My Verbally Abusive Marriage

Halloween! The veil between this and “the other” world is as thin as it gets tonight.

My dad, Pap, died in 2003 at the age of 54 from an abdominal anyeurism that moved and exploded his heart. It was sudden and shaking; according to reports, he was surprised himself as he died on the gurney on the way into the hospital. Two hours prior, we all thought he had kidney stones.

I don’t need a thin veil between the worlds to hear from him, though. Pap spoke up unexpectedly in a recent journal entry to shed some light on my thinking. I was journalling about co-dependency – wondering why and how I neglected to develop my sense of “self” way back before I met my husband.

I will share what he said to me (I copied it down as I heard it) and I would like you to imagine that this is your daddy or your mommy talking to you. They don’t have to be dead, they don’t have to be healthy on this plane of existence. Imagine that this is the very best part of your parent speaking to you. In places where he said my name, I’ll place an underscore so you can read your name instead of mine.

“_____________ you look good from here. You look like your light is crashing through, spilling out, flooding the atmosphere. You were always more than I understood or could comprehend. I tried to bring you back to my level, and it seems I succeeded to an extent, unfortunately.

“I am so sorry I didn’t see then what I knew was in you. I thought by hiding you, squashing you back inside yourself, that I coud protect you from those who wanted to TAKE what you had. I see now that teaching you to squash yourself worked too well.

“Celebrate who you are and when you feel your walls fall down, let them fall. You are too much for me as I was, but you are exactly what the world needs.

“You have so many questions! Never fear. If you simply take one step and then the other, each and every one of your talents will find its place in the sun. You really can do anything, so you must choose what you LOVE over what is possible.

“You are shining. We see you clearly. Let youself BE and feel good that you do not know when and how you will serve. Just know that you will. Just by following your nose. Just by being you. BE. BE. BE. BE. Be YOU, ___________. That is all I ask.

“Be the one I feared. Be the one I squashed. Be the one I told you you couldn’t be.

“I was misguided and afraid. It was my fault you pinched yourself in so tightly. You had to be what I could afford and I felt I could not afford a gifted daughter. I felt a need to lower your sights for yourself because I couldn’t afford lofty aspiritions.

“Me squashing you was about ME. My insecurities, my fears. My dreams for you were average because I felt average was all I could provide.

“Don’t listen to me from those days. I see now the world and the heavens in their beautiful abundance. There will always be more than you need, more than you can imagine. More than I let you believe.

“Keep moving and abundant life will be yours as it is already. Nothing you do is small, __________. Nothing is small. You are large. You are full and you cannot lose your fullness by giving it away. In fact, the quicker you give, the quicker you receive enough to give twice as much.

“Go ahead. I love you. I love you. Be You. Be. Be. Be.

“(Your Grandma) told me you were special and that scared me. Special meant I was responsible to you and I didn’t want that responsiblity. I’m sorry I squashed you small, but I didn’t squash you dead.

“Keep moving. Keep growing. Keep me in your heart as I now am and as I was so you recognize my squashing voice. Then, when you’ve heard me squashing 3 times, let me go. Let me go so you can BE. When you do that, you’ll find me again. Me as I truly am. Me as your father who loves you and would never and could never hurt you again.

“No more squashing YOU. ____________, I love you.”

I think people in general view victims of abuse as being uneducated and monetarily disadvantaged. I mean, why else would a victim stay with her abuser? If she was smart, she’d just leave; if she had access to money, she’d pick up and go, right?

Why in the world would she stay with an abusive mate?

I have my answer for that, and so do you. We don’t stay because we’re dumb or uneducated. No one reading this blog is staying because we don’t know what’s happening to us.

We stay for varying reasons, but none of them are because we’re too ignorant to leave.

C. Anne shared her story with the Break Your Silence, and I am so very happy that she did! C. Anne smashes the stereotype of “poor and uneducated” to smithereens. At least, she breaks some people’s stereotype…you and me know better.

Read C. Anne’s Journal Entry

Read All of Your Journal Entries

Sometimes I feel like I live in a haunted house – dark, dreary, ghosts hovering, and memories creaking in my mind.

And then a window flies open, the breeze blows the heavy curtains aside and I can see what has always been there but lurked forgotten in the overpowering shadow.

This time when the curtain blew aside, I saw myself in a mirror. I was so surprised by what I saw that I caught the curtain and tied it back so it couldn’t fall heavily over the window’s light.

I see a bright, energetic, excited, adventurous woman in the mirror. I see someone who is ready to step out of the shadows, out of the house. I want the sunlight to fall on me, I want the wind to blow my hair. I like how the sunlight catches my eye color turning it from brown to yellow.

I like me.

It amazes me how I am only seconds away from greatness. I am only seconds away from being fully me, no limits, no restrictions, no rules except the ones I choose.

The ghosts want me to let the curtain fall dustily into its normal place over the light. They tell me that I am too weak to maintain this certainty of self, that I am too small to make a difference, that I am too little, too late, and too short of everything it takes to keep the curtain from falling.

What the ghosts can’t see is that I am not holding the curtain back; someone bigger, badder, stronger and bolder than me is doing that for me.

She knows I’m ready, I know I’m ready. I’m ready to be me. Bring it on.

I was talking to a friend today who told me she had read the blog and could completely relate – almost like I was writing about her experience instead of my own. Many of you who read this blog tell me the same thing. In fact, my business card says, “Read my journals…you’ll think I married your husband.”

The experience was the same for me when I glanced through Patricia Evan’s book, The Verbally Abusive Man: Can He Change? It seemed as if she had interviewed my husband.

I thought “How can this be? How can all of these women experience the same thing I feel?” I almost believed that I was a drama queen, finding problems where there were none. Making it up. Making it worse than it was.

At times, I wondered if I was losing my mind. I knew something was said or happened only to have him vehemently deny it (or look at me with feigned uncomprehending concern).

It was worst when I’d casually mention an event from yesterday and he’d tell me I had the details wrong. Something tiny, something that didn’t affect the event at all. Eventually, to end the argument, I’d agree with him. It was ridiculus to argue. But over time, all of that giving in I did caught up with my psyche.

I was conditioned to agree that I was wrong.

I suspect it made life much easier for him.

My abusive husband tells me in overt and subtle ways that what I feel, think, believe and suspect is untrue. He  attempts (subconsciously? does it matter?) to undermine my faith in my own perception.

He successfully made me believe that I was incapable of remembering, deciding, doing and thinking for a very long time. I could trust only him. He lived in the “real world” and I did not.

I couldn’t feel the way I felt because I had such a deficiency somewhere inside that I didn’t even know when I was wrong about the tiniest of things, and I believed him.

It’s up to him to tell me when I am wrong, and he is the only one who knows when I’m wrong. Like during our phone call yesterday when he said that if he were me he wouldn’t write what I write AT ALL. He would keep it to himself.

I suppose he would. He has hidden it from everyone but me, our boys (and choice others) for years. He wouldn’t write what I write, he wouldn’t say what I say, he wouldn’t be the man he reads in these entries.  And I am wrong for writing about that man that I perceive to be my husband because I know damn good and well that I can’t trust my own perception.

What I want you all to know is that you are not wrong. Your perception is valid. Your ideas, beliefs, memory and all the rest of you is intact and functioning.

Write what you know to be true. Keep a record and refer to it. Instead of being the abuser’s lab experiment, turn the tables and examine him. You don’t have to tell him you’re doing it, this is for your sanity. When he tells you it’s day when you know it’s night, check your record. You’ll see.

My heart beats fast because I let a conversation with my husband go beyond my tipping point. Next time, I’ll end it at the very first sign that “something’s wrong”. It’s not worth hearing the words as he says them.

I wish (what’s in the other hand again?) that he would talk to me without the subtle blaming, without the subtle undercurrent of threats. I wish that he would talk to me without telling me that what I do is wrong, what I write is wrong, what I feel is wrong.

I wish he would not tell me that if he were as miserable as I am he would have left me long ago and given custody of our children to his mother because of his deployments.

I wish he would express his anger and frustration differently.

I wish he would stop saying that what I tell him is bullshit and that my blog and my words to him don’t align. I wish he didn’t say I was a liar.

I wish he would stop cursing so much, labeling me, labeling you (readers of this blog), labeling everyone.

I wish he would stop telling me that I am miserable and dumb for not leaving him since I feel so imprisoned.

I wish he would stop getting angry with me because I wouldn’t do something he told me to do.

I wish that he would stop telling me how to talk, how to say what I want to say.

I wish that he would stop telling me that if I am not going to do the things that make him happy, then … Then what? Did he say?

I wish he would stop reading this blog if it brings him so much pain. I wish he would stop telling me to stop writing because he wouldn’t do it if he were me.

I wish he would not act like everything was fine at the beginning of a conversation only to ease into the ugliness.

I wish I would learn that talking over his anger does not make me deaf to it’s hurtful words.

I wish he would love me for me.

I wish I had stopped this long ago, but I didn’t. And now that I am trying to stop it, I wish that I could wave a magic wand and make it all better. I wish that saving my soul and saving my marriage was not a process – a long process. I wish that I had ALL the skills I need RIGHT NOW instead of quietly realizing that it takes time to learn new habits.

I wish I could replace all of this shit with wishes.

I am going to have to be patient with myself, forgiving of my mistakes, and continue moving forward. I’m going to have to fight the urge to make this all right for him. It’s not all right. It’s all wrong. It’s wrong for me.

Wish me luck.

I feel a need to explain to you that I hear voices.

For the shrinks out there, no, they don’t tell me to do bad things or to hurt anyone. I’m not disassociated or schizophrenic and that is not a self-diagnosis.

Anyway, I do hear voices. Some people think that I’m only talking to myself. Sylvia Browne, who insists that spirit voices are high and tinny, would probably think I was talking to myself, too. Regardless of anyone else’s opinion, the voices I hear are not always my own, although I will give various “parts” of myself a listen at times. I can always tell if a voice is my own or someone else’s.

I’ve heard the voices of wandering spirits wanting to chat or pass along a message. I’ve heard the familiar ring of a passed loved-one’s voice. I’ve heard the soothing (and sometimes vehement!) voice of my angel and other similar-feeling angelic voices. I’ve heard the voice of my gut (most recently) but also the voice of the pain in my leg, the knot in my belly, the flighty anxiousness in my chest.

I stop short of claiming to hear the voice of god because I feel that I am not worthy. (But what are angels? Do they say things god wouldn’t or not say things god would?) Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to convert you to anything. You’re perfect the way you are! Ask god if you don’t believe me and then listen!

I love the fact that I hear voices. Sometimes what I’ve heard scares me, angers me, and incites me to call upon the white light of protection to insulate me from the din. But in hindsight, they all tell me things that I need to know, need to hear.

Try as I might, I have yet to hear the voices of my pets, and I cannot “command” performances from any “voice”. However, I do know the state of mind to attain in order to hear the more familiar ones clearly. Especially when it comes to my angel, I am familiar with how to connect.

And I also know how to turn off the voices.

So, in the course of this blog, you’re likely to read what I hear (like in the Gentle Other Voice).

I suppose I wanted to explain this to you because it’s a gift I want to share. I take credit only as a stenographer.

I’ve thought about it, and my root fear goes deeper than “Is he right?“ 

My next theory concerning my root fear is one that I suspect even “healthy” people wrestle with from time to time. Am I worthless? is a deeper fear than Is he right?  In the setting of this abusive/codependent relationship, means almost the same thing. The difference is that in asking if he is right about my worth, I turn his decision about me into the only one that matters.

Yes, my fear is strengthened by my abusers actions and voice, but even I know that I am not everything he proclaims me to be. Reason tells me that he is only “GOD” if I allow it, and I have decided that my husband is not and cannot be the god that speaks to me, protects me, loves me. My husband may be a powerful force in my life, but he is not god. 

Ultimately, I get to decide if I am worthless or not. If you’re the religious type, then perhaps you would say that God decides. However, since I have to wait until I die to get the down-low on God’s true opinion of me with certainty, then I’ll decide for myself for now. 

Anyway, my rumination brings out a new question: “Why did I choose to marry someone who consistently and loudly voices my deepest fear?”

“Why did I marry him?” implies that my fear of worthlessness was in place before I knew him. Maybe I married him because he validated my fear; maybe he truly was the hero I was looking for. In essence, he told me that I WAS RIGHT.

What a gift! It was exactly what I wanted.

“It’s just the beasts under your bed…In your closet and in your head” ~Metallica, Enter Sandman

My fear, my bottom-line, no-one-else’s-fault fear is that he is right. What if he is right?!

What if I am best shut away from the world? What if I am hurting my boys? What if the only thing I’m good for is contrasting his greatness?

I am an anger generator with no sense of right-wrong, good-bad; I am a godless, misinformed, stupid waste of space only good for dipping his dick into and cleaning up the crap he creates.

He makes the money. He schmoozes for the promotions, he works his ass off goddammit so he can come home and work like a slave around here, too. I’m always breaking stuff, always buying more than we need, always wasting the good life he’s providing for me by crying, fearing, cringing, and hugging the walls to avoid detection. He can’t turn his back on me for one second because of all the stupid ignorant stuff I do when he isn’t riding me like a dying hag.

I’m the part of him that he exorcised during our marriage ceremony. He didn’t marry me, he divorced himself from responsibility and all the bits of himself he could no longer face, no longer control, no longer contain. In marrying me, he made himself God.

My REAL fear, the no shit fear that lurks beneath my bed and circles my thoughts like a vulture – What if he is right?

I am getting rid of some possessions that reflect “the old me” and keeping ones that project “who I am, was at heart, and always will be.” If something I own does not support the idea that I am “strong and vibrant”, then it is finding a new home.

I am sitting at the table, thinking about the trunkful of books to take to the used book store (about 70% of my collection) and looking at moving boxes I plan to deliver to the Salvation Army or Goodwill (about 60% of the stuff in my kitchen hutch, display case and office). All of these things remind me of bad events, were given to me for a manipulative reason, or reflect the time that I spent trying to be someone I am not. Good riddance, right?

So why am I anxious? Why am I getting that unthinking panic feeling in my gut? Why am I wondering if I couldn’t use those boxes for end tables…a pretty cloth would cover the box and…STOP!

Frantically, I start scribbling in my journal. Free flow, let the feeling out. After a bit, I get the following bit of information:

Fear and panic (like this) are signs that I am thinking of NOT being who I am. I am thinking of ignoring myself, denying who I am, and my big ol’ heart just can’t take the thought of retreating to the dark recesses again.

Immediately, I think, “So what do I do? How do I stop the panic so I can be me?”

And that gentle, other voice replies:

“Know that this anxiety is a reaction to doing something that has previously brought you pain. You were punished for being you. Going into your false identity was safer, you thought. You’re wiser now, but coming out of the false identity you so dutifully crafted isn’t easy. You know you will be punished for being you again; only this time, you have no desire to compromise. You will not shrink, you will not fail.

“Plod forward, day by day, to extricate your truth. Do not second guess your decision to be strong and vibrant. Know that this anxiety is a habitual reaction and will dissipate as your false habits vanish. Deliver the books and objects to another heart seeking her truth…they will be met with open arms as I am standing here now, arms open, welcoming your warm light into the folds of truth, encouragement and love.

“You are never alone. You will not fail to be you.”

Unlike many of you, I am not facing abuser everyday at this point. There is still some time before he returns from deployment. However, I am mentally rehearsing possible scenarios, over and over again. I am educating myself on abuse of all sorts because knowing who I’m up against in this battle for my very soul is crucial.

Portrait of my abuser:

He is a master of deception.

• His friends think he is infallible, his superiors think they’re lucky to have him. Both go to any length to protect him. Anyone who doesn’t agree that he is a superior specimen is degraded, ignored or cut from his circle of friends with calculated cruelty; not only are thay not a friend to him, but they’re no longer a friend of his friends.
• He knows how to keep his cool and argues in public like a gentleman, if he argues at all. There are only a few of us lucky souls who see the other side, the real side, of him.
• He refers to me as the Sergeant Major to his friends, maintaining the image that I am the one who calls the shots. He acts as if he must somehow do everything I ask or suffer the consequence.
• He seems to deceive himself as well as he deceives his friends in some cases. He says that he respects me, but then acts out oppositely. He says that he loves me, but then sets out to destroy my joy and peace. He points to the fact that he said he respected and loved me while ignoring my examples of how he behaves differently.
• He is “fine”. He doesn’t need counselling, he doesn’t have anger issues, he is not manipulating the people around him. It’s the rest of us who have problems accepting him for who he is.
• He has no integrity between word and deed (although insists honesty between him and me is imperative…fact is, I must be honest so he knows where my weaknesses are and he must lie so I can’t comprehend or predict what he does or says).

He manipulates everyone.

• He rehearses his conversations in advance so he can figure out how to best manipulate the other person into doing what he wants. (I know, because he’s told me he does this when he needs something from his boss/friend.)
• He studies my weaknesses so he knows when it is the best time to strike and how to best approach me (nicely, angrily, whatever – it’s all about getting his way).
• He gives backward compliments to throw me off balance when I am making too much sense in the case against what he wants.
• He talks badly about his friends behind their backs UNLESS he feels he needs their “connections” for self-gain.
• He actively plans how best to handle me, talk to me, make love to me,…always ready with a reason I should feel sorry for him, submit to him, “love” him like a woman should love her husband…
• He is deceptive about his needs, desires, motives and emotions in case he finds it necessary to behave contrary to what he’s said.
• He is able to bring out the qualities I want to see in him at will. I am unsure of whether he is Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. He wants me to believe he IS the man I desperately WANT to see.

He is narcissistic.

• He is prejudiced against anyone unlike himself. Race, sex, … we’re all “you people” because we’re not like him and therefore aren’t exceptional or worthy.
• He gets mad at me when I don’t do what he expects me to do as a “good” wife/mother.
• His opinion matters most, no matter what the subject.
• He never fails; it is the people around him who fail.
• He is entitled to everything: a “good” wife by his definition, “good” sons by his definition, unwavering support, promotions, his beer, his truck, his house, his job, his desires. There can be no dissension.
• He is arrogant about his talents and embarrassed by his family.
• Any empathy he exhibits is designed to create the illusion of caring.

Horrible, terrible things to say about the man I married, I know. Not one of those things is an exaggeration. Knowing that he MAY BE evil to the core is balanced by my HOPE that he is not.

When he comes home, I will be paying close attention to his actions and very little attention to his words. I will set my boundaries verbally and observe to see his reaction. He is about to undergo a test: when I act authentically and insist his abuse ends, will he respect me or attempt to thwart me?

Actions will speak louder than words.