I don't think Dear Abby can handle this one...

So yesterday was unintentionally weird. Hm, do weird days ever happen intentionally? Anyway, I have this colleague. She's a bit older than me and she lives with her sister. Both my colleague and her sister have grown daughters who are in abusive marriages and refuse to leave, even though there are kids involved and absolutely everyone in their circle has been like LEAVE HIM. When I see my colleague, sometimes she will vent about the things that happen to her daughter or sometimes her niece, and it's always triggering to me.

I was in an abusive relationship for five years. He was my first boyfriend. It went from when I was 15 to about 20. I don't like to talk about it and I don't think I've blogged about it yet, and I hope to not have to do so in the future, but it's relevant to the story. Anyway, I still have PTSD from that. It mostly hangs out in the background and / or manifests itself as this constant social anxiety I have. So yeah. That happened, and I'm still affected by it. He messed me up real good. But I run through the aphorisms like dwelling on bad shit is like letting that person live rent-free in your head and living well is the best revenge etc. And I'm on a lot of pills. So I'm simply super; thanks for asking! {ting}

Thus, when I say triggering, I mean triggering a PTSD flashback. Yesterday, I saw my colleague. She was really upset. Apparently over the weekend her niece's husband had "beaten the hell out of her" "fractured her front teeth" and "choked her with a cord until she became unconscious." Annnnnnd apparently the kids saw everything and the oldest one (about kindergarten age) knows what's happening. And she, my colleague, is still worried that her niece will go back to her husband even though this is the worst the abuse has ever been. I expressed upsetness and disappointment and anger and all the stuff you would expect... I tried to be supportive... then a little while later my colleague, who knows very vaguely that I had been abused --I may have mentioned it when she told me about her daughter and niece and their situations --starting asking me really personal questions about my abuse.

I was sort of shocked by the fact that she would ask me these personal questions, but I gathered that she was really life/death worried for her niece, that she wanted to know the perspective of someone who had been there and come out of it. So the questions were like, "what was it like?" "why did you stay?" and "why did you leave?" I sort of felt obliged / shocked into answering. I like my colleague a lot. She's a warm, giving, genuine person who devotes her life to helping people. And I think she was looking for some advice about how to convince her niece / daughter to get out of these marriages.

When the conversation was done my colleague was all like, "you're amazing," and I was all like, "I'm okay," and she was like, "No, really, you are; you're amazing," and I was all like, "I have trouble accepting compliments heh heh." So we sort of shared a moment there and I hope I helped her in any way that I could ..... BUT ...

I had started my day full of energy and plans. After she left I started in on my list of things to do, but when it came time to go outside... I had already packed my laptop, computer, notebooks all my crap.. and my brain was just like NOPE. NOT GOING OUTSIDE TODAY. And I was trying to appeal to my brain's reasonable half. C'mon brain, you need some distraction.

I plowed ahead with more "inside" tasks, which included calling my mom to get a family recipe for a cake as part of a poetry project. I wrote down the recipe plus her commentary and the conversation was really hilarious and actually kind of nice because my mom and I were talking about baking and baking brings her out of her constant, profound depression. She used to be a pastry chef. She's an AMAZING baker. Was. Is. She doesn't bake much now but when she does it is amazing. I am an okay baker. I don't do cakes so well. We talked about my problems and she diagnosed the problem and gave me some simple solutions to fix it. She also talked about when she first started how her cakes were flat and dense and horrible and she just kept practicing until she got good. I was like, "I can't even fathom the idea of you making hideous cakes," which made her laugh. By the time I was sentient her cakes were awesome.

After that I tried again to move my body outside. I had my stuff packed. I was looking cute. The bus was gonna show up. And brain was like NOPE. WHAT DID I TELL YOU? And I started have a gigantor panic attack that lasted on and off for the rest of the day until Mike got home.

When the panic was "on" I laid on the couch, watched tv and played Bejeweled. When it was "off" I tried to move ahead with some poetry stuff. But mostly, I was not very productive and it made me feel guilty.

Here is the Dear Abby part. Like I mentioned, I like my colleague. I want to be supportive. But I fear that --especially now that we've shared this moment --that she will think our intimacy has leveled up and we can talk about stuff like this more often. Except even before yesterday I was thinking my colleague can be so triggering; I wish I knew how to respectfully tell her to back off without it being mega-awkward. I don't want her to know that she's triggering me. I just want her to talk about something else. Like animals. She has three cats and three dogs. Like me, she carries pictures of her animals on her phone. You see? Different conversation tack.

Luna is now making incursions on my keyboard and I'm afraid she's gonna erase my entire entry, plus make a large monetary contribution to the Republican party on my behalf.