How Would I Ever Trust Anyone Again After What I’d Been Through?
The answer surprised me
16 years in ruins.
I surveyed the damage of the life I’d been living with a man who at the end of our marriage would be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.
A shell of the woman I used to be, with a nervous system that short-circuited after years of walking on eggshells, I wondered how I would ever recover.
And once I did, how would I ever trust anyone again?
I’d been conditioned to think a certain way about myself that benefited the man I loved — it kept me under his control. Because of it, I was filled with fear, doubt, and mistrust.
I couldn’t tell the difference between those who had my back and those who were talking behind it. Being gaslighted by the one I loved created a low-level paranoia — I didn’t trust the stranger in the mirror or the voices in my own head.
I looked at the world with suspicion — who could I trust? How did I know someone else wouldn’t do just as my ex and rip my heart out of my chest?
I couldn’t survive that kind of pain again.
But as the years passed on my healing journey, I learned that my fears, while valid after what…
