Mental Musings from
The Marginatrix
...because sometimes I just need to share my thoughts.
I remember in college taking a course that has a profound impact on me: Women & Violence. I learned about Tracy Thurman, repeatedly beaten by her husband then stabbed, despite a restraining order, in front of police who did nothing to protect her. I learned about Kitty Genovese, murdered and calling for help while all of her neighbors ignored her pleas. We talked about snuff films and the signs of an abuser and the cycle of abuse. I questioned why any woman would stay with an abusive partner and I honestly could not understand or relate. And after a few years, I forgot the most important parts.
Pride comes before the fall. He was so charming when I first met him. So attentive. So conciliatory. So concerned for my well-being. So anxious to be with me. So enamored with me. So involved with me. So obsessed with me. So controlling of me. So disappointed in me. So frustrated with me. So angry with me. So much a victim to whatever feelings I made him feel, whatever actions I made him take. It happened so slowly, I wasn't even aware of what was happening. At first, I needed to be knocked down from my pedestal. I needed to understand I wasn't perfect. I wasn’t as great as I thought I was. I wasn't as smart as I thought I was. After all, if I didn't like it, I should just leave. Naturally, these insults were followed by profuse apologies and gifts, as well as promises to do better. The first time he slapped me, I was stunned. I imagine I stood there with my mouth flapping opened and closed like a fish flaps its gills, struggling for oxygen, unaware it has had been plucked from the water. I was so disoriented and unprepared, I was speechless. Maybe that was the point. But I had never bothered to consider how I would react if someone hit me because I could never imagine that anyone actually would. I didn't come from that kind of family. I wasn't predestined to choose an abusive spouse. It must have been a mistake, an anomaly. Surely, this wasn’t the same man I had come to love. I forgave him and believed it would never happen again. For a while he was careful, but then the verbal abuse escalated. Dragging me from bed in the middle of the night to attend to his needs for food or a drink when he'd stay late “at work” became a nightmare of mine. The bullying and threats came more often, along with the taunting that I didn't have the guts to leave him. Until one night when he asked me to pick him up after work, since he was already drunk from an afternoon spent with coworkers. From the moment he got in the car, he was nasty, ripping the rearview mirror from the windshield to demonstrate his disregard for my property, for something I had earned myself, before him. I don't remember what he said, but I can still remember the hopeless feeling that drove me to consider crashing my car because that was the only way I could imagine escaping him. Ultimately, I drove home, and as he continued to abuse me on the way to the apartment, I screamed and made enough noise for neighbors to come out to their balconies to see what was happening. Someone asked if he should call the police and I cried out yes. My boyfriend left. When the police arrived, he was long gone. We called my brother who came to escort me to his apartment and the following day my mom came to get me. I packed what mattered most and went home with her. I didn't go back. I moved in with my grandmother and my boyfriend began “courting me” again. At first, I wanted nothing to do with him, but he was persistent and seemed truly changed. He had given up drinking and I thought things would be different. After many months, I agreed to move back in with him, but this time we would live close to my family. Things were good. He proposed, we got married, had a baby, but somewhere along the line he started drinking again. And I think he became jealous of our daughter. He became belligerent, controlling, and nasty, often drunk and when he wasn't yelling at me, he was crying about how I didn't love him. He couldn't live without me. He would die if I ever left him. Then, he almost died. He worked nights and when he didn't return by the time I needed to get to work in the morning, I was angry, but it never occurred to me to be concerned. Until that afternoon when the police called. He had driven his car into a ravine and had been spotted by a police officer who happened to pull over another driver near that spot. They estimated he had been hanging upside down in his car for at least 8 hours. Enough time for the alcohol to leave his system. When I got to the hospital, he was in surgery. The neurosurgeon told me we'd have to wait and see whether he'd live. The man had no bedside manner, never considering his dispassionate words might cause me pain. I’m not entirely sure that they did; I was torn. There was a part of me that thought, finally, I'll be free of him. To be honest, I had been close to leaving him anyway. Another part of me thought, but my one year old daughter needs a father. I decided to wait and see. If he died, I would be saved the effort of going through a divorce. If he lived, I'd give him another chance. He lived. I lost track of the number of times I wondered why God hadn't just taken him, why He hadn't saved me from additional misery. I suppose He wanted me to save myself. My husband wasn't the same man. After being in a coma, there was a certain innocence about him that was endearing and brought out the protector in me. I would care for him, nurse him back to health. But he didn't handle frustration well and his rehabilitation was destined to be fraught with difficulties. Once again, I became the scapegoat. What's worse, he confabulated fantastical stories that I believed, until his therapist told me they were untrue and also told me that if he was hitting me (he was) I should leave him. One day, as I sat with my two year old on my lap as my husband grew increasingly agitated as he yelled at me, he unexpectedly kicked me as hard as he could across my shins. This time, my shock only lasted a few seconds. Suddenly, I saw everything with absolute clarity, and the lessons I had learned in college came flooding back to me. The cycle of abuse: When a little girl sees her mother being abused, she will grow up to be an abused woman. Would I ever allow anyone to harm my daughter? Absolutely not! So why would I allow anyone to hurt me, and in so doing, teach her to expect the same? That was the last time my husband ever hit me. Afterward, I looked over the list of the signs of an abuser, and he fit every one of them. If I had remembered what I had learned, perhaps it would have saved me. Perhaps not. The one thing I have learned in life, repeatedly, is that judgment of others leads to lessons for me. Whenever I have looked at someone else, judged their actions, and thought, I’ll never do that, I have been tested in ways I had not, but probably should have expected. It’s so easy, especially when we are young, to make snap judgments about others and have absolute certainty that we would never make such mistakes. I don’t advise that. Why does a woman stay with an abuser? The reasons are many, but for me they were partly disbelief, doubt, fear, hope, and inertia. I was willing to sacrifice my own happiness for someone else’s. I thank God for my daughter. If not for her, and my overwhelming and all-consuming love for her, I might still be there, forgetting who I was bit by bit as all hope and all willingness to fight was drained from me. For her, I was willing to fight, and I was willing to not only hope for something better, but also to refuse to accept anything less. Because of her, I found myself again, but it was a better me — a me who does not rush to judgment, a me who is more compassionate toward others, and a me who values her own happiness as much as anyone else’s.
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Elizabeth J. Connor
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