Anything but “Normal”
Your cursor hovers in the Google search box. You type into the empty space: How long does it take to get over an abusive relationship? When will I start to feel better? Over two months have gone by, 60+ days, and you’ve had a noticeable decrease in your uplifted mood in the last few days and weeks. A dark cloud of sadness and grief looms in the distance and grows closer, like a slow-moving storm. Darkness is upon you.
As your fingers press into the keys on your laptop, you taste salt on your lips from the tears that made their way down your cheek, now resting on your chin. More will soon follow. Slowly rolling down to collect there on the tip of your chin and eventually falling down your neck or onto your lap. Your face grows increasingly damp with each passing minute. You wonder how much mascara is running down your cheeks now.
Words from the Google search stare back at you. You blink to clear the moisture from your eyes, only to feel it fall down your face again. You aren’t making any noise, save for your breathing and the sound of your nails hitting the keyboard as you type. A glow flickers across your face from the fireplace. Golden warmth holding you in this moment of grief. You glance at it briefly before stealing your gaze back to your laptop screen, determined to find answers. Sniffle. Blink. Keep reading.
You’re looking for a formula, a guide to follow. Anything that you can do to make this ache go away. You see fragments of promise through blurred vision. Journalling. Therapy. Self-care ideas. Community support and time with friends. Exercise and getting out in nature. You read the diagnosis as people do when they read about physical ailments. Dr. Google, here are my symptoms. How bad is it really? What’s my prognosis? You search for logic, meaning, and answers after a year of endless questions. Your mind is in a state of confusion. Your nerves are a crime scene. Your heart and spirit are shattered into pieces that are unrecognizable. So Doc, how much longer do I have?
In your research, you read that healing after an abusive relationship takes longer than a ‘normal’ breakup. No shit, you think to yourself, letting out a little scoff. Nothing about this was normal, you agree. It doesn’t feel normal to have someone tell you that you’re the love of their life while they cut you down to pieces. It doesn’t feel normal to have someone once tell you they love your intelligence, the way you think and speak, only to have those qualities later cast aside as character flaws and reasons to punish you. It doesn’t feel normal to be gaslit. It doesn’t feel normal to have blame shifted onto you anytime you share your thoughts and feelings, as if everything is somehow your fault. It doesn’t feel normal to trust your heart with someone who betrays you in the biggest ways possible. It doesn’t feel normal for someone to let rage take over and say the most horrendous things to you, only to then act like a different person the next minute, as if it didn’t happen. And it doesn’t feel normal to be punished for your reactions to someone’s abusive behavior towards you. No, this isnt normal.
The worst parts of your current diagnosis are tied in first place: cognitive dissonance and hypervigilance. In the former, you are mourning two people: the person who was kind to you at the beginning, the person you fell in love with and who would ever-so-briefly appear during the relationship, and then the person who hurt you on a very regular basis. Coming in close behind cognitive dissonance is the state of fight-or-flight, which your nervous system maintains for a longer period than is natural. We are biologically programmed to experience this sensation when there is a momentary threat. This is a response to danger, like running from a bear or a tiger trying to eat you. However, our nervous systems were not designed to sustain this for long stretches. And the result of extended hypervigilance can have lasting negative effects on your health.
No wonder I was so exhausted for so many months, you think to yourself.
Both cognitive dissonance and hypervigilance result in deep and extreme types of emotional exhaustion. You remember that at the height of the abuse, you felt as though you could sleep for a month. When someone has been in a long-lasting pattern of abuse, they are literally tired from the mental gymnastics they run through on a daily basis. All sense of ease and relaxation is gone, out the window. It’s as if you are perpetually running from the theoretical bear or tiger. Danger is quite literally around every corner. On the outside, this person may objectively be “doing nothing.” But on the inside, this person is effectively running a marathon, over and over and over. True and trained marathon runners don’t run every day. There are calculated days off for rest and rehabilitation. Not here. There is no rest for this runner — every day is a run for your life.
Hypervigilance is in the family with PTSD. Research shows that it is used as a criterion for diagnosing war veterans with PTSD. Read that again. That means that someone who experiences chronic hypervigilance from an emotionally and mentally abusive, and narcissistic, relationship will experience symptoms akin to war vets. War.
With this framework in mind, in an abusive relationship, your nervous system literally never turns off, like leaving a car running 24/7. It manifests in a walking-on-eggshells feeling, increased anxiety, and inability to sleep. You begin to become attuned to your partner’s every move, his mood shifts, changes in tone and word choice, anything to alert you of danger. All sense of safety is gone. Relaxation is a foreign concept. If you relax, you die. You and your body become prepared for any possible threat at any moment.
And as with war veterans in civilian life, far away from the battleground, someone experiencing abuse will live in a state of hypervigilance long after the abuser is no longer around. The abuser left their mark, a seemingly permanent tattoo you carry on your nerves at all times. The threat may be gone, out of the picture, but your body and mind have yet to adjust. Think of a firework show on the Fourth of July. An otherwise objectively joy-filled day for celebration. To some, it’s a day for swimming, sunscreen, hot dogs, and grilling. For others, it’s a flood of terror, igniting the warzone that lives within. When you’re surviving an abusive relationship, every day is like the Fourth of July, vivid reminders and triggers abound. Every pop, snap, and boom feels like an electric jolt to your nervous system. Every sigh they make, every passive-aggressive comment, every silent treatment they give, it’s like waiting for a bomb to detonate. You become keenly attuned to observing others’ moods and emotions, a skill you adopted in order to survive and prepare for the regular abuse.
This plays out for you in real time, even now in the aftermath. An otherwise innocent text from your best friend saying, Hey, are you free to talk today? makes your heart set on fire. You pause and catch your breath. Anxiety starts to surge through your limbs as the blood flows through your veins. Your mind begins to race, jumping to the worst possible scenarios. Of course! You respond, even though you’re choking on fear and anxiety. Dear god, is it about him? You wonder to yourself. It becomes harder to breathe. At the same instant you text her back for reassurance on the topic, she gives you the assurance you need. I’m so sorry! She apologizes. Historically, this wouldn’t have mattered; she could have said that to you without a second thought. You feel a surge of guilt. No, no. It’s ok. I’m just still not myself. You assure her, trying to settle your nerves.
An otherwise ordinary text from your best friend. I cant even handle that, you scoff to yourself, feeling a bit of shame and annoyance at how heightened your anxiety became.
But if you’re honest with yourself, a lot of things make you fearful and unsure these days. A sense of unease and unsafety still lingers and weighs heavily on your heart. Did I just hear my gate open? You think as you lie in bed at night, a thought that wouldn’t have ever crossed your mind before. Are my doors locked? You try to brush off these thoughts as silly and over-the-top, only to toss and turn when you try to sleep at night. And if you’re successful with that, you might end up having vivid nightmares anyway. Hey, good morning, a friend will say. How’d you sleep? You look at your phone, eyes trying to adjust and take in the words. I didn’t, you say in your head. If you’re lucky enough to fall asleep lately, you have vivid, nerve-wracking dreams. You wake up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back asleep for hours on end, mind and heart racing. Memories replay as you lie on your bed in stillness.
This cycle runs until your body eventually gives up. After a while, after a few nights of anxiety-induced insomnia, your body loses steam, and your nerves somehow relax. Then you get to relish in a few sleep-filled nights. Jeez, I slept almost 10 hours! You realize. Those times, you feel more rested than you have in months. You relish and look forward to a sleep so deep it feels like a coma, deep enough not to dream or think about him. A respite from what took place. As it did in the relationship, sleep becomes a place where you can finally feel safe, albeit briefly.
More research jumps out as you scroll. The answers feel good. A calming balm gently soothes some of your anxiety. They say that abuse survivors need to talk about what happened because they’re trying to make sense of it. Yeah, I can relate to that. You silently agree. At times, you feel self-conscious that conversations with your friend still lead back to your abusive experience. And yet, compassion and research remind you of the necessary step in your healing. Unlike a “normal” breaking in which you’re mourning the loss of a partner, the aftermath of abuse is littered with adrenal fatigue from hypervigilance and the pieces of your shattered reality. This helps you make sense of how you feel. When your marriage ended years earlier, you described it as “we just didn’t work out,” and you were able to shrug it off and focus on your future. Healing from an abusive relationship, however, holds a stark contrast: on one hand, the person you’re mourning felt like your soulmate, the love of your life; and on the other hand, he posed the biggest possible threat to you and your safety. In this state of cognitive dissonance, your mind is still working overtime as it sifts through the memories, deciding which truth is real. The result: constant, exhausting, devastating rumination.
I don’t even know what was real. I don’t understand. He was so sweet, kind, and loving, yet so terrible to me at the same time. Not only is your body and mind fatigued from being in a constant state of survival mode, but they are also still working tirelessly trying to uncover the truth. Did he love me? Or did he hate me? You’ve seen evidence of both. It feels impossible to comprehend.
It’s like moving through mud, your therapist explains to you when you discuss this “slow healing” process. You sigh. She’s right. At times, you felt like you were finally ascending the mountain, tasting bits of freedom in the air. In other moments, you encounter a flashback: a song comes on that reminds you of him, an inside joke you utter and realize only he would understand, a funny quote that makes you think of him, and a memory of him showing you love and care, tangled with memories of him hurting you, dismissing you, and devaluing you.
This is no “normal” breakup. This is no “normal” healing process. The reality that you thought you knew was shattered beyond recognition. That doesn’t just leave you with a broken heart. It leaves you to repair a broken heart while also repairing deep physiological and psychological wounds. Not only was trust in someone else broken, but also trust in yourself. This leaves you reeling in agony, questioning what you can believe. Do you trust yourself and your gut? You did when this relationship began, and look where that left you. So now you don’t even feel safe within, and you fear a lack of safety from the outside world. The repair is monumental.
At times, when grief washes over you, your body feels heavy with pain. You feel an ache so strong it pulsates through your whole body. God, I’ve never felt like this before. This is the worst thing I’ve ever had to survive. The thought runs through your mind as you tilt your head back and rest on your couch. You shut your laptop, closing your eyes as more tears fall from the corners of your eyes.
The crackle of the fire continues. A few minutes pass like this. A silent sob, shoulders shaking.
Eventually, you will yourself off the couch and make your way to bed. When you sleep, you pray to wake up and find it was all a dream, or to somehow forget that it happened at all. But somewhere beneath the exhaustion, beneath the weight of it all, a quieter truth persists: you are still here. Still breathing. Still moving through the mud, one heavy step at a time. I ran a marathon once before. I can do it again.
