Perspective

Just to put things into perspective, it is now the fall of 2011.  I am 41.  I have been divorced (for the second time) since 2007.  My younger daughter has not seen her dad for almost ten months.  I still wake up at night in fear….imagining M standing over my bed….panting and unshaven ….here to hurt me… or to beg me to stay, so he can hurt me every day for the rest of my life.  I am grateful every day for my job and for my health insurance.  We have a roof over our heads and the majority of our mental healthcare is paid for.  From the outside, our life looks mostly normal.

My "aha!" moment.....

Oprah likes to talk about those “aha” moments in your life.  I had numerous aha moments in my relationship, and to this day I still can’t fully understand why I didn’t act on them.  Maybe it was the smothering intensity of the apologies that always followed that sucked me back in, or maybe it was the sincere sounding promises that it wouldn’t happen again,  or maybe  I’m just a fool.  I’ve mostly stopped beating myself up over my part of the situation, but I’ll throw it out there as an option. 

I guess the first aha moment was several months into our relationship when I discovered that he was still corresponding with his ex-fiancé.   Corresponding so much and in such a way that she believed they had an appointment for couples counseling to try and work things out.  I can’t remember the exact details, but he took a call from her when I was in the other room and it made me uneasy.  Then I snooped.  Then I confronted him.  Then he told me more details.  At this point a smart, mature person would have made a graceful exit while he figured things out.  In fact, I asked him if he wanted me to do that.  Of course he said no.   As you can imagine, this continued on for several more months – him talking & fighting with her, me still dating him.  I imagine she finally found strength and sanity, because it eventually did stop.

Another aha moment came months later, when were living together.  This moment gave me a scary view of his true personality (disordered as it is).   I was printing something on his printer, when it got jammed.   A normal person says, “oh, crap” and tries to fix it.  He became absolutely enraged!  I didn’t care about his things!  I was so stupid for putting too much paper in it!  On and on.  Then he grabs the printer and yanks the cables out and smashes it on the floor.  Of course I am crying hysterically, I have never witnessed such a rage in my whole life.  I came close to doing the right thing that night.  I went to  Target and bought a new printer, then told him to pack it along with the rest of his stuff and get out.  But I wouldn’t be writing this if that were the end of the story.  Of course he was sorry, it would never happen again, etc. 

But it did happen again. And again, and again until finally had my AHA!!! moment.   We were married with a one year old child.  I was packing my final bags two days before deploying with my reserve unit for nine months in the Middle East. Until this day, it was, “I support you, I’ll take care of everything, I’m so proud of you!”  Suddenly as his parents, our daughter, and my older daughter stood and watched, I became a “selfish fucking bitch for leaving your family!!!”    We all watched as my bags flew out of the third floor window of our home while the horrible screaming continued.  His parents helped me gather the kids and the luggage and before he realized what happened we fled the scene.  At that moment, while I was cursed out in such a violent manner in front of my children, I had my final AHA moment with him.

 I vowed at that moment that I was done.  But as I would discover, sometimes leaving is harder than staying.

The Laundry List

The first little inkling I had that something was not right about M was the socks.  We hadn’t been dating very long, and I was in that initial stage of infatuation – he was so charming and really made me feel special.  We were both off from work, and I was just hanging out at his apartment.  He was doing his laundry and I absentmindedly sat on his bed and started matching up his socks while he was in the other room.  When he came back in and noticed what I was doing he became very upset.  He raised his voice at me, telling me that I had matched them wrong, started pulling them apart and obsessively laying them out and re-matching them.   I was upset at his reaction; I was just trying to be helpful.  He calmed down and reassured me it was okay – he was just particular about his socks. 

I put it out of my head pretty quickly, okay fine, the man is particular about his socks, so what?  Looking back with the years of experience I have, it wasn’t just about the socks.  It was about control and keeping me on my toes.  Soon it became about the shirts – they had to be hung dry, placed a certain way on the hanger.  Then the pants – hung dry, certain way on the hanger.  I have certain clothes I liked washed and dried a particular way, so I tried to be accommodating.  After all, isn’t part of a relationship about doing the little things for each other?

 But then one day he became short-tempered with me and yelled that I was hanging the shirts wrong.  “No, “ I said, “you told me to hang them this way.”  His insistence that he had said otherwise had me confused.  At the time I was very hurt by his mean-spirited criticism and doubting myself. 

This kind of scenario repeated itself over and over again, beyond the laundry.  I tried to do certain things the way he liked them, as I expected he would do for me.  Then the requirements would change – although he would insist that the requirements were the same as always, I just heard him wrong.    I had never had troubles with details, I have a successful career, I was in the military and listened to and carried out orders all the time.  Why was I always mishearing things at home? 

 One book I read calls it “gas lighting” after the movie.  I get it.  Tell me one thing today; tomorrow insist you told me something completely different.  Do it with such frequency and sincerity that one begins to doubt their own sanity. 

Looking back, I should have run screaming after the sock incident.  Who knew?

A little history

I married for the first time at twenty one.  Of course I was too young and immature.  At the time, I thought I was making a wise choice.  He was smart, and on the surface he was also ambitious.   I wanted financial security to avoid the hard struggles my parents experienced.  A few years later we had a daughter.  I adored her, but as years went by I became more and more unhappy.  My husband and I had serious financial problems, but even worse, we could not communicate.  I turned twenty nine and took a painful look at my life and marriage.  We were bankrupt, we never spoke, and I was so bitter I hadn’t slept in the same bed as my husband for a year.  I finally worked up the courage to ask for a divorce.   I almost laugh now as I recall the surprised reaction I received.  Really?  We haven’t had sex in over a year and you can’t believe I want a divorce?  I won’t say anymore than that because in spite of our terrible compatibility, my first husband is a good man and a really great dad.

 I was the one to move out of the house because my mother-in-law had retired early to come live with us and help out so we could both put more effort into school and career.   I would have left a few years sooner if not for the realization that for the good of my daughter, she would have to stay with her dad and grandma if I left the marriage.

 
About nine months after I moved out, I met M.  I wasn’t legally divorced yet, but I had really left the marriage years ago.  My relationship with M moved very fast.  He was so charming and everything was so perfect.  Amazingly, everything I liked….he did too!  We were so compatible!  He had just broken up with his fiancé and I had just broken up with my husband.  I liked him, he liked me, and it was perfect!  Yeah....right.

Running with Ping Pong Balls

     I had a dream once that I was running and my arms were filled with ping pong balls.  I was just holding on and running as fast as I could, but balls kept falling out of my arms.  I remember telling myself that I had to just keep running, I couldn't stop and pick up what I had dropped.  So I did.  I kept running to some mysterious destination, trying to hold on to as many of the ping pong balls as I could.

     Now, if you are a decoder of dreams you know exactly what was going on in my life at that time.  I was overwhelmed with events in my life, but determined to keep moving forward.  More accurately, terrified to stop moving forward. 

     That dream was about five years ago.  Today I am still running, my arms are still full of ping pong balls, and I am still terrified to stop running.  I hope that by writing about the things that have me running, I can perhaps find a tidy bag to carry my ping pong balls in and just walk forward at a leisurely pace.