Downright pissed off

Along with the fear is the Anger

Anger is something that comes and goes in the life of someone who has survived being victimized. Never think for a minute that the schoolyard bully grows out of their penchant for picking on people because not all of them do or even want to.

Raging and Permanently Injured Goddess

Throughout the course of my life I have been referred to as many things, most notably I have been referred to as an "angry goddess," and while that is a cool thing to be thought as, the way that I got this way was not so goddess like. I endured a whole lot of stuff that no one should have to. While I get it when people say 'you should have left' or ask "why didn't you just stay gone?" and I think my most favorite thing to tell these people is to screw themselves because unless you have had to endure it, you cannot say what is best for someone else and yes, although we are in a lot of danger while still in the presence of these brutes, we are more endangering ourselves when we leave and try to stay gone.

You can never know peace if you are constantly looking over your shoulder, looking to see if in the fray of unfamiliar faces there will be the one face you would rather not see. I know that I am probably pissing a few people off, but I am sick to death of covering up my husband's sins against me and ultimately, at least in my own mind and in my own thinking, the legion of brutality loving idiots on the face of the planet, but I probably no longer care and I am sure it is because of the fact that no one bothered to even try to see the side of reason, which was always mine. 

Being brutalized does something to a person. You become mistrusting of everyone and anyone who you do not know. You start believing that there are no good people left on the planet and then one day you break down in tears, wondering why it is that God would send such a person into your life and when said person is going to be gone. This was my prayer and my query to the almighty God above for a lot of years, and I recall, too, being alone and cursing at the ceiling through angry tears, wondering why it was that God left me all alone to fend for myself. It is enough that you are being told to leave, and enough that people think you are some sort of moron for staying, and there are a lot of people who will even get mad at you for not having the balls to turn around and look your attacker in the eyes and tell him to go fuck himself, and that is not exactly the sanest idea either because an already violent person has the ability to snap and go from being Jeckyl to Hyde in the blink of an eye. Again, although the idea of leaving seems easy enough, it is anything but easy.

You get angry, eventually, angry enough to contemplate other uses for kitchen cutlery, accidents that could happen if you just knew where the main battery cable in the golf cart can be put so that when he'd start it he would fry to death, but then you just give up, realizing that watching them die that way is not the greatest idea because you would end up in prison for the rest of your life over someone who would not do the same for you. You get angry at yourself because you cannot believe that you did not see this shit coming, and when you started feeling a little bit perturbed they noticed and held you in an even tighter grip, never letting you out of the house, not even to get some air. You end up feeling like your life has been given to you because somewhere in time, perhaps in a past life you must have done something really, really bad because no one would ever choose to go through this. You think so many thoughts and you come up with so many different ways to get out and you start planning.

You start packing boxes and sending them to whoever it is that is left in your circle who will still talk to you, or you send them to your grandmother's house, or your auntie's house, or you just forget about them like I did all those times that I left. He always found me. He always knew where I was. Sometimes he followed me. Yes, part of being victimized means that you will be stalked, you wll be harassed and when you are found, you will be scared, at first, and then you will be angry. That anger never leaves you. It dies down a bit and becomes tolerable, but always you are on your guard wondering when the hell you will be able to smile for real again. It seems like forever and a day, but you eventually do smile.

My real smile began December 20, 2008.

How God made an angry goddess smile

It is sickening to me sometimes, but in a deliciously and delightfully sinfully wonderful way I get a little giddy when I think about all of the things that took place from July 2008 until December 20, 2008, which was the day that the man I married had a massive two-sided heart attack. I say giddy because I knew that he was going to go through quadruple bypass surgery but also that he would only do so because he felt it might shut me up. What would have shut me up was if he had just not had the surgery. Yes, that is bad. I know it is bad, but there is nary a soul who, after having read my story thus far, and more, who has, themselves, gone through something as horrible as being the receiving half of a union which becomes marred with the cuts and scars of domestic abuse, who will be able to blame me for the way that I feel right now. 

There are some reading this right now who are muttering to themselves "I told her to leave. I told her to kick him out," and while their sentiments and their care is received with Love, it is also a mixed feeling. Not all abusers are the same. Some are more violent while some are not violent at all and who are more prone to speaking to their victim in an abusive manner. 

I got a taste of both, and to this day this moron seems to think that because they are only words being spoken that those words do not affect me. They do and they don't. They do because I know that he says them just to be an asshole, but they don't because they are words spoken out of complete vitriol over what he himself lacks as a human being. While he chose to take the time that has passed since 2008 to find everything and every reason to no longer want to live, I chose to take this time to evolve into something he never thought I would be able to...

...a Bad Ass Me...

Take my words however you will, but I earned the right to call myself a Bad Ass. I earned the right to be this angry, and I earned the right to say what I have to. I earned the right and am entitled to having my say so because for a very long time now I was only picking the scabs off of the wounds left by the shards of my shattered and broken self when instead I should have been ripping the scab off so that the wounds could heal and leave the scar and the memory. 

I am not a large woman, but I am a very angry one, and one whose time has come to let the world of survivors know that you are ok in being angry, that you are ok in thinking that what you have been through made you more bad ass than you can ever have claimed to be in the past. A lot of people in your life, and probably more who are no longer there because of your attacker, have probably had a lot to say to you, probably told you that they were telling you off because they cared, and while them caring about you might be true, they can never ever know what it is that you singly know on your own. While we do not wish this sort of thing on anyone else, there are times when I do wish that those who'd told me to get out while I could would have been there when I tried, and more, when he'd found me, because it was always the same...at first he was nice and I was still scared, so I left with him just so that I would not have to find out if his threats on my family and their home would be made true...and then a few weeks go by and he is at it again, starting with the yelling and the getting in my face...then the pushing...then came the biting that left scars, one bad enough for me to have a small tattoo put over it that has to be redone because it is fading and though no one else can see the scar, I know it is there and it will fuck with me if it is not somehow made no longer visible...then came the slapping...the kicking...and eventually the closed fists...the blackened eyes...the bruise on my back as long as my spine from my neck all the way to my lower back...over and over and over again, and then ...I left, again.

When you live your life at the mercy and the will of another, and when you weigh, in comparison, next to them, but a-buck-o-five soaking wet, you pretty basically have not a lot of options other than to come up with another plan to leave, a plan that you know will be temporary because of the threats made to you on the lives of your loved ones. It is an ugly cycle that never ends unless and until you wake up one day and start to implement the plan to leave. A plan to leave does not need to be elaborate and it does not need to involve your loved ones. You can leave on the sly, like I did more than one time. But never forget about where you told them your family lives, all of them, because I thought I had a great plan. I thought leaving to be with family in Northern California who would help me get to Hawaii to my grandparents' house would be easy. It wasn't. When a man loves a woman he will go to the end of the earth for her, but when he thinks he owns her, he will go even further than that. 

When you have to go through this much and you have to deal with what you have been given, you begin to see that you are far smarter than you ever thought you were, and you start thinking beyond what you normally would. You come up with all sorts of different plans and most of the time you will try them all, and hopefully, one of them finally works.

And when you get to where it is that you are safe and can be yourself again, you begin to see yourself, I mean really see who you are, and once again, you like who you are. You can see that you are angry, hurt, gnarly pissed off, because I know that I am, and I know that I have been, but I earned it. I got my heart broken and my life shattered, but now I get the chance to redo it all, all over again, without him, and I like it. I figure that if I can deal with his sorry ass all these years, can endure the harsh words and the beatings and the threats of brutality and the threats on the lives of my family, I am pretty sure taking the world by the balls and making my part of it my bitch should be a cake walk.

Whatever you do, don't tell anyone your plans. Just make them. Be careful and execute them.

...because it is nice being thought of and referred to as a Goddess, but it ain't easy being an angry goddess

I Love You All!

Rox...

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. please contact her by clicking here . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)