by my mom, who knew it was wrong when she did it but she didn’t want to be alone with my information. A lifetime of my mom choosing her friend over me, telling her my secrets, letting her be cruel and giving excuses for it, and here we are and it’s STILL HAPPENING WHATTHEFUCK. I should have guessed it before sharing it with my mom. Struggling not to be vicious towards myself.