Days 0648, 0649 & 0650

Shivers. That’s what I get when a good friend tells me their paramour has said the words ‘I’m so disappointed in you’ following unaccountable rudeness from him.

That used to be my everyday paradigm: He felt angry and would swear at and embarrass me in public and harangue me in private, and it was all my doing; my fault for not loving him enough — for not putting him at the centre of all my decisions and actions.

From the green peppers being cut in the ‘wrong’ direction at dinner to purchasing a nice pair of shoes because my old ones had one heel left and were making me lurch … all of things were inconsiderate and led to total and utter disappointment from him.

It got so I could feel the disappointment ooze out of his pores; he didn’t need to say anything. It was all there in his shoulders, his eyes, the flick of a hand gesture.

As an exercise in Pavlovian control, it was truly breath taking.

As an exercise in life, it was suffocating.

And every time I take a deep breath these days, it makes me thankful. The only person around who feels any right to be disappointed in me, is me. And frankly, she needs to step back and put down the judgment now and then too.

But the fear of being sucked into that familiar whirlpool is still there: it brings nausea to my tummy and my heart — it paralyses my brain with fear. I cannot imagine being there again: in that horrid prison of abuse and erasure.

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 0409 & 0410

My memory may not be perfect on this one but the 2007 movie Into the Wild had one theme I could understand very well. I saw it in the context of being lost in depression, of being the mum of a young kid, of being a transplanted person who was faster and faster disappearing into the crunching fist of a man who defined control as love.
And he thing I remember most from that movie, seen at that moment was this: that the man/boy protagonist had purposely lost his identity. He was angry and hurt and destroyed by the behaviour of those around him – his parents and the material world – and he rejected the self he’d been given.
But, finally, when he was completely alone and knew his end was coming, he wrote his name at the bottom of his final note to whoever found him.
This is where my thoughts disconnect from the film and go in a me-focused direction.
I have always had my name, but I lost my self.
My name is about all that reminded me of who I am and where I come from and who truly loves me. I even named my son so saying his name would remind me of that origin, that grounding sense of belonging. The kind of belonging that gives your spirit strength when you think you have none left.
Regaining my maiden name helped symbolism that taking back of my spirit. It felt bloody good.
I don’t feel proud of my name per se, but immeasurably stronger for knowing who I am and will never let go of again.
This isn’t a new thought for me.
But today it struck me that even a year after Halfman’s deceit was fully revealed to me, I still can’t speak his actual name. I’ve spent an entire year speaking to people who know him and work with him naming him up only as his former work title or, in very limited company as the Shit Eating Bastard he actually is.
I wonder if those work colleagues in particular ever noticed that I never said his name? If they just thought it was some oddity of mine that I call people by their work titles even when I know them?
And I wonder how I have such a need – still – to avoid saying that first and last name out loud.
Am I worried I will crumble to dust first string them together.
Or that saying them will make him real when I wish he was nothing but a very bad dream?
Or do I long to erase him in the way he tried to erase me and turn me to nothing by treating me like a secret unbeknownst to me?
I suspect it is that last one. I don’t use his name because he opted out by treating me as less than human.

Day 0323

What happens when a ‘seduce, control, annihilate’ person loses control?
Apparently they get angry and desperately cling to attempts to annihilate while also sprinkling in some seduction – their only means of regaining control.
It is odd and uncomfortable to be called pet names and complimented by a human being who is concurrently trying to tell the world you’re crazy, lazy and don’t care enough for your child.
In fact it creeps me out.
We all have moment a of discomfort when someone steps over a line in human relations.
But there is an extra special feeling when they don’t just step over a line but take normal behaviour and twist it weirdly so it’s illogical by every measure.
My brain nearly eats itself trying to untie the weirdness and make a straight string of logic out of it.
I am so lucky I escaped before the annihilation was complete: at that point where we’d just reached a stage when’re he hated me for letting him annihilate me but still had some work to sand down my edges perfectly.
Thinking of that at least makes my blood boil enough that I can stand on my two feet and say: You might try to wear me down, but at some point this will end and it will end in my favour. The only weapon you have is delay.
And though I hit a place where I nearly can’t be bothered every once in a while, I will continue and I will get to the end.
And then I will be Me.

Day 0283

I despise finding passages about myself in self-help type books. My ego is far too large to sit gently while I’m told I am just like a billion other people.
But I just came from a discussion with a psychiatrist about the ‘seduce, control, annihilate’ model of behaviour and then found this on the internet:

‘The narcissist despises who their supply person has become; they view them as powerless, inferior and worthless victims, but at the same time, their worthless prey is providing them with a bountiful amount of narcissistic supply. Therein lays the paradox; the more the victim shows their distress, the more they become narcissistic supply for the abuser, and the more important and powerful the abuser gets to feel. The more important and powerful the abuser feels, the more blatant their verbal and physical violent becomes … The narcissist is merciless in the way they devalue the victim. Devaluation of the victim can be delivered through many different forms and levels of attack; through victims own attachment needs, their intellectual capabilities, physical body, sexuality, creativity etc. By this time, like Pavlov’s dogs, the victim has been conditioned, and appears to the outside world that they are willing partners in the narcissists “convoluted dance”. Even if they do manage to escape from that narcissistic individual, they are at high risk of future re-victimization and entrapment with other narcissists, because they are primed in a way that other narcissists can spot.’ (http://followchristine.com/what-is-gaslighting-the-sociopath-next-door/)

And even I can’t deny that is exactly what I’ve been through: in my recent failed marriage and in just about every other relationships.

I don’t think any of them have been actual narcissists but I certainly recognise the pattern in all of them.

The thing my marriage to He Who Shall Not Be Named did, which the others didn’t overly do, was annihilate me.

I disappeared and became an automaton when near him. I forgot how to offer help to people because I was constantly fearful of being screamed at or threatened.

And here I thanks goodness for my son once more: he gave me the difficult gift of seeing that ‘relationship’ through the eyes of a third person.

And what I saw not only made me uncomfortable, it repulsed me. I did not want to let a child think that was a relationship and perpetuate it on someone else later on.

That perspective allowed me to save myself – and him.

If I had stayed any longer I have no doubt I would gone, annihilated, not even a shell but a desiccated nothing with no colour, no favour, no thing.