He was arrested at 9:14 am on May 21, 2003. It was a sunny, blue sky morning. The birds were fluttering and twittering in the trees. The river flowed lazily by, meandering through the forest, dappled with sunlight, sparkling, clear.
We were in hiding. Had been since February 26 when we’d fled the city we lived in 1,000 miles away, heading west, heading to the US, he’d said. “I’ve got money there,” he insisted. “I’ll just leave this mess to my lawyers to fix. No sense hanging around waiting for them to get it cleared up. I’ll let you go once I’m out of the country,” he promised.
Like all his promises, like everything he’d ever said and done, it was all a lie.
On that morning in May, the lies fell apart and he was exposed. Two police officers walked in and took him away. “Are you on drugs?” one of them asked me as I sat, rocking back and forth, back and forth in a chair watching the scene unfold, a quiet, low keen seeping from my mouth. I was catatonic. I was not on drugs.
They took him away and I sat surveying the mess around me, trying to make sense of the mess of my life.
I hadn’t heard of No Contact with the abuser, but I knew after months of no contact with family and friends, I had to make contact with someone beyond the narrow confines of my world with him. He was gone. I had to reach out for help.
I called my sister who lived an hour away from where we had been in hiding. She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t yell or scream at me. She came and got me.
No Contact was the only possibility. He didn’t have my sister’s number and it was unlisted. He did keep calling the couple who owned the cabin where we’d been staying. They called my sister, she advised them not to give him my number. He called my mother. She hung up on him, even though she felt it was rude. “He’s the man who almost killed your daughter,” I told her. “It is not rude to hang up on him. It’s vital to my well-being.”
I didn’t want to think about him but at times, my mind betrayed me. I’d be walking down a street and hear a cell phone ringing and it would be his ring. My mind would leap to thoughts of him. What was he doing? What was he saying? What was he telling people about me?
I posted No Trespassing signs in my mind. When thoughts of him intruded, I’d mentally hold up a sign and send the thoughts back to where they’d come from, my fear, my shame, my guilt.
I knew that one day I’d have to go through the thoughts of him and examine them, but for now, I had to give myself time to grow stronger. For now, it didn’t matter that I had to rid myself of his presence in my mind. That would come later. At first, what mattered most was that I build emotional strength so that I could eventually deal with thinking about him without making myself sick.
In those first minutes and hours and days weeks and months away from him I focused my thinking on me. On what had happened inside of me. On what I had to do to become healthy again.
The police asked me for a statement about anything I knew about his illegal activities. I had to do the right thing to show myself, remind myself; I was capable of doing ”˜the right thing’.
I wrote it down. It hurt. I was scared. What would he do when he found out I had ”˜told’ on him?
I couldn’t let my mind go there. The monster of him in my head was bigger than the reality of him, out there. Out there he was in jail. I had to escape the prison of my mind trapped in thinking of him. I held up my No Trespassing sign.
Focus on doing the right thing, I told myself.
I kept writing.
To remind myself that I was so much more than that five year relationship, that my life was made up of so many other important things than just ”˜him’, I made a list of things I’d done in my life that I was proud of. Being a mother topped my list. “What kind of mother are you really”, the voice of self-denigration whispered. “You deserted your children.”
I posted STOP signs in my head. Whenever self-doubt, negative self-talk invaded, I held up my STOP sign and consciously reframed the negative into more loving words. “I am a courageous woman. Yes, I did something I never imagined I would ever do as a mother. I was very, very sick. And now, the poison is gone and I am healing. I can make amends. I am reclaiming my life. I am courageous and growing stronger every day.”
I kept adding to my list of things I’d done that I was proud of. In Grade five I raised $122.00 for a charity by walking 21 miles. I was an honor student. Got a scholarship. I ran the marathon. Wrote a play with a group of street teens and produced it.
My list reminded me that I was capable of living in the world beyond the narrow corridor of his abuse. It reminded me that I was a competent, caring human being.
At first, I wanted to cry and cry and cry. At first, I did. And then I knew I had to build emotional muscle, to build my willpower. I gave myself a time limit for crying. It began with ten minutes on the hour, every hour. That was when I let myself cry. The other fifty minutes I had to do at least one constructive thing (Work on my resume. Phone about a job interview. Take a walk.) to take me one step further on my healing path. The ten minutes every hour became eight and then five and then only every two, then three, then four hours. Eventually, as I kept doing more and more things to take me on the healing path, I forgot to cry.
At first, I wanted to tell everyone my story. Talk about what he had done. How hurt I’d been. How confused and scared and lonely. At first, I thought everyone knew what I’d been through just by looking at me. Couldn’t they see the scars? Couldn’t they see my pain? I couldn’t understand how the world could be so normal. I needed to embrace its normalcy. I enforced No Contact in my speech. I could not talk of him. I could not tell the story again and again. The only time I had permission to talk about him and what had happened was when I went to an Alanon or Co-Dependents Anonymous meeting. There, with the safety of the 12-steps empowering me, I could speak up and give voice to my pain, my fear and my hope.
The greatest danger wasn’t contacting him. He was in jail. My greatest danger lay in thinking about him. In remembering those gentle moments where I had felt his ”˜love’ embrace me.
“It was never love,” I reminded myself. “Love doesn’t almost kill you.”
I kept working at No Contact in my mind. Good times or bad, thinking of him wasn’t healthy for me. I kept my No Trespassing signs posted. My STOP sign handy. Over time, it became easier. A cell phone ring wouldn’t startle me. My body wouldn’t jerk suddenly at the sound of a car backfiring, or a door slamming. I wouldn’t cry at every turn. Sit in silence immersed in sadness. Thoughts of suicide were arrested before they even saw the STOP sign in my mind. I was building my will to survive. My will to rejoice in living life fully every day.
In time, it became easier to live without the fear I would always be the abused woman I had become. In time, it became easier to live with the possibility of life beyond his abuse, beyond the lies he’d told me about who I was, what I could do, where I could go and who I could never be. It became easier to believe in me. It became easier to talk, about him, about what had happened, about what I’d done to betray myself and those I loved without falling into despair. It became easier to love myself, not as an abused woman, but as a woman who had the courage to face her fears, to turn up for herself and love herself, exactly the way she was. A woman capable and confident enough to let go of abuse and claim her right to live freely in her own skin.
I was an abused woman. Today, I continue to grow and heal, to love myself for all I’m worth and to give myself the space and time to let feelings flow through me without having to stop them.
Today, I give myself the grace of loving myself enough to know, I am okay. The things I did that hurt those I love, and me, are nothing compared to the things I do today to create a beautiful life all around me. I am not measured against what happened back then, my value is in what I do today to make a difference, in my life and the world around me.
Today, he was just a moment in time, a small segment of my life. He has no value in my life today. My value is in how I live, what I do, say, how I think and look at the world through eyes of love. Today, my value is in me.
Yes, Witsend, so true. As they say in AA, we don’t go to a bar to get a haircut…Something else they say is, we’re not responsible for the first thought, but we are for the rest. Try not to entertain those thoughts. He’s toxic, and intoxicating. You’re only a drink away from a drunk, speaking metephorically.
Thought Ya’ll might like this video. I love it.
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/e/emmylou_harris/deeper_well.html
great lyrics, Kim.
Morning, Sky. How is your morning progressing? It is an absolutely beautiful Fall day here, clear and a little bit crisp. After a long hot summer, it’s lovely. The coffee’s good, and I feel like a million bucks. Glad you liked the video.
skyler,
I would like to pick your brain a bit if I may…..I am very interested to know what you have “picked up” on from your Xs childhood. Maybe not so much things he has told you, at least not what you might consider lies….But more of what he has told you combined with what your gut instict has told you.
I have heard you make some mention in some of your post about his childhood that have triggered some intrest for me.
I believe I read that you had thought him to be full of hate for women in general, starting with his mother. And also I thought you had said in the past that you got the feeling he had maybe experienced something in his childhood??
I know that my son hates me. I mean really hates me in a deeper sense. I also see his interactions with girls so far, not being what a mother would like to see…..
I have known his few friends (his own age) for several years, and because these kids have spent alot of time here at the house, spending the night, hanging out, eating dinner etc over the past years, they know me as well.
However my son has a new group he hangs out with. Since the summer. 2 older girls and a couple of older guys he works with. These kids don’t know me at all. I know nothing about the girls and I think my son has a relationship with these girls that involve alot of the “pity ploy”. He has “spun” a story about his terrible home life, blah blah…..
And the reason I think this is that these girls seem to have a rescuing relationship with him…..He carefully keeps it where I never meet them, they never call the house phone (even when his cell is dead) I have no idea where they live (other than they are local) and they don’t even pick him up or drop him off normally, like pulling in the driveway, they will just either coast by the house and drop him off in the street or a block away from home and he will walk the rest of the way…..
In other words he CAREFULLY keeps us at “bay” from one another. I don’t get to know them, they don’t get to know me.
He uses them mostly for rides, and sympathy (I imagine). Also makes him look good to his friends his own age….2 “older” girls giving him attention.
I am trying to understand where the hate for women comes from. Where it began? How does this happen?
Yesterday, a disturbing thing happened. My dog GROWLED at him. Actually I would normally refer to the dog as HIS dog. (we have 2 dogs) This dog has always slept with him and spends most of his time in his room. He was trying to control the dog in a mean way and the dog growled. THIS DOG has never growled at a person before. (except at another dog). His disposition is really sweet. It really upset me as I think dogs have a 6th sense that people DON’T. And it made my son REALLY angry that the dog growled at him.
I don’t know why I brought up the dog story because initially it doesn’t seem to be connected to the hatred in my sons heart….Or does it? What do the animal lovers think. Does the dog sense danger?
Witsend,
I completely relate to your need to understand. It feels like that is our only way out of this mess: understanding it.
I’ll tell you everything I know because some stuff might make more sense to you than it does to me.
He was the 4th of 6 boys. At age one, he got spinal meningitis and says he remembers being dipped in an ice bath. I think, that he thinks it is relevant to his evil nature. His mother says that the father neglected all of them and the father’s dad would live with them for several years, leaching off the family. She says she did all the work and that when her husband came home she had to yell at him to whip the boys because they had been bad all day – and she didn’t like always being the bad guy doing all the corporeal punishment. XP confirms this and he agrees that they WERE bad all day. Seems to me that a kid isn’t going to learn anything if the whipping comes several hours after their behavior.
He tells me that his mother always knew exactly the kinds of toys he loved and that she always got him the coolest toys. She confirmed this.
XP told me that he played with all the stray cats in the neighborhood as a child. He loved cats. His mother confirms this. XP says that one day his mother took all his cats, put them in a bag and dropped them in the river. He says he will never forgive her for that.
She is the kind of person that keeps cats outdoors but breeds little dogs indoors to sell. She doesn’t spay any animal that I know of.
But when I recently asked her about the cats in the bag, she said that her best friend’s bf put the cats in the bag and dropped them in the river and as soon as her best friend found out, she dumped the guy.
When he turned 12, his mom found out that the husband was cheating while he worked in Alaska. She was lonely and didn’t like being alone so she went to visit him and found him with various other women. She never told the boys that he cheated, just took the blame for the divorce and married another guy. I don’t have much respect for this woman and she could be lying about many things including who cheated first.
XP was devasted and refused to go to school. He was never good at school anyway. His mother couldn’t control him so she tracked him down to a house with other truants and had him arrested and locked up in Juvy for 3 days. When she went to visit him he told her “I WILL HATE YOU UNTIL THE DAY I DIE”. He told me that he manipulated the counselor into getting him his guitar (with the pity ploy)and also convinced her to move him to a low security area and then he escaped with his guitar.
This tells me that he was ALREADY a manipulator and very sure of his charms BEFORE the crisis of divorce.
He says he lived in many places but eventually ended up playing guitar with a band in bellingham and living with an 18 year old prostitute for about a year. I can’t imagine what that was like. He does have stories of having sex when he was 10 with older girls. Apparently he was THAT GOOD EVEN THEN! 😛
I’m not sure where the hate for women comes from but yes, it is definitely focused on the mother. It might come from watching the dad abuse the mother and therefore identifying with his father, wanting to please his father and be like his father. Or else it might come from his feeling that he was abandoned by his mother when she locked him in juvy. I think that intensity of emotion was already there, it was just looking for something to lock onto.
Was your husband abusive before he died?
I feel like the hate for women is about shame. He has a deep seated shame about who he is and needs to project it on someone who is a scapegoat.
I’m pretty sure hanging around older kids has to do with wanting to manipulate “authority figures”. To him, an older kid is an authority figure because they have cars, money and sex, but yet they are still accessible to him. They validate him by paying attention to him. When he manipulates older girls it makes him feel like he has taken their power as his own. It would be great if you could find a way to short circuit this validation and help bring him down to reality. if you could find out where the girls live and explain the entire personality disorder to their parents, give them books and have them explaiin to the girls. Lots of “ifs” there, I know.
As for the dog, I’m sure that your son has beaten the dog and that’s why it growled. Now I know that XP beat my dog and I never suspected it. I just thought the dog was a nervous dog. Turns out he was only nervous around my XP, but he explained to me that the previous owner was a guy who beat the dog, so now it was nervous around men. DON’T LET THE KID ALONE WITH THE DOG or any helpless animals or children.
I have some more thoughts but will wait til you reply.
NEED ADVICE!!!
domestic abuse injunction is off. the X-P left me a message on my phone…he called to let me know that he went to court today. he wants to come by to ‘pick-up his stuff.’ the only thing i have is a HD cooler bag, which was given to both of us. The guns were turned in to the police. He doesn’t know that i turned them in months ago. (this was actually a requirement, but the police never followed thru, so i did).
oh, should i give him his xgirlfriendsssss vibrator? and a porn movie? he left these, too?
Questions!!! Should i call him and let him know. If I do I will keep the conversation very short.
I must say that I’m incredibly angry that the court system never sent even a courtesy letter notifying me that the injunction was coming off.
i believe i should contact the court system/domestic violence dept. whether i call him back or not.
ALL ADVICE IS VERYYYYY WELCOME!!
Candy,
I’m not sure but is it possible to go to the police station and tell them that you are afraid of him and have them call him and tell him that you don’t have any items of his since they were thrown away a long time ago? have them say that you don’t want him coming to your home at all?
Dear Candy,
I’d CHECK to see that the injunction IS OFF.
Then I would put his stuff OUTSIDE ON TEH CURB, and text or e mail him and tell him to get it before the trash man does.
You migh tput a note with it that says, “You can call teh cops about your guns, as they have them.”
But that is all i would do. I would not contact him directly by phone or otherwise. and do nothing until I saw that what he said is true about the injunction.
Good luck. (((hugs))))
skyler,
well I am UNAWARE of any physical abuse. That would include his father. He was very young when his dad died and because he was so young he spent most of his time with me. I didn’t work full time when he was young and my husband didn’t babysit when I worked generally (except that fatal suicide day). Usually my in laws babysat when I worked.
However my husband had issues with alcohol/drugs and he could be mentally abusive when under the influence. So my son would have witnessed some of this even as a baby. And also very controling. I saw my husband at times be pretty controlling of my older son (about 13 yrs old at the time) And he didn’t seem to get the concept of picking your battles with a teenager. He would make a BIG deal over my son wearing shorts to school when the temperature wasn’t what HE considered short weather…Stuff like that. Like arguing about if it was 59 degrees outside or 60?? (by the way my younger sons father was my older sons step father) But I didn’t see these control issues with his own son because he was so young.
When my husband died my oldest was almost 14 and the youngest was not quite 4 years old.
After his dad died I thought that me and my younger son had a pretty close relationship. He and his brother were 10 years apart. And although they grew up together and were pretty close even with their age difference. They didn’t necessarily fight or compete with each other like most brothers that are close in age. My younger son seemed to look up to his older brother when he was younger and want to “hang with him” when his friends came over to play basketball or whatever.
I don’t know…When I look back I think that my son suffered more than the usual LOSS & disapointments, in his young life. Of course starting with the tragedy of his fathers suicide and my son being with him that day.
Because of the lack of “a father figure” in his life, we went to the big brothers/big sisters program. I guess he was about 7 or 8 at the time. His “big brother” was a man from our town that has a couple of kids of his own. This relationship fizzled out pretty quickly because this guy just didn’t have the time that the program required to spend with my son. Between his job and his own kids and his kids pretty active in sports ect. He just didn’t have alot of time to spare.
I think my son was upset by this at the time because he really liked this guy. And it ended pretty abruptly.
Big Brothers/Big sisters program soon replaced him with a new “big brother” and this relationship lasted for a few years. When my son was about 11 years old, that relationship also ended abruptly. His “big brother” started to expect my son to call him and keep in touch with him rather than the other way around. The big brother also had taken on a big project at work around this time and abruptly ended his relationship with my son by calling big brothers to inform me he also no longer had the time to be involved with this program.
My son was crazy about his first male teacher in the 5th grade and often went to see him after school in his 6th and 7th grade year. Just to visit…..
To me it seemed that he did need that “male” influence in his life. And I tried to provide it the only way I knew how. My son also played sports up until high school. (male coaches)
However none of those relationships ever lasted LONG TERM.
Other than with my oldest son.
Now to me it would seem natural that he would have ambandonment issues. Starting with the death of his dad. Suicide can be devistating for those left behind. And maybe to include the others that he developed close relationships with and then they just dropped out of his life.
You know that was one of the reasons when I saw all this disturbing stuff when he was 15 that I took him to counseling.
I thought he might have lots of unresolved pain.
If you sat him down and asked him…..I have done this many times over the years….How he felt about his dad, and more importantly how he felt about not having his dad in his life…How this impacted his life.
He would say: I don’t remember what it is to have a dad, so I don’t really know what I’m missing.
Or a few years ago: I never had my dad at my baseball game so I don’t know what that would be like. Kind of non commital stuff.
Yet I don’t really believe that. He has never shown the pain, of even feeling sorry for himself, that he doesn’t have a dad. He is pretty matter of fact about it. And to me that indicates that he has unresolved feelings about it that he has pushed down. Kids are pissed about their parents getting divorced.
The hate he has for me….. and now what I see with his interaction with females…..I’m not sure where that comes from. Obviously he has a different perspective of our past relationship.
I used to think that maybe he blamed me for his dad taking his life? The same way that my older son went through a phase of blaming me for his dad and myself divorcing?
Its not like he will open up to me now. He lies so much now if we have nay kind of conversation it is pretty futile.