Read this post and more in My Abusive Marriage . . . and what i’m doing in it by Kellie Jo Holly.
Will’s assertion that I try to gain power over others by making them think there is something wrong with me is bullshit. Today I reread an old journal entry from 2005 about where my deep-seated desire to control people (an idea implanted in my head by my husband, Will).
But today, I saw the entry for what it was: He used me to distract myself from the shit he did. He was crafty in diverting my attention from the horrible abuses he committed by convincing me that I was the problem. He turned my head around on me, on purpose.
He exploited my vulnerabilities and pretended to care about me. But he didn’t care about me at all. He just made some shit up knowing I’d set my mind to figuring out what was wrong with me.
And you see, if we look at ourselves expecting to find something wrong because someone we love says there is something wrong, we sure as shit will find a wrong reason to explain our pain.
I was in pain because I lived with a controlling husband who used verbal and emotional abuse to keep me in line. He didn’t want me paying attention to what he did. So he used a kernel of truth to concoct an over-the-top story about me. A story I would want to get to the bottom of — a story that made just enough sense to send me examining myself. Harshly. Creating reasons for why I was so sad, broken and miserable where there were none. Or rather, no reason except for that my husband was an asshole.
Okay. I’m done ranting. Sometimes I get so sick of reading past journal entries that I want to never deal with abuse issues again. But I will continue to deal with domestic violence and abuse because it can literally make you fucking crazy. I don’t want you to be crazy.
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