Looking At Old Photos Is Like Sticking A Needle In My Eye

My kid is doing a collage representing himself, and he needs some pictures.  This morning I have been scrolling through recent and not-so-recent family photos.  It feels like I'm sticking a needle in my eye.

The pictures of my married life stir up anger and anguish....angrish, as I like to call it, and I'm fighting the urge to blanket my sadness with busyness and business, and I'm wondering why haven't I replenished my chocolate stash lately?


I still have a lot of pain when I look at the pictures of my married years.  Grief and mourning still surround past events and pictures and memories.

It's like the pictures are all up on the surface of a lake, where people are smiling and posing and traveling and being born and growing up, and under the water is a dark current of deceit and sadness and uncertainty.

The worst part is that during all these seemingly happy times, I was struggling emotionally, and I didn't know why.  I didn't know why my husband was working late or why he had insomnia or back pain or depression or the checked-out disease.  I didn't know why it was a burden for him to be with his kids or talk to me.  How was I so blind to my own life, I wonder?

I believed 100% that what was happening was what.was.happening. Days like today I still grieve that loss; the loss of trust and security in my husband and in my life.

Although my husband and my life are much improved with recovery, I have a residual fear that I really don't know what is going on in my marriage and my life.  While my fear unsettles me, that fear also brings me consistently to God.

In my humility, my insecurity, my mistrust of others and situations, that is where I meet God, or that's where He meets me.  Either way.  He gives me stamina, sometimes through a feeling, or a friend or a book:  I can live today, even if I don't have all the answers.  All the answers are not mine to have.  In those old pictures, when I didn't even have the questions to the answers, He knew me and was working in my life.

Could it be a blessing that I didn't know my husband was a sex addict all those years, when he probably wouldn't have been humble enough to seek recovery?  Was I spared years of heartbreak as he tried over and over again to quit?   Did not knowing help me hold things together, albeit haphazardly, until my husband could pull his weight?  Could my blindness have been for my own good?

ANGRISH 101

Last weekend I was in an emotionally fragile state, when my husband abruptly changed our much-anticipated (at least for me) Saturday plans.  It was five minutes before we were supposed to leave, and he decided to do something that he felt obligated to do, for people that are minimally connected to our lives.  The timing was such that we couldn't do both.

If I were a normal person in a normal marriage, I suppose I could have "rolled with it."  But, I ain't in no normal marriage.  It brought back memories of the flakey and checked-out husband I lived with for years, who did what felt good to him, regardless of how it affected our family.  I cannot live like that now.  I need security and constancy.  This is part of building trust in our marriage.

I was indignant, far beyond what I knew was reasonable for the situation.  Since the major trauma 13 months ago, my brain has a very short fuse.  From what I've read, this is part of the trauma response.  I seem to go from 0 to 300 amu's (anger management units) in a matter of seconds.   My emotions are on a hair trigger.

Not only does my anger flare more quickly now, it also reaches far deeper.  The anger spans out to that deep place where it meets the pain.  It's like the trauma gouged out a canyon of pain inside me, and the anger crashes in like a river to fill it up.

This anger and anguish blend together into one suffering concoction that I call Angrish.   I know  anger is a secondary emotion, and I use it like a salve to medicate my anguish.  I wish it were a more effective medicine.

On Saturday, after I had soaked in my anger for several hours, I surrendered it to God, another person and a sticky note in my surrender bag.  That surrender process is a living, breathing thing, and it works.  With the anger out of the way, I broke down and cried like a baby for hours.  It felt sort of good to let go and be sad.  I know I am still grieving.

I am working my recovery every day, and I am learning to accept my feelings as they come.  My angrish cannot be glossed over or forced away or ignored.  These are my honest feelings, and they need my attention before I can be done with them, and they can ride off into the sunset.







Next post I will share an idea about handling tough emotions from a Vietnamese Buddhist monk.  He treats his anger like a baby, and it's brilliant.  Stay tuned.