[leomama]

So I'm working now, full time, and have been for a year. I ended a toxic relationship. My daughter graduated from high school. I should feel great, right, at least according to people who don't know anything about complex PTSD, but we all know better.

I feel awful. I still feel bad for divorcing my child's father, and he wasn't even the toxic person that I was referring to in the above paragraph. I feel bad for even getting into that toxic relationship that I mentioned above, but that's a different story.

I guess I'm really struggling with self-blame right now, which as we know is a symptom of our illness/injury. I know some feel strongly about our symptoms being those of an illness, not an injury

Its the night before Christmas Eve and I don't feel like going to church and abandoning my daughter so I'm taking her to the sauna instead. That's one of the ways we bond. She's going to let me choose the essential oil tonight, we just started using essential oil in the sauna, so that's exciting. That's about the only exciting thing in my day, to be honest.

I have christmas presents for everyone in my choir and my family as well as my daughter, but I still don't feel good. I think part of that is because I've had work or choir obligations every day this week. I haven't met any of my choir obligations for these pre nativity services. That's probably why I'm feeling down, in addition to my divorce, even though it was over 10 years ago, and the failure of my second relationship. I choose to be alone. I also work in the retail/restaurant industry now and I was at the epicenter and ground zero of christmas madness this week at work. It wasn't really madness, but having to be of good cheer for 32 hours this week, well, let's just say it was draining.

I am excited for Christmas to be over. It brings me no joy. Additionally people or clergy at church do judge me for my attitude so I have to keep that hidden. They don't understand because even if they came from abusive homes, or had an abusive parent, they are still happily or securely married.

I know its my "fault" for choosing to divorce, but I was miserable in my marriage. Even when I think about it now, well, marriage is defined by sex at the end of the day, when you're in a religious setting and I just didn't want to have sex with my husband anymore.

That's the same problem I had with my second relationship but since it was outside of marriage my former partner was wrong to expect sex from me. I think I'm still angry with him for his attitude, since the break is relatively fresh.

What I really want is friendship and I have one male friend, who has a live in girlfriend, which allows us to be friends. I'm trying to create some friendships at work, which is kind of dangerous because my former therapist, my daughter and even my supervisor told me that people at work aren't your friends, but to be honest they are the people I spend the most time with. I'm not trying to create friendships around my ptsd but around common interests like fitness.

[Skeezyks]

Thanks for sharing this. Christmas can be such a difficult time of year. My wife & I don't even celebrate it anymore. We don't have any extended family or friends; so there's no one around to do anything with even if we wanted to. And I'm pretty-much a recluse at this point too... by choice. So I don't go much of anywhere I don't have to. Still... I, at least, am flooded with difficult memories. And there are a lot of them. I wish you great success in your efforts to create new friendships.

[leomama]

Thank you . I went to see my brother and his family today. That is a post in and of itself.