Days 0868, 0869, 0870 & 0871

It took me a very long frog in a frying pan process to identify what was wrong with my relationship as abuse.

And the realisations came in fits and starts, in concert with his worst behavior.

In part it was denial and my sunny disposition. In other parts it was because he could go from beelzebub to charming in less than the blink of an eye.

But mostly it was because he ‘loved’ me and I know I’m imperfect. 

In court his side’s narrative had the abuse all happening after the trauma of my son’s birth. And it was traumatic. But really the trauma is what kept me there inert well after I should have left. The trauma wasn’t what made the abuse happen.

Having my son’s big blue eyes and spongelike learning in our house made me start standing up for myself.

Just as a reflection shows you what you look like in front of the mirror, I could suddenly see how I was being treated in the eyes of a witness to it. Even before he started to talk and reveal truths to me.

I had been treated that way for half a decade before my son came along. 

Having him around just gave me insight and a reason to stand up for myself (and him) that heightened conflict.

Before then, before I had a witness, I had learned to protect myself by not arguing my case. Outward conflict was lower, but I was less than human: shut down and corralled in a relationship where he was always dominant.

Days 0864, 0865, 0866 & 0867

I’m not a huge fan of insults – unless they’re funny. But the worst kinds of insults – much like lies – are the lazy ones.

You know, the ones where zero effort has been applied and all that’s left is the nasty.

Things like: ‘She manages like she’s a police officer’ when the person in question used to be a police officer.

It’s the same aggravation with ‘the easy narrative’.

Just say you had spent five years being strung through court over child custody matters with a man who once and continues to try to abuse you.

Just say he spends all that time telling you you’re a liar. And mental. And completely forensic in trying to keep his child from him.

And the narrative he chooses to tell the tea room audience at work is this: The system is full of man haters. She is just keeping my son from me to cause me pain. She is a vengeful and crazed bitch.

Never mind that he’s the one who took the matter to court. Never mind that he ended up getting less than he’d been offered custody wise the first day he and his estranged wife sat down for free of charge mediation five years and a couple hundred thousand dollars ago.

And ‘Man Hating Crazed Bitch’ is all he can come up with?

Surely if I’m that crazed, I’m worth a much better story than that?

How insulting.

Days 0834, 0835 & 0836

ive learned a lot of things in the four years since I escaped.

Not least of which is this. There is happiness in just being.

The curled up dog at my kid’s feet.

The mud from a soccer game on that kid’s knees.

A fire cosying away in my fireplace.

A good book to read before I fall asleep.

I don’t need to feel worried. Or vigilant. Or wonder how in being selfish.

Life can be gentle. And sweet.

It does not need rage to continue. Existence is not based on feeling fear.

It is good.

Days 0810 & 0811

hoe are you meant to feel while watching a perfectly nice person sticking their head into a lion’s mouth?

Especially when it’s a lion mouth you’ve only just escaped yourself?

Part of me wants to shout ‘RUN FOR YOUR SANITY!!’

While the other part of

Me knows that while the lion’s enticing and then chewing on her, he won’t have any teeth left for me and my kid.

And he will be trying to impress her with his charm and so will be kind to his child in front of her. Thoughtful even?

Where does my obligation to another human start and end?

Would my earrings even be heard? Or would they just be me being the bitch I’m made out to be.

Better just to leave it, take my place among the pariahs gathered on the school soccer field sidelines. We Are ‘The Ones Who Left’. And that’s all it takes to look like The Bad Guy.

If only life were so blessedly simple.

Days 0758 & 0759

Do you know that moment when you’re talking to someone and they suddenly take a deeper look at you and say ‘are you all right?’? And the tears just burst out of you?

Well I had one of those today, except what the person said to me was: you know what? I reckon you’re furious.

And it was like having someone smooth the dirt away from my surface and see me for real. And I could feel fresh air hit my skin and, well, it brought tears to my eyes.

And the next thing she said was: and I’m so pleased for you. I think it means you’re recovering.

For the first time in 16 years I feel safe enough to be furious.

Where anger didn’t help with He Who Shall Not Be Named … Where my anger in fact escalated the danger level, I’ve now crossed a line or built a wall or hit some other metaphor that makes it ok.

And the anger is strong. Furious is the only word that comes close.

And where Halfman-related anger twists me up and makes me feel powerless’ this fury … Well it warms me and makes me feel stronger and safer. It makes me see that I don’t ‘have to’ anymore. That I don’t need to fix and avoid and work around to survive.

I can just be me.

And I can wear my anger with happiness – another rung climbed out of that pit I sat in for too long. 

I have never been so pleased to be angry. 

Days 0751, 0752, 0753 & 0754

i am loving the past tense today as in this sentence:

Yesterday would have been my wedding 16th anniversary.

But, thank Dog, it wasn’t.

🙂

Days 0741, 0742 & 0743

I am fairly shy. And I have no need to be in control of everything. And, to be frank, people talking about home renovations and primary school association politics bore me.

So I attend all my son’s extracurricular spike a good mum. I say hi to the other parents and chat to a handful of them. But that’s about it. I have other interests into which I pour my social energy.

It also pushes me away that Mr Ex is decidedly of the joiner variety, finds superficial social interaction with other parents to be proof of his worthiness as a dad and has a great need to takeover every single extracurricular activity.

So he’s there. At everything. Jollying about with his ‘mates’ and proving his Caring Dad credentials.

I see other parents seeing only the charm veneer – that presentation he makes of the poor guy whose fighting a horrid both who won’t let him see his kid.

He needs friends so I don’t wish to discourage them. He’ll never get to the point of revealing his True Self to them and that makes my son safer. A good outcome from my POV.

But it does cement me in The Outer and allow me to be washed with the thin paint of his preferred stereotype.

I find the best way to counteract my frustration is to imagine these fine upstanding parents realizing that he’s the sort of ‘man’ who threatens to stave in his wife’s head with a glass jug. I think them how the claps on the back and the ‘sure my kid can play at your house’ stuff would look and sound.

Would they feel tricked? Humiliated? Would they run for miles like I’ve tried to?

Days 0722, 0723, 0724, 0725, 0726 & 0727

Horrid people. How I wish they were monsters.

But they’re not. Just people who’ve been broken or twisted.

If people were monsters, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with Halfman: his horns would have been showing even while he ran his long, tree frog fingers through my coiff.

And I wouldn’t have married He Who Shalt Not either, would I? I would Have glimpsed the fangs and the fists and the rage seeping from his skin.

I am not attracted to monsters. 

I don’t choose to spend time with monsters.

I just really need to learn the difference between human faults and monstrous behaviour. 

Until then it’s probably best to stay away from both.

Day 0721

You know what?

Just because you think ‘all men get angry’ doesn’t mean I needed to stay with a man who was always angry.

Just because you make excuses that that’s ‘just him’ when he yells at you and humiliates you in public, doesn’t mean I needed to keep doing that.

And just because you think ‘you can always work harder and give a bit more’ to a relationship doesn’t mean I ‘gave up’ by escaping when I did.

I don’t judge you for staying.

Don’t judge me for breaking free.

Days 0715, 0716, 0717, 0718 & 0719

Hours and days seem to pass in a haze at the moment. One second things seem to take forever, the next I’ve been sitting staring at the dog’s wet nose for an hour. It took me 30 minutes to figure out how to unscrew and then screw in a toilet roll holder yesterday. As if the concept of counter clockwise/clockwise had abandoned me as I sat with the screwdriver in my hand and The Kid splashing in his bath on the otherside of the wall.

I have one more work related stringing together of words and sentences to do before I can submit to my brain’s increasing inability to think beyond each thought to the next.

Next Weds, it will all be over. I will be fine. No one will have been injured. No wars will have been started.

Today I am upright, dressed and at work. Not functioning perhaps, but here in body. And I’m pleased with myself for that.

The toilet roll holder is also functioning nicely. And attached securely to the wall.

So while my brain is like a jellyfish’s tummy at the moment (ie, everything passes through it like it’s not there), my structure is strong. It will get me through and the two things — body and mind — can reunite once the tension is gone.

This is not fragility; this is strength.

You keep going. And you’re more You afterward than you were before.

And you’ve fought for your kid. And you haven’t given up.

That is what strength is.

Not a facade of unbreakability, but remaining unbroken.