One of the most difficult challenges in leaving my narcissistic ex is navigating the lies that he spreads about me, and accepting that others believe the stories he tells.

As time passes, it’s almost easy to become complacent. To focus on my work, my children, my pets, the daily routine. It’s enjoyable to focus on celebrations, on dinner that night, on cheering on my son, on a meal with friends. Slowly you put the past away; I usually choose not to dwell on the unpleasantness that I’ve had to be faced with over these many years.

But. I’m not free. Not yet, and maybe not fully ever. I don’t know how other women manage. We have more official meetings in front of us, involving attorneys and statements and etc. So, to respond to one another, we read what the other has sworn before a notary.

Starting yesterday, and throughout the day today, the core of my being has been silently screaming, crying in protest at the lies. The emotions are many. The shock and instant rejection of gross false narratives about my person, my behaviour – things that never happened and never would or could happen, yet he’s attested to their truthfulness without a shred of evidence to back up whatever he claims. It’s as if, because he read it in some dirty novel somewhere, he can apply it to me without once considering what is factually true.

But, I didn’t want to write this about that.

This is an acknowledgement of all the ways my body is failing me right now. I held up; my spine of steel (or so I thought) turned out to be more of a noodle – I wept on the phone with my attorney as we reviewed and discussed incidents that my ex harmed the children with; I shook with remembered rage and horror and fear as I remembered returning home and finding the baby alone and screaming on the bathroom floor in a 4,000 sq ft house because his dad thought it was a good idea to go saw wood for hours in a shop more than 200 metres away from the house while his child was napping… Then there’s the reliving of the 2am awakening where my 4 year old baby was frantically attempting to scrub his own sick feces out of his carpet out of fear his father would discover the accident, when his father had given him ghiardhia by encouraging him to drink from a dirty stream; all things I discovered after a long and horrible night of comforting a distraught child, and cleaning filth from every corner of his room and person. There was the having to prove again (and again, and again) that I am not a whore; that I never had an affair; that I never authorized anyone to post intimate images of my time with the husband who was supposed to protect me, online for the world to see.

So … even though I sleep … weariness is not a word that explains the complete and utter shutdown of my soul on this evening. My animals cried at me today to spend time with them, but I had to work and navigate ugliness; my children challenged me in all the ways teenagers are supposed to challenge their parents and my patience snapped and I spoke harshly to them about doing their chores. I yelled at my dogs for sticking their heads in my grocery bags. I vacuumed like a crazy person because the dirt caused by life was just too much for me to handle tonight.

I have tried to smile. I fear it looks more like a grimace or the grin of a pumpkin when I turned it on people, the skin stretched too tight, the teeth shown a little too much. I noticed other shoppers at the grocery store looking askance at me as I wobbled my way about different stores trying to remember the things that normally are right in the front of my mind to purchase.

I feel exposed and raw. I feel like people just look at me and they hear his horrible stories and judge me, when never once in my life have I behaved in the ways in which I am being portrayed.

I chose to take some professional development at work today (not quite realizing how much the rest of this was affecting my mental health); and I learned that people who choose suicide have a perfect storm of emotional and real life events that take place. I remember the time of my life where I wanted to walk away from everything – to just disappear. I am grateful that perfect storm didn’t materialize for me, but instead true friends began to reach out, without even knowing I was looking for an exit.

I have good people who take good care of me. This is not a post about ‘poor me’ but a post about what being triggered can do… really really do.

Being triggered should be justification for a sick day, pulling the blankets over your head, and just healing.

But it’s a word that’s used too casually by people whose injuries are ones learned in books and not in life. If you are triggered, if your past is brought forth and you have to taste its awfulness again, be gentle with yourself. Take the time you need to reframe it, re package it, and hold hands with it. Those lifetime traumas are here to stay, and so, take the time to acknowledge you and yourself and know you are loved by God. and I love you too.