My Heart is Failing
Since he’s come home from his trip, he’s been on my ass 24/7. I have heard about how embarrassed he is because of me and how his whole family “knows” I’m on the brink of leaving him. He tells me that I am twisted and sick, and that I am doing the same thing to my kids. He’s currently on the couch, muttering. I cannot hear his words, but they’re hostile.
He’s told me that I’m selfish because I won’t listen to his family (not one has spoken to me, only to him) and no one matters to me EXCEPT me.
My heart is beating quickly because I recognize the signs, but there is no way to get out from under them. We are here. Together.
And I am “like all women” and do not appreciate how hard he’s worked for me to have this roof over my head. According to him, I am ready to leave and I want the house, the kids, and everything he’s slaved to create for the past years since becoming a man.
He told me that he doesn’t like to talk to me when I’m calm because he doesn’t believe me. He believes my anger only, and has worked very hard tonight to elicit it.
He’s walking around threatening the cats with a belt.
I wish I was already gone and hadn’t promised to be patient.
I wish I didn’t feel like I couldn’t support myself.
I wish I didn’t feel like I somehow deserved to be treated like a second-class piece of shit because I am not happy with … whatever HE deems I am unhappy with, not what I tell him I’m unhappy about.
I wish I wasn’t afraid to go to bed. Doing so requires me to walk past him.
I’m not fearful of physical harm; I’m dreading the emotional harm.
I’m dreading trying to go to sleep while he quietly sneaks through the house looking for things that piss him off, things that I haven’t done because my priorities are fucked up.
I’m afraid to think “this isn’t fair” because here I am, refusing to leave.
I’m afraid it would be easier to play the part of the adoring wife than to continue being me, because being me is scaring the shit out of him in some manner that I cannot comprehend. I can judge by his words and actions that he wishes I weren’t here. He wishes I would disappear. Life would be so much easier for him if I were dead and gone.
I’m afraid dying is easier than living, but I know that I will continue to do the hard thing because the easy thing abandons the children I love. And thinking that my children are my only reason for living makes me sad because it shows me that I haven’t really come too far at all, and all the work I think I’m doing has resulted in me being in the exact same place I was even before I started this blog.
My heart is failing, and I have to be the one to save it. I am unsure that I can do even that.
He’s smacking the belt in the other room. Smack. Smack. Smack.
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January 23rd, 2010 at 3:55 AM
I am physically ill reading this post.
I never had it as bad as you have taken. But I know that sinking feeling all too well.
I am heart sick for you and oh so frustrated that there is nothing I can do.
Last night my own husband tried to blame his behavior on me. He called me crazy, and threatened to call my family and tell them all about me “they will believe me because they already know what you are”
I felt that flicker of fear and sickening shame like I had actually done something wrong.
After he left I called my mother an asked her what she thought of the state of my mental health – am I crazy? do I need help?
Its so confusing to me how we smart and VERY strong women can be calm and rational when we are away from the situation. We replay the abuse in our heads and we see the fear behind the threats. We see the bluff and we see the twisted logic. But when they are in front of us, denying our life breath and right to defend ourselves it is a different scenario. We are paralyzed and shattered by our own involuntary reactions to the taunts and names and accusations.
The only thing I know to tell you is what helped me most.
This sounds silly and it does not sound like it will do anything at all. But it helped me feel stronger.
It was actually a spiritual experience that started my climb back to the top of the rabbit hole.
I had a vision one night. It was a vision of God (though I am not Christian it is the same God), and in that vision, for one second in time I saw and understood the true place of everything in the world.
Perhaps I was touched by God or perhaps it was a hallucination. Either way, when the vision ended I had one thought in my head. I MATTER. I MATTER TO ME.
If I matter to no one else, I matter to me. I matter and I have a place in the world just as I am.
This was my vision – that everything and every one has a place and it all matters very much.
From that day forward I repeated to myself a thousand times a day – I matter. I matter. His ideas, his thoughts and beliefs about me do not matter.
Only my thoughts and beliefs about me matter to me.
It took a good year to make that statement stick. It took another year of reminding myself of what I believe about me and who I really am to make me feel strong enough to make his thoughts and actions not matter to me.
Every day I had to say to myself – thats not right. No, he is lying. No, he is bluffing. So what if he is angry?
I had to learn to take responsibility for myself and realize that it is OK for me to be angry, sad, and it is OK, more than OK to expect respect and it is OK for me to demand it.
I realize your situation is different. Yours is tougher in a lot of ways but you are much tougher than I have ever been. Your put prison camp survivors to shame with your strength!
But though all of this self talk about who I am and what is RIGHT to me is very simple, it is the only thing that ever helped me overcome myself.
Even still, I stood there last night questioning my own sanity, giving him power over me.
I almost caved in.
But once again my new found tools of self talk and self VALIDATION brought me round.
By the end of the day today I could see how rediculous his threats were to me. How rediculous and grasping for control that I would not give.
I want that for you too.
I want so much more for you.
I want you safe, and I want you laughing.
I want you to feel joy – the real guiltless kind.
It is OK to see the clown of a man he is. It is ok to acknowledge that he failed kindergarten and never grew up.
For me, part of my resistance to this way of thinking was that I would feel worse for having loved a man who is not worthy of my love.
But I realized that my love is not cheap and it can not be threatened out of me. Only I can give it and if I loved him once I am not obligated to love him still.
I am allowed to hold my love in the highest regard.
Ok – that is my maudlin speech. Over the net – that is all I have to give you.
But over the universe I am sending you my love, my support and my prayers for a better, freer and guiltless and joy filled life.
I am not really religious, but I am sending the arch angel Michael to stand between you and your husband. His sword is drawn, and he is defending you. The light of his wisdom and strength guides you. Keep this image in your head and heart and call on it when you need a super dude at your back. He is me and I am there for you.
January 23rd, 2010 at 7:23 PM
Thank you. I cannot say it any other way, and I mean it in the deepest meanings of “thank you”.
February 4th, 2010 at 7:47 PM
[...] January 22, I wrote My Heart is Failing. I’d been sitting here at my desk, writing in fear, for awhile at that point. But something [...]