...She never used to be able to sleep well, before. She got maybe a few hours per night at best, interrupted by night terrors as she remembered the things that her stepfather used to do to her. And her dreams always felt real to her -- to dream was to relive her horrible past. To dream was, literally, the exact same thing to her as having all of those things done to her again. And the things that she shared with me were unspeakable -- the sick bastard was obsessed with horror movies, and loved to live them out with his favorite little victim.
She always had slept with the bedroom door locked, paranoid that somehow that bastard would make it out of prison and come for her.
And yet all the while, she wanted to help people. When a friend was in trouble, she'd drop everything to help, even at her own expense. No one else in her useless family would take the time to take care of her ailing grandma who is starting to show signs of dementia, but she, who lived out of state, would drive down to her grandma at least every month and use money out of her own pocket to buy the woman necessities that her social security check wouldn't cover. She only made $1,000 a month and her parents wouldn't pay for anything for her, so this was a
huge deal.
And when I came into the picture, things changed for the better. When I was by her as she fell asleep, she was able to sleep through the entire night without a nightmare. She felt safe. She felt confident that no one would harm her. Her dreams became positive things. Her life became one of hope instead of one with an unshakable sense of an approaching doom.
She stopped sleeping with the door locked, even when I wasn't there. She started improving. She would smile so brightly as I looked into her eyes.
She started believing that maybe life isn't the endless string of meaningless horror that she assumed it to be. She began to see herself as worth something instead of woman who was as useless and horrible and deformed as her stepfather would tell her she was on a nightly basis.
But now... now the nightmares are back. Now she can no longer sleep through the night. Now she's doubting that she's worth anything again.
Yet she still helps people. She recently sorted out problems that my best friend's fiance was having with her in-laws before the wedding. She still drives down to her Grandma's to help her when she can, though her job prevents her from doing so as often as she'd like.
I'll be damned if I'm going to let that woman rot.
I might not be able to do anything now, but if I can improve myself in a way that will make me more capable of helping her through life, I
will. She won't want to talk to me for a while, but when she does again I'm not going to have the same problems I did to begin with.
You can give me advice on how to make these improvements if you want. I've listed them and what I think they mean. I don't care if it's unfair for me. The woman who has been through so much is still willing to put others first... I cannot live in a world where that woman would be abandoned.
Yet that seems to be the world that exists -- so I choose to make it otherwise.
Added at: 05:32
Sol, most of us have been in situations like this. I watched a very close friend of mine go through this with his mother. Slightly different situation, but she was mentally damaged (mentally ill, in this case) and he was unable to pull himself out of the world she created around them. From the inside, it can be difficult, or even impossible, to recognize how damaging or fucked up the situation is. This can make it impossible to make rational decisions.
But I know you are a rational dude. You can't see the evidence from within, but you have a whole group of people who care about you, who all see the truth that we've all had to learn the hard way. Accept that the evidence we present overrides what you are able to see from within, and get out. I know you love her, but you are one of the problems in her life. It's **not** your fault, you're just trying to give her what she wants, but she is in a self-destructive spiral. By giving into her, you are enabling her to hurt herself even more, and hurt you as well. This is the very definition of a toxic relationship.
The right move here is to walk away. It's not the easy move, it feels like a failure, but if you truly want to help her, you need to make that hard decision. What's more, you need to be willing to have her hate you if it means she has the chance of getting better.
You're not Norris. None of us think you are, otherwise we wouldn't be trying still. You're just stuck in a terrible situation, where the right choice is hard to see, and difficult to do.
...I don't want to hurt her, though. Do you really think I'm worse for her by trying to be there?