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.