Reflections

Isnt that a great, schmarmy name for a blog post? Reflections! Even better in Italics!

Well, I will try not to get too sentimental and all Lifetime Channel on you. I havent been feeling sentimental lately. I have been feeling... just real. Solid. Powerful.

The reason I am reflecting, the cause of my retreat into past posts, is that an acquaintence mentioned that she read through most of my blog. Which is amazing because I think I have just rambled on and on and on uinterestingly for the past two years. But... I took a peek at what I had written last week. Then the past season. And over the past few years... I kind of want to clobber myself over the head.

Not because I wrote anything wrong or dumb. But because my writing reflects the reality of my life at that time. Of course it does. What really hit me, though, was how my life at that time was so filled with hope and weariness. Hope that my husband would change and be nicer. Or that I would finally discover the great flaw in myself that was causing our marital rift. And weariness because in my heart I knew it was hopeless. Weariness because I had used up every resource I owned, had been gifted, or had borrowed on credit. I couldnt give what I no longer had.

Nor could I fix what was not broken by me.

When I turned over the third decade of my life and became forty, something shifted for me. It brought things just the tiniest bit into better focus. And for the first time I could see what was going on. And I had a name for it too. Abuse.

For nearly twenty years, I had been convincing myself (with the help of therapists, doctors and well-meaning friends, as well as ministers, and my own stubborn life view) that my husband hurt me because he was too sick to know better.

Take a moment. I am. I just need to be silent a moment.





He hurt me. Over and over again. No matter what I did wrong or right. No matter how hard I tried to be a better wife. No matter how much therapy, or how many life changing eye-openers he had, no matter WHAT. He kept hurting me.

And it wasnt because he was sick, bipolar, depressed, injured, scared, or anything else. It was because he is an abuser with a narcissistic personality who cannot empathise with others. How can this be so simple to write in one short sentence, yet take twenty years to figure out?

It would take more space and energy than I have to describe what I have done in this marriage to make it work. The shortcut is simply to say that I did what I was supposed to, and much, much more. It didnt matter. Because I had nothing to do with it. We never had a relationship. It was always about him. And it still is. The reality is that he LIKES hurting others because it makes him feel temporarily powerful. And for whatever reason that power kick is all he cares about. That is enough for him. He is quite lazy, actually, and so the maximum gain for the minimum output is his motto. Fucking with someone else is a good way to expend little energy and get big rewards.

So I look back on some of the things I wrote the past two years and I feel sick. I was grateful and groveling because he bought me some fresh veggies one day. The only time in almost two decades he actually went to the grocery store and bought something healthy and I roll over and pee like an excited puppy. How lame. What kind of loser makes twenty years worth of impulsive trips to the grocery store and buys thirty bucks worth of junk food each time. What kind of self-centered jerk refuses to buy his family fresh fruits and veggies for decade after decade? How on earth did I think that one abberation from his pattern meant he was getting better? I wanted to hope for something better SO BADLY!

Only a few days after he came home with fresh veggies for the first time ever, I discovered how much money he had been spending on comic books that month.

Oh. I see. Fucking with me, huh? OK.

I need my moment of silence again.






I am tired of trying to justify to myself that its OK to get away from an abusive husband. Its OK to protect my children from him. I am frustrated that I did not see clearly sooner.

But I cant change this. Today is the day I have. I have done the best I could. Things are so much better now that he is away.

Which helps me to see something else. I was so crazy. I was crazy all the time.

I mean, I functioned. Quite well, actually. I cant believe how much I was able to do, how optimistic I was with the kids, and how nurturing and responsive I have been throughout this. I have not ever lost myself through this. But, I have been kind of nucking futz. The amount of anxiety, the panic attacks, a fugue state and depression... it was all, for the most part, because I was living with an abuser.

Its like when you have two magnets with the same polar field. No matter how hard you try to make those magnets stick and line up properly, the push each other apart. They will not find resolve or a way to mesh. They continue to repell one another. And it is the same with my mental state. No matter how hard I tried to make life line up and harmonize, I was ineffective against the repelling state of abuse in a relationship. There was nothing I could do to make sanity click when in an insane setting. You just cant. And so while I tried to be healthy and should have succeeded, the abuse was always there, invisibly forcing me out of my continuum.

I think I did one thing cool though. I was a good mom. And I remain a good mom. Not perfect. But good. And that may be the undeniable and tangible power of being a woman with children. This is the force that enables women to nurture and help their children thrive even under the worst of circumstances. The goodness of this force, this motherhood, is far more powerful than the evils of abuse.

This is what is meant - that God gives us graces in order to mother our children. Those graces are some seriously indomitable shit. Dont get in the way of a mama and her God given graces.

Life is so much better now. Parenting is easier. Breathing is easier. Everything is easier.

Yes, some days are hard, but not as hard as before. Just hard in a different, less sinister way. It is a weariness being a single parent. But, a weariness that a good rest can defeat. A weariness that comes from the triumph of doing a good and thorough job. Sometimes I complain. But I am still quite grateful.

And now, I can bounce off that last paragraph and go for the schmarm! I can close this essay up with a real sentimental doozy. This is emotional stuff and a good tearful ending would be effective. But heck. Clarity is showing me that I am tough. I am optimisitc and persistent. I dont need to go for the sympathetic ending. I think instead, that I will move on toward powerful beginnings. Forward we go, into joy and ease and clear vision.