Abuse Hides in the Dark. Turn on Your Light.

Santa is a Bastard – Hateful Things & Hidden Memories

If you live with someone who promises to "change", you better "listen" to what they DO, not what they say.

If you live with someone who promises to "change", you better "listen" to what they DO, not what they say.I don’t really mean that title up there. Santa is like God – sometimes he gives you what you need instead of what you want.

Well, you could say that Santa just gave me a pack of big ol’ granny panties, definitely unwanted but oh so useful. I went up into the attic to grab another journal. In it is a page torn from a notebook, on which I wrote,

Will grabbed me by the face and put me where he wanted me so he could yell and bully. He wouldn’t let me out of the corner, or later out of the room.

What the fuck? Why don’t I remember that? And where is the rest of that notebook? I mentioned the physical abuse in passing, but the focus of my feelings & thoughts is on his anger. This is domestic violence. And I ignored it.

Here is the entire journal entry:

Will grabbed me by the face and put me where he wanted me so he could yell and bully. He wouldn’t let me out of the corner, or later out of the room.

We worked it out, but he will not agree that he needs help. Obviously, he does not know how to deal with his anger.

We worked out a plan to help us when we fight. Before we get angry and nasty, we take a short break and get back to it later. We were supposed to re-discuss the anger management and practice our new policy, but he blew that off.

Last night when I told him I wanted to talk more about it, he got very defensive and turned nasty on the phone. I quietly hung up the phone. When he got home, he woke me up and angrily asked about the toilet clog. He woke me up twice. I was on the phone with him when our boys flushed the toy, so he knew about it before he got home!

I tucked Marc and Eddie into bed beside of me. Their small warm selves comfort me, but still, I lay in bed feeling nervous. I could not go to sleep until I asked God for protection and peace. Will fell asleep in the boys’ bed in answer to my prayer. He has been up this morning long enough to yell at Eddie and later at Marc. The kids have a stomach virus and are cranky. Will went back to bed.

Anyway, since our conversation, he has tried to get his point across through anger. Will banged on the wall and scowled at me during a conversation his friend and I were having about my guy friends at the beginning of our relationship! Instead of working on his anger, he seems to think, “Getting pissed and loud worked last time…I’ll try it again!” My promise to do the dishes every night feels more like fear than compromise. I resent it.

Erin came over yesterday. Will said he felt cooked up about one thing and then two other things on top of it. He told me he realized what he had done. Instead of fixing the first thing, he got angrier and angrier – but then he fixed the first thing to cut off the cycle.

That of course, is great.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to be proud of him after he rants, storms and stomps, slams doors and cupboards, and insinuates I am a horrid person. He did all that in front of my sister. He embarrasses me. This sucks. Period. (All of that happened 11 years, 1 month, 1 day before I left him.)


Rereading this post today inspired a new one: Grabbing My Face is Domestic Violence