You don't have to be a victim any longer
For a long time, I told myself stories about my life. In my mind, I was the epic hero of some kind of grandiose narrative: I was a devoted wife to an emotionally damaged man, and warrior mother who protected their children from his bad behavior.
As it turns out, this wasn’t true.
The real story is that my children and I were victims of domestic violence.
I like the old story better.
In this new story, my devotion didn't save him, and my interventions didn't save our children.
In this new story, it will take years for our children to heal from the damage resulting from years of feeling unsafe in their own home. It will take years for them to overcome the pain of never being good enough for their own father.
I had my story wrong for a long time, but I don’t have it wrong anymore. I might not like it, but it is mine and I will tell it.
Maybe in the telling I can finally become the hero of the narrative. Maybe in the telling, other women can come along and become heroes of their own story too.
We can own our stories by telling them.
This is the story I’m telling myself now:
I married a man who had a difficult childhood, and I thought I could heal him. I soothed him as he raged, excused his bad behavior, and apologized for him often. I quieted the kids so he could sleep, and straightened the house before he got home, and said yes as often as I could.
He yelled at us, and called us names. We were lazy, stupid, and unmotivated. I was “babying” the kids and “ruining them”. He’d taunt them, “Oh, what are you going to do? Run to mommy and she’ll protect you?”
He frightened us when he drove erratically, and raged at other drivers. We cringed when at an amusement park, he once told a ride operator to go back to her own country.
There were times I felt embarrassed to be married to him because every once in a while he would let something slip like, “Well, I think sometimes black people bring it on themselves.”
He mostly kept these thoughts to himself, and I pretended they didn’t exist.
He once called my son’s friend a “Pinko” because he attended a cooperative school. “What are you, some kind of Pinko?” he said crudely to this very sensitive teenage boy who was over at our house.
When I disagreed with him, he’d say, “Well, you’re wrong. Again.”
When the kids failed to pile in the minivan or get washed and brushed up at bedtime with military precision, he was quick with the nasty retort between gritted teeth, “What’s the matter with you people?”
We tried to stay on our best behavior so he wouldn’t get angry, but our best was never good enough.
There were other things too. He also baked cookies, watched Disney movies, and played board games. He coached little league, drove carpools, and never missed our son’s football games.
When it was good, it was good. When it was bad, it was abuse.
You can’t see these things for what they are when you are trapped in a vortex of tiptoeing, pretending, and drowning in the minutiae of managing your daily lives. You can’t see things for what they are when there are plenty of moments when things seem just fine.
What I didn’t realize was the deleterious effect his behavior would have on all of us.
For years, I begged him to go to therapy. I offered to go with him. I told him there was medication that could soothe his irritability. He said he was fine. He told me that I was crazy, and maybe I should go to therapy.
So I did.
In therapy, among other things, I learned that you can’t help anyone who doesn’t want to help themselves.
I also learned that you can get out.
It was the stories of others that helped me see that I could have a completely different life. It was a man on a podcast recounting a tender conversation with his wife and I thought, “Wow. There are husbands who talk like that?”
It was a novel about a husband and a wife reading in bed at night in which he read her a passage and asked her opinion.
It was going back to work and learning that many women actually liked and respected their husbands. I guess at one time I did too, until over time there was not much left to like or respect.
We need to tell our stories… all of them. These stories saved me.
Okay, maybe I saved myself, but I held on tightly to the words of others in the hope that one day they could be true for me too.
I was ashamed for a long time because I was the one who chose him. I thought this made it my fault. Sometimes I still do.
I try to remind myself still that his words and his actions weren’t my fault. That even though I was there, I'm not responsible for his actions.
I still often feel somehow complicit that I somehow "hosted" his behavior by making endless concessions and excuses. But my wise therapist assures me that when you're drowning, you can't save anyone else.
So although I still sometimes feel guilty, I won't be ashamed, and neither should you.
I may not be the hero of the story as I always imagined, but I am still a different kind of hero.
I trust my instincts, and I don’t apologize when I’m not wrong. I tell the truth even when other people don’t like it. I use my voice when it matters and even sometimes when it doesn’t. I don’t tiptoe or make myself small and quiet for anyone. And most importantly, since I couldn’t protect my kids or myself in my marriage, I got out.
I own my story now by telling the truth.
I say that I was once married to a man who told me I was “simple.” He used to shake his head, and look at me condescendingly and say, “So simple.” These words felt like a gentle pat on the head as if I were a dog.
I tell that story, and other stories of how he degraded and humiliated me. And in the truth telling, I grow stronger.
And the more you tell it, you will grow stronger too.
You will hold your head higher and stand a little taller like the hero you are.
Because it was never your fault. . . not then and not now.
Previously published in Medium under the pen name Allyson Finch, 1/12/2020.
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