DeConfusing–finding your way through the chaos of domestic violence

I found this poem on Pickle-osophy. It is written out of the pain of an abusive church situation, but reflects quite vividly much of what I feel, reflecting on the abuse I suffered in my marriage.

Too long you played your games inside my head
Made me the scapegoat of your brokeness
Milked my raw pain to cream your comforting
Named your needs mine then blamed my neediness.

You took the meek of my fragility
As your strength’s proof, let loose to hold my heart
You scorned the naked shape of what I am
While silk-shot ego dressed your every part.

I was the target of displaced self-hate
While you swam, swan-like, forwards toward day
Trapped in your shade, I cowered in the dark
While your voice mocked me, “Come on out to play!”

O, how your callous laughter broke on me
Like acid waves, to etch into my mind
My stark unloveliness, proved by unlove.
And, all the while, you told me you were kind.

Was this your mercy? Mercy to yourself,
Dismembering my trust to patch your soul,
So that the mirror of your self-regard
Could show yourself exquisite, clean and whole.

This poem by Mary Karr is not exactly like my abuser, but close.

To keep his blessed armor hard he ate

     lean meat, cruciferous greens, few

     grains. He likes his instants

parceled out in reps and sets, and he was glad to dangle like an ape from an iron bar, admiring his bicep bulge (amen): He worked hard

     the slant board, the oblique

          twist, and his own form

waxed and polished, his house a bleached vault where he lit votive candles to the clear persistence of his little self though no one else

     showed up. He liked

     the slammed door, the map’s red line, to stomp a clutch, to clutch the black wheel, to wheel away in steaming rage.

               He was a preacher fond

of Revelation. His truth was slant,

his facts oblique. He sought a righteous girl, articulate,

     whose slang he could steal

     for his opaque and soporific sermons– a girl all clean and bare in her nethers with mouth of Cupid’s bow–someone to dress in white and hold

     struggling under water, to warp

the iron of, till she melted. To her

he gave and gave. He gave all

     the all he had, which wasn’t much.

I hate this question. While there may be times that it is asked genuinely, out of a concern to understand what it is like to be in an abusive relationship, it usually feels as if it implies that any woman who stays in an abusive relationship is either (1) stupid or (2)asking for it.

Internally, when I hear this question, I cringe, because it feels like it is missing the point and coming from a perspective which does not understand the dynamics of abuse. Before I answer this question, I like to tell people, “Think terrorism.” No one asked Gracia Burnham, after her horrible experience as a hostage of terrorists, “Why didn’t you leave?” Abusers are terrorists.  And while it might look like a woman enables her abusive husband by staying in an abusive relationship, her leaving does not only not free her from that relationship (especially if she has children), but she risks the abuse escalating.

While I’d love to dismiss the whole question as irrelevant and coming from a wrong understanding of abuse, another part of me wants to do my best to shed some more specific light on the difficulties of “just leaving” an abuser, for those who genuinely and caringly wonder, “Why won’t she just leave?” Read the rest of this entry »

This phrase was by far the most stabilizing thing I heard as I began to work my way out of the fog and confusion of abuse. I had one friend who, for a period of time, would tell me that every time we talked.

I remember being excited to find this website called that very thing: youarenotcrazy!

You are not crazy. Your abuser is doing and saying crazy things. But you are not crazy.  Read the rest of this entry »

[THIS post, because it explains the root of how I look at abuse, is also filed permanently in the sidebar as a PAGE titled "About"]

From Why Does He Do That: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, by Lundy Bancroft: 

“The abuser creates confusion because he has to. He can’t control and intimidate you, he can’t recruit people around him to take his side, he can’t keep escaping the consequences of his actions, unless he can throw everyone off the track. When the world catches on to the abuser, his power begins to melt away.” (p. 20)

I’m still coming out of the confusion and chaos of an abusive relationship. Divorced now, I have physical safety and do not live with constant fear. Still, because we have children, my abuser continues to have great power and continues to act, speak and interact in ways that are frightening and destabilizing to me, while maintaining a social aura that makes him look above reproach to those around him.  Even though I don’t live in constant fear now, it doesn’t take much for me to be frightened or vulnerable when it comes to having to interact with him. Read the rest of this entry »