I’ve kept my silence, kept my worth, kept my mind together doing the only thing I know how to, being still, staying small, freezing because the abuser is still there, waiting, watching for your reaction, to see what you will do next.
Many people in my world think that this is going to blow over, that we will be back together again, that we can’t just throw the whole of our pasts away, can we?
YES.
Here’s the reasons why, the relationship I’ve been in has been a lie from the very start, the person I was with didn’t know who or what they were deep inside. I cannot change that fact. It happened at me, not to me, I didn’t know, I didn’t realise at the time of us coming together.
If what happened to him is what I think and feel happened to him then the blame lies elsewhere and there’s no hell worse enough to put the people in that did it to them.
But that does not help me.
What it does is give me reasons for the abuse, the words, the power games, the slow cruel destruction of my soul and self.
If the people seeing me now knew me before they’d be scratching their heads wondering just where the woman I used to be went.
Easy, she got her mouth shut for her, her mind closed off, her choices taken, her money stolen, her worth destroyed by acts and selfishness that was constant. The ever wanting needs of someone else who doesn’t understand the first thing about being human or having compassion for someone they ‘care for’.
There’s an envelope on the table in front of me and I know it’s not going to be thrown away because if the thing on the front of it. It reads ‘I Love and Care for you’, they don’t understand the depth of my care, of how much I gave every single day to them, how my presence with them calmed them down, gave them strength to try.
I can stand alone, I’ve done it before I can do it again, older, wiser, scarred but I’m not giving up on anything. But them? First time alone, first time out there in the world just them alone, responsible for themselves and the things they say and do.
I’m no longer their interpreter, their buffer to the world, the one who they can ask ‘what did they mean?‘ I gave everything I was, every day, even on days when the pain made my mind scream and my face tight and words waspish.
To be told that they were pulling away already when my diagnosis had been confirmed, that they had plans already made in their head to leave me. It hurts to know but then what can I expect from a black hole that only wants more?
There is nothing left of me, nothing left of the old me, she’s dead, gone, smashed to pieces and what is left is not the person you know. Not the smiling person you talked to, not the person who had time to share, the person here will not listen to wants, or selfishness.
Get it into your heads, there is nothing left to take, I am empty, the garden is trashed, the soul bereft of anything but open wounds and scars.
You see when I went into hospital I died there, the person I had been is dead, gone, lost, the hammer blows have taken their toll and the bits that are left are ‘me’.
Who I am now is going to take time to understand, I’ve lost a home, a thirty year relationship (which had been a con all along), all the work I’d put into a business dream of someone else lost and forgotten. No redundancy payment here, oh no, just a quiet shutting of doors and leaving me out of it all.
My life is now my own, is it new or am I repeating patterns? To be honest I’m not sure, right now I’m just trying to come to terms with it all.
Psychologically I’m fucked, there’s so many trigger words and actions that make me ‘react’ in the old ‘trained’ way I’m not sure if it’s ever been ‘me’ or the training I’ve undergone?
I’m hoping to get somewhere sorted to live this week, to find a place I can make my own and settle into, I know it won’t be easy but I have a month to clear out the old place and find storage to put my belongings in. I hope to do this quickly and calmly but I’m running on empty mentally to be brutally honest with you.
I’m a walking wound right now, I don’t need trite words or saying’s, I don’t want your well meaning advice telling me how ‘as a couple we should get past this if we show a little more love‘.
Trust me there is no more love to fucking give, it’s gone, empty, lost, when the person you cared for, gave up things for, just lies about you to everyone who’ll listen, who snaps out the vilest things they can to hurt you, to demean you in the eyes of others. And when you don’t retaliate, don’t rise to the bait, they do it again, worse, to see how much it’ll take to get you to shout at them. Because they NEED you to so they can point and say ‘look their the abusive one, not me!’
I have been destroyed, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, yes my body has let me down time and time again but that was not my choice either, bad genetics and predisposition. Yet even this was my fault, I wasn’t ‘good enough‘, then to be told that there are others outside of our relationship telling them to ‘screw me to the floor’ further, as if driving me to near suicide isn’t enough.
Yeah you read it right, before I went into hospital I had it planned, even how to distract people, how to get them to go to the wrong place to search for me. I had it down, all of it, it wasn’t the illnesses, it wasn’t the cancer, or the liver failure, it was him.
Being kept there, being ignored, being ‘cared for‘ when it was nothing of the sort, I wanted to die rather than go back there, rather than be with him again. To be touched and controlled in every single way possible, told what to do and when, how to eat and what I could eat. Who saw me and who didn’t, controlling my every move, the every part of me he could reach and starve to death.
Don’t tell me you saw what we ‘were‘, what you saw was what you wanted to ‘see‘, others saw the decline in me, planned to help me but fate did it instead. Even then he wanted to control who saw me, who reached me, who heard my truth and even his own lack of effort. You see to him, I died in there, I did, I died there, the woman he knew died in that hospital bed.
This one, no one really knows, not even me yet. You want to know something, fucking ask me, to my FACE! Otherwise keep your fucking distance, if I come to you be aware that the person looking at you might wear my skin but have a look in my eyes. A real good look and you’ll see the differences, this one, me now has no patience, no second chances, you hurt me, I’ll hurt you back just as hard.
I’ll tell you the truth, I always have, I’m not the one who told everyone I didn’t want to see them.
If it doesn’t come from my lips, don’t believe it.
If you don’t want to know, don’t ask!
ghosthare22 