Spective's Story

Tomorrow will be two years exactly since I left.

I've tried writing my story a number of times. I think where I've ran against the wall is that I've tried to write a linear, literal "story". Starting at A and proceeding forward from that point. But that is not how it feels inside and that is not how it comes bubbling up to the surface here and there and all over the place.

I am following the steps. So I am at Step 2. I previously tried to skip some steps, egotistically thinking, hmmm I'm probably at Step 5 already, when I first found this site.

Two years.

I thought I'd be SO over this by now.

Yet I spent the past week a tangled mass of emotion and confusion and upheaval. A miserable, obsessed wreck. For the 5th time in the past 2 years, we've been in court recently - we have a child together. And each time I am in proximity, physically, to him in court, I find myself confused and in pain. My counsellor has even pointed this out to me... "Hmmm spective, didn't this happen last time you were in court, and the time before?". Yes, why yes indeed it did.

I feel Empathy for him. I imagine that he feels the same pain and betrayal and hurt and disappointment and loss and grief and disgust, that I feel. I "know" that he doesn't .. but my brain keeps taking me there. Or my heart. I can't even tell which is telling me what.

I've created this story around him - to distract myself from my own out-of-control feeling life? I don't know. But when I saw him, I thought, oh he's so wounded and alone and I feel the pain I see written on his face. But it's not his pain I see. It's mine. I see my pain reflected everywhere, because I haven't let it go yet.

People often asked me "Did he hit you? Did he hit your kid?". And I say to them, no. He didn't have to.

I was beaten into submission through sheer terrorism. I was terrorized. I wasn't physically harmed and I believed to the core of my being that I must do everything possible and even everything impossible, to keep him happy enough that he wouldn't inflict upon me the horrors he loved telling me he was capable of. Not to me of course, no, I was different. We were special.

I wonder if he laughed about it. How easy I was to control. Other people in his life he had to physically harm to control. With me, when I began questioning my life and speaking up in small ways, he would threaten to hit me. Not verbally of course. That would've been far to vulgar and then he wouldn't be able to say how he never, ever hit a woman. Gestures were enough. The sickening feeling in my stomach seeing the look in his eyes, the cruel taunting and the enjoyment he got from seeing me like a deer frozen in the headlights.

A few months ago I began to really question whether or not anything he had told me was the truth. In retrospect, his timelines don't add up. I get confused trying to make sense of all he told me over the 5 years I knew him, and now I see: there were so many lies! I can't make sense of it, because it's all lies. And he must have been so buried in them that he couldn't keep track anymore either - thus the inconsistencies.

This realization makes me shudder and want to throw up. Basically EVERYTHING was built upon lies. I had a child with this guy (he's not a man) because of LIES. And I weep for our child - that the mistakes I made will now haunt her as well.

I feel so much sadness, still. Two years out. I feel so much anger.

I have low contact with him, because of our child. I tried no contact and got a good 7 months in, until the court order legal &$*# required me to have email communication in regards to our child. Each email from him is triggering, because of course, it's not about our child. And I have to read it once to find that out.

I'm getting stronger. Sometimes I openly scoff when I read his BS and it's easy to hit archive and ignore. Other times, I falter and stumble and wake up 2 weeks later wondering what the hell hit me? I still sit down and write him letters I'll never, ever send. I email him back and hit delete a million times, because I don't email him back anymore.

Yet not responding still hurts. I feel like I'm no better than him when I "treat him that way" -- I struggle with the NC/LC still. Two years out.

I don't know. I'm trippin' because of the date tomorrow. I haven't been to this site in months and when I scrolled down the main page and saw Step 2 I thought, Spective, it's time. Start writing your story here, just Get It Out.

So here it begins... I'll probably add more to my thread as it comes up.

Let it suffice for now to finish with this... when I began learning about abusive relationships and men who abuse their intimate partners and all that -- I found myself repeatedly amazed at how perfectly he fit the mold. How everything that happened to me, with him, followed this neat little formula that could be wrapped up and written in a book, or on a handout. It's creepy actually.

He's got the big 3 going on - Abusive, Mental Illness, & Addiction.

Sigh.

I've resisted any email contact since October 2013. I've practically had to put my laptop in the freezer to stop from replying to some of the love-bombing, rational and human-sounding emails. But I haven't responded. And the last time I looked him in the eye, at his face even, in person exchanged words.... was very end of September 2012.

Other than in court, I haven't met him in person for 15 months! - and yet this fear of him remains. The residual fear I should say. It's lessening. But dayum, it's powerful. He reminds me of gravity - or a black hole. The force that I have to resist.

I am taking my power back. (To reframe this in a more empowering light.)

Thanks... I am so very grateful for this resource. I'll be back. I have a feeling I will have more to Get Out here in Step 2.