There is not a day that goes by without me thinking of my husband.  He wakes me up each night or early morning.  It is a toss up which of two aches wakes me first, the sharp pain in rolling over on the shoulder he damaged, or the deep sorrow at losing him every single night and day. He decimated my life. My dreams. All of my young life I dreamed of being a wife and mother--I always knew I would be one of the very best at both. And I was. I still am.

I gave everything I was to be there for him, to even anticipate any possible want or need he had, and he did not lack for much. But it was never enough. Not enough to keep him from pouring another drink, and another... or lighting up his bong.  Or bolting for no good reason out the door, after instigating yet another argument or tense situation. He'd try to start a fight, then get frustrated fast that I mostly ended up crying in confusion, instead of fighting back. Then he'd snarl at me that I was "pathetic," and "why would he want to stay here?!"

I'd actually go into a deeper depression then, as he slammed the door, lying that he'd be back in a couple of hours. I knew he wasn't coming back. I hadn't truly done anything wrong. I don't mean that I'm some sweet innocent or that I don't want to take responsibility. I mean I TRULY had NOT done ANYTHING wrong.

Sometimes when he was out of town on "business," he'd hold fake telephone calls with me, when his newer female interests showed up. He'd pretend to be answering a fake something I'd never even said. He'd react vehemently to, seriously, complete silence on my end. He'd go on about this fake argument for show with people in attendance to soak it all up: his bad wife, mean wife, "pushing his buttons...well, I'm not going to let you do that Julia!" Me, still not saying a word, but, "Why are you pretending we're fighting right now? Who's there? Why are you doing this?"

He hates me, right? That's the only thing that makes sense. Except that I haven't earned his hate. I exhausted myself trying to explain things better, do things better, give him his boys' days, cook, clean, mend, heal him, love him.  It was never good enough.

So what's a girl to do? Her husband screams obscenities at her, throws her against a wall twice over a bong around our baby, slugs her across her jaw when he finally comes home after a weekend away from his family when we planned a family weekend... Then wrenches her arm up and back to frisk her forcefully... Police reports...judges... Hospital bills and weeks off work without pay...

So what's a girl to do? To help herself and her child from their husband and father?

He told me we were a burden when I told him to choose between drugs/alcohol or his wife and child. He was cavalier over stair rail, gave us the "Peace out!" sign, and said, "Bye-bye!!"

My husband has no allegiance. No respect. No honor. And a huge incapacity to feel for anyone other than himself, his wants... At whatever moment they occur to him.  He cannot sustain the pimage he claims to be.

He doesn't pay child support. Once in  awhile he puts some cash into my account, but it hasn't happened in months. He doesn't even call to talk to our son.  There were sparse times he'd call for several days in a row. Just like when he'd ask me out somewhere special, have me spend the night, tell me how amazing and wonderful and perfect it could be again, then disappear for days on end again.  He hasn't spoken to our son over the phone in months. Maybe half a year now. I try to reinforce to our child that Scott not calling or showing up has NOTHING to do with our son, and everything to do with Scott. Scott is a bad dad. He is what people call a "dead-beat-dad."

My husband, our son's father, is 35 years old, handsome, intelligent, charming, talented and unable to hold a decent, real job for more than several months.  He'll get the job! But he'll also lose it and it does not garner him the position or lauding he expects in his original grandiose projections. He is also what people call a "Disney-Daddy," a term I was instructed means a father who is good-time playmate, all fun and laughs in public, but not the same man at all when the curtain closes and the lights go down. He is also what the psychological community call a "sociopath" (more recently referred to as an "anti-social personality disorder").

Today my husband said he would sign away all father's rights to our only son, so that he could avoid paying any past due, current, or continued child support. My husband, our child's father would rather write off our son in avoidance of doing the right thing: taking care of our son.

I am sick to my stomach. It makes me sick to my stomach and sick to my heart.  I am falling apart on this one.  That the man I chose to marry, the man with whom I conceived and gave birth to our child with...wants nothing to do with me or his only son.

There are so many things wrong with the world.  But there is nothing our beautiful child ever did to deserve his father's neglect, harm, and then abandonment. 

Our son is an incredible boy.  Not just okay. Not pretty good. But incredible.  He is a dear, giving, thoughtful, funny, hard-working, pensive, kind, intelligent, sensitive (and a bonus only to everything else, handsome) child.  There is nothing in him to cause anyone to run away, or leave him behind. Let alone his own father.

I was an incredible wife. Not just decent, not just pretty good...But incredible. you have no idea the wonderful, patient, kind, loving things I did and gave to that man. I am also dear, giving, thoughtful, sometimes amusing, intelligent, hard-working, pensive, sensitive (and sometimes, attractive) woman and wife. I was insightful and creative in trying to understand the unspoken form my husband, to assuage any hurts whether real or his imagination.  It got to the point that I would have to guess what my husband wanted, not just to make him happy as it started out, but to try to keep him from screaming and cursing at me, then our child. Or throwing things at us. Or shoving me into a wall for his bong.

Or dropping our months old infant child head first to the hard wood floor just to watch the terror as I lunged to save him. 

What kind of man does that? What kind of human being deliberately seeks to harm, maim, or destroy other human beings. Whether a grown woman who is physically weaker than a grown man, or an infant who cannot even hold his head up yet against a father who throws him to the floor...

What kind of monster did I fall for? And how will God help me to make this all right? How will my God who seems to be doling out the favors for this monster, give me a kind glance. A kindness. Betterment of my own in the face of my abandoning husband's professed good fortune...?

Goo, do you hear me? Have I done something that you do not love me God? Because my son and I were abused then abandoned, and the man who did this to your precious innocent creations is out destroying any and all that was left of us, while praising Your name for all of the good this has all evinced for him.  He is being rewarded and living life with no commitments, no shame, while his destruction has me at the edge of poverty, with a wonderful child, who is orphaned by his father, while I struggle with the aftermath of Scott's many misdeeds and his annihilation of our marriage and family. How have you turned away from me, dear God? I love You. I love him, too.  But I love our innocent son, and I have to love my self.  Because no one else seems to love me.  I wonder if you do Father. The way it's all turned out. So many years on my knees, pouring out my heart and soul to you God.  SO many years begging Scott to love his own wife, then begging You, Father, to love me too.

Everett and I deserve love, God. Please give this back to us. We deserve truth, openess, love, honor.  Please bring a man of goodness, truth, and  honor into our lives. I deserve a good husband. Everett deserves a good father.

Stand for Something

DEC 2012

     One of my friends just ran into my estranged husband in a store. She couldn't find anything, as this was her first time in his store, was about to give up and leave, when he suddenly "came to her aid, and was just so helpful!" They spent a half hour discussing food, and then--after all the horrible things she knows he has done to hurt me and our son--she exchanged emails with him! and sent him some recipes and documentaries on juicing! WTF--rather, WHAT THE FUCK!!! Are we on the Martha Stewart "Battered Wives" for dinner special? She can't get a recipe to me I've asked for months, but she can hook up my battering husband with volumes of information in the span of a couple hours.

     My estranged "husband" has worked wonders at invading my personal life and making me incredibly unsettled at the least. After we'd joined a gym, he'd purposely go without me, deliberately, at times I couldn't go due to work. Not once as I continued to ask did he wait for me. He'd go out drinking when I got home.  So I found another gym that had both earlier and later hours, and a 2 hour child center included, so that I could go and have our son watched (which he would not do). He was angrier than anyone should be, and then he joined it right after me while still paying monthly dues for the other. When I joined another gym in particular for a group of girls I wanted to befriend,  he made his presence known there as well. He then started going to the masseuse I use to work on my DV damaged shoulder. Then he set up his mom-- who is nothing less than hateful toward me-- as he's fed her lies for years about our "situation"-- with the same masseuse at my small, little, low population gym. I had a more distant grocery I'd been going to, a bit of a treck away form our home, where I would be certain not to run into him. But lough and behold, he went and got a job there!

     I warned my friend that my husband was up to no good, that he was intentionally seeking her out due to knowing I confided in her. He charmed the hell out of her, and next thing you know, they've exchanged emails, and recipes.

     I quickly shared with her my disdain for this confusing occurrence. I said I did not understand how it got that far, and that I found it hurtful and upsetting.  She was defensive, started back-paddling that she was so incredibly tired when he caught her off guard. Said she never intended me any harm. I don't think she intended me harm, but it was harmful. I have worked long and hard trying to rebuild my and our son's life with only those who are healthy and supportive of us both.  I know my husband too well, and that this was just the beginning of him screwing with my life again through my friends. And it's working. She swore she wasn't swindled by his charm, that I should give her more credit, that she knows who he is.

     The next week, my son's teacher and her husband were hi-jacked by my ex in the same grocery store. Though her husband had made a practice of just walking away when he saw my husband, my son's teacher took the opportunity to confront him about innuendos he'd made regarding her & her husband both after I'd allowed him to come to our child's birthday (big mistake). He denied everything, apologized for nothing. She said he kept on and even followed them out to their car, giving her husband his card with his personal cell number on it "to talk later."

     This morning, I awoke to various bizarre texts from my ex, having swapped himself into the role of a victim, and me into the role of the abuser!!! He accused me of tearing him down, and expressed huge gratitude that he knew the great guy he was before we met, and had managed to find that great guy again, now that he'd essentially escaped my "web." He also wrote a sickening poem full of psychological breaks in thought and reasoning, accusations of the wife he abused being the reason for any and all problems, and on and on. Note that he was a heap of alcoholic, daily-drug-using-mess when I met him, that I worked hard to get him away from all of that--and that, due to his refusal to do so, things escalated into him attacking me, and our child, as The Threat to his continued drug and alcohol use.

    He then wrote again saying that he's ready to and wants to gather the teacher, her husband, my friend, her husband, along with his [actively alcoholic] mother, his dad [who looked the other way as dad's best friend sexually molested Scott], and his sister [who threatened to take custody of our son when I called the police on Scott the 1st time he threw me against a wall], to explain how apparently my mom and I are liars, and he's just this great guy & the victim in all our made up stories about him. This, in complete oblivion to the many police reports, arrest records, and judges' orders supporting everything I've said as happened so far.

     I alerted my son's teacher and my friend of his plan for this meeting, his plan to get them all aside to tell them his innocent "side of the story," meaning, his lie that my mom and I made it all up. I cannot comprehend the energy it takes to continue not only his utter disregard for the truth, but his efforts at altering reality for others to support his continued lies!! I cannot imagine...  What kind of person keeps battering away both on the front line and behind the scenes to completely destroy the mother of his child and all of her support systems...? What kind of person can do that?

    A sociopath. There is nothing he says or swears that he hasn't ad infinitum before. In May, I gave him another chance to show me the imaginary changes again. What he repeatedly showed me was that he still drinks, gets drunk, drives that way, and doesn't see it as a problem, still lies, and still holds the same perpetuating abusive viewpoints on his violence toward me and our son.  He showed me only that he was not changed inside. I tried my life to help him get well, not tear him down, to the neglect of my own health and life, to help him get better and away from all that would tear him down... I loved him...I love him... But he is sorely delusional about who did what. Emails, texts, voice-mails galore validate the truth he refuses to talk about or "see." He was downright evil to me and our son. He said to kill our baby girl growing inside of me.

     And he is still twisting facts to tear ME down...

     It is me who had to stand up to his continued lies, not the other way around.  

     I told him then and there, that if he doesn't believe in Hell, then he won't ever have to fix this while he lives. But as it stands, he will be welcomed there first. He is a criminal. And the master of his own deceit.  I have said before in response to his cruelties, "May God grant you as you have granted me and our son, except tenfold..."

     God and His Angels help me continue to keep my self and son safe from his words and acts against me.
Please, God, keep us safe from him.

All Better

     After the newly-married glow wore off--within the first week--I became about the business of saving my marriage.  Though interested in becoming "something" in a career, my most fervent goals were to have a happy family.  My husband had voiced the same strong inclination up to the night of our wedding, for all of the cameras, that "within the next couple of years, we'll have a couple little 'poopies' running around the house." We were on the same path. Thank God I'd found a man who expressed the same goals and timeline as me for our immediate future. He said numerous times that he was "going to take care of you, Baby.  You can stay home to raise our kids, and I'll take care of everything else."
     My husband was a dreamer, a boastful bright-shiny-future dreamer. Dreams can be incredible, they drive invention and so much positive change in the world. But my husband lacked application, discipline, fortitude, and a work ethic.  He lacked other ethics as well. Add to it a daily & nightly proclivity to marijuana, and a big gulp sized nightly "one-for-the-road" Crown n Coke, or Vodka 'n Sprite... well, it was not the kind of fuel needed to propel him into success in any employment.
     I'm pretty sure he got fired, though he came home drunk announcing he'd finally quit his abhorrent job, that he'd got tired of being pushed around and told what he could do! (when he was the only one in the office and called all of the shots, except for a few spare visits from one of the two owners of the company). He siphoned money for himself through the company's "referral" program. He got chummy quick with other like-minded opportunists, offered to continually split the cash pay-out between them & him if they would continually refer their own potential loan customers to him instead of the their own company.  He earned some thousands this way, under the table. I think the owners figured it own. I think one of the owners showed up, caught him off-guard on it, and perhaps he quit before they could actually fire him in the same sentence.
     He funneled his grandma's money, his mom's money, then my money into re-labeled pyramid schemes.  All in the name of professing he was a self-employed entrepreneur.  He'd scream at me if I questioned his financial "investments in our future." The pyramid schemes, now called a "down-line" of gophers with the same buy-ins upfront, were carried by the same daily fuel as before: pot, alcohol, bravado. I pregnant working three jobs at this point--within months of marriage--to keep the mortgage, keep the utilities on, and hold onto insurance for him and our upcoming baby. And he hated me for it.  He hated me for it. The more I worked, the more he said I was trying to "make him look like a piece of shit!"
     The more I desperately I tried to keep our marriage, house, and finances from going under, the more he hated me for not "believing" in him, that "any day now" he was going to make it big. From the couch with empty bottles of booze beside him. Any of my words of encouragement were all twisted into his daily madman's rant at me. He let me know I "wasn't successful at anything, so why would he ever listen to a word I said to him about business-- or life!"
     Every vile thing he threw at me, I'd try to counteract by showing him how dedicated I was, how helpful I could be, getting him presents, cards, showering him with my embedded love. I would love that man well again, and he'd come out of the other side realizing how he'd treated me had been so wrong and discover heartfelt understanding of my endless devotion to him and our vows, for better, for worse.
     There were sparse moments he'd decide he loved me again--one of the most notable was the night before he thought he was going to jail for getting caught stealing $15,000 from a new set of employers. They were onto him having written an "erroneous loan" for a fake car title. They made him work it off over a period of years, in lieu of jail-time. But the money had been stolen and spent in a period of the few months I'd had a restraining order against him. I never knew where that money went. He didn't pay the house note, his car note--both got taken over by banks. He convinced me that was all in the past, and to come back to him-- to sign a house rental lease with him. The day I moved back in with our son, the house reeked of marijuana.
     I never saved the house, the car. I never saved our marriage. I never saved him. There was never a light-bulb epiphany from him as to all of meaningful efforts, any remorse, any re-commitment... Just his spite. Resentment. He would literally tell me that if he were "fucked up and in rehab, how much more fucked up and sick was I for being with him!" He meant that. There was always some bizarre comparison he had going, a competition I never signed up for with him--but his subconscious kept score.  He had to be doing better than someone--and I was the closest someone.  So he put me down. Over and over.
     Abusers are never grateful you tried to the point it was killing you, because if you're dying, they're doing better than you. If you are the only thing they can control, then so be it. My husband hurt me on purpose.  He hurt me and our child on purpose. In jealousy, anger, spite, rage... because that meant he was in control of something.
    And as little as I meant to him, being better than me was enough. 
    

Breathe Again

     Sometimes it feels like I am suffocating.  Literally like I am being crushed, my lungs, heart, my windpipe, my head.  When I think of him, whether us being together or us not being together... either way, I feel like I am having a panic attack, like way too much hinges on the next few seconds going into minutes going into hours and days.
     How could I be intimate with him again? He hurt me! He wrenched my arm and shoulder up and nearly out of the socket, causing a rotator and labrum tear that has caused me to rock on the floor back and forth in pain for many, many months. He is without any true apology, and still yet could nearly care less.  I had to have it surgically repaired. I could not move it for a month post-op. And now I still cannot move my arm in needed directions.
     And yet, he charms me into going back to his house, the scene of the injury, back into his bed, the scene of more injuries, and letting him back in to my heart, the scene of utter slaughter more often than not.
     I do not want to admit this, that he could make me believe again, that I could have sex with my arm in a sling with the man who put my arm in the sling. It hurt to move it, or if it got moved. And even so...there I was again.  I don't want to admit it, it seems so sick. But that's what we are, right? That's the crazy sick part of being in domestic violence. Going back. And going back. And going back.
     I am talking about this here because maybe we can all figure this out together.  Maybe we can figure out why, after so much verbal, emotional, and physical trauma, we go back... It's not like all the danger sign have been removed.  it's rather that what we want to believe is so much more powerful than the truth.
     I think I go back because I want to finally get to that happy ending. You know the place where you return to the guy who has now had time to contemplate his losing the best thing that ever happened to him, and now, finally, now is so sorry and so very much wanting to be the man you thought he was when you got married... or something close.
     Do you know that each time he hurts me it is worse. Then each time I go back, he is less sorry, not more, and he believes that somehow I must make this up to him: my leaving--and it better be good, because, I really don't deserve that shot at possible happiness that he might offer though, honestly, never fulfill.  Because, who are we kidding? He never thought enough of you, of me, in the first place, to treat you like most real men should treat their wife, or their children.
     I should never have had to stand there in front of the man I love, and had to ask him to be sorry that he threatened me. That he shoved me. That he deliberately dropped our baby. That he tore my shoulder in front of our son...
     I used to trust him. Most nearly completely.  But then he lied to me. Then lied some more. And more. Then yelled at me for questioning his transparent lies. Then threw things at me and our baby. More lies. More yelling. More lies. Lies. Yelling. He'd hide things that he should never have kept. Why did he keep receipts of partying? Why did he keep video of the girl he was having sex with in our bedroom, chasing around our kitchen?  When I discovered them, he'd lie and yell some more. When I found condoms, then later more condoms, then another time condom wrapper, then more condoms, then new house, new condoms, then again. WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE MATTER WITH ME!!!???  How little value did I have that he would bring others into our home, then abuse me over finding evidence that he did so? It made me sick, yet I'd so desperately want to believe it were not true.
     What kind of monster sets up that kind of scenario for a wife he SAYS he's trying to work out his marriage with, who he swears to he's a changed man, and swears to that SHE is the one who has not and  will not change. What kind of monster sets up that scenario, packed full of lies, then tells his wife she may "look wherever you like, I have nothing to hide" whereupon she does "look" with him present, and he DOES have something to hide, and in fact HURTS HIS WIFE FOR FEAR SHE HAS DISCOVERED IT.
     WHO does that?
    My husband was labeled a sociopath by our child's counselor just prior to the second time I moved out.  It stands to reason. Notwithstanding the alcohol to lower his inhibitions, my husband seeks me and our son out when it suits his purposes, then casts me or us off with magnified irritation just days later when he wishes to be single again, to go out partying, drinking, using.
     My part is much like an addict too, isn't it? Why else would I go back there when he has only been bad, chaotic, threatening, depressing, troublesome, cruel, painful...  Why else would I be there asking him to hook my bra because I can't use the arm he hurt to hook it myself? That's fucked up.
     So, I have been steering clear of it, of the dangerous irony in getting close to him again.  Sometimes, when my shoulder hurts too terribly, I will not go near him in the house, just watch cautiously from the staircase.  Some days I would kiss him hello, then the next days, hurting, somber, careful, on alert for something not quite right, I would move about him with great trepidation.
     It hurts so bad when he is not with me, not just in person, but with me, part of my life, together again?  But it hurts to be that too. Somebody please fix the circuitry in my head that makes me think it might all work out ok. I believed that since this was the worst he'd obviously hurt me, it would be the worst he'd obviously feel about such a thing, and certainly be the horrible catalyst in final change for good.  But abusive people--people who choose to be abusive to their wife or child while choosing not to hurt others and not to act out violently in front of others, are not menders. I keep asking when he's finally going to get the picture, when I need to ask when I'm going to get it. God, please, rewire my circuitry. Fix me. I have trouble breathing in all of this. He knocked the breath out of my hopes and dreams. My beliefs. Please, God, help me breathe again. Just breathe again.

The Fatal Thing...

MAY 2012-
The fatal thing is...What? Even if we could isolate it, it doesn't seem to be extractable to allow the victim to think rationally when it comes to their abuser. I still believe I love my husband. My husband has abused me, so badly emotionally, and into physical abuse.  His careless, often damaging, choices are fueled by his sense of entitlement to do whatever he wants, no matter the harm, no matter the circumstances. His immediate reward is whatever self-satisfaction strikes him in the moment: the lull of liquor, the high of a drug, sexual use and climax... His greatest annoyance is to see someone who is supposed to be one of his cheer-leaders in life, cry when she's been hit by his ball, perhaps deliberately, or see that he's working other cheer-leaders at the same time, and question his game-plan.  He's the hero, and I am but a sub-character, easily replaceable, not very worth while except in what I can do for him, which is usually forgotten by the next morning. No matter the harm or cost to her or her child, even his own (who is also supposed to also be a cheer-leader as words are learned and spoken)...
     A pastor at one of the largest churches in the states said in warning of marriage, that if your future spouse says you are the reason he's stopped drinking/using/gambling/cheating, you will eventually be the reason he goes back to drinking/using/gambling/cheating. An innocent soon-to-be-newlywed might wonder "How could that be?" but many marrieds will say it's an amazing and incredulous reality. I've experienced just that. It's just a matter of time.
     In reality, if the single man you are dating has a drinking problem, when you marry him, he will only be a married man with a drinking problem. If the woman you are dating has a gambling problem, when you marry her, she will only be a woman with your last name with a gambling problem. The problems do not change once you are married, they are just 2 single people's single person problems brought into a marriage.
     I married a single man with an anger, drinking, drug problem, with a propensity for flirting- though he "wouldn't do that once we're married," as if the marriage fairy sprinkles magic abuses-be-gone dust on us both with the wave of the "I do" wand. These abuse "issues" that he was changing because he loved me so, only worsened once he had me, and became truly threatening once I was pregnant with his child.    
     So the fatal move is...going back to  the game, having to pay for entrance, having to be at the top of the cheerleader pyramid and okay with him selecting or not selecting you this time.  The fatal thing is to go back to the game, to face the music he plays for you... Sometimes it sounds like a death knoll.

My "Place" in his Heart

It has been months since I last wrote anything.  I have made it 8 months without seeing my husband, the man who treated me like trash.  There have been rare phone conversations, but not much communication or change.  In the last 2 weeks, my husband sent me a few more links to u-tube love songs, videos, photos from a weekend retreat "thinking of me..." I blinked emotionally, started to let him back into my heart, hopeful, hopeful, hopeful for that Miracle I'd always kept tucked into my soul.  It was near instantaneous since, after all, I'd emphatically told him not to contact me personally again unless it were about my Miracle, or our son. He didn't contact me about our son. But he opened the floodgates to my hopes and dreams, since he was contacting ME personally with images and songs about loving me, about me being so beautiful to him...

I responded with return texts of questions and uncertainty.  He left me hanging the rest of the day, no answers at all. He called after I'd nearly fallen asleep; I was exhausted and asked if he would be available the next day when I was awake and alert.  He said yes, but then he was not available. Nor did he call me back. The day after, he said he'd "just now seen my 'missed call'." That was a lie. Still the lies. My heart sank, but I forged ahead about no more "could've been's" just a need for what CAN be now and in the future.

He said I need to be responsible for MY part in HIS VIOLENCE toward me. He told me how ridiculous I was for filing a restraining order,  that I was "punishing" him with a restraining order, and how I went over the line "making him leave HIS own house !!!"--not OUR house. Not sufficient injury in his mind to cause me to be afraid of him for me and our child. Plus, he reasons, I must deserved it, because he doesn't have "any problems with anyone else, just you, Julia."

Except it was not "just me." It was our infant son, then our toddler son, then our child... And I learn and believe more every day that  no one DESERVES to be abused, verbally, emotionally, daily, nightly, physically, spiritually--not even me.

He says like he always did before, that his life is great now, without me in it, so much happiness, so many good things happening, so many people touched by his good heart. He says like he always did before that he "was in a bad place"  when he would treat me poorly, but that he's not there anymore. He always excuses his violence on a "bad place," " a bad time," not that he is a bad person, not that he is very evil at times. He was being evil still, what he was trying to still put onto me.  My fault still that I MADE HIM act that way. I know that's not true anymore. 

He tells me, as always, how much he's changed, and, as always, how I won't get to experience that.  Because of ME. He's always holding that unobtainable prize in front of me: the happy, healthy marriage and family I'd prayed so fervently for, worked so hard to create and maintain. He bolsters this lie by saying his family and "everyone who knows him" knows how wonderful he is, and that the problem with us is ME.

Except it was not "just me." It was our infant son, then our toddler son, then our child...And I learn and believe more every day that no one DESERVES to be abused, verbally, emotionally, daily, nightly, physically, spiritually--not even me. 

I am having surgery to repair the damage he did to my shoulder and elbow, cartilage torn, nerves damaged. I will be off work more days, the majority without pay. I will not be able to use my dominant arm for 6 weeks. I've already missed many days due to duress, doctors' appts, police appts, domestic violence center appts, domestic violence counseling... And the physical pain has endured even with pain medications, nerve medications, muscle relaxants... I haven't been able to work out physically for all these months.  I've been so very depressed. I lost function in my arm, foot, and I lost the outlet for my frustrations at the same time because of the same loss of function.

And yet, I will still occasionally pick up that ringing phone, I will tell him how I am still in love with him, how I still hold on for my Miracle.  But it's just a call to remind me of my place. To remind me I should laud him like all others. To remind me of my place. My "place" in his life, my "place" in time, my "place" in causing the abuse. I've changed his title on my phone to "abusive sociopath," to remind me of my "place" in his heart.  I am no where.  I am nothing to be concerned about, no one to feel remorse to. 

Solomon says somewhere in the Bible that a "fool" is someone who knows the difference between right and wrong, but doesn't care. My husband doesn't care. Never has. God wants me to be safe from harm. God wants my son to be safe from harm. I must be mindful of the company I keep. I cannot keep company with my husband anymore. Not and live.

Tick Tock, Bomb or Clock.

January 2012-
    I haven't seen my husband in over 3 months now.  I miss him. Pause. Right? Sometimes the pain in my left shoulder into my back is so incredibly, indescribably awful that it is very difficult to manage.  I have spent cumulative hours with my back flat against the floor, no relief from the pain medication.  I've been getting migraines as well.  I cannot pick up my son, albeit, he's five now.  He cannot pull down on me as he hugs me.  It hurts my shoulder and back to turn a doorknob and pull open a door with my left hand.  The slightest pressure of handling a pen or pencil, stapler...I'm left-handed.  So much I took for granted, generic movements. Previously, I first put my right arm in my jacket, coat or sweater, then pulled the balance over with my left arm.  Now it's a mandatory reverse: gently maneuvering my left arm in first and reaching for the balance of the clothing with my right arm.
     Unbelievable, but true of the majority of abused spouses: I miss my husband. The man who did this damage to my body. The man who expresses no true regard for it, nor feels any sense of duty to amend the damages. In my case, this time, the injuries are much more significant and unrelenting, so it has an element of more frightening permanence. This time.
     Next time. This time. Next time. this time. Tick tock, like hours on a clock. The rhythm, what I am used to. The horrible build up from my husband from nothing at all really. The build-up I only manage to delay, not block or derail. He wants to explode at me. Then, once we had our son, he easily transfered the blow-up from me to our newborn, to me, to our toddler.  Really, it wasn't so much a back a forth between our child and me, it was more like we were a set to him--and he could be equally angry at us as one unit, so that if he started with me, but I went to work, he'd continue with our son, until I he came back home to me and our son. A set. I should've know when my husband started screaming at us collaboratively that there was no true root of blame in my particular words, lack of words, actions, or lack of actions--because our newborn inspired my husband's anger just as easily, just by being there.
     But I didn't quite catch on then. i was too mired in assuaging my husband's ill temper, or too busy trying to build up his ego, er-go self-esteem--because, if he could only see how I loved him, he could then love himself, and if he could love himself instead of hate himself (as the books I read told me), then he could love me too, and our child.  But the knowledge held in books is not always the knowledge held inside or outside one's self. My husband didn't buy any of this "crap" I was reading to help him, and to help us. he knew without a doubt it was most nearly all my fault.
     My husband would cite that no one else he knew had this "issue' with him; that he was not angry or mean or abusive to anyone else who knew him, thus, it must be me.
     But he was this way to others. Friends, random waitresses or waiters when he was drunk enough. He'd wake up in a sweat from a dream where he was literally kicking and starting to throw punches in his sleep, saying, "I want to killl him! I just want to beat the shit out of my dad!"  I thought it was all a part of my husband's upset that his dad had cheated on his mom, once more, this time divorcing her for the other woman.  I thought my husband was just that loving and honorable regarding his mom and fidelity in marriage, that he wanted to hit his dad for hurting her and their family like that. But he'd flirt just as carelessly with enough women in front of me, then yell how dare me! for quietly, sweetly, with more than a few "pleases" asking him to stop. 
     One evening his father told him to "Go ahead, hit me, Son. Hit me. I know you want to. I can take it. Hit me if you want to. Right now." He didn't hit his father. Even though he'd dreampt it numerous times, that he was "beating the shit out of my dad!", even though he was drunk at the time his dad challenged him to follow through in person. He didn't hit his dad.
     He hit me. Not that same day. But he hit me. He threw things at my head, at the baby in my arms, screamed over insignificant things, nothing to next-to-nothing. He hit me. Instead? As a cumulative effect?
     Tick, tock. This time. Next time. Tick, tock, like the hours of the clock. I still miss my husband. Like it was yesterday that he loved me, and years ago that he hurt me. Careful. Is that a clock or a ticking time bomb?