My dragonslippers
Four years ago, my abusive marriage ended. I thought that the passing of four years was long enough, and that I would be “over it” by now… I was wrong. Over the past couple of months I’ve been swept up into flashbacks, as well as experiencing anxiety and dissociation for no apparent reason.
The other day, I was feeling good, and thought that the storm had passed… but now, it’s back with a vengeance.
The good thing about the four years since the marriage was over, is that I can more clearly see how we reacted to each other to create the disaster that was the marriage. It’s easy to say that I walked into the marriage because of old patterns… one therapist told me that I married a man just like my father, after all. But that’s a nice square box to place the experience in… the reality is so much more complicated. My childhood was my training for my marriage… it taught me how to ignore my own needs in favour of others, to consider myself worthless, and not expect to be treated with respect. His training involved systematically having his self-confidence destroyed; suppressing his anger, to the point where it exploded without warning; and thinking that domination equated to power.
He needed control, but didn’t want it… and I didn’t want control, but needed it.
That one line is possibly the most accurate summary of the marriage. How it presented was sometimes funny; but more often than not, painful. Now that I’m a little further away from the situation, I can see the links between such things as his jealousy and my actions. The best example that I can think of to describe this dynamic, is my fear of going outside – he once commented that one of our male neighbours always seemed to be going outside when I was; which was a huge red flag to me. It meant that something was wrong, and that something needed to change, as anything that bothered my husband, meant danger. I couldn’t stop my neighbour from going outside, but I could. So began another layer of my social anxiety.
There are lots of little examples like that…
Reading this, people will wonder why I stayed with him for so long. It’s a perfectly reasonable question… I lived in fear of him for eight years; he abused me regularly, and was constantly in trouble with his employers. But that chaos echoed both of our pasts, so it seemed normal. I didn’t go to work with visible bruises, and he acted almost childlike in public; so I would often be seen as the bossy one. No one looking into the marriage would say that anything was wrong.
Probably the most obvious example of why I stayed within the marriage for so long, is shown by his reaction after his final attack on me… The attack happened on a Sunday afternoon, and after his panicked phone call to my mother, he settled down as if nothing had happened. When I went to get medical treatment the next day, he accompanied me into the examining room, where he laughed about the injuries and how he had caused them. He repeated this laughter when he dropped my medical certificate into my workplace to say I wouldn’t be in for at least a week. It wasn’t until later that day, when my brother arrived that any sort of reality started to creep into his awareness. He hid the chair broken during the attack, and tried to pretend like nothing had happened… but my brother took him aside and said that he needed to move out for a while.
When my brother went home, and my mother arrived; there was a further dawning of awareness for him… he was always desperate for my mothers approval, and that was obviously missing. Suddenly he couldn’t cope. This is when the twisting of the story began in earnest. Two nights in a row he took off in his car… on one night he threatened suicide, and on the other night he threatened suicide and then told that police that he was too scared to return the house. This showed how he could act when faced with a situation he didn’t like.
On Valentine’s Day, he left me to return to his family. It was then that his twisting of the truth became more obvious… suddenly there was no attack, but instead, I was making it all up. I broke the chair and caused the injuries to myself. This version of events is what he was going to defend the Protection Order with… thankfully, I had the medical report detailing the attack, and all of his documentation which included a letter to a former supervisor apologising for assaulting him… When his lawyer saw the documentation, the Protection Order defence was withdrawn.
When I look at this incident, I can see why I doubted so much of what happened within the marriage. I was dissociative, so often doubted my version of events anyway; but he encouraged me to doubt things by twisting them back onto me, and playing a totally different role in public. This situation reminds me of a quote from the book Dragonslippers: This is what an abusive relationship looks like:
‘You know, it’s interesting…work…politics…. It’s really so easy to control other people. You just have to cause dysfunction. Once someone feels insecure, you can do anything you want with them.’
This was said by the abuser within Rosalind Penfold’s relationship. I entered the relationship with my ex-husband already insecure… all he had to do, was to keep me in that place and he could do whatever he wanted. That’s why my attending therapy was seen as such a threat, and why he enjoyed my dysfunction so much.
I’m glad that I’m now physically free of him… I just wish that I was psychologically free as well.
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Now playing: Headless Chickens – George
via FoxyTunes
PDF The walk
Got to run… Got to get away… Got to escape…
This is how my need to runaway always starts… those words, repeated over and over. Sometimes they creep up on me slowly; but sometimes, they hit like the freight train. On Sunday, they hit suddenly; although I should have been expecting them… Last week, an inundation of triggers, meant that by Friday, I was a dissociated mess. Through my own actions, and decisions, I set myself up on the road to self-destruction, and despite some last-minute reality checks, things became very messy…
On Sunday, I got that last little push that tipped me over the edge into a flip-book of flashbacks… So, the chant began… Got to run… Got to get away… Got to escape…
This has often been the beginnings of an incident of self-injury, which I know just causes pain to be piled on top of existing pain. I know the pull of self-injury well… it can be hypnotic and alluring… there’s a cold comfort in its familiarity. But, instead of following that path, I took the words literally and escaped by going for a walk.
Considering my social anxieties, I’m not quite sure why I decided to do this… and initially, it seemed a huge mistake. I walked past families preparing BBQ’s, causing flashbacks to summers of watching my father cooking at the family BBQ… past the barking dogs, which brought up images of the scars on my friends back from an attack by a stray Alsatian… It went on, with each new sight, smell and noise triggering a new flashback.
I walked faster, and faster… trying to outpace the thoughts and images in my head. But the chanting in my head got louder and louder… Got to run… Got to get away… Got to escape…
Negative talk started to drown out the chant… I shouldn’t have eaten so much over the past week… I didn’t do enough at work… I’m just an attention seeking nightmare…
It went on and on… until, the words of WPT cut through all the noise. He told me the story of a woman who heard some rattling behind her as she walked; so she walked faster, scared of the noise… She walked faster and faster, until she was running… all the while, the rattling noise became louder and louder. As she scrambled up a hill, she met someone who told her to turn around… The noise was that of the skeleton of her past, tied to her ankle. Until she turned, faced it, and cut it free; it would always be with her. **
This rather butchered part of a story, brought me back to reality… I realised that this is what I was so desperately trying to do… I was trying to outrun the skeletons in my closet. But, they were making their presence felt through flashbacks and anxiety. Because they exist within me, I’m never going to outrun them… or inflict enough damage through self-injury to drown them out for long. Until I turn to face them, and work through what happens in the present as a consequence of those skeletons; I’m never going to ease their hold over me…
The kicker is, that I know this. I know that my self-injury is just another way to try to run… but turning around to face those skeletons is terrifying. I’ve been able to do it at times, but never for long. I get scared, confused and overwhelmed. I can never seem to do it they way they say in the books, or even in the other blogs I read… It seems such an unobtainable goal. How can something summarised in one chapter of a book, be so difficult, and take so long to do?
Of course, my annoyance with not being able to achieve this thing called “healing” is yet another sign of my need to distract and have control…
So, the skeletons of my past keep rattling…
** As a note: I know my recounting of the story isn’t accurate, and I’m not sure of its title; but I think it might be one of the short stories in the book Women who run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
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Now playing: Missy Higgins – Ten Days
via FoxyTunes
Who are the “creepy guys”?
“Creepy guys”… that’s how the men shown on a recent current affairs programme, were described by several of my co-workers (see promo article – Close Up shocked by ‘sexually explicit’ online chat with girl). Everyone around the table nodded in agreement… these guys were “creepy” and “disgusting”. Implicit within their words, was the fact that it was obvious that these men were “bad”, and that they would be able to spot them a mile off…
While looking one of them in the eye, I responded that those “creepy guys” could have been your husband, father, neighbour, school teacher, anyone… including being a woman, rather than a man.
Their denials were swift and vigorous… No, all of those men looked creepy. I don’t think they could get their heads around the possibility that an abuser could be a female, so that part of my response was ignored.
Then something happened… someone said that one of the men shown looked like he was a businessman. Another mentioned a recent case where a well-known comedian was convicted of child sexual abuse. My amazing cynical friend, who knows a little of my past, repeated my words to the others in a slightly different way… suddenly there were uncomfortable shifting in chairs as they realised the implications of what they had seen on the show, and were now realising… An abuser isn’t the “creepy guy” with a long coat hiding in the bushes, or online… No, an abuser could be your neighbour, friend, relative… anyone.
I work with educated people… about a quarter of our number have at least one masters degree, while the others hold at least one bachelor degree… yet, they have led fairly sheltered lives. When faced with anything outside of their comfort zone, they don’t cope. They have shown this time after time… so I don’t know why it surprised me today.
Actually, the only difference in the usual play of things, was that today, I spoke up. I gently questioned their beliefs, and they listened. I’m not naive enough to believe that I’ve changed their minds; but for a moment, I had them thinking.
I know it’s not much, but it’s something small that I could do to acknowledge my past. I grew up in a time when abuse was considered to be physical violence only – sexual or psychological abuse weren’t well-known, understood, or acknowledged. However, much like today, people considered that any abuse only happened to “those people over there…” as they point to a vague point in the horizon. It certainly didn’t happen in their house. Yet, my father was a well-known, and respected member of the community… as were the other men that my siblings and I, called “Uncle”. This helped the abuse that I was subjected to, fly under the radar. No one questioned why I came to my mother during a party in tears, I was just shooed back to bed with a drink of water; all the while, the party laughed about my “excitability”.
I can understand them not questioning… well, I try really hard to. We were a white middle class family, and that sort of thing didn’t happen in white middle class homes. I didn’t say why I was crying. I never said anything. I’d been told, in many ways, that telling was not an option. Societal expectations played a part in my silence… maybe, just maybe, by questioning my co-workers beliefs about “creepy guys”, it might make them consider things such as why a young girl would be crying at an adult party…
It’s not much, but it was something that I was capable of at that moment.
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Now playing: Tracy Chapman – I’m Ready
via FoxyTunes
Expressive Arts Carnival: Obstacles
The theme for this months Expressive Arts Carnival is:
Through drawing, painting, or any other visual means, create an image that represents a major obstacle facing you now.
My first reaction when reading the directive for this month’s carnival, was to write the letters “ME” on a page, and send it in. It feels more and more as if I am my own worst enemy; or probably more accurately, my thinking is.
My disordered thinking is evident in all areas of my life, but is particularly problematic at work – where I’m doing the job of about two people, but reluctant to make waves by saying that I’m swamped; within therapy – where I hold up any negative interaction as a reason to further beat myself up mentally, and use as a gateway to more self-injury; and finally with my relationship with food – where small things like being told that I must have three meals a day in order to have the antibiotics I was prescribed last week, caused a major panic.
I know that all of these factors are inter-related symptoms of an underlying cause… the problem is, that the symptoms are screaming so loudly, that it’s difficult to see, or hear the motivations behind it all. It is for this reason, that I’ve chosen this abstract photo of a red canna lily to represent both the scream of the symptoms, and the underlying motivations.
This scream is my obstacle… and my path to healing.
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Now playing: Counting Crows – Rain King
via FoxyTunes
Angel
I return to work on Monday. Going back to an overwhelming workload, within a toxic environment.
I don’t know if I can do it. Actually, I know I can’t.
The only question is; how long can I handle it, before it destroys me?
Falling
When I returned from Wellington, I thought I was making my way out of the abyss. Things seemed more settled, and my thinking clearer.
I was wrong.
During the past week I have reconnected with dysfunctional people from my past; and set-up emotional scenarios which mirror different aspects of my past.
I’m a train wreck.
I’m trying to live in the present, and failing. The past has begun haunting me with a vengeance.
I would tell you how my week has been; but I don’t know, it’s a blank. I see from my tweets that there was a problem over the weekend with a neighbour… my hair has been cut… I see from emails that I was concerned about friends… I had Christmas cards to put in the post today, so things were getting done… I was appearing normal. But, I don’t remember it. There’s jumbled glimpses of other things… putting on trackies when I was getting cold talking to a friend on the phone Friday night… It’s Monday, right? That means I need to get the rubbish ready to put out tomorrow… Panic in the mall on Saturday… I hate Allison… Take the team at work to afternoon tea on Thursday, but tell them they can go downtown for an hour if they want – one small way I can make up for them not getting a bonus… I don’t trust anyone… Why is our work Christmas function in a sports bar?
Just a mess of thought fragments being tossed around my head.
I was scrolling through my YouTube playlists, and came across this piece which calmed me briefly…
If I’m falling, I wonder where I’ll land?
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Now playing: Arvo Part – Spiegel Im Spiegel
via FoxyTunes
Being
Everything we see, or experience leaves an impression on our being… is it positive or negative, and does it balance out over time?
As I’ve descended into the depths of suicidal ideation and intent over the last few months; these sorts of questions, have played on my mind. I questioned why I was here, what my purpose was, and how far I had fallen short of meeting any expectations – my own, and my perception of what others expected of me. I could say that I was caught in the thinking, but I wasn’t… I was still working, existing, and being “normal”. However, everything was very superficial, and in the moment. I had no concept of anything long-term, and all I felt was the confusing extremes of nothingness, or utter chaos.
Earlier this week, I had to go to Wellington for a conference. Not only was the conference in the city where my father lives, but it was going to force me to interact with a group of strangers for long periods of time without any downtime. This was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back; all of the emotions that I’d been bottling up from the different stressors over the last few months, came bubbling to the surface. In my rather typical fashion, I didn’t tell anyone what the problem was; instead, I descending into mute chaos, unable to even pin-point what was going on. All I knew, was that I had to go to Wellington, and that going to Wellington was going to be the place where I tried to destroy myself – either physically, or psychologically. There was so much rage at the thought of being in Wellington, that I was barely able to function.
Most people would have tried to avoid going to the conference. Most people would have tried to communicate with their therapist about what was causing the chaos, especially after asking for an emergency session because things were out of control. Not I. Nope. I sat there, almost mute. Allison tried to encourage me to talk. I shut down further. She tried different techniques to try to encourage me to open up, and I dismissed them. All I could do was scream internally, and not say a word until the very end of the session, when I mentioned that I wouldn’t be seeing her at the usual time because I was going to be in Wellington at a conference. A nice parting cry for help… too little, too late.
I went into the weekend, planning my own demise. It was going to be spectacular!
Possibly the only reason why those plans weren’t carried through, was that a friend I hadn’t talked to in a while contacted me. Thankfully, they know me well enough to understand my warped codes… my signals of distress… the warning signs that I was planning something very bad. They pushed through their own problems, and forced me to confront my own. They tried to be a voice of reason, when I wasn’t prepared to hear anyone, or anything. They listened to my rants about no one understanding… countering my rant with simple questions regarding how I was communicating. They know me all too well… I can walk out of a conversation sure that I had said A, B, and C; only to realise that I might have said A, B, and C… but it was buried amongst the rest of the alphabet in such a way that there is no way that anyone would be able to understand what I was really trying to say.
As part of this interaction, I wrote one of the most honest emails I’d written in a long time. I laid out how out of control things were, what had caused the chaos, and the reasons why I had been slowly withdrawing from everything for months. I tried to show how much I was failing at everything, and that I could see no reason to keep on going. I thought I laid it all out very nicely… my friends counter point was that I wasn’t a quitter, so why was I quitting now. It seemed a pretty weak argument. It didn’t change my plans for self-destruction. I flew to Wellington with everything set.
What I hadn’t counted on, was the quiet determination of my friend. There were texts to see how I was. Often arriving at a point when I was about to jump off the metaphorical cliff. Those seemingly simple acts kept that part of my brain that seems determined to heal, somewhere nearby.
I honestly don’t know how I made it through the conference. There were triggers everywhere… crowds, noise, alcohol, hotels… and one of the worst… a former team leader. A woman who seems to know exactly how to push my buttons in a way that will tear me apart without thought. This time around was no different. My colleagues and I met her outside our hotel, as she was waiting for someone to come and pick her up. She greeted us with a smile, and then said that she had recognised me because of the tattoo on my right shoulder-blade. As this tattoo is quite low, I said that I was surprised that she could see it… she said she could just see the top of it, and then grabbed my jacket and blouse, pulling them down to expose my back, and show everyone what she had seen. This invasion of my personal space was too much. I immediately dissociated, and lost the rest of the night… in one move, she had shown that my personal space was meaningless, and could be invaded at any moment without consent.
So now I sit, having made it through the conference in one piece, despite my best efforts. I’m left wondering where to next. I sent the email to my friend, to Allison as well. On Thursday we had a very difficult session. She admitted that she didn’t understand my code. I told her I was difficult, and that every other therapist I’ve seen has said the same thing. She read things in the email that she had no idea about. All I could do was mention how difficult I am to work with. I hide. I avoid. I cloak unbearable pain in pretty words and say them as if they were nothing. When she doesn’t understand, I take that to mean that the unbearable pain is indeed nothing. So, I withdraw even further.
Yes, I am difficult. I would hate to be the therapist that tries to help me heal. Part of me thinks that this is Allison’s way of easing me out the door. Another part of me thinks that the fear of that, is a good distraction from having to deal with the pain of what happened in Wellington, and what led up to it.
Time will tell. Time will tell if it really is worth the pain of being.
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Now playing: Counting Crows – Round Here
via FoxyTunes
Fragments
Fragments… just bits and pieces flying around inside my head.
That’s what the last week has been like. Nothing tangible to hold onto.
The only constant are feelings of disgust. I feel dirty, disgusting, sub-human… unclean. I don’t think the layers of filth can be, or will ever be, removed. It is part of me as surely as the colour of my eyes. It is a part of me, and I am a part of it.
I think I could handle it, if all of the fragments flying around my head were of horror. Horror has the ability to sweep you away in a dissociative haze of lost time. But when there are everyday scenes intermingled with the horror, it makes you pause. You pause and look. You turn the fragment around, inspecting it from all angles. You look into the heart of it, and only then do you see the horror. The unmitigated horror of seeing how brazen and normal the abuse was. In those everyday scenes, you see the range of emotions on the faces around you – discomfort, curiosity, embarrassment, and the knowing smiles. What they don’t know, is that they are being manipulated. This is part of their entrance exam into the Old Boys Club. They all pass. Even the ones who question the young girls presence in a place she shouldn’t be, with their joking protests quickly turning into silent observation.
It was the perfect scenario. There was no obvious abuse, but it was implied. Every person in the room probably knew that something was wrong, but there was nothing tangible that they could take to the authorities. It opened the door to silent consent, and they walked through. They became accessories; and in order to ease their own conscious, they will stay forever silent. They didn’t see anything, after all. Just a young girl with her father walking by the shower room. He might not have known that the team were in there. They’re both hearing impaired, after all.
It changed the way those men looked at me. Some of them turned away more quickly. Some saw through me more readily. Some smiled, and beckoned me over more often.
Then the memories of horror draw you into their grip. Grounding techniques are lost in the wave that overwhelms and batters your mind.
But still, you force the smile and talk inanities to the person asking about patron upload problems.
You pack up the box of horrors for another time. Stamp down the lid and push it backwards. You hope that you never have to look at the box again. But, you know you will. Not because of the memories in the box, but because of the emotions it evokes. There is anger at looking at the horror, and anger at looking away. In a world of no-wins, I walk the minefield of navigating the present, while trying to understand and heal from the past.
It’s all done in the hope of having a future. My father took me past the shower room in order to have a future that he wanted. I walked past that shower room because I had no concept of choice. Despite often losing my way, I do have choices now. I have choices based on experience, education and understanding. The only thing more soul-destroying than the abuse, is seeing how I seem to make choices which encourage, or perpetrate self-abuse.
I know that there should be a positive note to the end of this, but there isn’t. I sit here at work, looking at the huge pile of work that is expected of me. I feel the effects of the medical problems which I was told yesterday will require minor surgery. I feel the dissociation starting – the slight fuzziness at the back of my head which is creeping forward steadily. It’s difficult to find that positivity, when the layers of stress in the present, add to the layers of horror from the past. Your head becomes a maelstrom of emotions, and the only relief is dysfunctional coping.
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Now playing: Tracy Chapman – All that you have is your soul
via FoxyTunes
Asking for help
I’m told that asking for help is one of the strongest things that a person can do. There is a strength in the vulnerability that comes from admitting that you can’t do something by yourself. It’s an indication that you’re not perfect… not the self-sufficient island of invincibility that you’d like to think you are.
It stinks.
It hurts.
It feels impossible.
Over the last few months, I’ve had the urge to cut off my hands during therapy. I know that this is about wanting to reach out for help, and not being able to do so. It’s about punishing those parts of myself who want to reach out. It’s about not allowing weakness.
I learned early on in life that weakness was not acceptable, and made life difficult. Any sign of weakness could be used against me. If I was scared of something, then I could be taunted with it. If something hurt, then it could be prodded. I was confused by being hurt by people that, five minutes earlier, had been laughing and teasing me. All of this meant that I saw my only option as being to draw inward, and showing no outward sign of vulnerability. I was often called stuck-up while I was growing up, mainly because I did everything possible to keep myself separate from those around me. I didn’t think that I was better than anyone else, I just didn’t trust anyone (including myself); so my only protection was to withdraw and project a veneer of invincibility.
That veneer of invincibility is now being threatened. There’s a needy part of me wanting to reach out to others for help. But that is being resisted. I’m showing more signs of dysfunctional coping. I’ve withdrawn any meaningful communication with everyone. I’m having to take medication every morning, just to face the prospect of work. I’ve withdrawn as much contact with people as is possible. All I’m doing, is trying to fly under the radar.
This is the contradiction that I’m living with – needing to fly under the radar, which by definition, means being self-sufficient and invisible; and parts of me needing help.
One is seen by society as being strong; the other weak.
One has kept me alive for the last 30 odd years; the other is what led to so much pain in the past, that I don’t know if I can go there again.
Even if I wanted to ask for help, I don’t think that I know how to do so. The stumbling efforts that I’ve made towards asking for help, have been a disaster. I’ve sent emails which have been misread and caused more pain. I’ve called crisis lines, and not been able to communicate how badly I’m coping, or ended up in the Police holding cells. I’ve gone online to talk to friends, but ended up being unsafe instead. So I obviously don’t know how to ask for, or accept, help. I don’t know what positive help looks like, and I’ve lost all sense of safety.
But, I’m still turning up to work everyday. I’m still playing the game.
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Now playing: Adele – Rolling In The Deep
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