Time to get back to the original purpose of my blog. I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences about the things that happened when I was growing up and into my adult life. My posts show the anger, pain, and freedom that I feel. I try to put a good, happy, or (dare I say) positive “progress note”, thought or spin in my writings. I guess the last few posts did show the rawness of my Journey, though. I don’t want to call them bumps because they felt more like falling off the trail. I had thought about making the last two or three posts private. I want to stay honest, and for me, that means sometimes showing the rawness, those moments when I slip back into darkness. The posts illustrate the struggle and that it is not always clear sailing. I’m told healing is not linear and I will slip and fall. So, I’m leaving them up. The important thing is that I have a support system that will help me stand back up, dust off, and remind me of where I was on my Journey and how far I really have come. Those posts are painful for me to look back on, but the reminder they show is even more powerful.
So, where have I been? Surviving on Safe Mode. I’ve tried twice to start a new post. I now realize that fear is still sometimes a roadblock for me. Ihnzo and I have talked about this recently. He wants me, and reminded me, to be open, honest, and unafraid. I started out telling the truth, yet I often worried about upsetting someone. Eventually, I realized I was still protecting the people that love, believe, and follow the perpetrator that had harmed me. Why am I back to protecting another person that didn’t give a fuck about me and used me for their selfish wants? FEAR!! NO MORE! NO FEAR! No Hiding! If my words piss you, or your circle, off… then maybe it’s time for you and them to ask yourselves why you’re so pissed. I owe myself an apology for allowing the fear to control me. I’m going to tell the truth, again.
Part of the truth is acknowledging how this journey has impacted my marriage. Ihnzo and I have been through so much over the last 22 years, the last two years have definitely been the hardest. We both have had a difficult time adapting to the new me that has been growing in my cocoon. The transformation I’ve been going through was hard and painful as fuck for me, and I never thought about how hard it was for Ihnzo. In his words, he “checked out” of our marriage, and probably life in general, mentally around June/July of 2023. It’s also about that time our marriage began spiraling downward. Mistakes on both sides were made, yet I kept moving forward. I told him time and again that at any point, if he felt this was getting too much or if he wasn’t happy, just let me know and I would leave. No arguments, no fighting. I needed to find myself and I needed to heal my trauma and repair the mental and emotional damage from the past. As the days turned into weeks, then into months, and we grew father and farther apart. We communicated less and less and argued more and more. I suggested Couples Therapy. We went every week for eight months or so. The fighting got worse and began spilling into therapy. I felt out of control. Rageful because I was unheard and unseen. I would get home from whatever errand or appointment I had and just sit in the truck for long, drawn out minutes, sometimes a full song or two, dreading going back inside my own home. I hated that I had allowed myself to lose control of my hurt, anger, and pain again. If I was in this much mental and emotional misery, why didn’t I just leave? As many times as I tried, he wouldn’t let me go. I would get empty apologies and broken promises that he wanted to try to make it work.
In the midst of this, in August of 2024, Ihnzo had major surgery on his right shoulder. For us, this was supposed to be routine. Surgery should never become routine for anyone, and that’s how it felt for us. Just another day. Before it was all over, he would end up having two more surgeries to drain, clean, and remove damaged tissue from a latent infection that bloomed within 48 hours of the first surgery in early August. He would also have two hospitalizations and a PICC placed for antibiotics for roughly four weeks. There were doctor appointments every week for six weeks. This would put the us in mid-September(?). I lost my father, Eddie, on August 23rd, literally the only day I somewhat remember. I never got closure from his passing.
I was under so much stress and distress that my therapist’s theory is that it may have caused an episode of dissociative amnesia. It could also explain my incoherent posts, but that’s my guess. By the first of November, I was trying so hard to hold myself together, be there for Ihnzo through his healing and recovery, running the house, and taking care of other “family bullshit”, that my body was beginning to protest. I started with a shingle flare-up (my third in as many years), that turned into the flu by Turkey Day that I refused to rest for. From the flu, I slid into a serious sinus infection through Yule. Around the first of December, all of our therapists were on holiday till after January 1. I never stopped, I just kept pushing on. We even had friends over for Christmas. Shortly before Christmas, Void was in the hospital for a short 24 hours with pneumonia. Right after Christmas, Ihnzo was hospitalized for a few days with the same strain of bacterial pneumonia. I was sinking farther into depression to a point that I noticed. I had never felt this level of depression before. The day after Ihnzo came home, Cheezer was hospitalized for the same pneumonia. He was the worst of them. He would be in the hospital for five days; his recovery would take till February. I was a failure because I had let my family down. The bubble gum and string I was holding myself together with was coming apart. Through everything, all of this, I continued and never stopped asking for help. I was both saying, “I need help” and metaphorically crying for help. I know mentally I was dying, and probably physically, too.
I kept trying to recover, regroup, and reground. I just wanted to pick back up where I left off in July. For five months I was surviving in Safe Mode. Not even autopilot, more like autonomic function. I needed comfort, reassurance, anything. Instead, I was being told I was the problem. When I asked and pushed for what I was doing wrong, what I could do to make it right, Ihnzo could not give me an answer. I tried standing up for myself, but I wanted us to be happy in our relationship. By the first of February, I just fucking broke. I needed out of my marriage. I needed to save what was left of myself. Time had proven that simply walking away wasn’t an option. I had come so far and made so much progress to just throw it all away. I was beaten, broken, and weak. I felt unheard and unseen by the person that I was still madly in love with. I know now that letting myself get to this point of brokenness left me in a place more vulnerable than I had ever been.
A little bit of a shift here. At the beginning of February 2025, I was ready to get back to writing. I chose a topic to tackle from my list that had been bothering me the most. I finally wanted to break down Victim vs Survivor and give my perspective. Most of what I write about are my thoughts fueled by curiosity that go through my mind, sometimes daily. There are plenty of papers, books, academic works, etc. on some of the topics that fill the list in my notebook. What I like to write about are my thoughts and conclusions, these are my perspectives and opinions. Often what you see is me working though struggles in real time. I will link what sources I can or include a list of sources at the bottom of any related post. You don’t have to agree with me, I’m not claiming to be right or correct in anything. Everyone is welcome to share their opinions, experiences, and thoughts, with the world or me.
The hardest part of writing about the shit in my head is being able to recognize that my past thoughts were wrong about me, my life and the world. I also tend to take on the most challenging things first. The biggest challenge on my list is what is a victim and what is a survivor? I have been through CA, SA, various manipulative relationships, and other stuff. Where do I draw the line between acknowledging being a victim and understanding being a survivor? So, let me break this down and see what conclusion I come to.
Victim vs Survivor, My Perspective
I have spent most of my life telling myself I wasn’t a victim; I was a survivor. I was a survivor because I made it through, and I was here to tell my story. When I went back into therapy, that first session on December 1, 2022, my intention was to sit down and finally be able to bitch about Nina and all the crap I deal with daily and keep hidden from everyone, even those who didn’t know her. I was finally ready to vent to someone who was unbiased. Most importantly, someone that I trusted. A bitch session, to be able to air my grievances, or a chance to just complain. Something I’ve never been able to do and the one thing I hated doing. In my mind, I wasn’t allowed to complain. From there my thought was to learn what I was doing wrong and work on ways to do better. This is what I go through, and how do I deal with this going forward? All the while, even telling Joss, that I felt like I was complaining and didn’t like complaining because “you don’t know how good you have it and how others would die to have the (parents, love, blah, blah, blah) you have”. Did they have to pay this high of a cost to have that? In other words, if I complained, I was ungrateful.
I listened and watched my entire life as Nina played the victim to leech empathy, sympathy, money, resources, or whatever, that she needed from other people. At some point, I don’t think I’ll ever figure out when, she began to accumulate “followers”. These were the people who looked to her as a trusted friend. There were some that believed she was an encyclopedia of sage knowledge. It was as if God had granted her the knowledge. The main component is that they trusted her. I may never know if anyone ever doubted her or questioned her advice. She would use whatever story that made her the victim to bolster her virtue and piety. “Give it to God” like she did. Tell her about your pain and struggle and she would help you. She would pray for you, as if she had a direct line to God. That’s what friends did. Then when she needed something, you could help her. In Nina’s mind, they owed her. I look at it like a blood contract. They just didn’t know they signed it with their soul as collateral. When they left, when they didn’t give, when they turned their back on her, she would tell everyone how horrible they were and talk about all the things they told her in confidence. They trusted her! Yet, she was the victim, and they were the people who had wronged her. They were bad, abusive, evil, under the power of demons, whatever fit her narrative.
I never wanted to be a victim. In my mind, victims were weak and weaponized their pain. They didn’t want to heal. I would be stronger than that. I had to be a survivor and live and heal and thrive. The harder I tried to break away, the more Nina held on. The more she forced herself in, the more I felt I needed her to survive. Then, it became my duty to care for her because everyone else had turned on her. I was her only child, her daughter, and I owed her because she sacrificed everything to raise me. I was all she had. For a long time, I never told anyone. When I said something, they told me, “She’s your mother. You should love her. You’ll regret the day you don’t have her anymore.” You don’t complain, victims complain.
This is the end of part 1. I cut this post into tow parts because it was getting very long. I still have so much to say, fill in, and work through. Hopefully part 2 will follow in a few days, probably closer to a week with my life. There’s so much I want to get out. I want to get back to the peace and freedom I felt this time last year. Much love. HUGS!
Ancestors guide me, ancestors protect me, ancestors show me my light. Blessed Be!
Fear by Blue October
All my life
Been running from a pain in me
A feeling I don’t understand
Holding me down
So rain on me
Underwater
All I am, getting harder
A heavy weight
I carry around
Today
I don’t have to fall apart
I don’t have to be afraid
I don’t have to let the damage
Consume me,
My shadow see through me
‘Cause fear in itself
Will reel you in and spit you out
Over and over again
Believe in yourself
And you will walk
Now, fear in itself
Will use you up and break you down
Like you were never enough
Yeah, I used to fall, now I get back up
Written by: Blue Miller / Justin Furstenfeld