I Am Working My Way Out Of Paranoia, It's So Hard To Give It Up
I have had enough trauma in my life. When I was sixteen I had a deep crush on a senior. We went to the same church and his sister saved a place for me beside him. She invited me over, we did everything we could for him to notice me. It was frustrating, especially because I had an inside person helping. Then out of the blue she calls me, she tells me her brother and two other seniors had gone sky diving and her brother plummeted to earth and was killed. Sixteen is awfully young to lose the love of your life like that.
I never dated in high school, I was still grieving for him. His sister and me got along and we were friends every day. She grieved for him too, so we kept each other company. Obsessive, yes, wrong no.
I went to college along with half of my friends from high school. Most everyone went to State and a few went to some far off school no one had heard about. At school we met so many new people. Then the news, one of the girls in our dorm went missing. Five days later they found her body in the woods, yes R and m****red. This played on me and kept me from meeting people, strangers. Her date was caught but it just showed that you can't trust anybody.
I went to work and made friends there, including a man who everyone said was an owner. He and I got along well and for some reason I opened up to him about my traumas. He listened, didn't belittle what I said and told me that he understood. We talked a lot after that, and I opened up about everything. My alcoholic grandmother, my mother who never worked in her life, who I liked and didn't like at work. I sat in his office sometimes till late just talking. Sometimes I got up and asked myself if he wasn't bored with me, talking about things that really didn't matter.
One Sunday morning I woke up with him. I didn't remember how or why I was there, well the why was obvious, he got what he always wanted. I blamed him for taking advantage of me. He became very serious about that and told me to hold on to my 'britches'. Sex was between two people, sorry if I didn't like it, but there was nothing more to it. Well that hurt me even more, now he was telling me that all I was to him was an object. I started wearing granny panties, mourning my virginity. Why did I have to lose it like that?
He came to my office and closed the door and told me he was driving to the beach to check on his beach house on Saturday, about a three hour drive, and he wanted me to come with him. We could talk on the way and get everything out in the open. I don't remember agreeing, he stopped by my apartment and woke me up and hurried me to get showered and dressed and put me in the car with him. The only thing I thought about was that I was trapped and he was taking me to beach to get rid of me.
When he told me he was going out to check on the dunes, he offered for me to come with him. This was it, I followed him slowly, he had to tell me to hurry up. He walked ahead and I walked behind, to my doom. I was going to die that day and be buried in the dunes at the beach. He walked up and down the dunes looking for the perfect spot and I followed him. It was my day, that's all no sense in fighting off the inevitable.
I got pregnant that weekend, in the house, not out on the dunes. He told me in no uncertain words that my time had come and it was time that I grew up. And what better way to force that than by getting me pregnant. It was only after getting confirmation that I remembered that I shared my personal calendar with him and on it I had my period days. He knew when I was ripe, and when I wasn't. He had planned it carefully and now I had the proof.
It was only after this baby was born that I started to see a therapist. To help me put my demons away. I had a baby, a real live baby and I was going to be the one to raise her and take care of her, like it or not, I was the mother. I learned about paranoia. And other trauma induced mental issues. And overthinking. And it's not because I'm a woman. I don't take meds, he doesn't allow it (there we go again), he doesn't want me walking around under the influence of anything.
It's real, paranoia. If you need help, get it. All along this man loved me and all I thought about was that he was out to get me. I love him, after all I have his children. I talk to my therapist once a quarter. Her goal is that I don't talk to her at all.