Flashback.
NO. I won't go there, I quietly fought with myself. I pushed back the tears, refusing to listen to my feelings, but I couldn't do it for very long, for the next thing I knew the memories were back.
I was standing in our small kitchen making dinner with him on our first Sunday together. He dictated how most of our cooking was supposed to go, most likely without realizing what he was doing. I couldn't cook the food in the order I was used to. I was chopping the vegetables wrong. I was using the wrong knife (which was probably true. I didn't know which of his kitchen knives to pick...) He wasn't mean about it; he just had it in his mind how things were meant to be done.
But then it got worse.
Fast forward about ten months. I was sitting across from him on the ground because I had just sold our furniture (much to my dismay), and I was crying because I felt hurt by the way he talked to me. I had tried to bring up some of my worries with him. Now, he was telling me the things I had done wrong. I wasn't supposed to get angry. Anger was childish and immature. I had walked away from the conversation. I had wrongly decided to talk to him about some difficulties I was experiencing. I was placing judgment on him, he claimed. I was unwilling to look at myself. "You'll never be happy," he said, pointing a finger, "until you can live with yourself and your own faults."
And I believed him. What else could I do anyway? Nothing I said could help the situation besides, You're right. I'm sorry.
The moment faded away as I shook my head back to reality. The power of the flashback was so real, and I wanted to scream, run out of the room, and cry.
I heard my voice say, You're just making these anxious feelings up. They aren't real, so get over it.
And just like that, I invalidated myself. Just like that.
My counselor often tells me how important it is to our healing that we allow ourselves to feel what we feel because we matter and our feelings matter.
The best way I could have done this would have been to leave the room and let myself work through the emotions. "You have permission to leave, Alissa," she told me. "You can always walk out. If you feel angry, you can leave the situation until you feel more able to talk because you have every right to advocate for how you feel."
...It's so hard to believe that sometimes. And I am so grateful she reminds me that I matter and that my feelings matter. I think I'm starting to believe it now.
The truth is that healing begins with recognizing what is causing us to feel emotion; what triggers we just experienced, and then to ask for validation - whether that be from within us or from someone else. We're human. We just need to be seen and heard . . .
I go back to that moment, and I realize how invalidated I was. He couldn't see and hear me for what I was trying to say. I was insecure on my own, yes. That is true. And the way I was invalidated still cuts me to my core when I think about it.
I hope I can keep working on my own self - learning how to love who I am, how to handle the feelings I feel, how to take care of myself and take responsibility for my own actions, because I can't ever do that for someone else. I can't control anyone else.
And no one can control me, either. At least, hopefully never again.
In these moments, sometimes I think to myself, "God loves me. God hears me. God sees me."
He validates me and will always understand my feelings, see me, and hear me.
And for me, that is enough.
For podcasts on getting through or confronting abuse, trauma, and addiction, here is the counselor my counselor recommends : Jodi Hildebrandt.
