Shameless Survivors

I’ve just transitioned out of my job supporting survivors of domestic violence. Transition being a figurative term. My position was eliminated and I was laid off. Non-profit life, such as it is. I feel I did what I set out to do. I gave all the wisdom and resources I had to give to my clients. I have zero regrets of the level at which I approached difficult conversations and reality checks. While compassionate, I never sugar-coated things.

The timing of my “release” is uncanny. This weekend I would be celebrating my 35th wedding anniversary had intimate partner violence not been a central theme in my marriage. Upon finally accepting that no changes were forthcoming, it is also this period 14 years ago when I told him I wanted a divorce. Which set in motion, truly, the story of my life after near death.

Going down the rabbit hole of cleaning up files on my personal computer as I ponder my next career/position, I found a reminder that no matter how stressed I am from losing my job, how uncertain I am of the timeline to find a new one, and how financially insecure I am, I am alive and free.

This is from the summer I tried to leave. July 2009. I had shared these concepts over and over and over with him throughout our marriage, to no avail. I’d written this out for myself, in exasperation, to validate I wasn’t crazy or imagining how things were. This is exactly how they were.

1. “I am neither dumb nor blond, so no need to worry about me acting that way when I take my car in. Surely you know your statement is offensive in that my sister, niece, and your daughter are blond, and they aren’t stupid either. Could it be you are transferring your intellectual inadequacies onto others?
2. You are a father and husband.  You don’t get to be ‘off’ and simply get up from the table while we clean up after you, or get in your car for the weekend as though we are simple conveniences that you can take or leave.
3. Fathers do not ‘babysit’ their kids as a favor to their working mother.  Fathers are joyful givers to their children. They spend time with them.
4. I work. I work very, very hard. When the work is there, I get it done. When it’s not, I find it. I don’t have a secretary or assistant to whom I can delegate. I don’t have the luxury of walking out the door at 5 or the convenience of collecting a paycheck, irrespective of the amount of work I’ve done that week. I can’t financially provide equally for the family, do the laundry, keep the house clean and tidy, and serve you a fabulous candlelit dinner with mind-boggling crazy sex after I’ve cleaned up the kitchen and put the kids to bed, but before you fall asleep/pass out.
5. Sex is not on-demand TV.  It doesn’t just happen right then and there because you snapped your fingers. Some effort along the way to emotionally engage me would have been preferable to the business-like discussion of the pending transaction. 
6. Is fun not in your emotional closet?  Everyone’s enthusiasm is stifled when an activity with amazing fun potential can be made so miserable by your attitude. (see #5) Lighten up, and go with the flow.  It’s not a death sentence to do something that your 12 or 9-year-olds choose.
7. I have a right to my own feelings.  If I have a headache, you say you have one too. If I’m really tired, you say you are tired too. If I’ve got a cold, you say you’ve got one too. If my allergies are bothering me, yours are bothering you too. If my back itches, yours itches too. If I’m bummed, you are too. I had surgery and am wiped out, you are wiped out too. Give me ONE thing that’s MINE!
8. I do not have a remote control for cats and dog. I am not feeding them subliminal messages like go scratch the chair, not the claw post; puke up your hairball on the oriental carpet, not the tile floor; kill another chipmunk and leave it for him to run over with the lawnmower; don’t relax and go to sleep during a thunderstorm – flip out and keep the whole house up all night.  They are animals, with small brains, and without the ability to reason. You, however, might consider this and not take it out on me. 
9. Children outgrow shoes, and clothes seasonally, and your $100 contribution once or twice a year doesn’t get it. No, you are not an ATM; you are a provider of shelter, food, and basic necessities. Oh, no, you aren’t – I AM!
10. That uncanny ability to hone in on something particularly sensitive to me and use it as a weapon of mass manipulation is just plain being mean.
11.  I know how to drive, and your incessant directions on how to do it do not enhance that ability. I spend the majority of our time together in the car fantasizing about a way to throw you out without pulling over and driving off into the sunset. This fantasy does not include turning around to get you. If you dislike my driving, you have the option of not riding with me.
12.  Women are not less than. Money is neither happiness nor something deserving of emotional involvement.  Homosexuals are human. Church isn’t to ease your conscience at your convenience. When you ask who’s more important, you or God you should already know the answer.  
13. Giving is not about recognition or reward. It’s not a placeholder to use as leverage when you want something later, to remind the recipient of your generosity, to demand something much larger in return for the gift. True givers receive more than they give. Try it.
14. It is not that I don’t have concerns. It’s just I think it is pointless to worry about things over which you have no control. I take the energy I would have wasted worrying to do something about the things I can do something about.
15. A request that you pay for your children’s soccer, piano lessons, cotillion, scouting,… is not me borrowing money from you. God forbid you pay for MY piano lessons.
16.  Either help clean up or shut up.
17.  I do care about sex. I simply choose not to participate until it is part of an emotionally enriching and fulfilling relationship. Anything less than that can be and is achieved entirely independently of you. 
18.  I’m not having an affair. I’m not a lesbian. Has it ever occurred to you that something is missing ………see # 17.
19. Be a team player. Observe me and the kids to see how that works.
20. Your children came equipped with great potential. Give them the opportunity to achieve it. Be there when they fail, but let them fail or achieve all by themselves. It’s character-building for both you and them.  
21. Let them feel their feelings. Let me feel mine.
22. TV is not an eminent domain under your authoritarian rule. Huff off to sulk if you must because we are in the middle of watching Horton Hears a Who and you aren’t getting the control to watch the military channel 24/7 – I’ll tell you what happens  – we won that war!  You are always invited to share movies, and to play cards and games …..see # 6. 
23. Uncle! Calling it. I cannot do this one more day. I’m out.

Like when not attending class and performing poorly all year a senior is suddenly shocked they aren’t graduating, he claimed to be blindsided by my desire to leave him. Though I didn’t know at the time, of course now we all know how it ended. It’s worthwhile to be reminded of why it ended. What seemed annoying and innocuous was actually the sign of something deeper rooted that in many ways predicted his need to maintain control, no matter what the cost. A keen reminder of the price my children and I paid for my freedom.”

If you are experiencing intimate partner abuse please reach out to your local Domestic Violence Agency or call the National Hotline to be connected. 800-799-7233

After storming the US Capitol, mobs of armed angry white men threaten and will likely descend upon state capitols around the country to assert their self-perceived dominance and hold the country hostage. Fear is one of their weapons.

Now you know how every woman who has experienced male violence feels.

Do you hide or stand up to them? Do you call them out or try to placate them? Do you educate their defenders who insist it was a one off or settle to know your own truth? Do you move this way? Or that way? Are they idle threats or will they carry them out? They’ve shown you what they’re capable but then they withdraw and blend back into normalcy so is it safe to breathe yet?

I penned my favorite saying. Once you know something you cannot unknow it. America now knows what every survivor of partner violence has known all along. This is what these guys are capable of. This is the degree of burn it to the ground take no prisoners destruction they live to carry out.

Sound sleeping is going to be a long time coming. You’ll always have one eye open now.

I don’t know what it feels like to be black. But I do know what it feels like to be under the subjugation of a white man. No, I have not encountered it my entire life in the most mundane of activities, generation after generation. However, I have encountered misogyny in every corner of my life, as has every woman. I have experienced the corrosive effects of oppression while in a marriage that spanned decades. White supremacy and partner violence operate on the same principle, maintaining power and control by any means necessary and without conscience.

I was moved to tears recently as I drove down Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, its Civil War statues by the now nationally known edifices of an ideology which fails to acknowledge basic human rights. Bronze reminders of a refusal to accept the outcome of a war lost. Under the 130-year-old monument of Robert E Lee, black, white, young and old, gathered together to take in the enormity of what had occurred in the previous week. Protests that changed the landscape, both literally and figuratively, came to rest in this space.

Seeing the monument, now finally relevant with spray-painted sentiments of a collective soul battered and reclaimed, I was suddenly freed from the heavy weight of my late husband’s closeted racism. Always, there with no apologies. He was raised in a South that embraced a separate set of rules for white men and he himself believed that status quo suited him.

Watching the peaceful gathering around the statue, I experienced an enormous sense of freedom as well. I felt released and instantly restored from another layer of identity theft. Choosing to stop trying to reason with him at the wrongness of his horrifyingly unacceptable racism, battles I didn’t have the energy to fight, I eventually accepted that was the way it was. It was another sacrifice of my beliefs to accommodate him and in that, another betrayal of who I was. That silence felt complicit. I have to continually deprogram that and reorient my thinking even now, years after he is gone.

Like in my own life, the chaos is over, leaving somber remnants of the fight but also leaving peace. Though the trauma will remain, there is finally a glimmer of light after so much darkness. Yet truly, the work has only just begun. And I know this; it gets harder before it gets easier.

Now is the endurance test. The test that weeds out the dreamers from the determined. Can we go the distance without wearying? It will take relentless effort yet I believe together we can create a society where oppressors are not only held accountable but will also not be tolerated and looked away from as they perpetuate their agendas. I believe each of us must play a part in success. If it is to be, it is up to me.