My Verbally Abusive Marriage

On March 1, 2010, I wrote a post called I Want to Lie to You. I wanted to protect myself from judgment by not telling the truth.

My life is different now. I know that the choices I make will be judged by others. The difference between now and then is that I am willing to let you think what you want without allowing your judgments to guide my actions.

I know that the decisions I make come from my core, my center. I know that I can’t go wrong when I listen to Spirit (aka God).

I am a work in progress, and I will be a better person because I willingly learn from my decisions that result in successes or mistakes. My mistakes, past and future, do not define me. My successes define me.

I gave the document attached to I Want to Lie to You to my now ex-husband as a final attempt to save our marriage. Weeks after receiving it, he told me, “I will never go to counseling.” His statement told me everything I needed to know. I was free. I’d done everything I could; he wasn’t willing to meet me anywhere near the middle. Continue reading

Dear God,

I know what you’re asking me to do. You want me to take another leap of faith.

When Will put his hands on me on January 22, 2010, I did leave. But I didn’t want to. I cried when I filled out the ex parte order. I cried when the judge approved it and handed me my copy over the top of her high mahogany bench.

I took that leap of faith, and You were waiting there for me on the other side of that fear.

When I moved from my marital home into the peaceful house I now rent with the past year’s tax return in my pocket, I didn’t yet have a job, not even a prospect at that time.

I took that leap of faith, and You were waiting there for me on the other side of my fear. Continue reading

In The Dark

“In The Dark” ( A Song For Battered Women) off the hot new Conscious Earth E.P. by Indie Artist J.D. Smith who says, “Please help me raise money and spread the word through this song and my new E.P. benefits an overcrowded women’s shelter called PROJECT SAFE in Athens Georgia.- Peace out”

Now available for MP3 download on iTunes, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk , & Napster. Catch it today!

 John Keane (R.E.M., Widespread Panic, B 52′s, Indigo Girls, 10,000 Maniacs etc…) produced J.D. Smith’s Conscious Earth E.P.

I’m on pins and needles waiting to hear back from a treatment center for my son, Marc. I found an inpatient program that allows him to continue his education without withdrawing… He’s 3 credits short of graduation, and the programs I’ve found in this state expect him to withdraw from school to attend.

As for Amy, his girlfriend, I’m having more difficulty. The school officials are working hard to find a placement for her. I cannot do it because I’m not a legal guardian.

(Oh – did I tell you that after her suicide attempt, her parents dropped her off on my doorstep?)

These two kids need help that I am unable to give. Keep us in your prayers as we (me, my friends/family, and the school) look for a door that won’t slam shut in the kids’ faces.

I guess these two aren’t “bad off” enough to qualify for quality care. Marijuana, DXM and alcohol dependence isn’t enough to qualify them for rehab?! Come on, you’ve gotta be kidding me!

These kids have no IDEA what it is going to take to stay drug-free after the initial desire wears thin. They need help, and will need help in the future.

I KNOW that rehab will teach them life skills that their abusive families weren’t able to teach (my family included!).

Prayers, please. Thank you.

Most hurtful thing I heard this week:

“I don’t love you, I barely respect you, and I hope the last words you hear me say are Fuck You!”

I love my son. His words did not send me into a tailspin. I didn’t cry because of what he said, I cry because of the example I’ve allowed him to absorb.

It’s not my fault, but it is my problem.
Fortunately, he recognizes his temper and anger problems. He’s willing to get help.

Keep him in your thoughts as we regain our footing in this tumultuous post-abuse recovery.

Demons worry that we will know their names (all the horror movies say so and, actually, my angel says so, too.) Once we name the demon, once we recognize it, it loses its power.

For example, when I admitted to myself that the demon in my marriage was ABUSE (not Will, but ABUSE), the abuse held less power over me. The demon flared up in a fiery attempt to terrify me, yet, after its temper tantrum, I stood strong and continued to call it by name. Will thinks I demonized him, but I think I demonized his behavior.

Will never admitted to Abuse living in our marriage. He still doesn’t. The demon may keep a hold on Will, but it doesn’t confine me.

Once you know the demon’s name, USE it. Continue reading

Lately I’ve been thinking about you, the readers of this blog. You readers are my core; without you, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to continue the leaving process after it begun. Without you, I think I may have resigned myself to more years of abuse – maybe I would have stayed until I died. Your encouragement, support (and in one case, your negativity) helped me to cement the idea in my head that leaving my abuser and staying gone was the right thing to do.

I consider those of you who didn’t contribute in writing but viewed the blog my silent army (I can see “how many” but not “who”). I think you were either suffering or knew someone who was, and I just couldn’t allow myself to let you down. Freedom from abuse was my only choice not only for me, but because I felt responsible to you. During my darkest hours, I thought of you, and my imagining that you were looking to me for guidance, to see what would happen if you left, allowed me to find the courage I needed to go on.

I know you are all “strangers” to me, but you’re the best damn strangers anyone has ever not known, and I thank you for being here for me. I’ve never been so grateful for the prayers and thoughts from strangers as I am today, as I look back.

Thank you. I appreciate you. I hope you’ll continue forward with me.

More to come tonight…

Last year, I wrote a story called Pride and Greed about how those two sins work together to create an abusive relationship. But now that I think about it, the story is not quite right. I mean, the story helped me to understand how Will and I “happened”, but it’s off somehow. The story is off if you think Pride as complete and utter sin.

There are philosophers whose opinions differ with the 7 Deadlies; philosophers whose words did not make it into the Bible. Aristotle wrote,

“Pride, then, seems to be a sort of crown of the virtues; for it makes them greater, and it is not found without them. Therefore it is hard to be truly proud; for it is impossible without nobility and goodness of character.”

The idea that pride has two opposing meanings fits neatly into the idea of pride being at both ends of the expanding/contracting continuum. Pride exists in a positive way when one sets out to do something worthwhile, and in accomplishing that goal, recognizes it. God rewards humans for doing good things; pride is the result of doing good things. Why would we feel pride after doing something good if we weren’t meant to feel pride as a reward? Knowing you did the right thing and feeling good about that is supposed to be its own reward. Continue reading

A few months after I’d left Will, I had worked through the grief stage and moved into such a euphoric state that I thought it would never end. I thought to myself, “So this is what I’ve been missing all these years!” and with a smile and artsy flourish of my wrist, I chucked my last 11 anti-depressants into the trash.

Here it is, almost a year later, and I feel a familiar numbness settling into my joints, radiating outward. I bet you can see it, murky and olive green, if you look hard enough.

Well, in hindsight, I guess I had a good run.

Over the past year, several good things happened for me: Continue reading

I wrote this some time ago:

Poe wrote, “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” Perhaps his statement sheds light on why abuse is so difficult to describe, so difficult to recognize, end, and admit. Living in abuse, I know that nothing is real. Every word I say is labeled a lie. Every emotion I feel is diminished to nothingness. But the person who acts on me in these ways is also unreal. He is a shadow of the bad things I tell myself, and he repeats the nonsense back to me in an effort to become real.

Abusers and victims live in an unreal world, so beyond comprehension that the statement, “Why don’t you just leave?” is itself ridiculous. Asking that question shows contempt for the very real dream I live in and exposes the dream the questioner lives in, too.

We all live in dreams formed by the perceptions we choose to empower.

I will not leave this marriage because you point out the benefits of doing so. I will not leave because you try to convince me I am unsafe and he is imbalanced. You ask me to leave without acknowledging the effort I’ve exerted to stay here, the number of times I’ve resurrected myself from death, or my desire to save the life of the man who kills me. You discount my belief that there is something good in Will, you tell me I am mistaken to believe he can change.

Fact is, he doesn’t have to change who he is to be lovable or loving; he is, by nature, capable of loving and worthy of receiving it. I know this, and giving up on him knowing it is the very last thing I will ever do.

If you keep telling me to leave, if you keep telling me I am wrong in my assessment, then you are the last person I will ever run toward. Your assertion that all would be well if I left is wrong; you telling me that my experience is wrong is wrong. You’re just like him. You live in a dream outside of me.

After a lifetime of living in my own dream, I am ready to change it. I am going to choose a different perception to empower. I have had enough of listening to the recordings of my failures, faults and sins. I have discovered that I am not fractured, not broken, not dead. I am whole and powerful enough to resurrect myself from the tomb to which you and he banished me. I have not wasted my life, for living it has given me more than it has taken.

Living like this allowed me to find God inside of me, a true God, a dark and light, living God who knows when it is time to expand and contract, who knows when it is time to fracture and time to become whole. God as we think of him expands and contracts across eons; I am a piece God, whole unto myself, but capable and designed to expand and contract on a shorter time-line.

Nothing you say and nothing he says will take away from me any longer. I will live as I see fit, I will monitor myself and only myself. I will decide for me when it is time to act and to be still, and I will change my mind as frequently as I like. Only I know how I will live, but I know I live.