MOVING OUT

The time has come where I can no longer stay in my current situation/environment and I have decided to move.  This has been a long time coming and should have happened a long long time ago.  I am to the point where I no longer feel welcome here, I isolate myself on a daily basis and I am stifled creatively.

I have mixed feelings about this move.  I know in my heart that if I stay here I will only stagnate, and I have been stagnating in this toxic and negative place I call “home”.  Thanks in large part to my PTSD and quite possibly my mothers own PTSD I have allowed and been allowed to stay in this house for too many years.

I am 33 (just turned) and I am leaving my mother’s house for the first time.  I have travelled in the past and I have lived in many other places for short periods of time but I have never packed up all of my things and left.  For what I hope to be permanently.  Like I said- I have been here too long.  I have allowed myself to think that I am not capable of living outside of this house.  I have been made to think that it is too hard “out there” and that if I can’t make it here then I certainly can’t make it “out there”.  I have become accustomed to not inviting ANYONE over anymore, even my best friend who has known me for over 20 years.  Partly due to embarrassment and partly due to the feeling that I just shouldn’t.  Socialization is not promoted in this house.  I am sick of being talked down to, I am sick of the constant negativity.  I need to be able to breathe. I need to be able to live.

So. I am moving out.  I have spent the last 2 weekends packing and moving all of my belongings to my mother-in-laws house where I will be staying with my love until we can save up first and last for our own place.  Trust me- I did NOT want to move from one mother to another but as my luck would have it the decision to move happened rather quickly and as we have no other place to go and we need out immediately, this seemed like the best option.  For many reasons.

And so here I sit, in my room, for the last Tuesday I may ever sit in this room.  Most of my stuff is gone to my new home, aside from my bed and a few large furniture items that will be moved Saturday morning, and my cat Marble.

I feel as though I need to remember this. I need to remember sitting in my own house feeling so unwelcome.  I need to remember that this does not feel like home – and then I have to ask myself – has it ever?  Grandma’s house felt like home.  This has never felt like that.  Looking back I realize that this “home” has allowed my PTSD to fester and erupt.  The worst it got, the more I thought I had to stay, all the while being suffocated by the thick, negative air.  Why do I feel like the family outcast? Because I found out 10 years of anxiety and depression where a part of something much bigger (PTSD)? Because I decided to take time off to heal myself? Because I fell in love with a wonderful man? Well. Pardon me all to hell.

I used to think this “home” was a safe place.  I have come to feel that it is not safe at all.  Not for me and my mental health.

I am sad.  I am sad that this took 10 years too long to happen.  I should have been in therapy and moving out 10 years ago.  The time and tears that I have wasted trying to find myself here, and falsely believing this was the best place to do it is frightening.  I am sad that I have allowed my self esteem to be on the chopping block for so long.  I am sad that I let my mother so interfere with my relationship with my father.  I am sad that I let myself down countless times because I was too afraid to be myself.  I am sick of hiding.  I am sick of isolating myself, I am sick of not living my life.

I should be happy that I am leaving- and I am happy but I am also hurt and afraid.  I am hurt because I feel as though the rug has been pulled up from underneath me…AGAIN.  I am afraid because this is all I have known.  I feel like I am about to be freed but I don’t know how I feel about that freedom because -at 33 – this feels very new, overwhelming, and scary.

Stay tuned my friends, this could be a bumpy ride.

The PTSD Tag

Thank you for calling me Brave

THERAPY THURSDAY | July 2016