I am fanatically polite, helpful, and very friendly in person and go out of my way to make people feel welcome and helped. My church friends and my patients absolutely love me, and I genuinely would give a kidney to most of them (well not every patient because some of them aren’t nice no matter what you do but I try to be very patient and hold space for what troubles them). I go out of my way to be generous in other ways despite the fact I have extremely little money, I’ll babysit your kids so you can go on a date, for example, and would never think of being paid. The kids at church adore me and I’m always sitting with a pig pile of them on top of me. People say I’m like a light in their lives. I genuinely want to do everything I can to make their day good, and I’m very funny and genuinely interested in other people.
But life at home is simply awful. My spouse is a violent manipulative narcissistic sociopath who I am only living with because he’s wrecked my finances and my ability to cope alone, and I cannot afford to leave, and I think he’d hurt me if I tried. My ability to cope comes out of amber bottles, if I didn’t have meds I’d be hospitalized and ripping the hair out of my head. My spouse only speaks to me about bare necessities. I have no control over money at all, I work two jobs, usually 12 hours a day save for Sundays but that’s still 8 hours, have almost no time to myself and he judges me for what I do to relax (which is reading, television, and church). Underneath it all I feel like a black hole because of what he has done to me, I’m not even scratching the surface here. I feel like five different people sometimes even though I have a very good sense of self, but I feel like I have to keep these parts of my life separated so I don’t emotionally bleed on anyone. I really don’t know what will happen to me.
I really hope you can open up to someone about your home life. Someone you can trust. I don’t know what faith you have, but maybe the pastor, preacher etc. could be a person of trust? I know that in my home country they are obligated to keep your confessions private under any circumstances. Or maybe there’s an institution for victims of domestic violence nearby? I know this may sound frightning at first or you might feel ashamed for one reason or another. But I hope you can take this step to get some outside help for your situation. You deserve to be safe. You deserve to be happy.
I have a therapist. But there’s really not much I can change without leaving. I can’t bear to leave my dogs, and a lot of people live in tent encampments in my city and I’m scared to be one of them. My therapist is sort of at her wit’s end with me because I’m actually fine, the situation is not.
I am fanatically polite, helpful, and very friendly in person and go out of my way to make people feel welcome and helped. My church friends and my patients absolutely love me, and I genuinely would give a kidney to most of them (well not every patient because some of them aren’t nice no matter what you do but I try to be very patient and hold space for what troubles them). I go out of my way to be generous in other ways despite the fact I have extremely little money, I’ll babysit your kids so you can go on a date, for example, and would never think of being paid. The kids at church adore me and I’m always sitting with a pig pile of them on top of me. People say I’m like a light in their lives. I genuinely want to do everything I can to make their day good, and I’m very funny and genuinely interested in other people.
But life at home is simply awful. My spouse is a violent manipulative narcissistic sociopath who I am only living with because he’s wrecked my finances and my ability to cope alone, and I cannot afford to leave, and I think he’d hurt me if I tried. My ability to cope comes out of amber bottles, if I didn’t have meds I’d be hospitalized and ripping the hair out of my head. My spouse only speaks to me about bare necessities. I have no control over money at all, I work two jobs, usually 12 hours a day save for Sundays but that’s still 8 hours, have almost no time to myself and he judges me for what I do to relax (which is reading, television, and church). Underneath it all I feel like a black hole because of what he has done to me, I’m not even scratching the surface here. I feel like five different people sometimes even though I have a very good sense of self, but I feel like I have to keep these parts of my life separated so I don’t emotionally bleed on anyone. I really don’t know what will happen to me.
I really hope you can open up to someone about your home life. Someone you can trust. I don’t know what faith you have, but maybe the pastor, preacher etc. could be a person of trust? I know that in my home country they are obligated to keep your confessions private under any circumstances. Or maybe there’s an institution for victims of domestic violence nearby? I know this may sound frightning at first or you might feel ashamed for one reason or another. But I hope you can take this step to get some outside help for your situation. You deserve to be safe. You deserve to be happy.
I have a therapist. But there’s really not much I can change without leaving. I can’t bear to leave my dogs, and a lot of people live in tent encampments in my city and I’m scared to be one of them. My therapist is sort of at her wit’s end with me because I’m actually fine, the situation is not.