How I escaped a murderous marriage despite being at rock bottom

The usual barriers to change are lack of: money, time, self-confidence, opportunity, energy, confidence in the flow of life and in the power of the Universe.

When ‘positive’ writers insist on how you can take certain steps and everything will work out for you, it sounds great, but try doing it when you feel like your life has gone as bad as it can get and you’re at rock bottom. .

Or as I said to someone who tried to knock me down a peg or two: “If you’re going to do that, you’re going to need a shovel to dig me up first because this so-called self-confidence you see is currently under the rock.” down and you’re looking at a person trying to move on.

The stubbornness to move on almost came to an end a few weeks later, when my normally happy mind flirted with the idea that a bottle of painkillers might actually kill the pain once and for all. sign immediatelyTravel to doctors for support and guidance, but no tablets! He had seen what Valium could do and the additional problems he caused and he wasn’t going to go there.

Once I was faced with the truth that there was nothing in my life that was right, I was completely intimidated by the magnitude of the disaster.

I was in a low-paying dead-end job because my parents had terminated my education before I took meaningful “she’s got a brain” tests. This was in the mid 1980’s in the UK and believe me when I tell you that if you had no money, you had no squat at the time, or the opportunity to develop squat!

I was in the marriage from hell with a man I shouldn’t have dated for over 6 weeks and yet I made the entire white wedding trip down the aisle while thinking “what the hell am I doing?”

I lived in a house owned by him and his mother where I had put up my fair share of money for improvements etc, but a lawyer advised me that the most I could claim would be 1/4 of the value of the house and that and more would go on attorney’s fees. So in the 1980s, I would have committed 17 years of my life to a meaningless relationship; my hard earned pennies to a house that wasn’t mine; my entire career to an undervalued, poorly paid, dead end job; and my self-confidence for a person who turned out to be more than a little screwed up.

My parents were totally focused on my brother and hated my husband’s wife, my husband thought least of my parents’ daughter, my in-laws weren’t impressed by any of those people and wanted something different, and my colleagues didn’t care. I liked any of those 3. My brother didn’t like me and his then-wife made our lives miserable. My friends wondered who I was and what I had done with Debbie (yes, they called me Debbie in those days), and they really didn’t like the resemblance to me. And hated all of those me’s with a vengeance. It was not a healthy situation.

Speaking of health, years and years of stress and anxiety were beginning to take their toll and I never felt well mentally or physically. I finally found myself in the hospital for a condition below the waist that had never really bothered me, with the problem that had bothered me getting worse due to stress, and totally scared of being out of control and ignored.

I was getting a lot of support from a branch of my family, but that really meant I was complaining about them a lot and no one was asking me “what are you going to do about it?”.

What would have been the point though? No money to pay a mortgage, no self-confidence to believe I could accomplish more than do my hair every morning, a dead-end, low-paying job, feeling ill all the time, and no energy to do more than lay down. the couch watching TV and trying not to get into any more trouble with anyone, like thatever went to work, was forever bad for everyone As soon as I wanted a person, three disgruntled people took their place.

Added to that, the career I was in was so unique and ‘strange’ in the words of one interviewer that companies said they couldn’t understand what I was talking about, so they couldn’t hire me.

You can probably see why I thought there was no way out for me and there was nothing I could do to save myself. However, that was not true.

I was talking to my doctor one day and after saying that she would like to borrow my husband to find out if another patient really was on the verge of a nervous breakdown because if someone could push someone over the edge he could, she gave me what that she saw as my three options in life… and it may surprise you a little, but remember that she knew me very well.

1. Commit suicide (but you won’t because you’re too strong).

2. Stay away from your husband and family (but you can’t because you’re too weak).

3. Stand still, build your strength, learn not to let any of them get to you, and then walk away (and you will for what you are).

I walked away and thought it over, realizing that deep inside of me was an enraged spiritual being who knew I didn’t deserve what had happened and definitely didn’t deserve what was happening. For the first time I discovered that my rock bottom was a freaking trampoline!

I apologize for the allusion to profanity but that is what happens. I get close to the bottom and then I think “That’s it, nobody treats me like that!” And I hit that trampoline and start bouncing up. I’m sure if you look into yourself that deeply, you’ll find your younger self outraged ready to pull your butt out of the quagmire.

So, having discovered that there was a stubborn part of me that was not going to give up – no one was going to ruin my life for me because no one else was worth that – I started thinking about what I could do, and here are the steps I took:

1. I had hypnotherapy regularly to help me calm down, think clearly, and discover my inner truth. Admitting that I didn’t love my husband and that he never had was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. The thought of quitting terrified me but I knew that one day I had to and hypnosis helped me cope and build on the idea.

2. I knocked on the doors of employment agencies until I found one willing to help me and, through it, an employer willing to give me a chance. I knew my husband could afford a mortgage, so I knew he had to beat him. I did it in 2 years.

3. I worked on myself. I learned to isolate my own image from that of others, and to decide for myself if I was wrong or not. It wasn’t easy to recognize the person I had become because I wasn’t impressed, but I discovered that I wasn’t always wrong and I was to blame, and was actually a pretty decent person who lived among people no better than his very human self.

4. I embraced spirituality and spiritual thinking, realizing that as a spiritual being, I could create the person I wanted to be and raise them myself. I saw myself as a little child and ‘raised’ her the way I would have wanted to be raised into the person I would have wanted my child to be, and it worked. I liked.

It took me 6 years, which may seem like an eternity to you, but it was 6 years well spent because it laid the foundation for my future. Even though I was still in the marriage, it was a great place to start discerning what I did and didn’t believe.

I made the most of that difficult marriage and from that bad space I built my future. I used every relationship and experience, every job and hobby, every difficult conversation and situation to rebuild myself, and every day it got easier and easier.

Finally in 1991 I walked out taking my two cats and dumping my clothes and jewelry at a charity shop down the road. Then the really bad started.

I met my current husband and soulmate of 22 years and counting and everything should have been perfect. Except after 17 years of telling me I was an idiot for staying with him, my entire family and all but 2 of my friends completely sided with him and left me adrift. I was laid off when my company closed the London office, I couldn’t get a mortgage because I didn’t have a job and I was homeless and I had 2 cats.

The only good thing was that my first husband had taken care of me financially, which was amazing until he screwed it up by telling me it was hush money. The problem is that he had confided in my family and they of course told him everything.

Although my husband and I are soulmates, we had a very lonely and difficult start to our relationship with no support during the tough times, he was 13,000 miles from his family by his own choice, a very difficult choice, and had no support at all. part. . He had left his home country hurt and desperate to escape the life he led, I was distraught that he had lost my entire life, not just an unhappy marriage, and neither of us could cope.

I got to another doctor who didn’t give me tablets, he was supportive, and it took me 6 months to resolve that last load of stress. However, he said something to me that I have never forgotten, and this is what I want to share with you for three reasons, first to show you that when you see me saying something they candone, you’ll know I’ve done it; second, to show you that someone who has been as low as you could fight back; but the most important thing to share this message:

If you are as low as you can get and yet you are still struggling, you are notyou weak you are strong. WThe people of eack burst into tears when a nail is broken and someone immediately comes to their rescue. Whereas anyone who bottoms out does so because it’s so strong that it took too much for too long before it finally broke.

A person this strong can go back and create the life of their dreams with time and determination, and you clearly have both.

Do not give up!