Days 0805 & 0806

Someone told me I looked pretty the other day and all I could think was: Wow, you wouldn’t say that if you knew about all the infrastructure under this dress!

And so, while I didn’t say it aloud I still managed to belittle myself and wave aside a compliment in that way I have that is even starting to annoy me.

For some reason I think the work behind the curtains delegitimises the part in front of the curtain. In fact, proves the ‘pretty’ isn’t real.

And yet I’d never ever agree with anyone else putting that argument forward.

The work that goes into something is part of its beauty, is it not?

The people I think are beautiful are those who work or have worked hard at being who they are. Not s good example, but Halfman’s ‘beauty’ was in the struggle with himself that he appeared to be working through – that he working at doing the right things the right way.

Now, of course that was a fiction I projected onto him, but it shows how I see beauty in the infrastructure as much as in the end result.

So maybe the infrastructure under my dress didn’t make me a fraud so much as someone who puts in some effort and got a nice word for my troubles.

Or maybe I just looked pretty?

Days 0803 & 0804

A new business model for #Halfman?

https://gimletmedia.com/episode/27-the-fever/

Days 0800, 0801 & 0802

Big realizations never seem to come to me at edifying moments.

The Secrets of The Universe seem to like popping up when I bend down to pick up a dropped sock or lightly move the shower curtain aside.

Today’s realization came while rewatching Buffy Season 4.

So perhaps this moment was edifying in Nerd Grrl Land.

And it was this:

I wanted Halfman to be a Riley. But he’s a Parker. A mistake. A loser. An ass. And not worth the gnashing of teeth.

I already knew that of course, but it’s nice to have it become an entirely solid thought that I can stop chewing on and file away under ‘Dickheads’.

I think too it helped immeasurably to have the real life judge apparently acknowledge that all that angst surrounding The King of Dickheads was real.

That was when the last AWOL piece of me fell back into place and knitted itself to my soul.

It doesn’t matter so much that Halfman treated me like I didn’t matter and created a world where I was No One. 

Because I finally am in a place where I KNOW I am Someone.

And he can just go get f@cked.

Day 0799

A word cloud.

That’s what depression feels like when it’s inside my head. Like a gazillion words are all mashed together – vertically, horizontally, higgledepiggledy – inside my skull.

And it’s not a soft and fluffy cloud – no rounded sans serif font here.

Nope. It’s heavy and be-serifed. Chunky and loud.

And there are so many words all jumbled together that I can’t find any single word to think about.

And it feels like my skull is just about to burst and I wish wish wish it would solid feel some relief. So the words could spill out, spiraling and spaghetti-ing off into the air and down to the ground around me.

Days 0796, 0797 & 0798

Who knew there was so much space in my head?

That once the tension and fog and fear lifted there would be such a loosening of my synapse?

There are a lot of ideas in there — some creative, some not so much.

And there’s room to think of other people more.

And of myself once in a while.

And to compute how to bake cookies and make even worse jokes.

And even more room to embrace others.

More light. That’s what is in there. What’s been in there all along under his urine soaked blanket of control.

My goodness but it is nice to know it is there.

Day 0795

A lady made a kindhearted joke the other day about how I needed to go out and find me a BIG man who looked scary in order to keep my previous mistake away and out of my life.

I laughed politely, but you know what?

I want to be that BIG and scary person.

I’m not physically that person but I have no doubt after all of this that I can be that person  when I want to be with just a bit of practice.

Day 0794

Words matter to me.

People’s approval less so.

Which makes me wonder why the act of naming up He Who Shall Not Be Bothered With Anymore in a court didn’t make me feel strong so much as worn out.

But active acknowledgement by someone in that room that ‘but he’s never going to agree is he?’ made my heart burst with satisfaction.

I’m sure it’s partly because my naming of him is always met by him with flat denial or insistence that I’m a conspiracy mastermind.

How much satisfaction can there be in stating how someone acted when they insist none of what you say is real?

But to have his desire to stalk me and keep me prisoner for as long as possible turn into a ruling that he can’t, well that’s good stuff right there.

And it still doesn’t take a whole lot to make my glass look more than half full.

Day 0793

Lots of people talk and write about why women stay. I think we all get it in the end: because it seems harder, scarier to leave. That’s why at its essence.

With clear air and space between me and It, I can see clearly the moment I knew it couldn’t continue; the moment when my exit plan began, even if I didn’t know that’s what it was. It took two years from then to get it done, but it happened and, in the end, that it ever ended is the most important thing.

But that moment is so clear to me now.

I used to think it was clear because it crossed the physical violence line that I understood rather than the emotional violence line I still didn’t have faith in.

It was when he threatened to smash my head in with a glass jug. He was angry. He couldn’t find the shitty 50 cent plastic cup measure, only the good quality Pyrex 2cup jug he held in his hand.

But that wasn’t even The Moment. 

I saved myself by moving to stand in front of the glass doors separating the kitchen from the dining room. I knew he wouldn’t want to break the glass so he wouldn’t risk throwing the jug in that direction.

It wasn’t even that he so clearly valued the glass above my wellbeing. That wasn’t new or revelatory.

It was that I knew I was worth less than that pane of glass. And that I could save myself by agreeing that was the case.

That is when the line we’d crossed became completely clear to me.

And thank goodness my ego knew it wasn’t true. Thank you thank you thank you for that moment of frightening clarity.

Days 0791 & 0792

it turns out victory is nothing like what you see in the movies.

For one thing it doesn’t come at The End.

It comes when it needs to – when The Crushed stands up and is taller, larger and stronger than the vanquished.

When The Nasty is seen for what he is – even if that is only for a morning or an instant.

But it is there.

It comes at that moment when you were expected to fall to pieces but ended up glued together even stronger than before.

And it comes with the help of others. Who can see you for what you are and do not let you forget it.

And after 12 years of being squished and four years of surfacing, even if this is the only clear moment I get, it’s pretty damn special.

Days 0789 & 0790

Not a great day. One of those ones where food tastes like unidentifiable mush, scented candles smell like poison and not wanting to soil myself is the only thing that gets me out of bed.

And yet here I am: two legs, two arms, a lovely home, blue skies, a fluffy dog at my side. A camera in my bag which is usually enough to get me moving.

But I’m at that place where tension takes me: the place where I wonder if the hardness of the past four years has been worth it. I know it has of course, but my brain likes to tell me I can’t be sure.

I managed to get dressed and tame the doc to the beach – it took four hours to get there, but I managed it. Yay, me. Woo and hoo etc.

And where I’m sitting in my car now is almost exactly where I used to sit in my car the occasions where I escaped the yelling and the threats and the doing of everything wrong. I would sit here with a beautiful beach filling my windscreen and cry and cry. And wonder where I was. Not my body, of course, but me and how I’d got into this place where I couldn’t do a single thing ‘right’ and where I would be threatened with having my head smashed in because … Well, just because he felt like it.

So clearly the past four years was worth it. Because I’m sitting here again – this time with my dog, knowing I have a resilient, loving child on my hands and knowing I can go home when I want and not be yelled at by anyone but me. 

Who knew that was the height of freedom?