You are important enough, I Promise

The thing about being part of a relationship is that there are two people


If there is anything that anyone who has been abused knows a lot about it is the idea that in a relationship there is the idea that there are two people in it, but when we are speaking in terms of our actively being a part of that relationship, when we think about it further, in an abusive situation, there is only one person and one non-person, or at least this is the lie that we are told.

For many years I have stayed quiet about the things that I have gone through, being careful to not bring up the past, not only so that I would not raise the ire of my abuser, but also so that I would not have to live through the muck that impeded my life and my willingness to go through what I went through - that's right- I said it, now deal with it. Let it be well known that we humans do not go through anything that we do not choose to go through. Am I saying that those who have been abused wanted to go through that hell or really did make the choice consciously to go through it? Oh HELL no I ain't.

What I am saying is...

Precisely what I am saying is that every single person who has been abused chose to deal with the reality before them rather than risk what they did not know would or would not happen. There is no way that anyone, unless they are a sadomasochist, chooses to be beaten, to be belittled, to go through what I and many others like me have gone through.

Everyday we choose to deal with what we will, and we choose to have the reaction that we will have to it, and in the case where a woman is being abused, physically or otherwise, this same thing can be said. We would rather deal with the devil we know instead of risking what we assume is the safer option - which, in reality, is no where near safer. It is safer to get out of a situation where someone else has all the control and the other person is controlled. This is not the way that anyone's life is supposed to be, not at all, but there are a lot of people on the planet who go through this all day long everyday and they do it while quietly pining away underneath it all, watching time and life slip on by while they stay there in that fear wondering when it will end.

When will it end?

God bless my best friend, April, because she has a way with being able to tell me things that I need to hear without making me hurt anymore. She has told me for a lot of years that no, I am not worthless, and no, I do not have to do anything that my soon-to-be ex-husband tells me that I have to do (or else he will....really? who fucking cares, right?) and I want you all to know, right now, for sure and for real, April is right. (April is ALWAYS right!)

April told me these words on more than one occasion, and today they stuck to me like dried shit on a long haired dog's ass - "it will end when you choose for it to end."

This is correct, by the way. We abused and survivors of abuse pine and wait for the opportunity to finally choose to do something, and the one thing that is the hardest to choose is to choose to no longer be a victim. I am no victim. I am not some shrinking violet - not by any means, but when that sonofabitch decides to run his mouth all those years of taking his shit catch up to me and make me a jumblefuck of emotions, these days causing me to have physical pain whenever the adrenaline kicks in and the fight or flight reaction decides to take hold.

I have spent the entirety of my adult life under the thumb of one person, and when someone gets used to that sort of thing, it is a hard thing to not do anymore. He does not like that I, like the ever-blooming flowers, are pushing up through the bullshit of his own life and his own losses, and he does not like that I plan to no longer be married to him, and he does not like that I have chosen to no longer be his to walk all over - those days are over with. It will be a challenge for me to have to get through this all while he runs his mouth, all while he begs me not to do it, all while he still will be who he is and I am who I am now, and who I am now will not allow his bullshit and will not deal with the disrespect that I allowed for so long,

We allow it, guys...really...

While there is no excuse for abusing anyone, after we have been beaten down into an unrecognizable-from-who-we-really-are on the inside shell, because we so badly want peace and because it is that in an abusive situation we are already afraid, we do whatever we feel we must in order to simply keep the peace. Abusers are excellent at the art of confusion and they are willing to confuse their victim enough so that the victim will do anything just to not hear that they are horrible, just to know that they have escaped having the shit knocked out of them again, and of course we learn to duck very quickly because of all the things that get thrown at us both literally and figuratively.

But, again, if we did not eventually grow accustomed to what it is that we let other people do to us, and we do not allow people to turn us into their doormat, we will not become their doormat. Yet, if, like me, because of your size and the fact that you have always been a peace-loving, fun-loving, loving person, period, all your life,and you know this is the truth of you, then like me you likely opted to try to Love your attacker into becoming peaceful, and then later on down the road found out that it only gave them one more avenue through which they could get into the meat of your soul and do what they would in order for you to be so scared. I know this because I lived it and even now, at this late juncture, I still have a lot of fear, but it is not fear over what it is that he has already done but rather and only what it is that I assume he will do.

Collectively we have to stop allowing these behaviors to run amok, because amok running is what the abused are so great at. We run amok when we get a little bit of freedom, and we run amok thinking that the tiny amount, that tiny space of time that we are allowed by those who would like to keep us locked in a prison of our own making, of time that we do have to make a choice is going to last forever, but it isn't.

I know that if I do not divorce this person that I am the one who will pay for my own choice to not be well and not be happy and not be all who I really am, and who I really am is a person who loves fully, who lives to the brink of whatever it is that you want to think is the brink of anything, and I am hardcore when it comes to caring for others - there are only a few people who I know I can trust, and those people know that when I Love, I Love big and real and for a long, long time.

The lingering question is if this is the truth of me, why then was all I had to give to one person not enough? Well, because he could not evaluate it in terms of price tags and how much he could sell it for one day. He could not place a price on it and could not see what I had to give to him as being of any worth.

So, what's a girl to do?

I'll tell you what a girl's supposed to do - get a divorce, that's what, because there is one other person on this planet who deserves me, faults and all, nuttiness and all, me, and all...

...Me, that's who...

When it feels like no one loves you, go look in the mirror and find the one person who should love you and will again.
I Promise...

I Love You All!
...Roxanne...

Wounded, but not dying

There are truths to us all that are not really truth and meant but only to cause us hurt. It is when we are the most wounded in the soul that we are also the strongest we can be.

I am a wounded warrioress, and rightly so, because apparently it was known by God that I was strong enough to deal with all that I have gone through for so long now, with all that has happened, even up to these last few weeks.

Indeed... I am wounded, but I am not dead.

There are a lot of ways that an abuse survivor can heal from the wounds of abuse. Once it was that I accepted that I am a statistic I found that this designation made it so that I would think that people were staring at the big red "A" on my chest that stood not for "adulterer" but instead stood for "abused." And I am an abused woman who can truly call herself a survivor, because not everyone makes it through the ailments of the soul that are not our own. Abused people tend to think at the onset of the abuse that somehow that we are being victimized because of something that we did or said but that is not the truth. When we are abused by someone else it is never because of who we are or even something that we did, but because someone else who sees only what they want to see instead of accepting what is really there chose to vilify it, chose to make it "bad" when in reality what it is that we go through is nothing in comparison to what it is that we will go through if we choose to not speak up, to not defend ourselves and to do nothing - doing nothing is as bad as being the perpetrator. Doing nothing allows our abusers to think that what they are doing is acceptable, not because you would really think it were, but because you said nothing.

Saying nothing is almost like saying that it is ok that you are being hurt, that you are being targeted for sins you have not committed or perhaps sins that were committed a very long time ago. Saying nothing tells your abuser that what they are doing to you, even though they KNOW it is wrong, is somehow ok with you because you have said nothing.

I say to hell with that, to hell with him, with her, and you get your ass out there and you SAY SOMETHING!
Staying wounded by choice is like not bathing after you have gone for a 6 mile walk uphill in the middle of August in 75% humidity - it stinks!!

We get knocked down over and over again, and we do not see the light that we are because we think that when we get back up and we start to recover we are getting stronger and better and unfortunately for our abusers, they think we are just getting over ourselves.

It is hard to get over the shattered heart, hard to look past the idea that there is someone on the planet who thinks so little of themselves that they have to hone in on our "weaknesses," attacking us where we are vulnerable and never thinking for a minute that not only are they our abusers, but they unwittingly become the greatest spiritual personal trainers that no money could buy.

That's right- I said it now deal with it.

If there is a way to get through what it is that you are going through, that we have all gone through in the case of the emotionally abused, it is to think and to believe that we are here for a purpose far greater than we are, more important than the self important assholes who feel privy to treat us as though they own us. No more will there be the days of isolation and no longer will there be a day, at least not for you, the abused, when you will be stronger and better and greater than you ever imagined. I know this. I live it, and even though I have days when I would love nothing more than to watch my abuser writhing in  pain and stuck in the miry goo that is the aftermath of emotional abuse, the frank truth is that I cannot change the past, and I cannot make different what has been done to me, and that the only thing that I can do about his sorry ass is to not do like he has done.

There are always two different ways that any street will go, and in our case we have the option to stay or not stay, and it took me a long, long time to choose to not stay married to him, to grab what is rightly mine and to be happy and settled in the idea that I came to this decision all on my own without prodding from outside help and even thinking ahead and saying to my best friend that I needed her help and her guidance in this because she gets it, she understands me.

You can choose to stay a victim, where it seems that nothing changes and that all that we are is what someone else who won't bother to get to know us tells us we are, or you can choose to fight, like the wounded and wartorn warrior, never putting down the shield and sword and never looking back to choose to go back to what is familiar and "normal" for what we have gone through.

I chose to raise the sword, the shield, and to one last time move headlong into the battle zone, unafraid of what can happen, unwavering in my steadfastness and always knowing that this time, I can't lose...

...make it be your this time and soon, because eventually your blade will dull and your shield will be heavy, and you fought and got this far - it would be a shame to see you give up the fight now...

I Love You All!!
...Rox...

Courage

It takes courage to change your life


It took a whole lot of courage to remind the person to whom I am married just how much damage he has done to me, both physically and emotionally, and it took even more courage for me to finally do what I know I have to do, and what I have to do is not wait for him to pass away. What I have to do is forget about the past and move into the future.

I told him that I want a divorce, told him that I will file one regardless of what he thinks or says, and told him that the damage done is severe enough to make me shake, physically, and enough to impede my life and my health and the lives of my children.

In each of our lives and through each thing that we go through there comes a time, and more times than not the time has come for me, for me and him, to say goodbye to each other. That time has come. I can no longer allow the things and events and situations which await me to get pushed further into the future because I asked for them all the be, and daily they show signs of Being, and daily I sit thinking about what would happen if I stayed.

Well, I know what would happen if I stayed, which I will not be, and I know that there really is nothing for me to be afraid of. I know that I have the love and the support of everyone in my life, and I know, too, that much of who I am anymore is attributable, both in good and bad ways, to the things that I have gone through.

The things that I have gone through


There are a lot of things that abuse survivors go through just to make it through the days without shedding tears, and these last few days have been very emotional ones for me. Though I feel no guilt for choosing to divorce, there is still that manipulative way about him that has been, for the last twenty four hours, trying diligently to chip away my resolve, my strength and the will that I have within me. I begged this man, pleaded with him, for years even, to just please be kind to me, and it was his option to be other than kind.

What an abuser does not know is that the emotional abuse is far more difficult to get through than is the physical abuse, and it is because a survivor can watch the bruises fade, can check the calendar to see when the cast comes off, can physically feel the pain of a bite mark fade with time. The same cannot be said for the abuse that I feel is worse than getting beaten. Emotional abuse will kill you if you let it remain in your life, which is why I chose this to be.

I had to save myself this time, had to hear it from a stranger that I may need some counseling, and it took a day for it all to sink in, and once the reality set in, the tears began to roll and I began to see mental images of all that I have been through during the course of the last 23 years, and let me tell you something folks....it was not easy, and hell no it wasn't pretty, but I am here and I am alive and well and can see that there is much ahead of me that waits for me to finally take that last step in this part of the path.

It isn't easy, and yes, waiting for him to pass away would have been easier, but I am positive that this way is how it was supposed to be. You see, the way of the wounded warrior is never easy. It is rife with pain and heart ache, with failure and the humiliation that comes with it, but it the way that many people never see themselves as being and as living. I see myself as a warrior goddess, the sort that, even through battle, rises above the mess that is her life and sees the confusion and yet also can still see the shades of glory and hope shining through the cracks in the facade of who I was told I was.

Be Brave. Embrace Courage. Live Freely.


The last thing that an abuser wants his victim ever to be is independent of them. Had this man told me what I wanted...no, what I longed to hear for so long we might not be here right now, we might be able to get along, and that longing to hear what I wanted to hear should have started many, many years ago and not a day and a half after I told him that we are through.

It took a long time for me to come to this point, for me to no longer allow myself to care for this person on any other level than that of an angry wife of an emotionally abusive man is able to, which is mostly on a compassionate, human being level. I used to have a problem with telling him that he was hurting me, and it was because he made it a point to tell me to 'man up,' to 'quit pouting and deal with it' because he was dealing with whatever it was and is that he is dealing with, and right now what he is dealing with is what I had been forced to deal with for over two decades - HIS demons.

This is the part that no abused person realizes until one day they are forced to see a situation for what it really is, and what this really is is just another way of another victim of someone else's smallness becoming, through adversity, all they are. The bitch of this all is that he has yet to truly accept that I am done with him and more, that he really did need me all these years, that I was not stupid, neither a whore, nor pathetic, nor immature, not a bad mother, and no where near being a bad wife. All these things became what I was told when I told him that I need out of this marriage, not only to make things better for these three kids, but also, so that I could save myself.

These things I learned the moment that he chose to tell me that we could work it out, and when he began to tell me that I was not getting a divorce and that he would not let me, he learned the only thing that he needed to learn...the truth, and the truth is that I am no longer available for him to choose to behave in an abusive manner with me, and that all these years it has not been me who has been causing him his grief, but his very self.

Here's to new starts....we get one everyday, by the way...

I Love You All!

...Rox...