As I read this site and others and as I do research on CPTSD. I have realized that my entire personality is built around CPTSD.

I read about people who after a traumatic event, who are trying to go back to who they were before the experience.

There is no "Before" for me. This ,of course, applies to any one who suffered abuse at a young age.

Mine started at 3 and a half. The age when children begin to define who they are. And whoever that 3 year old was going to be E destroyed. With help from my older brother and sister. He destroyed who they were going to be as well.

Now I not saying this out of self pity. I like who I am now. I think cutting myself off from my family for all these years allowed me to heal some of it. And when I set down and decided I needed to be the man who my wife and children needed was important for me.

I also think that walking into that kitchen with that gun and saying No More was definitely a defining moment in my life.

" We are we pretend to be , so let's be careful of who we pretend to be ." Vonnegut 

" I do things not because I want to , but because I want to be the type of person who wants to . " I can't recall where I read this.

But now I need to be the person I need me to be. So there are a lot of things to work on. Symptoms of CPTSD which I found useful before no longer serve a purpose. 

One is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. That was useful when we were fighting with a whole state government trying to keep our daughter out of a cage. It was useful when I was trying to deal with my wife's bipolar. But these were choices I made, and I am fine with that.

But now these problems are , while not solved, are managed, and that is fighting me on moving forward. And I am going to move forward.

I need to stop thinking that I am going to end bloody, that at any moment violence and death wait around every corner.

It's going to be hard because the little man in my head is right now screaming that if I do that I won't be ready when something bad happens. That the second I relax it will happen. What ever it is.

Well if "IT" happens I will be ready because I am always ready. It's who I am. But until then I going to work on the basic assumption I will live a normal lifespan and die in bed surrounded by these I love.

I never thought I would make it to 55 so the little man was wrong about that.