Diana is, I think, the youngest person to contact me in hope of breaking the silent pattern of abuse. She’s 18, and her abuser is 23.
Although I hesitate to use the word “fortunately”, I find myself thinking it because at the time of her writing, she was not with her abuser due to his physically violent rampage. He went for her throat, pushed her into a window.
Carolyn wrote an abuse testimonial a couple of months ago. I hadn’t posted it yet because I didn’t really want to think about my own abuse. That wasn’t fair, and I’m sorry Carolyn, that you waited so long.
As you read through it, think about the years Carolyn has lived with this verbal, emotional and mental abuse. The time it takes you to read the testimonial is nothing compared to the years she’s spent living the abuse. I got a knot in my stomach realizing that many of the abuses she reports were happening in real time even though she was listing past abuse.
Lately I’ve not preached the gospel of what verbal abuse IS or how it is affecting me because I’m in a new phase. The phase that exists after the prime abuser is removed from the majority of life. However, just because I’m revelling in the freedom, that doesn’t mean that all of YOU are revelling with me! So I’d like to share some links about abuse and where you can find help and relief from it.
The Narcissism Daily Mirror, author Kim Cooper, is writing a series on verbal abuse. The latest one is When verbal abuse is covert or may not sound like verbal abuse … Check to the right of the article to view the others pertaining to verbal abuse.
My friend recently found a site called Women Exhale. It’s an inexpensive alternative to traditional therapy for abuse victims, and it is not insurance based, meaning that your abuser will not receive notice of your choice to seek therapy from any insurance approval letters that may come to your house.
Patricia Evans, author of books such as “The Verbally Abusive Man: Can He Change?”, is online at VerbalAbuse.com. I highly recommend becoming a member of her message boards. Yes, you must call the toll free number to join the board, but this is done to ensure only abuse victims have access to this resource. No abuse perpetrators allowed. When I called, I spoke to Patricia directly, and had access to the boards within minutes.
For information on verbal abuse, try Dr. Irene.Please call or virtually visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 even if you don’t know what you’re going to say, and even if you haven’t experienced the physically violent side of domestic violence (yet). Domestic violence includes mental, emotional, verbal, financial, and all other sorts of abuse. Just because you’ve never had a bloody lip or blackened eye does NOT mean you are not experiencing domestic violence.
To read my story from the beginning (1992), start at Less Than I Am and click “Next” at the upper right to continue. Or to read testimonials from other abuse survivors, visit Your Journal Entries.
Also, check out the Blogroll and Links section to the right, near my facebook badge. The more you know, the more powerful you become. The more power you have within yourself, the sooner you can make changes to stop the cycle of abuse.
You do not have to leave your abuser right now or ever, you can stay. That is a valid choice.
For me, I chose to stay until I’d reached a point of power within myself that did not allow me to stay any longer. But before that point, I had begun reacting differently to the abuse. Back then, there was no way to know if my husband would change or not, but I hoped he would.
Hope is not a solution, it’s a distraction. Stop hoping and start educating yourself.
Back in March, I spent a couple of days writing a story for a Memoirs, Ink short-story contest. I didn’t win, but now I can share the story with you.
This story did not factually happen the way it is presented. I drew from my last night with Will and all the other times that were (and are) so vivid in my memory to create a snapshot. Again, this story is a mash-up of times and places, a reorganization of reality, with a knife thrown in because I had only 1500 words to tell this story.
DayBreak
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “You’re calm. You’re calculating your next move … I can see it in your eyes.”
“What?” I asked. I felt my eyes scrunch at their lids, felt my brow knit together into the one wrinkle on my face, off-center between my eyebrows by a fraction of an inch.
He used to smile at me when he saw that wrinkle appear, run his finger along it gently. Now, years later, looking into his whiskey reddened face, I understood why he loved that wrinkle. The subtle line showed my first signs of anger. It was his clue that he was getting to me.
“I can’t trust you when you’re calm,” he continued. I felt my wrinkle deepen. “Why won’ cha you call me an asshole, a bastard? Why won’ cha yell at me no more?” he said, “I’d respect that more than this calm, manipulative thing you’ve been doin’ to me lately.”
He grabbed his drink from my desk. I smelled the sourness of the whiskey as he pulled the glass toward his pinched mouth. He took a sip, looked into his half-empty glass with narrowed eyes, and then finally relaxed his face enough to gulp the rest.
I felt the wrinkle disappear, my face relaxed as if I were his mirror image. Calm for an instant. But then his knuckles whitened on the glass and he brought it down fast, stopping it an inch above the surface of my desk. My hand gripped the computer mouse tighter than a second before. He concentrated on his hand and banged the glass to the desk three times, seeming to need the punctuation of sound. I squeezed the mouse three times harder and felt my ribs clench together in my chest.
My eyes were wide as he slowly defocused from the offending glass and settled his greener-than-sober eyes on me. “What’s that look for? What’s wrong with you?” he whispered, emphasizing the “wrong”.
We looked at each other for a long silent second, me wide open and scared and him white-knuckled and angry. Was he angry because I was frightened? Was he mad because I wasn’t angry?
It would be wise to choose anger. Smart to give him what he wanted. My mind shot five minutes into the future and I saw myself yelling and crying, shouting horrible things I didn’t mean to placate him. I foresaw his muscles relax, envisioned him turning away toward the kitchen. He would be saying, “You’re fucking irrational. I can’t talk to you,” with a sneer on his lips.
I would hear the ice banging into his glass, then hear the Coke fizz briefly before the Jim Beam silenced the fuss.
What he wanted was an excuse to keep drinking.
Spinning out of the vision, looking into his eyes, I realized I was stuck in a tight corner, my only exit through him. If I stood from my seat, I would have to lean into his space. Would he allow me to stand? I decided he wouldn’t.
I blinked my eyes, then pinched my lids together tightly for a moment. Opening them, I saw that he was leaning in closer to me, bending at his waist and eyeing me curiously. I felt like an unknown type of animal the hunter must study before killing. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Tryin’ to figger out what you’re gonna do,” he said, tilting his head a little and slowly pushing his chin toward my face until he managed to look down at me even though our noses were aligned. I felt his breath on my cheek.Smelled the residual stench of alcohol mixed with sweat as if it were my own. Familiar. Threatening. Vile.
I didn’t move. I thought of how a deer froze in the road as if its stillness guaranteed immunity from the car barreling down on it. The car always won. I saw my carcass in a ditch.
I snapped back in my chair. He startled. I rose up from under him and escaped the corner. I didn’t go far, turning to face him as quickly as I could from a new position near the freedom of the kitchen and its exterior door. Six feet of air stood between him and me, and my purse was three feet beyond him on the table by the front door. Could I exit the kitchen and then round to the front door, re-enter the house to grab my purse and get to the car before he could stop me? I considered his slowed and drunken state, but I doubted my ability to execute the plan. I imagined that once I was out of the house he would lock the doors, and I would be outside in my socks and the cold dark rain.
Or worse, he would chase me outside to subdue me. I would run, but he would tackle me. I would fight, but he would win. What did it mean to win? What did he want from me?
“What do you want from me?” I yelled, knowing he wanted me to yell. “You are scaring the hell out of me!”
He slowly stood erect, a delayed reaction that bought time for his voice to switch to a croon. “You’re scared? Come on, Woman. Have I ever hurt you before?” he said, corners of his lips lifting upward while the centers stayed straight. He slightly lowered his head like you do when you peer at your naughty child over the top of your glasses. I expected him to tsk and shake his head in disappointment.
He may have forgotten holding my face over the lit stove burner and using my neck to swing my head into the wall, but I hadn’t. Five years had passed between that night and this, but I remembered it clearly.
I put my hand to my mouth partly remembering the heat and partly in shame. Why hadn’t I left him then? Why was I still here?
He took a slushy step toward me and I heard the sole of his Ridge Desert Storm boot slide barely over the surface of the wooden floor. At 1 a.m. he was still wearing his uniform and boots. That meant his knife was still attached to his belt, in its case, positioned horizontally not vertically.
I took a step backward, purposefully staring into his eyes so I wouldn’t glance at the knife.
He wore the knife horizontally so he could pull the 5-inch blade from his side with a smooth backward motion before giving a powerful forward thrust. He’d shown me the move, proudly, not long ago. The knife was too long to be regulation, but he’d said “Some of us get to carry what we want,” and I hadn’t doubted him. He was a stellar soldier.
“Why do ya gotta be so different from me, Woman? Why d’ya havta challenge me all the time?” He took another but steadier step my way. My thighs tightened into coiled springs. He subtly rounded his back. My torso twisted slightly facilitating my right arm’s creeping motion toward my own imaginary weapon. I was gonna take my knife and twist it into something raw.
“I only want you to respect me,” he said. His glassy eyes filled with tears. “Why can’t ya respect yur husband, Woman? Why?” He moved toward me, the toe of his boot rubbing the floor somehow wrong. He stumbled and then fell to his knees, putting his hands to his face, shamed. He sobbed. I felt the tension drain from my body. I couldn’t run.
I dropped to my knees and pulled his head to my breast. My eyes welled up with tears and we cried together for a while. He cried until he passed out on my lap and I let him sleep there while my legs grew numb.
I sobbed my goodbyes to the sleeping soldier. He seemed innocent like this, on my lap, in my arms. I smoothed his thick dark hair. I wondered if he would wake to mimic my broken heart, to express grief in the same way I now mourned, realizing we would never grow old together, never see our children, and never once touch one another, ever again.
It was a comforting thought, thinking he may weep for me.
I gently placed his head on the golden wood floor then straightened my legs to get the blood flowing. I uncased the knife at his side, and carried it with me to our bedroom. Packing, I would stare at the knife at times, reminding myself why I was leaving. It would be easier to pretend he hadn’t wanted to stab me, that I had imagined the whole thing. I wanted to crawl into the bed and sleep away the pain. Instead, I packed.
On this side of daybreak, I stepped over the soldier on the floor. I laid his knife on the table by the front door, took up my purse, and drove away.
Tonight, a conversation occurred that I knew would come but hoped would not. Will was angry after reading the past few days’ blog entries. He feels that he is doing everything he can to provide for me, and yet I continue to drag his name through the mud.
He says that he believes that I believe what I write is the truth, but says I do not tell the whole story. He insists that I have never mentioned throwing keys at him, or to saying mean things to him. He says that he has done nothing I haven’t done, that we are both equally wrong.
He says that I am slandering him. Dictionary.com defines slander as “a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report (i.e. a slander against his good name).” So I am lying, he says.
He told me that I had better write something good about him. He has an appointment with his attorney on Wednesday and they are going to initiate the financial consent order. If I want him to be reasonable, then I’d better write something good. When I asked if he was threatening me, he said he was “promising” me.
The really sad thing about his promise is that in the past 24 hours I have spoken to two family members about the things I truly love about Will. But I hadn’t had time to blog (weird, isn’t it, for a woman who “isn’t doing shit” to not have time to blog).
Last night, I told my mother that he protected me from other men (who, after the date rape, were the enemy). That he was once intrigued by the ways we differed. I was an artist, a free spirit, and although he didn’t understand me, I offered something to him that he must have needed. He loved me. He wanted to provide a home, a family, and financial security to me and our children, and he has done those things admirably.
Never once have I worried that my family would have no income, or that he would refuse to have or keep a job. In fact, there were times he carried the burden of two jobs on his shoulders while I remained at home, safe and sound, with our young boys.
Will re-entered the military in small part because there was no real future in the company he worked for due to buy outs and the resulting seniority issues, but also because he believed that the military could offer more family time. It may sound silly to assume the military would offer more family time, but at that time, he was working second shift with no change in sight and NEVER got to spend much time with his boys. The military offered a 9-5 job, home on the weekends; he couldn’t have anticipated the number of times he’s been ordered to deploy or the length of time he would be gone.
This morning, I spoke to my grandmother. I told her that Will was now the father I know he always wanted to be. Since his return from deployment in December, his children are his priority…not work, not his “schedule”, not his other commitments to friends/acquaintances. He is enjoying time with his boys – real and memorable time.
They work together, they joke together. I know his relationship with them is different from my relationship with them, but I sense a closeness between them that wasn’t there before. Marc and Eddie were excited to see their dad on Sunday night; I was happy for it, happy for them – all three of them.
But yet, this post, the one that most likely would have come naturally from me, is bittersweet. I so wish I hadn’t talked to him tonight; if I hadn’t spoken to him then this post would have been better. It would have been “good”. It wouldn’t have included the introductory part about his “promise” to me.
A facebook friend posted this quote: “Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.”
Good advice. But I think my wishbone is coming back. Or maybe it just never left.
I think I am foolish for wishing what I wish. My wish is the same as the day I started this blog: I want the four of us to be a happy, healthy family. I don’t want a divorce, I don’t want to divide my family. Our precious boys deserve so much better than this.
The problem is that I hate myself for wishing what I wish.
I have this idea that somehow, after almost three months, I should be more solid in my resolve to just “end it”. I remember writing somewhere that the HOPE was what was killing me. Unfortunately, I still hope.
On the flip side, I have some ideas about what happened in court last week. I’m not going to share them here because, well, they’re my ideas and I’m going to consider them alone.
I’ve told Will that I’ll work through a financial consent order with him. But I’m not signing it until after we go through custody mediation on the third of May. I want shared custody at least, and if he won’t agree to it, then I’ll put everything on the line for the judge to decide. Finances, custody…everything.
Yes, I know the judge decided in his favor last time. Yes, I know it could happen again. Will doesn’t want to go back to court because of the hurtful things my attorney says on my behalf. Of course he’s hurt now in public – when I told him similar things in private, he didn’t care. It’s the public persona vs. private persona thing.
The things his attorney says piss me off – they do. I’m hopping mad over some of the stuff his attorney has said. But I’m not embarrassed. Why? Because it isn’t true; I know the truth in my heart, and what I hear in court isn’t true. I’m trying very hard to leave it in the court room. What goes on in there is like a 30 second snapshot of an 18 year marriage in which NO ONE looks good. Well, maybe. I don’t know what picture the judge is looking at.
Well, I am embarassed to tell people that the judge gave temporary primary custody to Will. THAT is humiliating beyond words. I cannot tell you how embarassed I am to inform people of the judge’s decision. But that judge’s decision was HIS DECISION. He made it, not me. A judge made the decision, not God.
I know I’ve been the best mother I know how to be. I know I don’t deserve to be sidelined in my children’s lives. I am praying and listening even though God’s voice is muted under the weight of worry and sadness I carry in my heart.
All I can do is keep moving forward. But I’m not going to sign documents with which I do not agree, and I’m not signing anything until Will agrees to shared custody. To me, shared custody means that we both live under the same set of rules. I don’t have to ask him for extra time with our children and he doesn’t have to ask me. (We will, at times, request extra time for special reasons I’m sure.)
I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you how ASKING HIM for anything in relation to the boys contributes to his ability to maintain control. If Will doesn’t agree to shared custody, then nothing will be signed and the judge can choose what is to become of us.
I’ve got nothing to lose. The boys are my boys no matter how much time I have to see them. No judge can “take them away” from me, not really. And in about five years, the judge’s decision won’t matter anyway.
Will and I went to mediation yesterday. We did not sign a parenting agreement. We return to mediation on May 3rd, a date by which we plan to have a financial consent order in place. I told him I wouldn’t sign ANYTHING until after the custody mediation.
However, Will suggested I keep the boys with me last night, and Thursday through Saturday night, dropping them off with him on Sunday at 7pm.
Of course, I accepted.
I don’t know why the judge did what he did that day. My confusion is vast and unending, and I am not going to try to figure out the “why” at this point.
Well, that’s not totally true. “WHY?” is the biggest question on my mind. But since I cannot get into the judge’s head, there is no way to know.
I do know that Will was flabbergasted to receive primary custody but NOT the house. “The house” was the furthest thing from my mind.
He had left with the boys, but I felt like he was still outside. Still wanting me to do something I didn’t want to do. I knew he wasn’t there, but I felt him all around me; if he had intended to invoke fear in me, he succeeded. Eventually I watched the end of a recorded show. It didn’t help, so I called my sister. That helped some.
I heard myself tell her that what he’d done was wrong. I wasn’t wasting time thinking about WHY he did it or what he hoped to accomplish from it. I didn’t care about those things. All I wanted to do was be FREE from the after shock.
When I walked out to the garage to find out about the taxes, I knew I was walking into a mine field. But I don’t blame myself for “not knowing” how it would end. I needed to get the papers and he obviously wasn’t going to bring them to me. He wanted me to walk into his mine field. But even before I walked into the battle zone, he had created it inside of his own SON. The difference between Marc’s demeanor before talking to his dad and after was like night and day. I was sad for Marc. I was sad that my boys were going to have to deal with their dad and his secret mines that could detonate at any second.
I also instinctively knew that most of the mines had exploded already – at least for the boys. Once Will was removed from my presence, my influence, he would work hard to make it appear that I was the cause of his outburst, not the boys. He would make amends with them at my expense – or try to anyway. Maybe he succeeded; but maybe the boys SAW and instinctively understood what happened at the house. Maybe.
I was suffering from something like Post Traumatic Shock. Both from the current situation which had caused me to fear for my physical safety and from the past examples where it was proven that I did need to fear for my safety. My body was reacting in the same old way despite my mind’s new awareness of what was going on.
But the day was still young. It wasn’t over yet.
After I ate a little, I went and started looking over the taxes. I thought I’d found a problem in my current discombobulated state, I thought it was best that I ask the preparer a question or two. Plus, I was hoping there was a way to verify that the return I was looking at would be the one she submitted. The only signature needed was on the “permission to file electronically” form, and having signed that, he could technically submit any version of the 1040 he wanted so long as the main numbers matched. I was suspicious of my husband’s intentions, not so much HERS. But I don’t know what he’s told her; I didn’t think she would jeopardize her career over him, but there have been others who have. (Like the female soldier who recently … never mind … I’ll leave out the examples.)
I was concerned about the other information being submitted, the information that wouldn’t change the numbers but could affect me later on. Like “married filing jointly” and if I were claimed as his dependent or not. At the time, I didn’t even know if my questions were rational ones…I just knew I had questions that Will couldn’t answer for me.
I texted Will for the preparer’s number. He texted back asking if there was a problem. I wrote that I didn’t know, but I wanted her number so I could clarify some things. He stopped texting and called, said that (she and her husband) were HIS friends and I was just mad because I wasn’t getting what I wanted.
I didn’t ask him what he thought I wanted. Instead, I said, “They’re your friends, but these are MY taxes, too and I have some questions.”
He said, “They are doing ME a favor – something you can’t seem to understand. When someone does you a favor, you do as THEY ask and I’m supposed to meet her today because she doesn’t want to work tomorrow!”
I said, “Well, you’ve had plenty of time to get the taxes to me. It’s not my fault that you didn’t do it sooner. What’s her number so I can ask my questions?”
He wouldn’t give me the number. In fact, he said he didn’t have it. He had her husband’s number.
“Okay, give me his number and I’ll ask him for hers,” I offered.
“NO! His wife is doing a FAVOR for ME, Kellie! You don’t need their numbers,” he said. I thought to myself that if he doesn’t want me to have his friends numbers, then he probably shouldn’t go to them for favors that involve both of us, but I kept it to myself.
Finally I said, “I’ll give the taxes to you tomorrow IF [tax preparer who is his friend] calls me today.”
30 seconds later, Will called me back and said, “He said that she says you can call her, here’s her number…”
I called her, she was the same person I knew from before the separation – no hate in her as he seemed to want me to believe. No divisiveness in her answers, no hint of favoritism. She answered my questions. When I apologized for being unable to meet her requested schedule, she said not to worry that she planned to submit the form at work on Monday anyway, not today or tomorrow.
She told me that the refund would come in the form of a check this year made out to the two of us. He cannot put it in a non-joint account (at least not legally). She said she flat out told him that he had to split the return with me. She said that when Will had started complaining about the small return that she had told him he needed to be grateful to his kids and that his wife HADN’T had a job this past year because if either of those things were reversed, then he’d most likely OWE taxes.
What Will doesn’t know about me and his “friends” is that our tax preparer and I share a limited connection. We are not friends in the normal everyday sense of the word, but we are understanding of one another. The last time we spoke (more than a year ago) we shared some of the commonalities between our situations, our marriages. We had similar misgivings, similar concerns, similar problems. She knows some of what went on between Will and me.
We didn’t speak of any of that during our phone call yesterday, but I know she remembers. I have the sense that she’s going to be the same honest person when it comes to her work (she is a tax professional) as she is in her personal relationships, including the limited one we shared.
When we got off the phone, I looked over the numbers again and saw that she was right. Without the kids or if I had a paying job, we wouldn’t have gotten crap back this year. I signed the form and feel confident about the information going to the IRS. And if there’s any future issue, I feel confident in my ability to correct it.
I think Will didn’t want me to talk to her because he wants me to believe I am all alone in my assertion that he is abusive. But, between you and me, I know I’m not alone.
I was talking to my friend about “how” smart, confident women (as I was at 19 soon before meeting my husband) get suckered in to abusive relationships. How we ALLOW ourselves to fall for guys who end up abusing us and then stick around for years of it.
Are we asking for it? Are we seeking it? Is there something in our make-up that attracts this type of guy? (Gee, don’t those sound similar to questions rape victims ask themselves? Questions used to accuse ourselves?)
Yesterday I think my friend and I hit upon one answer. Or rather, one question that is actually RELEVANT to “How did I get here?”
What was going on in my life when I met and fell in love with my abuser? Or gave it one more try?
I was date raped less than a week before I met Will. This guy drugged me (I think, ’cause I know I didn’t drink enough to pass out in a bar – never have). I woke up at least once after he was already inside of me, I remember saying, “No, no, no…” and then going black again.
Next day, he came to visit me. Didn’t mention the night before. I think he was checking to see if I remembered. After that, he started telling people what a good lay I had been. Sicko.
I didn’t report it because my sister had been summarily discharged from the Army for “failure to adapt to military life” after reporting her own rape. I was new to my unit. I was happy to be a soldier. I feared being discharged or having to work with this guy while an investigation was going on. I thought it was best to ignore it.
Nevertheless, Sicko was running around blabbing about the sex. I was “fresh meat” as female soldiers always are upon arrival at a new duty station. When my soon-to-be husband tried to flirt with me at a coffee shop, I turned him down flat.
But something about him aroused me. Whether it was his deep voice, muscular build, overall “manliness”…he was hot. But more than that, in hindsight, he was protection.
Will was and is “manly”. There’s not a feminine tendency in his make-up. He is strong, forceful, confident, and everything else a woman in my position longed for. He was exactly what I needed, what I wanted.
And in fact, Will helped make the rumors GO AWAY without even knowing it. His presence and his soon-to-be renown jealousy and possessiveness, kept ALL predators (er, men) at bay. I did look at all men as predators at that time. They sucked.
But I thought I had found the one good one in the herd.
When Will’s jealousy and possessiveness began to be problematic, I overlooked it. When he ordered me to throw away the box containing my letters, pictures, mementos and journals, I did. Well, I threw it away the second time he told me to do it. The first time, I just told him I’d thrown it out. The second time, he had seen the box in my friend’s room and confronted me so angrily that I did it.
I threw away the first piece of me. Because I thought doing so would keep Will from turning on me. Prevent him from becoming a predator in my mind and heart.
You see, I HAD to keep Will on my side. I HAD to have protection from those other slime bag men (who, in hindsight I know were not all slime bags) . I had set Will up to be my ALL. My protector, my lover, my partner, my equal, my defense against all bad things in life.
If I were to admit to myself that he was overstepping his role, that his request to destroy my box was irrational, then I would also have had to admit that he was irrationally “protecting” me.
And he was. Jealous rages are irrational protection mechanisms…but not for their victim. Jealous rages protect the rager – the one who cannot bear to “lose” someone whom s/he never really “owned” in the first place. But he thought he “owned” me because I let him think so because I wanted someone to protect me, know me, love me.
So “How Did I Get Here?” is answered with one statement: I wasn’t in my right mind when I chose Will. I was in “survival” mode, crisis mode. I was irrational and didn’t know it. None of my decisions at that time were based on fact…the “solutions” I devised for myself came from FEELING, not THINKING.
Will felt like “the one”. Will felt like my soul mate. And I think that because those feelings for him were SO STRONG, that I overlooked a multitude of signs to the contrary.
I love Will and see no end to that feeling. I sense it changing, morphing into a different kind of love. Without Will, I wouldn’t be who I am today…and I like me today. He was sucked into my irrational world as much as I was sucked into his.
You would have to ask him what need I fulfilled for him 18 years ago. But for me, at the time, his ability to protect me from the outside world was what I needed. I didn’t foresee that same quality morphing into abuse.
HOW DID YOU GET HERE?
On December 18, 2009, I wrote a post called “You’re a Housewife” in which I described how Will told me what I was. I wrote, “But to Will, I am a housewife. He said so. He also rejected any of the other labels I listed because none of them bring home any money.”
I actually remember that conversation well because he was yelling about being “King of the Castle” and was infuriated when I told him that was a title that was EARNED, not an ENTITLEMENT. That’s when he told me that I was a housewife and I should be happy because I “have a roof over [my] head, food on [my] plates, a home to clean, a man who is willing to work, and children to care for.”
I bring this up again because today Will again told me that he’s been wanting me to go to work since the children started full school days. That would mean that he’s been encouraging me to work for years and inferring that I have refused working, sucked an income off of his hard work, and sat around eating chocolate bon bons on his dime for all that time.
Interesting. Hurtful, but I’ll get over that.
It’s almost like he wants me to believe it because that’s what he says now. That’s okay. He’s trying to get out of paying me alimony.
I listened to the above bit of drivel, but when he said, “I told you I don’t like crawfishers. This isn’t a threat, but -” and that’s where I cut him off.
You can pretty much bet that when someone tells you “This isn’t a threat” that it is going to be a threat. (The “crawfisher” bit is due to his upset over my changing my mind about doing the custody battle in court vs. hashing it out with him alone.)
We were standing in front of the same attorney’s office to which I visited to sign the paper requesting to dismiss the assault against a woman charge that HE faced. Mind you, I just did HIM a favor (that I didn’t have to do and was very difficult to complete), and here he was telling me that because of ANOTHER of my “sins” I was forcing him to…WHAT?
I didn’t hear what he’d planned for me because I know two things:
And that is that.
