A nightmare I could wake up from

Just awoke from a nightmare. My heart is still pounding. I dreamt that the Addict and I were driving on a freeway in Seattle at night. As we were on a ramp transitioning to another freeway, we were clipped by a speeding black car that spun in front of us and hit the guardrail. To avoid colliding with the black car, the Addict steered hard to the right, but we spun around and the back of our car tipped over the edge of the road into a ravine. I could feel us sliding down and I could see the trees in front of me in the dark ravine. "Should I jump out?" I yelled. I didn't hear any response but I could sense he was in the car with me. When we came to a stop I jumped out and yelled for him, but no response. I kept screaming his name and I could not hear him or see him. I stumbled out of the woods still calling for him. It was raining, and there was a road and some cars were passing and a few people on scooters. I was terrified and I wanted help, but I was afraid to flag down cars because I was afraid they would hurt me and I felt so vulnerable and helpless. 

I'm so glad I woke up, because that was really terrifying. I felt so frightened and vulnerable.

I've been reading the book of the first year of this blog, going over the first experience to revisit the learning and growth and strength that I found as I worked through the trauma of the first betrayal. There is a lot there that is hard to read, but it's good for me to get present to all that has happened so I don't shy away from it as I make decisions. 

One thing I'm struck by is how immediately forgiving I was last time and how careful with the Addict's feelings, while dismissing a lot of my own feelings. At one point, I wrote something about how I felt, but then went on to say that it was irrational, so "I immediately invalidated it." I wonder how much discounting of my feelings I did during that process because I could intellectually understand certain things and so therefore felt that I didn't have the right to have anger or pain, or felt indulgent when I did so. That is what I do. I minimize my own experience (because I can "handle" it) and don't allow myself to feel angry or upset. I look for explanations for what someone has done so I can have compassion and understanding. Not always, but a  lot, and especially with the Addict. Because I wanted to rebuild, and you can't rebuild without compassion and understanding. But it left some things unprocessed for me.

Ever since 2007, sex has been fraught for me, even during the hyper-sexualized period right after my initial discovery. I have never completely been able to be fully present because of thoughts on my mind. Either thinking about him fucking other women, or not wanting to be a fantasy object like those prostitutes - a vehicle for his desperate desire to achieve some unattainable peak experience. And, for the past several years, I've been having pain during intercourse because I've passed through menopause and my body has changed. So intercourse had  become infrequent again. Once every 2-4 weeks, although we did other things. But the amount of sex we'd been having had definitely slowed down. And I can't help but wonder if that's why, or at least part of why, he felt entitled to get hand jobs, blowjobs and intercourse from prostitutes.

Went for STD tests today (chlamydia, gonorrhea, HIV, hepatitis C, hepatitis B, syphilis; no HPV because that can only be tested for during pap smear, so I'll find that out later).