Shameless Survivors

I still have a few of his ties and his tuxedo. They represent my reluctance to finally sever what is left of remembering him at his best. I used to say ‘remembering when he loved me’. The way he could smile and melt my heart, the wonderful evenings when we dressed and went out for the night, the fun he could be and the way he could make me laugh. He would court me, romance me back, win me over with his charm and lightness. They are difficult images to reconcile with the arguments, the humiliations, the sheer cruelty in the painful way he cut me down to my core of my being, and now I am beginning to feel and process what I could not have functioned with then; the terror.

For a long time I have wanted to believe he loved me the best he could. Not a love I’d ever want again, but I held it was all he had to give. It is yet another mourning to know his grand professions of love, even in his final goodbye, were only words and had no real meaning; another deception, something he gave or took away; wielded like a gift he bestowed as he appointed himself the sole judge of whether and when I deserved it.

I have been slow to acknowledge that if he was genuinely capable of feeling the love he professed this blog would not exist. I have held he loved me despite all the proof otherwise, as to let go is to accept my love was poured into a bottomless well and it was only my own love reflecting back as I looked down into it.

It is spring and I see lovers everywhere. Young and old, new relationships and time tested, awkward and innocent, trusting and comfortable, in an easy natural togetherness. As a voyeur looking in I observe, watching and waiting, realizing I am lonesome and longing to learn again what they already intrinsically know.

In my quest for freedom from this curse, I realize I do not remember how to receive love. I do not understand what it is, how it works. It was convoluted and twisted for so long I am uncertain I can let it in, to be loved. I sit with the uncomfortable questions of whether I am able to fully trust again.

I know women who have gone on to have wonderful meaningful relationships after abuse, so it is certainly possible. On the outside it seems so seamless but I realize that there is much work to do. Truly, there is no birth without pain, no reward without effort to be able to return to an emotional level that is healthy enough to be vulnerable and open to that level of emotional intimacy.

I fail, I fall, I forge ahead. I hope.

“Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone….His conversation is sweetness itself, he is altogether lovable. Such is my love, such is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.” Song of Songs

Through years of planning honeymoons for travel clients I am always aware that the advent of spring weather brings the wedding season. I am consistent in my wedding gift giving and continue a tradition my husband began by choosing good quality knives that will last a lifetime to complement a couple’s well-appointed kitchen. I love to cook and find my kitchen knives indispensable.

I have always appreciated razor sharp knives as well, though I threw the sharpening stone in the garbage the day I moved back to the house in favor of taking my knives to be professionally sharpened. Like the cases of liquor that I insisted be removed before I came back to the house after the shooting, this small seemingly innocuous stone represented something that I could not live with.

There was something in the attention he gave the sharpening, which he did regularly, usually weekly. It was not quick and useful as you might when you pull a dulled knife from a drawer as you need it. It was long and purposeful; an uncomfortable energy, a vibration, a look as he sharpened them. In a way that I cannot explain, a danger was implied. Though he never once threatened me with a knife or held one near me, I developed a disturbing fear he would stab me to death.

He kept a hunting knife in the drawer of the bedside table. We did not sleep in the same room, but I was unsettled by its existence just the same. Only weeks before the shooting I touched it as it then lay on top of the bedside table and there was an unconscious understanding, without a word being spoken, any of the knives could kill me.

Internal clues as to what was to come were overshadowed by rational acceptance people we know and love don’t do these things; of course these were not weapons to someone who loved me. I wanted to believe I was safe in my house, with my husband. I could not comprehend the only true safety I felt was outside my home. My instinct as a mother was not to flee the house when the children remained in it yet the final day survival overrode that instinct as I fled, uncertain if they were safe.

I remember fights that began in the kitchen, following me into the bathroom or the bedroom. Kitchens with sharp knives. Dead ended bathrooms. Chairs in bedrooms in inescapable corners. I just wanted to get away as I moved further and further away from doors that exit outside, not conscious of the danger of being assaulted in these rooms. I didn’t think about being trapped until he blocked me from getting out. I only wanted to feel safe.

I cannot go to bed with a knife in the sink, or in plain view. I always put them away. Though I know my threat to be gone, even as a guest in someone’s home, knives in a block on the kitchen counter or on magnets over a stove, a knife sharpened before carving a roast; these every day scenes still fill me with lasting fear.

Having successfully escaped the snare it is a surprise to now find the enemy I seek refuge from is only me. Indelible images permanently branded into my mind as memories intrude at inopportune times. As I have become more relaxed, overriding the terror is like trying to stop a speeding train by standing on the tracks. Indeed I refer to these episodes which transport me back as riding the crazy train, where the baggage cars immediate follow the engine with no stops in sight. Despite knowing it will eventually run out of steam and pass without event, the urge to jump off is challenging to sit with, to wait it out.

It is in these times, when we most need help, that we are unable to ask for it. I am ever grateful for friends who reach in and grab me off, my rescuers who rally around me again and again as my triage team and re-frame my own distorted perceptions by reminding me how far I have come. Friends who when I am at my worst, love me the most.

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends. Yeats

According to him I always took too long in any store, especially the grocery store. He would fuss and say he was going off to pick up other things on the list so we could get out quicker. When it was time to check out I wouldn’t be able to find him. The conversation in my head would be something like: “Do I try to find him or do I wait in line and see if he’ll meet me here? I’m next in line, I don’t have enough money for all these groceries because I pay other household bills and our agreement is he pays for groceries. Do I just walk away?”

Finally I pay and hope he will put money in my checking account to cover it (he insists on separate accounts because I am ‘bad with money’). All the while I am wondering will he once again tell me that I never have funds in my checking account, use this as an opportunity to emotionally beat me up, or say we didn’t need the items I’ve purchased and refuse to pay me back for them knowing another bill will go unpaid to cover the unexpected expense. At which time he will tell me how irresponsible I am that I can’t pay my bills and why should he ‘help’ someone who is so careless and irresponsible with their finances.

Many times I would get to the car and he would already be there, furious he had to wait, with none of the items he said he went off to get. Each time I’d try to be quicker and quicker so I could make it to the checkout line before he did. Sometimes I would be the one to run and get items while he got the produce. When our daughter was a few months old I went off to grab a few things across the store and came back to find her in the cart and him nowhere in sight. I was frightened and angry he had left her unaccompanied. For years he’d ridicule me for being afraid someone would take her from the grocery store – ‘watch out, somebody’s going to steal your baby’ as though I was somehow wrong to be concerned.

I eventually convinced him of the benefit of my going to the store alone by reminding him how slow I was. I was not really alone as most times he would refuse to ‘babysit’ and I took the children with me. It was still far more peaceful with just the three of us.

That was years ago. I am now visiting a friend. When he picks me up from the airport he has an errand in town to run. Tired from travel, in an unfamiliar place I am caught off guard and I panic at the prospect of going into a store with him so I wait in the car.

Later in the visit he makes plans to cook dinner and I realize we are going to the grocery store together. Nervous about it, I want to decline going. Intellectually I understand it is a grocery store and even if I am left I can find my way. I always have. But there is a pull stronger than my intellect and I have a difficult time staying in the present moment as we drive through the little town where he lives and I see the store. It is not huge like ours. As though to reassure myself I will be okay I say aloud ‘it is so small!’ which seems odd to both of us.

It is the first time I have been in a store with a man for many years and my anxiety level is high. My heart races as we approach and by the time we enter and are in the produce section I realize I am having a panic attack. I want to leave immediately but I am more afraid to be separated from my friend. I don’t want him to know how I’m feeling because I am embarrassed and who could possibly understand this? On the verge of tears I soldier through like glue on his heels with his every step. I try to be casual and browse but I continually look over my shoulder to gauge where he is and move quickly to rejoin him. I tell myself over and over this man would not leave me in a store in a town I am unfamiliar with, and has no reason to find fault with me. I am relieved to finally get outside. Though I am adept at appearing very composed, I want to collapse.

This experience bothers me. I think that I am healing and doing so well, and then in the most mundane of experiences I fall apart. I feel like it is hopeless, fear I will continue to have these insane experiences which almost paralyze me emotionally when I never reacted those years ago; didn’t skip a beat and certainly didn’t shed a tear over nor process it with anything more lingering than annoyance at the time.

It makes sense I am still spooked by loud noises, guns, sirens, and being surprised by someone. I will likely always avoid being in a room without clear access to an exit and be uncomfortable in a room with a closed door. I don’t know how to explain the challenges these seeming everyday things are for me which to someone else are inconsequential. To experience everyday tasks on such high emotional alert is very difficult. My confidence is shattered and in that, I am also disheartened. My ‘I can do this’ turns to doubt and my fighting spirit surrenders to darker thoughts as I question this newest chapter in my experience.

One thing that is clear is those who have lived with the daily barrage of crazy making thinking in abusive relationships will have to work a little harder at things than someone who hasn’t experienced what we’ve been through. The ordinary, the mundane that most take for granted has to be relearned, and our minds and bodies reprogrammed to not react in anticipation of a pending attack. It is true…“Ongoing survival requires relentless attention.” Laurence Gonzales

We so many times create a narrative about our lives that enables us to make sense of what has or is happening. I see now mine was not at all the serendipitous love story I had created of being romanced and wooed. I now know his behavior was predatory. It is sad to accept my married life was a lie and that I was little more than a target. He chose me. All batterers do.

He knew I was vulnerable from a recent break up, he studied me for months before he saw the opportunity to insert himself into my life. Gifts and flowers and trips and lavished attention from a charming handsome man made me feel like I was very special to him. For months I resisted his advances, at once feeling flattered by his attention but also uncomfortable and unsettled by it. I sensed something not quite right at the beginning but I loved the whirlwind-ness of it, the romance and thrill of it.

It was not until I was squarely in that I would learn for every gift, there was a sacrifice expected. Every compliment, criticisms threefold would follow, that the attention he gave he demanded back exclusively, finally that he would became the only person capable of mending my pain, he who was inflicting it.

In the relationship I did not see he was the same person in the peaceful periods as he was during the attacks on me. I reveled in the quiet times thinking we were on track again and it felt like love, but more likely it was relief. I did not understand at the time he was simply gathering information to attack me with later. A week, a month six months later, but later.

I have taken additional time in therapy beyond the trauma to assess how this happened to me. I do believe unknowingly I very much contributed to the perpetuation of the abuse. Not overtly, certainly. Truly I was groomed to react as I did. It began by not challenging his thinking and actions as he tested me with small things, each time pushing me just a little further with bigger and bigger things to see when I would push back, draw the line, and in doing so little by little he reset the boundaries. It ended with a loss of my self, my needs; entirely vulnerable without the protection of personal boundaries.

Early on he accused me of being terribly selfish, and he consistently reminded me of that selfishness. He’d frequently assert ‘it’s all about you’. Only now can I see in fact it was all about him. At the time I did just as he suspected I would which is take it on and try to prove him wrong by centering my attention on him. Soothing his wounded ego, being the good wife and partner he demanded, trying to prove I was truly worthy of HIS attention.

A certain degree of selfishness is necessary to care for ourselves. In many ways I gave my husband the power to destroy me by being so in love with him. In the end we are, none of us, selfless nor is it a healthy state. Coming from this skewed relationship history I need to be aware when I feel I am leaving my needs and wants and desires in exchange for a friend’s or potential partner’s. Unbalanced relationships with those who seem unwilling to meet me in the middle need to be evaluated.

I have great capacity to love and I will love with total abandon in the future but never again will I love someone else more than I love myself, nor be willing to sacrifice my needs for someone else’s. This is my gift to me this Valentine’s day.

There are days, like today when I sit quietly with my coffee in my kitchen checking emails, or in the sunny corner of my bedroom looking out into my yard, that it hits me. The images come rapidly, as though my mind is fanning through a book. As shock encompassed me that day three years ago, today disbelief shrouds me. Surely this cannot be true. Surely this is not me, my life, our life. How could this have happened?

Though most times now I am able to be detached from the story, telling it as a narrator, waves of connection and with it intense emotion envelop an unsuspecting me and I am left once again trying to reconcile the person I am with the life that I found myself in before. No matter how I try to leave it I cannot rewrite the story line that has been established. I cannot fast forward from twenty one to fifty, cannot erase and write over. As I examine it, turning it over and over and looking at all the facets, observing all the flaws, it remains intact.

I have a sudden understanding of my daughter’s recent plunge back into the depths. She has been coming out of depression and I see more and more she is able to experience contentment, if not joy in bits and pieces, as she reconnects with her own life. Then suddenly she is overwhelmed by feelings she cannot articulate and in an instant she is suicidal once again.

No one talks about the intrusions, waves of shock relived. Trauma, once experienced, is a force that does not ever truly go away. It only lies dormant. In us is a sleeping enemy awakened by a sound, a sight, a smell…a dream, a sensation; people, places. Once roused it will not lay down quietly. The crown of peace is so easily stolen away in these moments our memories pull us back. The invitation extended, the wrestling begins; fighting to win this round. Victory does not come easily and is impermanent.

We resume a little further back than where we were. Though not as far away as when we started, we go on. We go on.