Trigger warning: This post is about a past violent relationship.
I wrote the following words on Sunday, January 29, 2017, when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t go back to sleep.
For a few weeks, I was waking up every night right around 3am. That’s what happened to me the night of January 29. The next day, when I mentioned to a friend how I’d woken up at 3am and how waking at that time kept happening, she told me I should pay attention to what I was thinking about when I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, maybe write it all down. I told her that’s just what I’d done.
My friend said (and the Power of Positivity website confirmed),
If the time that you awaken is between 3:00 am and 5:00am, it could also be a sign of your Higher Power alerting you to pay attention to messages that are being sent to align you with your higher purpose.
In any case, the following words are what I wrote that night:
The fear is not just that he would hurt me, but that I would go back. I’m scared I’d set eye on him and feel his power over me again, succumb to it, run into the sickness with open arms.
It hurts to say I participated in my own abuse. We’re not supposed to talk about this aspect of the violence, but the truth of the matter is, I stayed. Sure, he threatened to kill me, my family, the dog, my friends, everyone I ever loved, if I left. Sure, he said it would be my fault if he ever ended up back in prison, the thing he feared most. He said I’d pay if he was ever put back in a cell, that he knew people and had connections and could have me killed. But I could have left, walked away and never gone back, as I finally did. What took me so long? And after the first three times I left in grand and bold ways, why did I go back?
I had hope, I suppose–hope that this time could be different, hope that this time I could be different, hope that this time I could be the person he wanted me to be, hope that maybe this time his anger would dissolve.
No one ever told me hope can sometimes hurt. No one ever told me hope should sometimes be released. No one ever told me that sometimes a situation really is hopeless.
I gave up on him changing early on. He was a pillar. He was steadfast. His anger was not going anywhere.
How can I bring out the worst in a person I love so much? I often wondered.
Now I understand I wasn’t a catalyst for the worst, but an excuse.
Why didn’t I leave?
I thought we were cosmically linked. I thought our stories were meant to be intertwined forever. I believed it was us against the world.
I believed his lies. I believed the lies I told myself.
I thought maybe I was so flawed, that this was the best I could ever do.
I hoped under all the bullshit, he really did love me.
I thought maybe he was capable of hunting me down and hunting down my family and hunting down my friends and killing us all. I thought I was responsible for protecting all the people I’d ever loved. I thought I was responsible for protecting him. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that I was responsible for protecting myself.
I’ve forgiven him, for the most part, to the extent forgiveness can extend to someone I still fear.
You don’t have to hate him on my behalf, I told a friend once. I’ve let go of any hate I felt for him. I feel great compassion for him, he who’s been locked in cages since he was 12. I wish him peace. I wish him love. I wish him to stay as far away from me as possible.
I’ve mostly forgiven him, but it’s just occurred to me that I need to forgive myself. I am my own most precious gift, and I squandered my own safety and value and self-worth to appease a bully, The hardest thing to know is that I sacrificed myself all for nothing; I gave up myself and it wasn’t enough for him. I could never give up enough of myself to satisfy him.
So now I’m working on forgiving myself for staying, for loving him and protecting him more than I was willing to love and protect myself.
My new mantra is I am a good person.
I say it to myself before I go to sleep at night. I am a good person. I say it to myself when negative self-talk creeps into my head. I am a good person.
I say it to myself when I want to say You really fucked that up or No one’s ever going to love you because you’re so fucked up or You’re going to die alone and no one will even remember you. Instead, I say, I am a good person.
Currently, I chant it frantically. I am a good person. I am a good person. IamagoodpersonIamagoodpersonI amagoodpersonIamagoodperson.
I’m hoping if I say it enough, I will come to believe it; the thought will become automatic; it will be true. I am a good person.
I’m hoping eventually I will be able to say it calmly, slowly, from a place deep within me. I. Am. A. Good. Person.
Because I know I can only let go of the fear of drifting back to him by loving myself enough to truly believe I deserve better than his bully bullshit.
If you are suffering from domestic violence (or wonder if what you are suffering is domestic violence), you can visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline website or call the hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY).
For more information about getting back on your feet after financial abuse, read the article, “Starting Over: How to Rebuild Your Finances after Escaping a Financially Abusive Relationship,” by .
Powerful, thank you sounds so inadequate. You are showing the way through for many people who have lived this pain. Bless you.
Thank you, Andrea, for your thanks. I’m glad this post spoke to you. As always, please feel free to share it, on Facebook or however you share internet things. Anything on the blog is always public.
THIS IS SO BIZARRE! I went to bed at 11 last night, and finally got to sleep around 3+, because I couldn’t turn off my brain, which was centered exactly on this problem.
I have an elderly friend (88) who lives alone since her husband died last year. I call her a couple of times a week to see how she’s doing and if she needs anything. But yesterday, I called her because I accidentally ran across her name in an online newspaper article about a car accident from 1976. The kicker is that the guy who was speeding and jumped the curb and smashed her parked car was the bank-robber son of my neighbor, the woman who my brother is living with! How’s THAT for weird coincidence? BTW, they’ve always lived in two different towns.
Later, in bed, I was comparing those two families. My friend’s family is WONDERFUL! Except for one, they’re all very nice, educated, strongly interconnected, and will go out of their way to help each other and even total strangers. Yes, these families are rare. There aren’t any on either side of my family, as best I could tell.
Totally opposite is the family across the street. The grandmother (my brother’s girlfriend) is a greedy, money-centered, manipulative spendthrift who has a monthly income of about $4,300/mo and is in the final stages of losing her home of 50 years because she doesn’t pay her bills. Her son is a spoiled, obnoxious, arrogant, abusive, bullying piece of trash with ‘anger management problems’. He apparently felt that mommy wasn’t giving him enough money, so he robbed a bank some years ago, and spent ten years in prison. When he got out, he had a job with the state for several years, until he punched out his supervisor and got fired. His wife (who also works for the state) is continually bleeding my neighbor for money for urgent things like hair appointments and regular manicures. Their son is exactly like daddy, a lying, thieving millennial who can’t hold a job, sells drugs, threatens police officers, etc. His grandma takes his every word as gospel; he lies and she swears to it.
I have always wondered why women put up with the shit they do. Is it the family that they came from? Were they ‘taught’ that they should put up with the bullying, threats and abuse, because that’s how it worked between their parents, that it was ‘normal’? My father was abusive, my mother (very nice) was very submissive. Her first husband was also abusive, and he abandoned her and their 1-yo son, and she nearly ended up starving to death. I can see how she was mentally ‘prepared’ to put up with practically anything. I have two sisters — one married an abusive drunk (still married), and the other married a psychopath, who she divorced four years later and swore never to remarry. I’ve never married because I won’t put up with the shitmongers, and that’s mostly what I seem to attract.
Maybe there needs to be required classes for female children in survival: which teaches basic lessons, every year for 12 years.
1. If he hits or abuses you once, he will do it many more times, and the violence is guaranteed to escalate. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO CHANGE HIM OR CONTROL HIM.
2. One major sign of a person who has no conscience is that he’s a sweet-talking manipulator who doesn’t care about anyone, ever. Just because he says he ‘loves’ you, doesn’t mean that he really does. They’re VERY GOOD actors. And they lie with every breath.
3. Get out, no matter what it takes. At least 3 women are killed by their partners EVERY DAY in the U.S. More than 10 MILLION are abused every year.
4. Don’t tell him you’re leaving; keep your mouth shut, wait until he’s gone, then grab your necessities and leave. And STAY GONE. Many women who tell their partner that they’re leaving, often leave in a hearse and are taken to a cold morgue drawer. The average prison sentence for men who kill their intimate partners is 2 to 6 years, and then they’re out, looking for another victim. Women who kill their partners are sentenced, on average, to 15 years. “Equal rights under the law? Don’t make me laugh. *sneer*
5. Once you’re out and clear of the bastard, for God’s sake DON’T LOOK FOR ANOTHER ONE JUST LIKE HIM!
National Domestic Violence Hotline is open 24 hrs a day, it’s free, it’s confidential:
1-800-799-SAFE (7233)….. or…….1-800-787-3224 (TDD)
Text “CONNECT” to 741741
More info here: http://www.feminist.org/911/crisis.html
Sue, thanks for posting the number to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. It’s good to post it as often as possible.
For anyone who didn’t read all of Sue’s comment and needs the info about the National Domestic Violence Hotline, here it is again: National Domestic Violence Hotline is open 24 hrs a day, it’s free, it’s confidential:
1-800-799-SAFE (7233)….. or…….1-800-787-3224 (TDD)
Text “CONNECT” to 741741
More info here: http://www.feminist.org/911/crisis.html
You ARE a good person! Love, Auntie M
Thank you, Auntie M. I appreciate you SO MUCH!
Thank you for sharing this piece of yourself, for showing your vulnerability. Your writing brought tears to my eyes for more than one reason.
I survived my man, too.
It’s been many years since I left him, but I was forever changed by that abusive relationship.
So much of what you wrote I’ve thought to myself. You are so right, sometimes, some situations, some people, really are hopeless… and it hurts to accept it.
Yes, keep saying it.
You are a good person.
I’m glad this post was important to you. Thank you for sharing a piece of yourself too. I appreciate you reading my blog, and I appreciate you leaving this comment.