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Friday, January 31, 2014.  I don’t know how my younger sister spells the term she coined for ‘it is finished’.  It’s either ‘tute fini’ or ‘toot fini’.  Hard to tell but my guess is it’s the latter.  It’s funnier that way even though many times events that can be lumped into that ‘toot fini’ category are not necessarily remotely funny.  Today is a ‘toot fini’ day for me.  I could say “fine with that” if I even knew why on earth THIS day and its events – that are TOTALLY unrelated to me – are bothering me at all!

I am a great one for saying that trauma repeats itself until the lessons contained within it are learned so that ‘mistakes’ related to it don’t happen again.

It’s not necessarily that the exact same trauma will repeat itself.  It doesn’t even mean that a ‘like’ trauma will repeat itself.  It can ‘just’ mean that inside of a person the FEELING STATES directly tied to the first trauma are repeating.  Sometimes that happens when a ‘trauma trigger’ arrives upon the scene of our lives that sets things deep within us to jumping around – or even those that lie close to the surface – because feelings are awakened so that patterns related to the trauma resonate – again.

Like a tuning fork the ‘sound’ of another woman today becoming my ex-husband’s 2nd ex-wife are reverberating inside of me.  This is ENTIRELY illogical and as far as I can tell are entirely unproductive!  Why should his 2nd ‘toot fini’ and HER 1st ‘toot fini’ awaken MY old ‘toot fini’ with this man?

It was 29 years ago this week that Joe ‘toot finied’ me so he could ‘formally’ date the woman he had been chasing after (and she chasing him) for 3 years prior without my knowledge.  A helpful neighbor in the small town I was living in at the time was kind enough (!!??) to telephone me the day before Joe’s 1st divorce went through as he ‘toot finied’ me to tell me of the 3-year history between those two.  “In case you don’t know….” she had said.  No, I did not know.

How I feel right now has nothing to do with a desire to pile up mistakes he made to see how his pile matches up with mistakes I made.  Or does it?

A part of me is asking Joe in my mind, “Was it worth it?”

I have realized since I happened to return to this area after all these years to reside here while this pair’s ‘toot fini’ occurred today that I never thought about any of that past at the time enough to figure out that those 3 revolving-door years directly coincided with the time I sought intensive and very difficult treatment for the first time to try to recover from the horrific abuse I had experienced as a child.  I was literally fighting for my life at that time.

Joe came to joint therapy sessions with me.  WHY?  He was at that time already hot after another woman – or hot with her.  The DECEPTION is what is getting me now!  I trusted Joe at that time and during those hard, hard months of treatment.  He was my husband.  Who else beside my therapists at that out-patient clinic was I supposed to trust?

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It is way easier said than done to discover the lessons that trauma needs to teach us.  I have no desire or any intention of ever getting involved with another man again.  I am learning that although I never spent any time thinking about it over these past years I did assume all of the ‘badness’ upon myself that led to that divorce.  At least I now carry only my 50% share as I mentioned in a post a few weeks back.

A spiteful part of myself with cute little horns and a pointy tail is “tee-heeing” at both of those two.  Do I normally rejoice in other people’s suffering?  “Not I.” 

So this must not be a normal time for me!

Once this day passes and takes its ‘toot fini’ with it I expect that I will move on — again — just as surely as those two are doing. 

I do strongly suspect that if I did not happen to know that ‘her’ mental illness of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) made that marriage an impossible affair in the end that I would not have the share of reverberations within me that are hearing the echoes of what happened between my father (another ‘nice guy’) and my mother that I do.  Was Joe swooped off his feet by her charms the way Father was by Mother’s — all to DISASTROUS ends – ESPECIALLY for me?

In other words….  As I write these words I hear my own question:   “Was I painfully struck again in my life by BPD where I was vulnerable through the impact this disease had on another man important to me?”

It seems that I was.

So while I was all snotty-nosed on the floor in therapy sessions pounding the depths of my pain out on pillows from my horrendous abusive childhood BPD was smoothly eating the entrails out of my marriage without my awareness just as it ate the entrails out of my infancy and childhood?

It seems that it was.

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I guess I am rather dismayed at myself that never once in the past 29 years since that neighbor woman called me the day before Joe’s divorce of me went through did I ever do the simple 3-year math to easily figure out what I see now.  No matter if BPD was involved or not in that charmed pair I was still being majorly betrayed at a time when I could not have been more vulnerable.  I know what that time in therapy was like for me — and so did Joe.  The fact that he said NOTHING and kept pretending he was on my side through that time — well…..

How did I MISS THAT piece of math?

Is this only coming clear to me now because I happen to know she is BPD?  I wish that I didn’t know — but families tend to garner information that sooner or later appears whether you want it to or not.

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Tick tick tock your way past me ole toot fini day!!   Be toot finied with me!!  I want nothing to do with ANY OF THIS!  So let go of me and be off with you!!!  That damage was done to me a long, long time ago.  I have not carried anger over any of this for all of these years and I do not want it now.

What is it I need to be learning here?

I will possibly be the last one to know.

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  A very kind professional graphic artist is going to revise our cover pro bono – what a gift and thank you Ben!

Click here to view or purchase:  A STORY WITHOUT WORDS

It lists for $2.99 and can be read free for Amazon Prime customers.  Reviews for the book on the Amazon.com site are WELCOME and appreciated!

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