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Old Feb 09, 2012, 09:45 AM
Anonymous32457
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I'm sorry. This will be long. I have to give some history to explain why I feel the way I do.

I grew up in an alcoholic, abusive family full of divorce and remarriage. My mother had a total of eight husbands, plus live-in boyfriends sandwiched between. We were in dirt poverty. None of those men could hold a job, and some of the live-ins were just bums sponging off her welfare checks. We moved from place to place. As soon as Mom had a new man, we had a new address in another town, so we could pretend for the neighbors that this was the same Dad we'd had all along. In many ways it was the "same" Dad. He was in a different body and answered to a different name, but he was still the same drunken, abusive, violent monster inside.

As the oldest daughter, I started down the same path my mother traveled. Although I never lived with a man I didn't marry, the man I'm married to now is my fifth husband. My first was the same kind of abusive alcoholic/addict I'd grown up with. Thirty years later, he still isn't clean and sober, and he would still abuse me if I would allow him in my life. (No surprise that my family has more to do with him than I will, and my mother goes so far as to say she "just loves him" because she's known him so long. He treats me the same way they did; why shouldn't they love him?) I began breaking the cycle in my second marriage. For once, here was a man who was not an alcoholic/addict. My second and third husbands were not bad people, but they did have some mental health and trauma issues, plus they were not physically healthy, and both died young. Number two from a brain aneurysm, and number three from causes I don't know, but he did have a severe seizure disorder. In each case, we were divorced before the man died. My fourth husband was also not a drinker/drugger, or abusive, but that poor innocent soul was a lot like Forrest Gump, minus the willingness to take risks, and I was too confused to know he wasn't competent for marriage. I had no idea what constituted a good husband, and I thought simply being a sweetheart qualified him. He left me after a year, under pressure from a sister who was convinced I was only out to take advantage of him. I suppose this was a favor to me, since it opened the door for number five, who from what I can see will be the final one. Even if he dies first, and I've still got some good years left, at this point I don't think I'll have a need to marry again, because I finally got it right, met that need.

Now comes the other side of the coin.

My problem is that I always feel like a phony when I act successful, healthy, or "normal."

Simply living in a middle-class house, married to a stable husband with a steady job, who has no major dysfunctions and manages his finances well, who supports us both without any government subsidy, and even now beginning to work with Vocational Rehabilitation to get back into employment myself, feels wrong. I feel like this lifestyle is NOT me.

It's as if I am living someone else's life.

An inner voice tells me I should be where I was before my husband and I met: In the ghetto, on disability, supported by government assistance programs. THAT, says the voice, is me.

No, this isn't healthy thinking on my part. Can someone help me reconcile "Be yourself," with a conflicting piece of advice I've heard often? It seems I cannot find a way to both "Be yourself," and "Fake it 'til you make it," which to me sounds like, "Don't be yourself; pretend to be someone else, and then eventually you will become that other person, which is better than being yourself."
Hugs from:
Anonymous32507, Open Eyes, Suki22
Thanks for this!
sharpe2