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ShatteredandSorrowing
25,476 M Aiming High 6
PathStep 294 Compassion hearts3,194 Forum posts32 Forum upvotes54 Current upvotes54 Age GroupAdult Last activeNovember, 2017 Member sinceJune 5, 2015
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Losing her is losing everything
Relationship Stress / by ShatteredandSorrowing
Last post
 October 15th, 2016
...See more Hi. I don't know if this is the right place to post this, my problems are a huge pile of issues, but the breakup is the latest and the one that feels like it's finally breaking me for good. I grew up in a very abusive household, I was beaten, manipulated, hurt physically and emotionally, and raped by my father. I grew up in a fairly fundamental religion that he manipulated the doctrine of to keep us in line, and the church leaders supported him and refused to believe me if I ever tried to go to them. I was homeschooled most of my life, so I didn't have anyone else I felt I could talk to. Once I moved out, I was able to function by walling everything and everyone off. I married my sweetheart, and it even took years before I was able to tell her everything. We've been friends since I was 14, married when I was 21, now I'm 28. In all those years we've weathered the divorces of both of our parents, her difficulties with her father who was emotionally abusive. We left the church together with a huge amount of pain and heartache, losing almost all of our friends in the process. We've almost never had any serious arguments, we agree about almost everything that's important, and have always handled our disagreements healthily. We've endured so much and just grown closer over all the years. She's the one who convinced me to start taking my walls down, to start opening up to people, to start going to therapy. She's the one who convinced me that I was a person worth loving. She's always been the most amazing, supportive person in the world - when our friends were having relationship troubles, she'd tell me how hard it was for her to understand, since we were always rock solid. When I realized I was trans and wanted to consider transitioning, she was all for it. I started therapy in November, was diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and PTSD, and promptly fell completely apart. I was working as a 911 calltaker, suddenly I was having panic attacks and PTSD attacks at work. I went down to part time, and then quit entirely in February. We agreed that I should just take time to focus exclusively on healing and transitioning, and then go back to work, since her income was easily enough to support us. Sunday, out of the blue, she tells me she wants to separate. She won't tell me why. She hasn't talked to me since I took a few changes of clothes and reluctantly moved back to my dad's house, she's only been willing to communicate through an intermediary. I feel utterly, hopelessly shattered. She's been my companion - whether she was my friend or my girlfriend or my fiance or my wife - for most of my life. I'm trying to just give her the space she's asking for and hope that, in time, she'll be ready to talk about whatever brought this on and we can try to work things out, but I'm an utter wreck. I feel like I'm back to square zero - right when I was starting to feel happy about life again, like I was making real progress. And now I have no income, I don't know how I'm going to be able to pay for therapy or meds - I'm updating my resume and trying to get a new job, but right now I can barely make it out of bed most mornings. I know I shouldn't, but I can't help but question everything she told me, all of her encouragement to believe that I'm a good person, and being back in my dad's house is crushing me. I feel like I've lost all the light in my life and I can't find any way forward. I can't transition alone. I think I have to put therapy regarding my dad on hold, because I have to keep my walls up here if I'm going to survive. I don't know what to do and I feel like I'm losing my mind. I know that her asking for a separation isn't the same as her asking for a divorce, I'm trying to be hopeful that things can get better, but finding any hope right now feels impossible.
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