Finding Peace when the world doesn’t have it
This past week I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on peace. What it is and how to obtain it. I honestly do not know how I define peace for myself. I’ve come to realize that I have never really defined what that is for me or what that might look like. Or even what that might feel like.
I know what moments of peace are. Yet I don’t know how to expand those brief moments into something that lasts longer than a breath.
I started thinking about this during the past week. So much of what I’ve dealt with this past week has been emotionally draining. I still am raw over not having my daughter. For the past 30 days I’ve had her for 8 days total. ExH took her for my weekend and I missed out. The police would do nothing. And that is frustrating. It’s frustrating that he can walk all over me with the help of the system. So many things are piled up that I have to fight against. There is a double standard as to how the rules are applied to him vs to me.
Yet even when there is nothing new and I’m living my life doing what I can to heal, the thoughts I have center around the injustice I’ve endured over the past few years. And this is the nature of my trauma. The nature of it means I get these thoughts that inject themselves into my daily life and I spiral into them. There’s no stopping them. Even if I manage to circumvent the thoughts the emotions linger and make themselves known. Sometimes I don’t even know what’s prompting the emotions.
It is a frustrating way to live. And because of that trauma and the way it’s presenting in my thoughts and mind, I don’t even know what peace is any longer. I don’t even remember the experience of peace, of having calm thoughts. But more importantly I don’t know what the experience of living without those intrusive thoughts is like. Not any longer.
Yet I know that I’m healing. There are small things that happen that tell me that I’m walking the healing journey. Like, exH sent me a message responding to a scheduling conflict and it was full of statements that were obviously an attempt to manipulate and to gaslight me. Yet even a few months ago, I would have gotten activated and caught up into the emotion that he wants me caught up into. I can feel the need to respond, but I didn’t. And I won’t. There’s no point. He just wants to suck me into his narrative. I don’t walk his walk, nor do I have any reason to argue with him. The point of arguing is to find common ground. He will not even cede his narrative to anything I say, no matter whether I have documentation otherwise. I’ve learned with him to document everything. Which means I can point out how he’s walking in a story that is all his own and not my experience at all. It’s exhausting. Yet I can recognize it now. I can make a different choice in how I react. I’m so tired of it all. I just wish he’d be reasonable and act like an adult rather than a petulant child.
Calendar
M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | |||||
3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
Leave a Reply