How Abusers Are Like Cheap Furniture

March 14, 2010 at 9:08 PM (Rebuilding)
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I’ve been feeling really down lately.  I was really triggered by some stuff in counseling and whatever.  So I was away for a bit.  I’m feeling better and I wrote this earlier and wanted to share it here.

Abusers are like cheap pressboard wood furniture that you buy from a big box store. From a distance it looks good. Up close, if you don’t look too closely, it still looks good. No matter how gentle and caring you are with your cheap pressboard furniture, it will always be just that, cheap pressboard. It might have a oak or cherry veneer, but the veneer is fake, it’s just something to lure you in, to convince you that this hunk of sawdust that’s been stirred with glue and literally pressed together is worth your while. It will never be oak, or cherry though. And with pressboard furniture if you make a mistake, no matter how gently you try to repair the mistake, the mistake is always thrown in your face as a moment of carelessness, a moment when you were wrong and it will never be forgiven, even if it was a simple innocent mistake.

I have such a piece of furniture. I put it together myself. It’s been moved around the country and considering such, it has held up well. But there is one flaw on a door where I was trying to screw the receiver to the magnetic holder in and I put it in the lower part of the door some how. It burst through the veneer and cracked. Gently I super glued the cracked veneer back into place, but it’s still there, because I know it’s there I can see it easily, even in low light. It’s just an inanimate object, but it will never let me forget a small mistake. It has no forgiveness, no ability to heal or be healed by my love. So it is with an abuser. They are innocent of doing wrong, your love will never be good enough for them to not abuse you, your love will not heal them. Abusers only show us their veneer at first. That is how we get emotionally invested in them, in being in a relationship with them. Then very innocently, something we do cracks the veneer. From then onward they will always abuse us, beat us down verbally/emotionally/physically. They bill themselves as solid and worth the price of a handsome well made piece of heavy oak furniture like what you see on Antiques Roadshow, exotic, rare, with unique character flaws, but overall beautiful and worth digging out of the neighbors trash. But with veneer, an ugly scar will always be. You can’t sand it down, revarnish it or repair it to “as good as new”. You can only try to frantically glue the pieces together so that when anyone else looks at it, they hopefully won’t see the flaw that is so obvious to you.

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Filing Custody When The Other Parent is in an Unknown Location

March 2, 2010 at 11:02 PM (Legal Stuff)
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Today my PTSD group therapy session was cancelled cuz my therapist went home sick. For a split second after that call I was like, “Oh, I guess I better call P’s babysitter and tell her not to come.” Then I was like, wait a minute, that means I’ll have 2 whole hours to do whatever I want, on my own???? 

So P got to have her fun time with her babysitter and I went to Target. They had a lot of stuff at 75% markdown and I’ve not bought clothes for myself since before pregnancy really (maternity clothes DONT count). So I spent a little money on ME! I also bought P some really cute stuff too. I figured I’d get her stuff in 3T cuz she seems to be outgrowing stuff still so fast. So I’m trying to get a bit more wear out of her clothes, or at least not need to do a major shopping spree after the next growth spurt.

When I got back from shopping, I talked with P’s babysitter for awhile. She used to work with the local DV shelter (not the same one I stayed in though) and really encouraged me to seek legal custody.  I know, I should have already done this. But part of me is afraid cuz he will know what county we moved to when I file, and while this is a largish community, it’s not a major city. It’s kinda in-between. I told her that when I first left X last year and filed for legal custody that the judge in our old county turned down all of my alternative forms of service that were available to me. It’s not my fault that X is overseas and can’t get the local paper to see public postings, or drop into the courthouse to see public postings, and this one…. the judge wouldn’t even let me use US registered mail sent to X’s fathers (P’s GrandFather) PO box in foreign country, even though I called the USPS and was told that they would honor a registered mail reciept from that country. AAARGH! That is the ONLY address I have for him. 

So anyway, P’s babysitter says they have some really sympathetic female judges in this county and I should try again. So I’m going to make a renewed effort to do this again. She said that I really don’t know where P’s father is, and I replied, “Technically I don’t”, and she gently guided me back to say, “No. You don’t.” So, I’m wondering if I should try to approach that from this angle? I don’t have a physical address for him, or any of his family in either of the countries that they have homes in. P’s birthday came and went without a peep from him, no phone calls, no text messages, not even an email. The PO Box of X’s father is the only address I’ve ever had for him overseas, and I don’t even know if it’s an up to date address since it was given to me over a year ago.

I just need to get this done.  I think about it so much.  If I had put the energy I’ve spent on thinking about it, into actually doing it….. surely things would be much better.  I know my safety concerns are valid also.

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My Daughter

February 24, 2010 at 3:06 AM (Rebuilding, Stuff To Feel Good)
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It’s early morning, or late night, depending on how you look at things.

In under 24 hours it will be your birthday, in a few minutes it will be the anniversary of when my labor with you started.  I can’t believe it.  Already 2 years have went by.  You are so different than you were, yet you are completely the same as you’ve always been.  I love you so much.  I want you to always know that.  I hope that some day you will understand why I made the choices I have and will make.  I hope that some day you will understand or at least accept all of this.  This is my story, but it is also the story of you.  About 2.5 years ago, my story and life collided with yours.  They will never be separate, and in reality never were to begin with.  From the moment I realized I was pregnant with you, I felt a peace, a calm, a reassurance that things would be alright.  It wasn’t easy to make the choices I did.  But I chose you.  I chose to love the feeling that you brought me, to know that it would be alright.  I chose those things only because you helped me to feel them in the very beginning.  I never wavered from my love for you.  And really, your father, well, I can’t speak for him.  But it’s not as simple as putting him in a box and saying he is bad.  He did bad things, very hurtful things.  He also had some very hurtful things done to him, and was in a difficult situation that he didn’t have the skills to cope with.  I’m not making excuses for him.  I just want you to know that life is not black and white.  There are shades of grey, things that make us uncomfortable because they don’t follow the rules of “How Things Should Be”.  It was in those shades of grey that my relationship with your father existed.  In my mind it was mostly black and white, before the abuse.  I see love as unconditional, and when I met your father, I didn’t necessarily choose him.  But we came to know each other, and I feel we did love each other.  I wish that things hadn’t turned out the way they did.  I don’t regret the choices I’ve made.  I just hope that when you are older, that you understand that I made the best choice I could make in each moment and with the knowledge that I have.  That is what any loving parent does.  And I think that your father left because he felt in some ways it would be better for you.  He made the best choices he could make in those moments.  There is plenty of ugliness that took place between your father and I, and even some that he inflicted upon you.  I think that both of us, your parents, realized this was not the life for you, and so he left and then I left too.  I’m just speculating on his behalf.   But I like to see the good in people, and I hope that I am at least a little bit accurate in this.

I love you so much baby girl.  I thank you for coming into my life.  I thank you for being such an amazing (little) person.  I love being your mother and I look forward to each new day with you, to each new experience of what will you bring into our lives today.  The english language completely falls short of expressing emotions clearly.  I’m not sure any language is able to express in only words what the heart overflows with.  I love you.  Happy birthday my sweet little girl.

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I Got Back In

February 16, 2010 at 6:18 PM (During The Violence)
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I think I should talk about grief.  There is a grief inside me that needs to be let out.  There is a hole in my heart that can never be filled.  I just finished responding to a couple of comments on my last post.  I am conflicted about drinking.  It’s not an everyday occurrence.  I don’t drink to the point of passing out or even being unable to change my daughters clothes before we go to bed.  It’s a moderated thing, a self-medicating technique.  I know of alcoholics on both side of my parents families, and my parents don’t drink.  I’ve seen it in both extremes.  Because I have seen the damage it did to a some relatives, I am aware of it and always vigilant to maintain my will power of when I can drink and how much I can drink and still be a responsible parent.  This parenting thing is a heavy load.

When I was with P’s father, he drank more than me.  Not just in quantity.  He wanted to drink every night.  Many nights his drinking ended with him vomiting and passing out on the floor by the toilet.  I used to feel so badly for him then.  I tried once to help him get off the floor, and he became very angry.  So I would just let him sleep on the floor and know that the next day he would be an ass with a hangover.  If he didn’t drink way too much, then he would force/guilt me into having sex.  After P was born we never really resumed having sex regularly because I was no longer willing.  His abuse of me was getting worse.  Why would I want to have sex with someone who felt it was their mission to make me cry every morning before he left for work?  Why would I want to have sex with someone who threatened my life?  Or who threatened to hurt our child and then call it in as me having been the one who had hurt the child?  He wanted to take her away from me, she was one of the ways he knew he could hurt me deeply.  He never wanted her.  That is how all this abuse began.  My refusal to terminate my pregnancy with P lowered my worth in his eyes.  I wrote a bit about that too a few posts back.  He screamed at me until I was 7 months pregnant with her that I should just go have an abortion.  Finally at that point I stood up to him and told him that he was out of luck because I was way too pregnant for any doctor to perform an abortion.  It was the last time he brought that up during my pregnancy with P.

Through the entire pregnancy I did my best to protect P from her fathers feelings about her.  I totally believe a baby is capable of awareness beyond our current understanding.  At the very least I remember that fight, when I told X that I was too pregnant for an abortion.  He was yelling, and I actually allowed myself to yell back.  Normally I didn’t engage because I didn’t want to acknowledge the abuse and because it was a way of protecting P.  But that time I yelled back, and he had on a pair of boots, with the laces untied.  He kicked at me, the boot flew off and hit me low in the belly, just above my pubic bone.  The only reason I was hit by the boot and not his booted foot was because I took a step back.  I had just had a check up with in the past day or two and was told that the baby’s head was down low.  I had told him.  And that is where the boot hit me.  I panicked.  It hurt, she was going crazy inside me.  I wanted to double over in pain, but my belly was too big.

He got mad and went to take a shower.  My belly was hurting, I was terrified.  So I grabbed my jacket, my keys and I walked out of the house.  It was dark and lightly snowing.  We lived near the hospital, within easy walking distance even for a 7 months pregnant woman.  But I was afraid to go there.  I knew if I went to be checked out that I would have to explain what had happened.  Especially if something was really wrong.  I didn’t know enough about being pregnant to be able to confidently lie about why I was having preterm contractions.  I was afraid that if I went to the hospital I would lose X.  He would hate me, I loved him, and would go back to him.  I also knew he would make me pay for making him look bad.  So I walked in the opposite direction.  I walked around the neighborhood.  I didn’t go far.  I just tried to stay out of site.  I was trying to walk through the pain in my belly, the pain in my heart.  Trying to let the baby know she was loved, and wanted.  Feeling horribly guilty that I had allowed the baby to be in such a situation.  That was a pivotal time, I realized that things might not get better with him.  It was at that point that I decided that if things weren’t noticeably better when the baby was 1 year old, that I would have to leave him.

So I walked in the darkness, holding my belly, trying to soothe the fears of two hearts.  I got a bit brave and walked down a street to peek at the house.  The lights were on, but our car was gone.  So I backed away and continued walking.  It had been about 45 minutes.  Walking, breathing.  I felt blank, even a bit empty.  I was so dazed, I just didn’t understand how this could be happening.  How had my relationship with X went from a dream to a nightmare?

Then a car approached me.  I knew the headlights.  There was no place to hide.  My legs were done moving.  So when the car pulled along side me, I opened the door and got back in.  I just wrote “got back in”.  I hadn’t been in the car.  But it was only symbolic.  I got back into the relationship in that moment.  In that moment I chose to hope that he would still change.  The baby would arrive soon and he would change when he saw the beautiful little soul that we had created.  He would love our child, and fall back in love with me too.  Some day I wanted to forget all of that, I wanted to be able to attribute it to the stress of an unplanned pregnancy.  Surely he was still the good man I fell in love with.  So I got back in.  I told him I was fine and we drove home.  He told me he had panicked and went to the hospital looking for me.  I felt glad for that.  I felt glad that 1. He seemed to still care, and 2. I outsmarted him because I knew that would be where he would look first.

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Second Annual Day Of Self Love

February 14, 2010 at 9:14 PM (After The Violence, Rebuilding, Stuff To Feel Good)
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February 14th will never mean the same thing for me again.  Last year Valentines Day was my 30th day in DV shelter.  Technically, because it was an emergency domestic violence shelter, I was supposed to leave on that day.  But P and I were good residents and the shelter was less than full, so they extended us.  It was in this way that 2-14 became known to me as a day of self love.  Last year I expressed this self love in my determination to move forward with leaving X.  I had to love myself (and P) more than I loved him to leave him.  There wasn’t enough love in our relationship any longer, so I had to leave to save my life, the love of my life, and P’s future life.

To be completely honest, I don’t remember a whole lot of what I did last year.  I know that I probably followed my routine of leaving shelter around lunch time, heading over to the apartment to pack, shower and relax a bit.  And then I had to be back in the shelter by 7PM.  And while we were allowed to consume alcohol, it couldn’t be done at the DV shelter and if you did consume, you couldn’t get drunk because it might be triggering to other residents at the shelter.  I didn’t drink while I was staying in the DV shelter.  I would have had to take my 1 year old daughter with me to a bar?!  No way did I need a drink that bad.  I did though, I was tied up in knots.  So I did something else.  X had a contact that sold him some good old fashioned mary jane.  And after he was gone, when I was over at the apartment packing his things, my things, the baby’s things, I’d smoke what he’d left.  So that was my stress relief, get P down for a nap so I could get my break.  Before I moved out I gave all that stuff away but that is for another post.  But that was a big rule to break, and why I always showered and brushed my teeth at the old apartment before I went back to the DV shelter.

I remember there were people in the DV shelter who would walk around with a hot/cold drinking glass, the kind with a lid that keeps your coffee from spilling or getting cold too fast.  There was one woman in particular who I know had vodka in her glass at the shelter.  She was later kicked out.  Another woman had some really hardcore drugs in her room.  I don’t know that for sure, but knowing what I knew of her, it wouldn’t surprise me.  Crazy times, living in a shelter around so many different types of people with different ways of living.

And now, I sit in the comfort of my own apartment one year later.  In fact, this place is much nicer than the place X had rented for us.  And for self love today I took it easy.  Not with Mary Jane, but with P.  I went and bought a NICE bouquet of flowers for our dining table.  I have some dark chocolate, and some alcohol for later.  The flowers are because I never do stuff like that for P and I, and I want to do it more.  Heck, I can afford to drop $20 on some flowers every month to bring us some beauty and joy.  The dark chocolate… well, there’s my real addiction.  The alcohol is because I can.  I felt so restricted when I was living in the shelters because I was under extreme stress, unmedicated and unable to self medicate.  The transitional housing program did random drug and alcohol screens and you were also screened upon entry.  If you were dirty, you weren’t getting in.  I find it a bit amusing that I had to become homeless before I was ever faced with a breathalyzer.  There were so many times in the THP that I just wanted to have 1 drink.  Just something to take the edge off.  But I never did.  It wasn’t worth the risk of P and I being thrown out on the street.  So while I celebrated my 21st birthday long ago, consuming alcohol is now a treat.

In some ways I feel lame about it.  I don’t worry deeply, I don’t drink enough to get sick or pass out.  I don’t drink every night either.  But I also drink more than I did before the abuse.  I do it because it feels good.  It’s a bit of self medication.  It’s a bit of a snubbing of the nose at X too.  He always got to go out, drink, do fun things and I stayed home to take care of P.  If he stayed in and we both drank, it always involved him guilting me into having sex, or him getting so drunk he would vomit and pass out on the bathroom floor.  So now I can drink and not have to put out or worry about an idiot who is over-indulging.  I can do it peacefully.  I can get a nice buzz, then easily fall asleep.

It’s strange how this post has came out.  I write stream of consciousness pretty much.  I go back and occasionally edit, and I always check for spelling.  My grammar isn’t top notch, but I at least check for clarity.  And this is a post about self-love, drugs, alcohol, flowers and putting out when you don’t want to.

And I’d like to give a shout out to all the people, this is what V-Day should really be about.  Flowers, drugs, alcohol, sex?  None of it matters if you don’t have love.  Love yourselves, and love each other.  If you can’t love someone, then leave them.  It is much better to break someone’s heart than to crush their soul.  And if you are someone who is in a soul crushing place in life and it’s not life that is crushing your soul, then find a way to get out.  Getting out is not fun, it’s not pretty, and is down right scary.  But once you are out and keep putting one foot in front of the other, you will quickly find yourself in a place where you can look back and see how far you’ve came.  And that is self-love.

Love Your Self First.

Now I think I am going to go have my drink of self love.  I’ve been waiting for this.

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There Should Be A Name For This

February 8, 2010 at 6:08 PM (Before The Violence, During The Violence)
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I did some searching yesterday and was disappointed but not surprised to find that there is no name for what I experienced.  Nothing beyond abuse, domestic violence, and battered women.  There were some statistics, but nothing specific to describe my experience with abuse.

My abuse began strictly as a result of becoming pregnant.  In those 2 months leading up to becoming pregnant, I was on Cloud 9 with my relationship.  I’m still confused about how I feel about this.  Was it real?  Was X honestly loving me the way I thought he was?  Was it all a big lie, a manipulation to ensure my indentured service to what was going to become an abusive relationship?  Really, I have no clue.  I can’t even answer how I feel myself.  Most of the time I tell myself it was all a lie, a manipulation.  But if I think about it like that for very long I become fearful.  Fearful of everyone else around me, because if someone I trusted and loved so deeply could so easily betray me, then more casual acquaintances are even more dangerous.

So I wish there was a label for the particular experience I survived.  It has changed me so fundamentally.  It has opened doors and brought great gifts.  But other doors have been closed.  I have the many keys to those doors, but I’m afraid to even use the peephole to see what may or may not still be on the other side of those doors.  Most simply put, I became pregnant unexpectedly.  X became upset about this and wanted me to terminate.  I refused to even consider termination.  This child in my belly gave me a feeling I had never experienced before.  It was the greatest feeling of peace, a reassurance that everything would be just fine no matter what happened in the near future.  So I simply flat out refused.  Upon my refusal the abuse began.  He was very classic in his methods.  Emotional and verbal abuse, crazy-making, gaslighting, and making me cry were his specialties.

The hardest part of this was at the same time that he was doing these things to me, changing me deeply, I was also changing as I became a Mother.  I remember early in the pregnancy, I was one of those who had All-Day-Sickness.  I vomited 6 times a day on average.  And when you do that day in and day out for weeks it really gets to you.  I was hyper-emetic but maybe only borderline Hyperemesis Gravidarum.  I might have been able to keep one thing down a day and the nausea was non-stop as long as I was awake.  I lost 8 pounds before it finally left me around week 16.  For a skinny person like me 8 pounds is significant.  During those horrid weeks I remember sitting on the couch looking deeply into my eyes.  There was a mirror there and  I didn’t recognize the person looking back at me.  The person I had been all my life was being overlaid with someone I didn’t know.  I felt like I was losing myself.  How much of this was because of my pregnancy and how much was because of the dramatic changes my relationship were undergoing, I have no idea.

I knew when I was pregnant it was my responsibility to protect my unborn child from the abuse I was experiencing.  I know that our emotions release chemical cocktails that in turn are passed on to the embryo/fetus.  The unborn child does experience everything the mother does through the mothers diet and emotions.  Suddenly I was responsible for a life that was new, perfect and unpolluted by the evils of society.  And all the while I was myself becoming a victim to one of our societal ills.  So I tried to take it all in to me, in a way where I didn’t let the emotions escape the confines of a box I built just for this purpose.  I am a very sensitive person and pregnancy made me a thousand times more sensitive.  So the chances of the abuse rolling off my back like water on a duck were slim.  So I created a box and worked my hardest to keep it separate  from the other life inside my womb.

Now I am left with that box of nastiness.  That box made from betrayal for the purpose of protection.  And I have to find a way to deal with it.  I hate that box.  I associate it with something that should have been a most beautiful transformation.  I was becoming a Mother.  The start of Motherhood is supposed to be a fairytale, a wondrous experience of joy and celebration.  You only become a Mother once.  And I became a Mother in the midst of betrayal, disrespect, manipulation, threats, and abuse.  I don’t remember those things being on the list for the Introduction to Motherhood.  But that was my experience.  And while sometimes I am the type that loathes labels, in this case I would actually like to have one created.  Abuse that begins as a result of an unplanned pregnancy should have a name.  The impact it has upon the woman who is becoming a Mother is significant.  I’m not saying that what a woman in my situation experiences is worse than an abusive relationship without pregnancy.  It is just different.  But the difference to me is significant.  Pregnancy changes a woman fundamentally.  Abuse changes a person fundamentally as well.  To me those two things occurring simultaneously deserve attention.  Pregnancy is an introduction to a life that you can only know little of without the actual experience.  Abusive relationships are the same.  Until you’ve been there, you really don’t know what it is like or how you would act.

I don’t have a suggestion of a label for this experience.  But I feel that saying I left an abusive relationship leaves out such a big part of the description of my experience as a whole.  I would like for myself and women who I share this unfortunate experience with to be given some recognition and support tailored to our needs.  How does abuse that begins during pregnancy change a woman?  What are the unique struggles we alone have to face because of a lack of awareness or understanding of our experiences?  How do we learn to look at our children differently?  How do we separate their lives, their being, and our Motherhood, from abuse and violence?

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I Am So Thankful For My Intuition

February 4, 2010 at 5:32 PM (Being Triggered, Rebuilding)

The other night P and I went to the local grocery store.  It was uneventful in the store.  I like it at night when it’s not so busy.  I kept noticing single guys though.  Nothing really stood out to me.  But I have thought at least once that I was being followed inside the store and would casually try to discourage it.

Well, this time we got our stuff and paid and as I carted it and P out to the parking lot it seemed fine.  I was parked literally in the spot nearest the entrance, in full light, etc.  I was putting stuff in the car and noticed quickly out of the corner of my eye a guy walking through the lot and getting into a truck parked about 3 spaces down from me.  I didn’t get a good look at him or anything.  I just got a feeling.  So I continued on with getting the groceries in the car and then P buckled into her carseat.  I looked casually over at the blue truck the guy had gotten into, but I couldn’t see anything.  Here was a person alone that could have easily been long gone by the time I buckled P in.

I started my car and instead of heading out of the parking lot towards home, I went the opposite way.  I went the long way through the parking lot and then pulled out onto the street.  I was just down from a major intersection, and it would be quite logical to assume that I had always intended to go that way.  The way to my home is not heavily traveled.  So I headed towards the traffic.  At the road though, I turned and headed back the way I’d just come from, towards home.  And then I saw it.  The same exact OLD light blue F150 extended cab truck heading towards me.  I was way too scared to look directly at the driver, but he got the evil eye from the corner of mine.  I think he reciprocated too.  But the feelings I was getting were obvious, he knew that I knew about the game.  Before our cars passed, a police officer made a left turn into a parking lot between us.  Then our cars passed.  I was so grateful to see the cop car because it meant he saw it too.

I was so freaked out.  Just writing this out has set my heart to racing and my breath has went shallow.  I’m still freaked about it, what, 3 or 4 days later?  I live in a well lit apartment complex.  But still, that freak could have followed me home.  Goddammit!  I am supposed to have a safe place!  I need someplace that feels safe.  Where I don’t have to worry about some creep trying to stalk me on the way home from the store!  How dare he try to take that away from me.  And I was with my 2yo daughter!  You fuckin’ creep!  No one gets to put her in danger.  I’m sitting on the back of a tiger and will protect her and myself to the end.  Don’t you dare fuck with me!

I am so grateful to my intuition! Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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Doing More

January 28, 2010 at 8:15 PM (Rebuilding)

I need to do more.  I need to do more for myself.  I need to finish the unpacking that I’ve not gotten around to yet.  I need to get myself and P on a decent waking/sleeping schedule.  I need to find someone to watch P while I go out on my own a few times a week.  I need to take some paperwork to a town an hour away.  I need to be more vigilant about cleaning up after myself and encouraging P to clean up her stuff with me.  I need to get my butt out of the apartment more frequently.  I need to do the legal stuff now that I have received some good news about my upcoming financial situation.

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I want to start doing yoga during P’s nap time.  I’ll start with 3x week.

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I want to leave the apartment more like every other day at least!

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I want to spend at least 15 minutes 3 times a day cleaning and unpacking.

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I want to do more.  I want to actively take better care of myself.

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I want to solidify my place in a local group of Mama friends that I’ve met through the internet.  P and I need to be social.

~

I still freak out a bit sometimes.  This afternoon P and I were on our way out the door to go to the park.  I reach to unlock the door and realized it was already unlocked!  That means it was unlocked since I got back last night!  I freaked a bit, but put P in the car and drove away.  I have to be willing to let go of my anxiety more easily.  My counselor says that we become hyper-vigilant and anxious because it protects us.  It was necessary for survival in an abusive environment.  I am not in an abusive environment now, so I need to let go of anxiety more easily.  I need to get myself outside, do more, be more, experience more.  I’ve been holed up in this shell of myself for so long.  For so long this shell of myself was all I felt I had.  The abuse took so much of me, I truly felt empty, like a shell.  My soul had fled for safety and there was just a little string of consciousness anchored to my physical body that kept it going.  I need to come back more strongly now.  I can fully inhabit my body.  I can be who I was before and discover new aspects of myself that haven’t had the opportunity to come out yet.

~

MORE!!!  Now if I can accomplish this hunger for more in baby steps so that I don’t overwhelm myself and then freeze in defeat, then I will have really done something.

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How To Raise My Level Of Anxiety

January 20, 2010 at 7:25 PM (Legal Stuff, Rebuilding)

Well, one way is for X to call me.  Now, he has no clue what I’ve been going through this past year, so it’s doubtful that he would think that I would have a reaction of anxiety.  He is still overseas and left a brief voicemail that was somewhat garbled.  It was loud in the background, so I guess he didn’t really have time to talk anyway.  Not like his toddler daughter would have spoke to him on the phone.  She doesn’t even speak to my parents on the phone and we talk every week, and visit every few months.  So she at least knows them.  But back to the X.

It was just after 10PM and I didn’t answer.  He knows the time difference between here and there.  Surely he didn’t think he would get to talk to P that late?  Maybe he did.  In any case, I am glad I didn’t answer.  When we were together he gave me the password to his email account.  He’s never changed it.  So occasionally I will briefly check his email to see what’s going on.  It started as a safety measure to be sure he wasn’t going to suddenly show up without giving me any notice.  Now it’s a way to still do that, but also to keep tabs a little.  It’s not something I do even every month.  I am pretty sure it had been well over 2 months since I checked last.  But this afternoon, when I was pretty confident he would be sleeping, I quickly logged in and checked it out.  I found out he is married now.  I wasn’t even a little shocked though, because previous snooping sessions had provided info that he was going to marry soon.   Even so, I am glad I found out this way rather than him telling me over the phone.  I can’t afford to give him any slack emotionally.  I can’t be caught off guard or shocked.  He doesn’t deserve that kind of power over me any more.

But the call raised my anxiety level last night.  I had a really hard time going to sleep after hearing his voice.  We haven’t spoken since June, when I officially told him it was over.  If you are doing the math in your head, yes, it only took him 6 months to get married since he found out I was ending our relationship.  Whatever though.  Really, I hope it keeps him busy, and keeps his focus away from P and I.  She was just barely crawling when he last saw her.  She’s been without him longer than she was with him.   In the voicemail he left he didn’t even say her name, unless it was in the garbled part.  <sigh>

Just last week I did a phone consult with a lawyer regarding terminating his parental rights.  The lawyer sounded optimistic somewhat based on the info I gave him.  The lack of meaningful contact between them, his lack of providing support, and an email from him a few months ago saying he gives me full legal and financial responsibility.   I guess now I really gotta get on the ball about getting this custody thing legalized.  I want to do it while he is still adjusting to being newly married, his parents will encourage him to relinquish his rights and I doubt he will want to embarrass his new wife and her family by fighting for a biracial child.  Not that I look at P that way, but X’s family and culture are known for being racist or elitist when it comes to outsiders.  P is an outsider as far as her paternal grandparents are concerned.  And I don’t give a damn what they think because to me she is absolutely beautiful and to have her in your life is a gift.  I am thankful for his contribution.  But after all that’s happened, I can take it from here.

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My First Freedom Anniversary

January 14, 2010 at 6:57 PM (Leaving An Abusive Partner)
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

One year ago today I was just processing into the local Women’s Domestic Violence Shelter.  The night before I had a crazy panic attack.  It wasn’t my first panic attack either.  But this one was different.  I finally recognized that I was in bad shape.  I admitted that I was having panic attacks.  So I wrote myself a note on a 3×5 card and left it on the kitchen table where I would see it first thing in the morning.  It said something like this, “This is real, you’re heart pounding, knee’s shaking, trembling hands.  You know you aren’t safe here.  If you won’t leave for yourself, then at least do it for P.  She is depending on you.”  I still have it, I think, but I’ve not came across since moving out of our old place.  That night I went to bed, and didn’t sleep, only dreamt my horrid nightmares and waited to hear the keys in the door.  Funny thing is that I was very sure he wasn’t going to come home and surprise me.  He was on the other side of the planet, literally.  It was a 2 day plane trip, and he just wasn’t the type who would want to show up and surprise me.  He wasn’t due back for another 3 weeks.  But every night felt like it might be my last.

The next morning I came downstairs with the baby and the note was right on the table waiting for me.  So I knew what I had to do.  I called the local DV shelter at 10AM.  The person answering the calls took my info and said someone would call me back shortly.  EVERY TIME the phone rang that morning, into afternoon, I jumped.  I was sure it was the shelter.  And it never was.  I was confused.  This was a place people called in emergencies and not many people have hours to wait for a return call.  Then as the amount of daylight became less in the afternoon, I began to panic.  I had to be out of there that very night.  And I had to be out of there before darkness fell.  Almost all of my panic attacks took place in the dark of night.  All of my nightmares, all of my fears, everything was amplified after the sun went down.  At 3PM I called the DV hotline again, I said I’d called earlier in the day and no one had called me back.  The guy answering the phone apologized and said that he would let them know and that I should receive a call within 30 minutes.  So I waited again, this time it was only out 10-15 minutes.  On the other end of the phone was Katie, a super sweet gentle woman.  I told her my situation and she said that I could come to the shelter.  After my phone interview I ran around in a bit of a panic, gathering up things to take with us.  I knew I really only needed what would get us through till the next day.  My main concern was being gone by nightfall.

As I drove P and I to the shelter that first time, I held my phone in my hand the whole way.  The sun was setting, darkness encroaching.  Many things were running through my head.  What was I doing?  What would the shelter be like?  Was this the right thing to do?   But the main thought in my head was the craziest thought of all.  I was trying to channel X.  I held the phone tightly, willing him to call.  Hoping he call and say he’d just been woken up from a nightmare and needed to talk to me.  Hoping, wishing I’d hear from him.  One little peep during that short drive and I would have turned the car around.  But my phone never rang.  No calls, no text.  I arrived to the safety location they told me to drive to.  I called them again and they called me back quickly.  They asked if we were alone, and I said yes.  So I was given the rest of the directions on how to get to the DV shelter and that was it.  We were checked in, given a private room and X never called.  I decided that once I had arrived and checked into the shelter I could never go back to him because I would have to tell him what I did behind his back.  He would never forgive me for going to the shelter, and so I could never go back.  I knew the abuse would be worse than even my nightmares if I went back to him after leaving.

The shelter was complete chaos for me, so horribly overwhelming.  There were 17 children and 13 women.  It was loud, kids running everywhere, playing.  People socializing.  But there must be some code, some indoctrination you go through upon entering a DV shelter.  Yes, you’re given a set of house rules to follow.  But everyone there knows your dirty secret.  And you know theirs.  The specifics don’t matter a whole lot because one way or another, all of us have been deeply hurt by someone we loved and trusted.  Hurt so badly by this person that we felt like we had no choice but to flee for our lives.  So everyone was nice, but also just gave us space.  I didn’t feel judged, and knew that there wasn’t anything I needed to hide.  It wasn’t an ideal place to live by any means.  I was terrified to put P down on the floor cuz there were kids from toddler to teens running around and she was such a tiny baby and not walking.  I was also afraid of her getting some kind of crazy germs because we had pretty much lived in isolation and suddenly we were surrounded by many, many people, including school age children.  It was terrifying, but also powerful.  Life in a shelter was never as bad as those nights I spent waiting for the key to unlock the door.

That first night in shelter I didn’t sleep so well.  But I was only slightly bothered by the nightmares.  I didn’t sleep well because the room they put us in was freezing.  It was so cold I tried to keep both of our heads undercover.  P was only 11 months old and it worried me, but she got through it fine.  The next day I told staff and they fixed the problem and the second night in the shelter I didn’t have any nightmares.  In fact, it has been 1 year now, and the nightmares I had before I left the home X and I used to share have never resurfaced.  I’ve had other nightmares, but not that one.

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