Cocoon – (noun) something that envelops or surrounds, especially in a protective or comforting way.
This next journal entry was written just after my third, yes third, failed marriage. I suddenly realized that I had changed quite a bit in the past eleven years. I had made concessions just to be able to live with a person with an addiction and depression. I had made myself be happy……most of the time. We had fun…….in the early years.
But I didn’t know how to deal with his disease and made many mistakes! I knew about the addiction before we were married but did the old cliché “he’ll love me enough to change” routine. Telling myself that it would “be fine” became my mantra.
But he couldn’t “just change”. He needed help and I didn’t know how to get it for him. So as things progressed instead of trying to help I became secluded and kept convincing myself he would stop because he loved me. You know what they say about hindsight and as I look back I know I should have made more of an effort to learn about the addiction and what to do as a partner. Would it have made a difference? I don’t know but I should have tried harder to get some help for all of us. But no, my stubborn bull-headedness took over and I encapsulated myself in my own little world all the while chanting “it will be fine”.
The last couple of years were getting bad. I let the situation push away my kids and my step children. The saddest part is that the marriage wasn’t all bad. It was good in the beginning and we were happy and had a lot of family fun. In the end there was so much tension that it was tough just being in the same room together so to say that marriage #3 came to a bitter end is an understatement.
This was my journal entry:
COCOON
When you live in an unhealthy relationship for so long and try to “stick it out” you unconsciously go into what I call a “Survival Mode”.
#1 – You take on your partners persona just to be able to live with them.
#2 – You slowly distance yourself from friends and family emotionally even if you see them every day.
#3 – You start liking only what your partner likes and doing what they want to do even if, before Survival Mode, you hated it!
#4 – You build a cocoon around yourself and hide in it because it just makes things easier to live with.
#5 – You become secretly bitter, resentful and miserable but see no way out.
#6 – You become a hateful old bitch just to live.
So how do I get out of my cocoon? I have lived inside it for many years and have set up house nicely in there. So maybe I’ll begin by making a small hole and peeping out.
OK, things aren’t so bad. I have family and friends who still love me and want to be in my lfe. But I’m still scared. I have to handle all the emotional turmoil, face people I haven’t been very nice to and put up with the gossip.
Then one day all that doesn’t seem so bad. I have people to talk to, new friends and old faithful, you know, the “real” ones. So this isn’t terrible……so I make the hole in my cocoon a little bit bigger.
This stage comes with purging the rest of the things in your life that causes you major stress. Without knowing it, along with that emotional baggage, you have hoarded stress. It’s just the way we are made. So little by little the hole in that cocoon becomes bigger until you emerge, maybe not as a beautiful butterfly, but as a stronger, wiser soul.
Please note that none of this comes quickly. It took me years to feel like my “old self” again. Scars will still show and old wounds may open up sometimes but keep looking ahead and strive forward. It CAN be done.
Am I still cautious about everything? Well sure, somewhat. I have come so far but still have a ways to go!
Life is what it is…..and it is good!