Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

Self

Do you live your life in the past, present or future? Is that right for you?

On Being a Smart, Independent Emotionally-Abused Woman

But is he mean to you? my friend asks when I tell her that I am changing my last name back to my maiden name after my divorce.

What do you mean? I ask back, not wanting to think that she may be implying that if he hasn’t hit me, then he hasn’t been mean to me.

You know, hit you, she answers.

Is that it? Unless I’ve been physically beaten—smashed against the wall with the requisite concussion, broken bones and black eyes—he has been nice to me? Is the abuse I have endured as naught because only my eyes are red, not my skin? Two years of constant insults and curses, and twenty years of belittling comments and controlling behaviors are okay if I haven’t been physically broken? It doesn’t make sense. Do people really believe sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? Have they never been upset by criticism? Have they never felt the pain of rejection? Have they never felt a sting caused by a word? Have they never felt a hurt-filled word reverberate through their mind a minute after it was uttered, an hour after it was uttered, a week after it was uttered—forever?

I look at her and respond (truthfully), He kicked a bag at my head once and I called the police. He didn’t try again.

She looks satisfied, as if now there is justification for my disaffection, for my wanting to distance myself from him and his name. And I had played right into those expectations, that to be abused can only mean to be physically tormented. My reply disappointed me; once again I didn’t stand up for myself, I didn’t say what I needed to say. Yes, he’s been mean, I should have said, he calls me bitch and liar and leech every chance he gets. Yes, he is mean. He insults my job, my interests, my ideas, my vocabulary, my family, my friends, my looks, my name, my breathing, my smell—my everything. Yes, he’s mean. And I have had no protection from him because he has not hit me, or threatened to kill me or physically harm me. And that must stop. For if I let her misperception continue, what chance is there to change that misperception?

Yes, verbal abuse is abuse. It hurts and humiliates. What more needs to happen to a woman in order to be protected against a man? Why do only welts count? A man should not be free to use his wife as his verbal punching bag.

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It’s devastating when the person who is supposed to encourage, support and protect you becomes the person you need to be protected from.  Now I pay a lawyer $350 (it used to be $500) an hour to defend me against and extricate myself from the man I unhesitatingly married almost twenty-three years ago. How does love morph into hate? How does the man who tells you you’re beautiful become the man who calls you ugly—inside and out? How does the woman who hangs onto her husband’s every word as if it were the truth from Mount Sinai come to cover her ears and scream STOP over and over again so she won’t have to hear him berate her? How did I come to hate the man I once loved?

I can blame him. I can say he’s selfish and a narcissist. I can say he never really loved me, it was all about him, always, and I naively believed that he cared about me. But what does that say about me? How did I end up with such an evil man? I can analyze and hypothesize about his faults and faultiness, but, ultimately, to make my life better, to make it one that improves upon this dismal present, one that I will be content within—no, happy within—I need to understand where I went wrong, or at least to understand where my intentions were missed, why my actions came up lacking. Much that went wrong can be blamed on him. So what? Does it really matter that he is a deeply-flawed person. The right question seems to be: am I? Am I flawed for having fallen in love with him? for having stayed with him? for having believed in him for so long (even more than myself)?

*  *   *

Since I have always thought that whatever I live through, someone else has/is/will do so as well, this book--broken up into excerpts for the blog--is meant to bring comfort to other women (and men) who have or will, unfortunately, at some point, live in this debilitating atmosphere, and to help them understand the dynamics of that relationship. And to know, that they are not alone, that there is a community of caring—even if never met or formally established—of women who empathize with them, and who send out thoughts of compassion and care, even if through the ether, and even if out of their own pain and incomprehension and self-doubt. These excerpts are also a heartfelt rending of my soul so that friends and family can understand what I—we—have lived through.

What would you like people to do for you now and in the future? This is your chance to begin visualizing and thinking about how you want things to be different—better. By thinking of new paths—and not just ruts—you can change your course, even if at first it is only in how you feel, for that, indeed, is the truest change.

Now that George Clooney and his girlfriend have gone separate ways, it seems to me that it would be easier to arrange a date with him (for myself, of course) than with a county judge. I doubt George would stand me up as much as the judges have been doing over the past SEVEN months.

November, 30, 2007: Filed a “Motion to Enforce Property and Support Settlement Agreement” because mr. ex had been continually harassing me, not paying his share of the bills, not buying food for his daughters, and obstructing the sale of the home.

February 8, 2008: Court date assigned to hear the motion. On the day before the hearing, Mr. Lawyer said that I, surprise surprise, got a judge who he considers inconsistent and feared that he wouldn’t see the logic of my case, since this judge's logic wasn’t observed by many. Okay. If, from your twenty years of experience, you offer me that advice, I’ll go with it. He stated, ever so confidently, we’ll get another date in a week or so. His years of experience didn’t enable him to foresee that he has a special client on his hands for whom that cancellation would cause events—dates—to spiral months into the future without having a hearing.

February 22: There I am, in the courtroom of the judge who had told my lawyer that he wants to hear the case and that it can be done in a half-hour. But no, I guess he was in a special mood that day, because the judge decided that, oh no, this case is too involved for a mere thirty minutes, we need the family court special: three hours devoted to the trials and tribulations of our situation. How special I felt. Did I say that mr. ex called Mr. Lawyer a liar in court? With his thirty seconds to stand up and say something he managed to sully the dignity of the place, and really piss off my lawyer. Lovely,all lovely. Whose divorce is this: mine, or my lawyer and mr. ex’s?

New papers had to be filed, because, well, that’s the way things go.

April 17: Lovely, lovely April day to see the judge. The date was written on pieces of paper; days off of work were taken; a suitable outfit was picked out; three sets of copies of months of supermarket receipts were made to prove that, indeed, I am buying food for my daughters; three copies of the bills I had paid with nary a 50% from him were made to prove that, yes, I am an upstanding woman of the world BUT some careless clerk or clumsy judge forgot to write my name on the big fancy Docket Diary and so there was no courtroom, no judge--no one to hear my case even in a hallway. There was nothing for me to do but go back to the bathroom and throw up in aggravation and angst.

Emotion

Does your life bring you happiness and hope?

I honestly can’t think of a thing that I want. Things have never done it for me. Twice I had the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood, and both times I was miserable. I never wanted the bag, the shoes, the dress, the jewels, the vacation, the car, the—I can’t think of anything else that I was supposed to have craved. There is no thing that will bring me to life as I think it should be lived and experienced. But still I want, I want, I want. I ache with want.

• I want to say lovely when someone asks me how I am.
• I want to smile slyly when people ask me how my weekend was.
• I want to sparkle when I think of tomorrow, and today, and yesterday.
• I want to contemplate the joys I have shared.
• I want to cause a butterfly to flutter in someone’s stomach.
• I want to wish people well, not because I hope that at least someone else is happy, but because I want them, too, to feel happy, as I feel happy.
I want to not have thoughts that I regret.

Feel beautiful in someone’s presence.

Feel fat and ugly and unconfident and lacking in grace and intelligence in that same person’s presence.

In the “Shoop Shoop Song,” Cher harmonizes that you can tell if a man loves you by his kiss:

If you want to know if he loves you so
It's in his kiss
(That's where it is oh yeah)

A man’s hand on the small of a woman’s back as he and his love walk side by side down a street or as they stand beside each other indicates that he wants to be in her presence, that he respects her, that is enchanted by her, that he loves her—for who she is. There is no need to add his presence (or even his kiss) to her, she is a standalone goddess, and this is how he shows his reverence. You don’t change a work of art to appreciate it, it’s very existence is what takes your breath away; and, to me, that is what that gentle gesture indicates.

If a man casually cradles his palm into the small of your back, wow, tingle time. It’s about care and protection. He’s protecting you without tackling you. He’s touching you just enough for you to know that he is there without overpowering you with his presence. And there is certainly none of that arm around your shoulder so that you fit into his armpit thing.

Not only is it absolutely sensual in a non rip-my-clothes-off way, but it is like the perfect perfume, gently easing into your senses without your being aware of it, and you are enhanced by it without even realizing it.

It’s a morning whisper of affection in public. Hey, babe, I’m here beside you, quietly before the day begins. Getting centered in my day by being with you. And how are you?

Can anything beat that?

When I see a man beside a woman with his hand there, at the small of her back, I think I see the embodiment of love, the kind that is compassionate and caring. The kind that I want.

Past

What do you feel when you think of your mother or father when you were a child?

Weekends

Rocking gently on the cold bathroom floor, I hugged my legs tightly, straining to hold myself small and tight, as if clasping my arms could prevent the explosion (or implosion, since I was the only one in danger) within from reaching the surface. In the small, darkened room, leaning against the locked door, I continued to hold onto myself until I finally heard him walk past, and then heard the door to the mudroom open and shut, and then the door to the garage open and shut, and then the garage door open and then shut, indicating that my husband had finally left the house. Had finally left me. At least until he inevitably returned later, in a good mood, as if he had not just made me wish I had never met him.

Leave, leave, leave, leave, leave, I screamed to myself in yet another desperate attempt at not losing self-control. Please, please, please, please, please, I added instinctively as if my niceties would help me now to get what I wanted from him. As if any of my goodness had had an impact on him. As if my pleas for help had ever been heard by anyone, divine or otherwise.

As I continued to rock myself in the dark bathroom, as isolated as I had ever been in the twenty years of my marriage, I felt a curious sensation of victory. After all, he had left and I had stayed. Up until now, it was always the opposite: I was always running to my car in a desperate bid to escape the house, escape his insults, escape his accusations, escape him. But now, finally, I had held my ground (albeit the cold tiles of the bathroom floor), but I had not caved in—running away, conceding the fight, conceding that I was weaker, conceding that he had won, yet again. I had not groveled my way out of the house, I had not enabled him to continue spewing insults, I had spurned the attack.

Not that I wouldn’t still have to endure countless verbal assaults from him before we would finally divorce, but I had ultimately swerved past his control, beyond his reach, away from the sway his words and commands usually had over me. 

In spite of my “victory,” I walked resignedly out of my bathroom tomb and went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for our daughters, as usual. It was only 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning. The beginning of another wearying weekend.

I turn the music up loud so that I can’t hear the words and story in my head. Sometimes it is better to tune out and focus on something else, or not to focus on anything at all.