Abuse and Consequences!

Abuse is a funny word. It brings to mind bruises and broken bones. Most people don’t think of the mental, emotional, or psychological damage other than giving it a cursory nod. And if a woman brings up the fact that she is verbally abused there is the impulse to dismiss it as the lesser type of abuse. After all, she isn’t winding up in the hospital from it. Or is she?

When my son’s therapist flat out told me that some of the things I was experiencing were abuse, I was flabbergasted. After all, my husband doesn’t hit me, shove me, or call me names like bitch or cunt. So how could it be abuse? The therapist, (we’ll call him Carl) suggested that I read a book call Why Does He Do That?, by Lundy Bancroft. Truthfully I would have dismissed what he said except he made a point of telling me that he had worked with a woman’s shelter and an abuser’s program for several years. So I downloaded the book and a couple days later, started to read it.

Disturbing was the first word that crossed my mind. Then I had to ask myself why I found it so disturbing and the answer was even more disturbing. I felt this way because it was true to my life. No, my husband doesn’t hit me, shove me or call me names but he does subtly belittle me, manipulate me into thinking I’m stupid, thinking I’m at fault, twists things I say to make it sound like he’s right and I’m somehow wrong…in my thinking, in my values and in my beliefs.

It’s not something I can explain to people. How do you explain the snorts, comments under the breath, the eye rolling? The veiled sarcasm that permeates everything he says to you? The circular logic and the constant deflection of the real issue until you think you’re going crazy. Unless you know what to look for, even if he did it in front of you (which he won’t), you’d never see it for the abuse that it is.

All abuse is heinous and wrong. The problem with verbal abuse is its insidiousness. It wears at your spirit and your mind. You believe this person, your partner; because they have told you they love you and want what’s best for you. The abuse is subtle and mind altering. You believe it. You believe after a while that you are wrong, that you don’t know what you really want or believe. After a while, even though inside of you is screaming that something’s wrong, you bow down to your partner’s demands/wants/beliefs. You change yourself in the vain hope that you will make the other person happy.

It doesn’t work and you die inside.

If you’re really, really lucky, something or someone will open your eyes. That’s what happened with me. When Carl suggested that I read the book, I hesitated but I thought about my son and decided that I needed to do whatever it took to help him. So I took the time to read it. It opened my eyes and once they were opened I couldn’t close them again. As I told Carl, the door opened and I have one foot out. I’m not going back in or closing the door.

Wondering

I left to go get one of my kids, picking up from a birthday party. I get that child and am driving to the grocery store when I get a text from an older child telling me that they and their dad just got into a massive fight. Please come home...

Well, shit.

I get home, debating with myself on how to approach how I know about this but it doesn't matter. My older child approaches me and tells me that they told their dad about their eating disorder. So first thing I get is him pissed about not telling him I took older child to doctor, then pissed that I kept it from him about child's chest deformity(which was nothing but that kid's ribs are too long and push the breast bone out.) Our older child had asked me not to say anything until they got a chance to tell their dad. Dad seemed far more concerned about the chest thing than the eating disorder...which, to me, is the more serious problem.

Then he complains to me that one of our other children told him, fuck you. He's going on about respect and how he would never talk to his dad that way. Never mind that he cusses and curses every day around the kids and I find myself wondering what he said to make this child say that. My husband claims that they were having a discussion but....

Of course I get to hear about how everyone else is the bad ones...until I catch some of them alone, without dad around. Then I hear how he insulted my family and when my children tried to defend them by simply asking their dad not to say anything more about them, he blew up and was screaming at them, calling them betrayers and worse. Yeah, one of them finally said, fuck you. Any surprise here? The kids said that after that he ran the gambit of rage and then crying, now it's like everything is hunky dory.

That is the norm around here sadly. How do we deal with this? I've thought about making him move out but where does that leave me? I work part time, I don't have a degree. I'd get child support but it would barely cover rent, utilities and gas. Possibly some of the groceries too. How the hell am I supposed to make it? How do I not?

Damned if I do, damned if I don't....



Noly

Fear

Why am I afraid to tell him the truth? What drives me to fudge things? I don't know. I do know that when I tell him the truth, he reacts badly. He uses his words to cut me to pieces and makes me feel ashamed even when I have nothing to be ashamed of. He blows up and then tries to make everything my fault. So I lie and when the lie is found out, he blows up anyway.

I know, I know...why not just tell him from the beginning and save myself the trouble. I just don't know. I think it began as a survival mechanism and now I don't know how to change it. If I have time to think of it, then I can overcome it but when I'm placed on the spot, like today, my first instinct is to lie to him. Which is stupid because the things I am lying about aren't even all that big. But they do set him off. So how do I change this? How do I tell him the truth without it turning ugly (and it will turn ugly)?

I feel like a failure these days.

Noly

Thoughts

Am I doing the right thing?

Is it fair to expect someone to change when I don't want to?

What will happen if...?

Why can't I make up my mind and do whatever I need to do?

Why do I want to please someone who can't be pleased?

I want to be selfish and then I feel guilty for wanting that.

Noly

Who am I?

Do you see me?

Do you hear me?

Who am I?

I am not who you want me to be.

I am not a fantasy.

I am not who I was.

Do you see me?

Do you hear me?

Who am I?

I wish you would open your eyes.

I wish you would open your ears.

I wish you would open your mind and your heart.

Wings

There swirls the velvet sky.

Glittering jewels.

Hope rises inside.

Can I fly?

Questions

What are your plans for today? I called, where were you? Don’t they sound like innocuous questions? Like someone who cares about you and is simply concerned? Or is it that they are checking up on you? Are they keeping tabs now on where you go and what you do? Maybe they need to check the mileage on the car. Keep tabs on who I’m calling?

Does it seem strange to you to take such innocent questions and turn them into something sinister? It does to me. I used to be naïve and optimist. I don’t feel that way anymore. I want it back…I want to feel safe using my computer or going to the store. I don’t like feeling down and depressed.

So now what? How do I fix this? Can I fix this? How do I do that without hurting other people in my life? Children primarily. I suspect that there will be a fight over them. How do I deal with that?

So many questions…

Today...

I got up this morning and I feel…nothing and everything. My heart feels numb but physically, I feel sick to my stomach and afraid. Of what, I don’t know. I eat because I have to but I don’t feel hungry. My head aches but more from tension than from anything else and I’m exhausted.

It’s hard work being something that you’re not. I understood this before but never really felt it until now. Before when I tried to be what they wanted, I honestly thought it was for the best. Everyone makes compromises in relationships, right? I didn’t understand the difference between compromise and surrender. Now I understand that I surrendered but at the time I thought it was a compromise.

This morning, my husband wanted to know what was wrong with me. I wasn’t my cheerful, optimistic self; I was, in his words, blah. Wasn’t that what he wanted? Someone who didn’t make any waves, who did as she was supposed to and followed the straight and narrow path? I have to be happy doing it too? Apparently, so I smile and say, “I’m just tired.” It isn’t a lie, I am tired. Tired of pretending. The ironic thing is that part of what came out in our argument was the fact that he wanted me to be honest with him. When I tried to be honest, I was lectured about the wrongness of my thinking. I wasn’t asking him to agree with me, I just wanted him to understand I felt differently.

When I went to my family reunion, it was so different. No one there cared about anything but that you were family. You didn’t even actually have to be related to be considered family. My dad’s ex-girlfriend came and was welcomed with open arms. I have, what most people would consider, a lot of kids and they simply welcomed them in, never saying a word about how many or lecturing me on birth control. I spoke there honestly about my beliefs and even though some of mine were vastly different from some of theirs, no one grew angry or outraged by it. Instead, everyone made others feel welcome and like they mattered. It was so vastly different from my husband’s family that my kids were in awe. 

I wasn’t afraid there and driving home from the friend I had visited up there, I found myself wanting to turn around and go back. I didn’t want to go home. Prophetic…

Compliance

Compliance is such a funny word, isn't it? Brings to mind thoughts of prisoners and prisons or forcing people to drink the kool-aid. I never really thought about the word compliance until recently. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that some times, compliance is the only way to survive the moment. No, not physical danger but emotional/physiological danger.

Confession time, my name isn't Noly and where ever I say I live...I don't. This blog is simply here to allow me to say all the things I really think because I can't say them where I am. I can't be who I am, not without paying a big price right now. I'm tired...tired of trying to be me and getting slammed for it, tired of trying to be strong enough to take care of everyone else and tired of being pulled back when I stretch out for a bit of freedom.

My husband says he loves me and I believe that he does but that love comes with a heavy price. That price is my compliance with the way he and his family think and believe. In no way, shape or form are you to be different. I tried, I tried for years to be what they wanted but then I nearly died and I lost a son. Suddenly, those things that they seemed to think were so important, didn't seem so important in the big picture. It was almost like coming out of a storm into the calm after. I got it...so I tried to be who I really was. Things became difficult between my husband and I and I began keeping secrets from him. You know what they say about secrets, right?

My secrets came out yesterday in a big way. What was this horrible secret that I had hidden from my husband you ask? Was it an affair? Perhaps I had become a hooker in my spare time? Wait, was it that I was the secret mastermind of a terrorist organization? No, no and no. My secret was that I wrote a book, a book that was a gay romance. Not so bad, you say. But to my husband and his family it was a serious crime. So how did it come out? I wasn't stupid enough to use my real name. Turns out that his family has been spying on me. Apparently I had shown too many signs of being different and they felt that I needed checking up on. They found out things that they should not have been able to find out unless they had joined groups that I belonged to and had gotten on my facebook somehow as a supposed friend. The length of that they went to is appalling. The saddest part was that those who did it couldn't even keep it to themselves and us but first told everyone in my husband's family, even his elderly parents. This was, I have learned, to put more pressure on me to comply with their way of thinking. At that point there were multiple phone calls to my husband at his work. There were phone calls to me as well, subtly trying to find out information about my website and facebook account. I confess here that I lied my ass off to them about it and tried to deflect them from it. Even as I did this though, I knew in the back of my mind what was coming.

Sure enough, I received a phone call from my husband that evening at my work, requesting I come home and talk to him. My husband, by the way, is an intellectual. He's very intelligent but like all very intelligent people, he assumes that he's right with everything. Not to mention that to him, debate is like a big game. I, on the other hand, know what I feel and think but have a hard time debating issues. Basically, I went into this already knowing the outcome. Some of what he asked for was reasonable. We had issues besides the writing that needed to be addressed and I had no problem with understanding where he was coming from and how we could work together to fix it. The writing was a different matter all together, as far as he was concerned, I was promoting a sin and I would cease immediately. Of course there were the usual platitudes of how I was an excellent writer and how I should write romance...just not one involving 2 men. Then I was lectured on the sin of homosexuality and why they can't marry. Every time I tried to explain the way I thought, I was told the errors of my thinking. Finally, I bowed to the pressure and gave in.

I feel like a wimp. I feel like my heart has died and that the world has lost it's brightness. I feel like a butterfly who broke free of the cocoon only to flutter into a spider web. Entangled, trapped, alone...that's what compliance means to me today.