Sometime in 2023, I kept trying to sign into my WordPress account and the website would freeze. I couldn’t log in at all. It was really strange. I tried multiple times over the remaining months of my pregnancy. I really missed being able to write my thoughts out. I couldn’t. Presently, I have been in 24/7 infant care-taking mode. Not too long ago I discovered I can log in again. My baby is asleep right now for the evening. As you might imagine, finding time to write has been extremely difficult if not almost impossible. It is rare, in the event I have a solid amount of free time, I want to actually write instead of catch up on sleep, shower, or decompress.
The last time I saw my baby’s father I was driving him home in my new car. It was February. His birthday had happened. I wanted to do something nice for him to celebrate. I asked him if I could pick him up and take him to work after taking him shopping for a new pair of shoes. He had been complaining about how much his feet hurt standing at work for 8 hours. On the way back to his parent’s house. One of my favorite rap songs from Megan Thee Stallion started playing. Which sent him into a spell of fury. His voice was rising as he started to berate me for listening to the song and female rappers in general. That it said a lot about my character to him. I changed the song to a male rapper I remembered him liking from way back in the day we knew each other. Z-ro. This just seemed to make him even angrier. He starts to rant about how music like this is bad for the mind is going to make me a bad person. I told him I disagree. I found it to be motivating. For me the message was about working hard, staying in your own lane, and making your own success story. He found it the opposite. In hindsight, it’s possible it brought up bad memories for him. Even if that’s the case it doesn’t excuse the increasingly aggressive manner in which he spoke to me. I asked him to lower his voice. I don’t drive well when I’m emotional. He wouldn’t. He just kept ranting and attacking my character. I changed the song again to “Youse a Bitch”. This only added more fuel to his fire. He started to yell about everything that made me not “right”. How he didn’t want the shoes I bought him. When he threatened to break the window of my car if I didn’t stop playing the music. I pulled over and yelled back at him to get out of my car. He could walk the rest of the way to his parents. He tried to demand I continue to drive him. I said NO! GET OUT.
When he stormed out of my car I drove myself home in tears. What happened to him? Where did my high school sweetheart go? What has life done to him? He’s grown into this scary person. Who I am now having the child of. I still see myself as this stupid fool. I thought I could help him remember who he was. I was so very wrong.
Now, I wonder what the future holds. When our son starts asking questions about him. What am I supposed to say? Pretend he didn’t frighten me? That I only saw what I wanted to see? I made him out to be better in my mind because I was living in the past. I didn’t listen to him in the present. I had been in denial.
There’s a YouTuber called, “The Crappy Childhood Fairy”. She discusses what it’s like to have childhood post-traumatic stress disorder as an Adult. There’s this symptom called “Limerance” where someone like me fixates on a person as a romantic ideal that doesn’t actually exist in the persons actions towards me.
So now I know what this pattern of behavior from myself is. I’ve been in chronic states of limerance with people I’ve dated or was attracted to in my past because I have been afraid of who I would be within the present. My attempts to find decent people, through friends even, did not end up well. I just harmed myself further. I really need to break this cycle. I’m hoping now that I know what it is I can move forward finally out of these harmful romantic interests.
I'm 30. Send Help. 