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 0755, 0756, 0757 & 0758

One of the most devastating after effects of Halfman was how crushingly STUPID I was left feeling. To be taken in by a passive and lazy conman … Maybe that’s the only type of conman who could have got me, but still.

But the other day I met a woman whose brain is the size of … Well, God’s Underpants (which I’m sure are cotton with little earth motifs).

And she had nearly the same experience. Not with Halfman but still, it sounded like she was talking about the same guy.

So gentle you couldn’t imagine him hurting anyone, let alone you?

Considered a bit feminine by male peers because of that gentleness?

Admiring of you for your intellect and strength?

Telling tales of a ‘former’ partner who was bullying and intolerant – who had driven him away with her mean way of being? Such a ‘pain in the arse’, Halfman said.

This Big Brain was hoodwinked too. But at least had the good fortune of not actually falling into the Pit of Love.

She told me it took her almost five years to recover. That at the two-year anniversary of discovering the betrayal, she was still angry and mostly curled up in a tear soaked ball.

That made me feel better – all of it really – but mostly the confirmation that the anger I still feel, the anger that made me give him the Fuck You Finger again just now as he paddled by on his bike, is not abnormal.

His face, his presence still make me shake with anger, with hurt and with utter disbelief at what he did to me.

The difference between that feeling now and two years ago is that I forgive myself for it. And I think that is quite ok.

Day 0702

Sometimes the hardest part of all this is the number of times I have to sit there and tell someone how appallingly I was treated for so many years.

I’ve come a long way in spite of bumping into the likes of Halfman as I’ve done it.

But I hate having to admit how much my abuser took from me. How much I have yet to claw back – the pieces of myself I have yet to rediscover and reassemble.

I don’t find strength in admitting that. And having to do it over and over, even to people who understand how insidious it was and still is.

I don’t want to be that person. But I am.

But I left. I had the strength to leave and to fight every day since.

He didn’t get all of me. That is the only bit I am proud of.

Days 0653 & 0654

I wish there could be a sense of peace about Halfman, but there just so is not.

Even now, when I can see his strangely toe-down step on the sidewalk ahead of me and think ‘ugh. ick. ick. ick. how did I ever?’ etc, I still feel an unending and hot anger at that thing. And I don’t mean the thing he did — I mean that being (calling Halfman a ‘him’ or a ‘person’ literally still chokes me — I can’t make those words come out in reference to Halfman; because I don’t consider them true or accurate). I have managed to refer to it by it’s Name once or twice, but only once or twice. People have names: Halfman is Halfman.

But it puzzles why it should be so.

Why I should still feel such anger at Halfman. Such anger, that when I do catch those glimpses behind my middle finger as I drive by Halfman’s path during the work week, it pops out in my dreams that night.

In the moment, the anger spikes, I laugh a little at myself and keep moving.

In the wee hours, when my eyes are all a flicker beneath my closed lids, I confront that thing. Most recently in a leaky boat. I was the captain, I knew that thing and his wife needed to get somewhere. And I declared I would take her but not Halfman, and proceeded to sail away without that thing in the boat, bailing the whole time, feeling like I’d rescued his spouse.

And then there’s the one where I saw Halfman in the front row of some public event. And–totally out of character–went right up and told him exactly what I thought of his Halfmanself for all to hear. I was rather pleased with the limited vocab I exhibited: colourful and heartfelt. And wholly accurate.

But I awoke wondering why? Why, when I am quite sure he has moved onto the next sex doll. When I am certain he has had no insight into that murky place in there. When I am sure Halfman does not yet even admit to himself what he did to me.

Maybe that’s the bit that sticks in my craw (do I have a craw?).

That I know there is some Halfman woven story he told his wife to minimise the truth and relieve himself of whatever amount of that truth he could keep from her–and I know he believes this story. That he doesn’t even acknowledge inside himself where no one else can see, that he did such a cataclysmically unkind thing to a person he said was his friend.

Days 0600 & 0601

um … no thanks.

Going out to bars to meet ‘people’. Putting myself onto an online dating service.

I can’t stand the thought.

I don’t *need* someone to share things with so why would I paste a sign on my forehead that says I do?

Or am I just a posh, uptight and judgemental soul?

I have a very old fashioned theory that you meet interesting people by doing the things that interest you.

Just got to work on weeding out the arsehats and that theory might bear fruit. Or not. I have definitely hit the ‘whatevs’ stage of whatever I am moving towards.

The idea of a relationship just makes me think of nothing but the break up of it and that makes me weary and …

Day 0576

How do I describe the feeling of just plain having had enough?

A bit empty? Devoid of anger? Beyond anger?

A friend told me the other day of how she had split from her husband the day before and she had found herself wandering through the house, collecting photos of him and dropping them onto the driveway below so they could all smash in a pile.

She wasn’t angry. Not at all. She had that feeling — the one that says to your whole body: I am finished with this.

It’s the feeling I had when, after two+ years of trying so hard to fix things and support him and protect myself and my child, it was one fairly simple act of his that left me hollow. Done. Finished.

Not angry. And not numb, though you might expect that. Just plain finished.

I feel like that today. Not angry. Not anything really other than tired. Not a feeling intense enough to be passionate. A completion of something.

Nothing big has happened. It’s simply the fourth Christmas of being hounded and yelled at (although that now comes via lawyer’s letters but it is still his words and ‘logic’ that they hurl at me). Of having my son involved in things that aren’t his worry but make him wonder if I’m the person he knows I am. Things that make him feel disloyal to his dad if he doesn’t give me a hard time. And he is nine.

Maybe I have reached that point where I have nothing left to hollow out of me. The point where he can’t tie in me in such knots any more. Because it’s gone. Totally gone. That sense of care I once had for what he does. That concern for how he acts towards me.

Maybe this is the point where I know I’m out?

I have most certainly grown utterly, unambiguously, weary.

Days 0553 & 0554

I know The Pill is meant to be this hugely liberating thing for women and I know it was back in the late 60s/early 70s but I hate the bloody thing.

I was hesitant to use it: I like the way my body tells me stuff as it waddles and bloats along its 28-32-day journey.

As much as it hurts sometimes, it’s terribly comforting to feel the *pop* of an egg making its way out those tubes like clockwork.

So, like I say, I avoided it. Besides, why should it be MY responsibility alone to make sure his tadpole didn’t cause trouble??

I resisted until I was 30 — pissing one or two people off along the way (which equals 50%-100% of males who were pissed off with me for that).

And then I tried it. It was hideous. I had a month of morning sickness followed by weight gain. Of course I didn’t gain weight in the places I would have liked and watched it glom onto the places I didn’t want it.

And my PMS was much worse. And it never worked — my bodily rhythms kept busting through until I had my period constantly apart from a one day break every once in a random while.

So I chucked them all out — those stupid foil packets — and thought: Fuck this.

I was long-married by then so it wasn’t like I was having sexual relations anyway really (I’m sounding bitter here, aren’t I)?

Then I had a kid.

And they added birth control pills to the veritable bonanza of drugs I was ingesting for the first two years of kid’s life until I finally chucked those out too. I hated taking them even more than the anti-psychotics that made me keep losing my car when I parked it in town (thank goodness for remote locking and flashing headlights).

Then I got rid of the blight on my life that was He Who Shall Not Be Named and entered a world I had never actually been part of: boyfriends and dating.

And the men were all (the two of them) like: ‘Oh, oops, I thought you would have taken care of that’ and ‘I just assumed you had — oh, jeez, sorry’ and ‘Is it safe?’ (that one made me laugh: like there was meant to be some coded word answer to that one — at least Halfman made me laugh albeit AT him that time) or the inelegant ‘Can I finish in there?’ (Halfman again, but that one didn’t make me laugh — it was more like finding a long and salubrious nose hair wafting from a loved one’s nostril at the apex of desire).

I do take responsibility for myself of course, I’ve found the ways that work for me. And I will not compromise them for someone else’s pleasure. At least I’ve stayed true to that one through all my other mistakes.

Day 0401

The 1000 Days Guide to knowing when it’s time to break up with that dude.

1. You fantasies about them having an affair.
2. You seriously prefer extracting in-grown hairs from your legs to their company.
3. Their extraneous use of the words ‘gluten-free’ cause you annoyance even when you are not physically in the same room as them.
4. Their attempts at romantic sweet nothings make you bark with laughter.
5. You feel sorry for them.
6. They prefer extracting hair from their chin with tweezers to kissing you.
7. Any amount of the dinner you cooked them lands on your hair or face in protest at what you have made.
8. They accuse you of trying to kill them by serving over ripe avocado.
9. You can feel the hair on your arms rise in your defense when they start getting all romantic and sexy with you.
10. He invites his ‘estranged’ wife to Christmas lunch instead of you.
11. He tells you he’s had ‘fantasies’ about you and a woman he works with.
12. He congratulates you on being smart – maybe even smarter than him!
13. You’ve heard that story before and saying so doesn’t stop him.

Day 0078

Ok. 27 hours of travelling so far doesn’t set me up for kindness. Somehow I can forgive the crying child next to us absolutely anything. But the woman with Tourette’s who sounds like a sneezing guinea pig takes everything over the edge to absurd. If I wasn’t stuck in a phallic tin can with her I wouldn’t give it a second thought. The man sitting right next to her has done very well not to stab her with a patented red, plastic Air Canada coffee stir stick. I am so tired I contemplated that stir stick for so long that it no longer made sense to me.
May my day end with zero Arsehats having been encountered. Unlikely, but one must remain hopeful or find a new kamikaze use for that stir stick.

Day 0018

Learning ever so slowly not to just be a ‘head on a stick’. Embracing it all. I mean, at least I can feel things, right? Some people can’t even get that far. And life is definitely richer for it.

Arsehat men directly dealt with: 0.1 (again with that empty/confused husk)

Tomorrow is going to consist of watching old men in suits tell me they know better than me and almost every other Tasmanian. After a year-and-a-half of work and passion, it’s not going to be an easy thing to see.