Years ago I told him that if he ever hit me again, then I was going to report it to the police. He had given the usual spiel — big emotions, loss of control, deeply regretful — and I was left feeling like I had to forgive. However, I did not want it happening again.
And it didn’t happen again.
But then about two years ago it came out that he had spent those years resenting me. He had considered my words to be a threat, that I had been controlling and dominating him, purely because I didn’t want to live with physical violence. He believed that it was his inherent right as a man to discipline me however he wished, and I had invoked the Corrupted System against him.
Sometimes it still haunts me.
He never hit me again because he didn’t want the legal consequences, not because he thought that I was a human being with a basic right to safety. Which means that he hadn’t lost control and he wasn’t deeply regretful — he just didn’t want me going to the police right at that moment and was manipulating me out of it. Then, when it all came to an end, I was the one who paid legally for not reporting the violence to the police.
It haunts me that he wanted to do more.
It haunts me that he resented me for not wanting to endure it.
It haunts me to wonder what he would do now if he ever got the opportunity.
I think that knowing that he resented me is scarier than what physically happened and didn’t happen. For years I lived alongside someone who wanted to hurt me and I had no idea.
Now that I’ve hit my late 30’s, I’ve become aware of the trend to marry and have the spouse do all the hard work of raising kids and securing stability, only to then turn around and dump that spouse to coast through the easier part of life with someone else.
Rude.
Sometimes the word ‘love’ is tossed around like it’s magical justification, but love has nothing to do with it — love doesn’t inspire people to hurt everyone around them. If you ask me (which nobody did), it’s not simply about laziness; it’s about erasing the one person who knows that they didn’t build their life on their own merit.
They didn’t really get up at 2am to feed the baby every night, but they’ll certainly tell their next partner that they did.
It’s about controlling the narrative.
Not putting up with the person who’s far from their best self because they’re overworked and exhausted.
Anyway, we don’t want to sound bitter, though maybe wiser. Getting older makes one realize just how many people have the dressings but not the substance. Stolen light.
The longer that I’m single, the more I want to stay this way. It’s a relief to never hear the words, “What’s for dinner” or “That’s your job”. I picked out the sheets for my bed based solely on my own preferences. I like that my driving revolves around safety and patience, so I never feel trapped in the passenger seat while someone else grows too competitive for comfort.
Not to mention escaping all the marriage advice that seems to always boil down to: the woman is at fault.
When you’re divorced, there’s this unspoken assumption that you’re supposed to miss the companionship. Sometimes its self-imposed in an attempt to justify why you got married in the first place. Was the companionship worth it? In my case, no. “Companionship” seemed to involve a lot of tiptoeing, a lot of disappointments, and a lot of feeling eclipsed. It was the sort of companionship that makes watching TV alone feel more restful and fulfilling. So I don’t miss it.
Speaking of TV, I bought a new one for my birthday and set it up in my bedroom. After years and years of hearing all about how TV is brainwashing, I now have it playing almost constantly. I love brainwashing. Can’t get enough of it. I want to be brainwashed day and night. Yup, that brainwashing sure feels liberating.
Even though my income is a fraction of what it used to be, I feel like I have more money now that every purchase is no longer subjected to someone else’s gaze. Anyone who thinks that it only matters if you have something to hide has never lived under that perpetual scowl of disapproval. It’s the sort of thing that becomes clear in its absence, how something as simple as a facial expression can suck out so much joy and motivation.
I’m still pretty scared to talk about specifics, so suffice to say that I had a plethora of brand new experiences, met a variety of people, and stepped well outside of my comfort zone in ways that I never would have imagined.
Oh, and I’m also now divorced.
Turns out that you can spend years working your butt off to love and care for your soulmate, only to have it turn out that you’re the wrong “context” for them and they don’t want to be with you anymore. Oh, and they also loathe the way you state the obvious. And the way you associate concepts together. And, and, and …
Maybe one day my heart will stop hemorrhaging.
You know all those statistics that claim that women fare better emotionally after divorces? Not true in my case. Aside from the soul-crushing devastation, there’s the intense feelings of betrayal and rejection, as well as feeling like a defective failure at life. Did this happen because I’m too fat? I dunno. Better stop eating just in case.
Only I know I’m not fat. It’s the stress and pain triggering body dysmorphia — my subconscious attempt to take control of something that’s completely out of my control. Even if I weighed only 90lbs and had the flattest abs in the world, I’d still be discarded. I’m still “that” woman.
So I’ve spent hours and hours crying until I was too dehydrated and exhausted to keep crying. I’ve had numerous meltdowns, and moments when it felt like I didn’t have the strength to keep living. Life doesn’t come with a pause button that lets you get your feet back underneath you, it just keeps plowing ahead no matter what’s going on, and getting dragged along leaves you feeling even more banged up.
Then one day I woke up and I felt like eating again. So it is true that time does eventually heal some wounds.
Though I am now dirt-eating poor.
I looked into getting a job or attending an online community college, but those options didn’t feel remotely right for me. You know how it is when everything you built up over the years gets abruptly yanked out from underneath you, you feel trapped in an aimless free fall where absolutely nothing could possibly get worse than it already is, and you say to yourself, “Well, I did always want to earn a living as a writer.”
That’s what I’m going to do.
I’m going to earn a living as a writer. It’s not just about getting by, but finding a new purpose in life — a reason for everything, and a means to express the hurt.
When I feel sad, I can research and implement marketing tactics to keep myself distracted (especially now that I know that I can survive far outside of my comfort zone). I can write about how much I hate men in my novels (facetious exaggeration, don’t take that seriously). I can start churning out as much fiction as I can possibly write, and I will build a new life for myself that can’t be unraveled so easily. And I will do it all while still cooking delicious dinners and homeschooling my children, because I can be that awesome no matter how hard it is. Sleep is overrated anyway.
I’ve spent the last few months telling myself over and over, “If you want things to be different, then you have to do something different.”
And I’m starting to feel ready to do something different.
As a romance author, I keep an eye on the trends for relationship/marriage advice. Most of it comes from Christian sources.
I once listened into a social audio conversation that was ostensibly about secular marriage, but the general consensus of the group was that, if you truly loved someone, you would go away so they could focus on their career. If I had a smarmy salesperson personality, I would have taken the opportunity to pitch my novels to them as romantic escapism, because that is some hardcore dedication to loneliness.
Anyway
I have a unique perspective, because while I grew up Christian, I married as a Pagan.
The overwhelming impression that I get from Christian sources is that the women are too picky when it comes to men. I guess they aren’t getting hitched because no one is good enough.
Once upon a time, during my early days of marriage, someone pulled out his Bible and read a lot of verses about the sort of wife I was supposed to be. Heck if I can remember much about it, but by the time he started reading about how I was supposed to earn extra money to help with the household finances, I knew beyond a doubt that I would have to develop a serious cocaine habit in order to have that much energy. I have never come close to being a perfect biblical wife.
Thank god I don’t believe in the Bible. (har har)
But lets go back even farther, to when I was a Christian teenager. This was when I really began to shine as a misfit, because when my church leaders advised me to date around a lot and aim to marry as close to perfect as I could, but I was more like, “Husbands are human beings, and marriage isn’t like buying a car.”
Yeah, I was bullied rather badly in church. Can’t imagine why /sarcasm.
But apparently, plenty of other women took that sort of advice to heart, and now the Christians are moaning that they aren’t getting married at all.
I think my husband is pretty great. I won’t go into slathering specifics, but he’s wickedly smart, he helps take care of me, and he plays with the kids — I can’t imagine wanting to be married to anyone else. He also doesn’t fit any of those bullet point lists that I was given in church during my teen years.
He cusses, he loves a good whisky, and he doesn’t believe in God.
Oh no!
But I fall short, too.
I go to bed with dirty dishes still in the sink. 😀
So we’re a couple of heathens who take our children to the park on Sunday instead of church. We’re happy.
Marriage isn’t shopping for a car, and you shouldn’t go out with a list of requirements, make comparisons, then pick the one with the most cup holders. Marriage is building a deep bond with another human being. A connection between souls.
And stop blaming women for being what you raised them to be.
The best marriage advice I’ve ever been given wasn’t intended as such at all.
Actually, I overheard Some Old Guy warning my husband that being married to a woman was like having a live grenade in your pocket.
And I decided that I didn’t want to be the sort of wife who was remembered as the psychotic ex, turning her husband into a 60-year-old MGTOW and alienating her children.
Turns out, the simple resolve to not randomly explode has made me extremely atypical.
When I was a teenager, my mom took me to her hairstylist for a complete makeover. She braided up my hair, chopped off a full foot, then proceeded to push me into one of the most awkward stages of my teenagehood.
I’ve always been a “wash ‘n go” sort of girl. Never really could get into the habit of using blow dryers, let alone curling irons. Yet I gave that new hairstyle an honest shot, because all of the adult women around me kept going on about how “mature” it made me look, and I was scared of standing up against people back then.
I hated that hair cut. Loathed it. There isn’t a single picture of me smiling with that stupid style. I eventually drifted back to “wash ‘n go,” because that’s my fundamental personality type.
We’re talking about two decades ago here, so I can’t remember the specifics, but I do recall feeling bombarded with criticism from the hairstylist. She went on and on about split ends and breakage, then proceeded to donate my hair to Locks of Love … *eyeroll* The stylist was bad enough I remember asking my mom about it afterwards, and she told me that it was best to ignore the criticism.
But it still bothered me. It bothered me badly enough that I switched over to going to the local college for haircuts, then eventually started doing it myself. When I turned 30, I vowed to never cut my hair again, and I’ve been much happier with my appearance ever since.
I’ve been married for over a decade now. My husband likes to help brush and braid my hair when we get ready for bed, and he always praises how silky and shiny my hair is. Sometimes he even recites poetry. He doesn’t see the split ends or the wispy bits that stick out awkwardly, even though he’s perfectly aware of the horrible things that happen to my hair in the cause of motherhood. He sees the beauty, not the flaws.
That matters far more than the nitpicking opinions of near strangers.
This month, my husband and I celebrate 12 years together.
It was one of those “love-at-first-sight” whirlwind romances that everyone insists is unrealistic and guaranteed to fail. Yet here we still are, and there’s no one else I’d rather go through the fall of civilization with. 😉
So…
Don’t let the critics and naysayers stop you from making your own destiny.
Is there anything more exciting than a story passage presented completely out of context?
Hee hee, enjoy.
Carol began to gasp and moan in her sleep, whimpering the words, “Don’t … take me …” before Lambert managed to shake her awake. She was thoroughly drenched in a cold sweat, and still confused as she frantically asked, “Where’s Henry? I can’t find him!”
“He’s there, right next to you in his crib,” Lambert answered soothingly, and waited for her to pick up their four-month-old son before pulling her into an embrace. “Everything’s fine. You had another nightmare.”
She was quiet, and he suspected that she had dozed off again. He kept her pressed against his chest, however, feeling her clammy skin underneath his hands as his mouth formed a straight line. He had hoped that with time and emotional support, Carol’s struggle with postpartum anxiety would resolve on its own, but instead it was growing worse.
The baby woke and began to root, so Carol shifted to breastfeed. “Sorry about this,” she murmured, completely awake. “Could you get out another pajama shirt for me?”
He nodded, but remained still. “Carol …” he began, and she stiffened from his tone. “It might be time for you to go see a professional.”
“I don’t want to,” she answered slowly.
“You’ve been having nightmares every night for awhile now. It might be best to get you on medication to help you through this.”
“I have you.”
Lambert felt Carol move to curl up around their baby, and for a moment he debated whether or not he should drop the subject all together. He got up to rummage through the dresser in the darkness, found one of the over-sized shirts that she liked to sleep in, and handed it to her.
“Cognitive therapy isn’t making any difference,” he said quietly. She remained silent, so, he pressed on, “You’re a good mother, and it’s natural to have some feelings of anxiety with a new baby …” he began, and the therapist’s intonation that he had slipped into grated against his own ears.
“Would you mind holding Henry while I change?” Carol interrupted, her voice slightly higher pitched than usual. She had recently discovered that he couldn’t argue with her when she spoke that way, and utilized it whenever she wanted him to back down. It was enough to make him cave and give up on his line of reasoning.
Lambert didn’t know what to do. For the most part, Carol was still Carol. They went fishing together on the weekends, and he came home every evening to dinner and a clean house. As long as she had their baby pressed against her in the carrier or in her arms, it was as if nothing had changed. The car trips were almost endearing, with the way she frequently checked the mirrors to ensure that Henry was still breathing, and needed the occasional reassurance that he wasn’t going to be stung by a bee or bitten by a spider while he was in his car seat.
But the nights were different.
Lambert had purchased a special crib with one side that clamped onto their mattress to help her feel closer to Henry, but it couldn’t overcome the mental separation of sleep. There were times when she had startled awake with the baby in her arms, crying about how she couldn’t find him. Recently, she had begun to fight against the fear of being taken away herself, but once awake she always claimed that she could not remember what she had been dreaming.
They had talked. And talked. And talked. Lambert had accepted the military relegating him into a paper-pusher role after the war had ended, because it enabled him to be home every night, and he didn’t dare leave Carol to sleep alone. He had even quit drinking for the most part, so he could maintain his vigilance and be there for her the moment the nightmares began.
After four months, he had reached the end of what he could handle on his own. Carol needed something more than talk to help her, and as a defunct psychiatrist, he was no longer qualified to provide it.
By Autumn Rain 