Abuse Hides in the Dark. Turn on Your Light.

Staying in Abusive Relationships


  • Expectations

    Like many of our “good” conversations, my husband and I talked for over three hours last night. I went to bed at 3:30am, tired of course, but also daring to hope that MAYBE we opened discussion on a basic problem in our marriage. Expectations cause us a LOT of damage – a lot of hurt

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  • In Your Heart of Hearts, You Know You’re Leaving

    Understanding is not what I need, and it’s not what I need to give. “Understanding” has super-glued my heart and mind to a mad man, and “understanding” will doom my children to repeating my loop.

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  • Tornapart

    I have no warning, I huddle in the dark as the tornado howls and screams, praying that the storm will silence itself. It seems unending. And when it leaves and the sun returns, I look at the faces of my children. The ones I huddled with in the blackness, pressing myself between them and the…

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  • Work to Undo

    I’ve got two boys that are going to be their own men in a few short years. I have a lot of work to undo. And hey – if you have a second, send a prayer or some positive thoughts to whomever or wherever you send them, for me and my family, please. I am…

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  • Some Things Differ

    Hmph. I guess I am the one who must stop living my life the way I want to live it. He’s the more important one. His opinion is the one that counts. The sooner I get that through my thick head, the happier he will let me be.

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  • Accepting Kittens for Who They Are Is Easy (Not So Much for Husbands)

    Accepting Kittens for Who They Are Is Easy (Not So Much for Husbands)

    One major difference between kittens and husbands is that I don’t expect kittens to change for me. I don’t seem to need evidence that a kitten “loves me.” Why do I expect my husband to prove he loves me by changing? Why do I need anyone to prove their love to me, for that matter?

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  • Wish in One Hand…What Goes in the Other?

    Wish in One Hand…What Goes in the Other?

    I must stop wishing him to “feel the way I feel” because in order for him to feel like me, I have to act like him. I don’t care if he feels like me or not. I feel like me, and that is becoming enough.

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  • Resisting Persuasion

    Resisting Persuasion

    WHAT? I asked myself why “resisting persuasion” and “verbal abuse tactics” were one and the same. The only logical explanation that I can currently come up with is that he uses these tactics because he feels that I am trying to persuade HIM into thinking or doing something that he doesn’t want to do.

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  • Can't We Talk?

    I don’t want him out of my reality, but if co-existing in a mutual reality means that I have to hide myself and rely on hoping that he’ll be nice to me, then any mutual reality between myself and my husband is going to end.

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  • at least

    i am no longer a mess but i may be becoming a new kind of crazy. hazy. unpredictable. but no longer unfortunate. no longer in ruins. edging out of the confusion i dare look to a horizon i didn’t notice before. like the old horizon, there is nothing discernible there. nothing special. unlike the old

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