Linda is not an abuser! I am not in an abusive relationship! I was in a very fucked up head space yesterday and I have this blog rule that I don’t talk about Linda in anything other than good ways for this very reason; that people can like the voice (me) and thus blame someone else (like…say Linda!). And what happened was very complex and covers decades and I put down about 4 sentences. So here goes....
Okay, I was physically abused in my life for many, many years/decades. I have not been ‘abused’ by Linda. Yesterday was a really horrid day for me, partially because I again tried to reconnect with my parents. This meant talking to my father for a LONG time about things that are so unbearable painful for me but yet to him completely dismissive and forgettable or worse that by asking him to remember things like, my brother sexually using my body for over a year, I was being a BAD person. Plus it was clear that my father was, though living a few blocks away, completely unaware of any of my medication conditions including: my need to convert oxygen (my hands turning purple along with my blue lips while we talked didn’t mean anything to him), my seizures, my partial stroke, my loss of memory, pretty much anything. In fact for my anniversary they gave us an album of pictures of me, there aren’t really any pictures from the last two years (with me in a wheelchair), or me fencing (because though invited to tournaments they never came, not even the ones in town).
But then, my father comes from a family where abuse=love. In fact to this day, the rest of the family gets together to verbally and sometimes otherwise abuse each other. Literally nothing good is said; if you make someone cry, if you say something so hurtful they leave, or vomit or pass out, then that means you win (Seriously, spouse dies of cancer, make fun of the member of the family stupid enough to marry them, and then make fun of the dead spouse). And yet they keep doing it over and over again because that is the only signs of love they understand. My mother's heritage was even worse. So in one way I can understand why my father even when he may not WANT to be like that, still ends up being like that. And how when describing how I was told in very vehement terms by my mother that we were not going to be ‘allowed’ to go out with them because I acted completely inappropriately. It turned out that the ‘inappropriately’ was passing out and falling face down in my food. To my Father this was not even memorable. But when he realized it was in the first 9 months or so when “they were ‘processing’ my disability” (meaning they wanted me to control it better so that I represented them better in public….like not be in a wheelchair for example), he said, “Oh yes, that would make sense then.” No apology or remorse really just a “Oh yes, that is how things are.” I don’t want to go on an on because I do love my parents even though they often and frequently hurt me, the one time they might see me every month or two. This however was a concentrated dose, prolonged and finished with my father leaving me crying because he had an appointment elsewhere, and well, me crying wasn’t really enough for him to stay was it?
So all in all a really bad day. Then we had the blog and some emails which didn’t go that great to be honest. But I am the one publishing the blog and I choose to put stuff out there (like this) based on my assumption that people are basically good and sometimes things happen in a very small space of time and you get turned around inside. And I became to believe what I USED to believe; that I deserved whatever physical, sexual or other abuse would come my way. In fact, I used to believe the only way I could exist was to be abused. I know that is wacky thinking but that’s what getting beaten for 19 years and then being forced to tell the person who beat you that you love them (and beaten again if it doesn't sound sincere enough) kind of does right? That’s what being sexually abused and then getting beaten for not having your bed made perfectly does. That is what happens when your extended family tries to create a restraining order on you, or your own grandmother refuses to look at you because you came 'out'. Being sick or disabled doesn’t make a group like that change their mind, being disabled only proves to them that I was ‘weak’ and not really one of them anyway. That is my extended and close family.
So when Linda late at night misunderstood the previously blog and kept verbally slapping me down because she kept talking about how I was stupid and they didn’t want to hire me because of my stupidity, and I was trying to tell her it was the WHEELCHAIR. But she kept saying, “Let me finish what I am saying,” in that tone a boss uses to the lowest underling before going on about the type of stupidity people see me. Well, that was a bit too much. Plus I had the computer open to yet ANOTHER incredibly painful email sent to me ABOUT me and disabled people. Now, Linda knows I am not stupid, she does not think I am stupid, but we run into people a lot who think am stupid because I am in a wheelchair. She didn’t read the blog, or didn’t remember it perfectly and while the post was about how I don’t even get to be seen at all, don’t get to be a human because all people see is the chair, she thought it was about this “stupid” issue. Of course having my partner going on and on about my stupidity while I am in pain (physical) and at the end of my limit of emotional pain too was the end. Also, when Linda works late, she often comes home and has office speak, so I have to just say to her, “Hey, I am NOT your assistant, so why not try saying that again.” Because spouses don’t say “I want you to get me this, this and this and I want that forwarded to me.” – at least we don’t, but if she works 10 hours as a manager at work, that is exactly what she does.
So, I left the bedroom. I went to the kitchen. To Linda, Beth upset plus Kitchen equals Beth is going to get a knife to cut herself. So when I moved my arm she grabbed it. I don’t think she knew how upset she herself was (for reasons not for here), nor how sick I have become and so she grabbed me hard enough to leave little finger bruise marks. Remember, only a short time ago, I was so strong that I could probably lift Linda up with one arm, my epee arm. So Linda grabbing me with the same strength as then (which may have been the last time I felt like this), had a totally different result. Then as I tried to move forward she body checked me (now that I am smaller and weaker than her, I think again, she is not used to the vast difference in strength), hard enough to wrench my shoulder and bounce me quite a ways. Was Linda “physically abusing” me? No. She had however made an assumption and acted on that assumption before talking or waiting to see if it was correct. It was a late and hard day for both of us. And I had not given her the space to tell what she understood and then corrected her but took it all very personally. So no winners here, just the kind of things that happen when couples who love each other have bad days.
However, her bruising and body checking/slamming me confirmed to me WHO I WAS. That I was a person who got these kinds of hurts, these emotional hurts because I DESERVED IT. This idea/action opens up a door in me. Inside that door is a demon which says, “Only when you have been punished ENOUGH will you then be loved.” Because that is what I had been told and what had been written on my body for a couple decades. So I had a whole day of emotional pain to punish myself with, so I started hitting my face, and my body and my legs, and my face again, and standing up, and then falling down (because I wasn’t on oxygen, and not so good on feet anyway).
Okay, this is a very private thing that people with abuse know about sometimes and those that don’t think is sort of crazy. And this not who I am nor have I done anything like this in years, in fact, I thought all that was gone forever. So I guess there is some counseling in my future. But the thing is that Linda tried to talk to me, tried to keep me safe, would sometimes leave to see if she was the trigger, would do anything EXCEPT grab me again because she knew now THAT WAS a trigger. I was in a particularly altered state. Linda wanted only to hug me and take care of me. I couldn’t let that happen until all my sins had been laid upon my body (meaning that I had been beaten and beaten until I couldn’t do that anymore).
So, again something I didn’t really want to talk about to everyone. Something I don't want to be judged about unless you have lived a life like that, in which case this really doesn't need the whole explaination. But this is the internet and people who care about people are going to have feelings. Okay. I would rather show you the type of screwed up person I am, the reason I call myself “the thing” or “the monster” and believe that I can only cause pain and suffering to those around me, than have anyone believe that Linda did this. I am saying this, not in a “Safe space” but in a public and open arena where people will again probably use it against me, because I love Linda and I would rather people understand the truth, which is complex and kind of ugly, than think she is an abuser. I AM an abuser, I just only abuse one person, myself. I never hit Linda, I didn’t last night.
Are my parents to blame? They were just showing me the kind of love they received. Were THEIR FAMILIES to blame? Or was I to blame because I knew better, I counseled about this and yet, this trigger broke through. Was Linda to blame simply because she was having a bad night? Or were the words to blame, words that every other night would have made me laugh and go, “No, not the stupid, the wheelchair, see, I don’t even get up to the level of being assumed stupid because that would require me to be a human instead of just a wheelchair.” Or was I to blame because on the same day I was getting slammed on the phone, on the internet, on email, I decide to have a long conversation to give my parents another chance (which turned out to be another chance to hurt me beyond comprehension). Or is it just what happened.
Well, once a person IS done beating herself, if they have a system which is not so greatly balanced and ill like mine is, it then becomes a problem getting to sleep because I stop breathing. A problem because my lung won’t inflate and my lips and hands are purple. I problem becuase I have partial seizures. A problem because if we go to the hospital I will be under suicide watch, and a problem because I haven’t taken any pain pills for the whole day, and just because you get the demon back behind the door, it still leaves you a wrecked body to deal with. (Seriously, today, I feel like I've been beaten up.....laugh, laugh)
So there is the squalid tale of yesterday. No, Linda is NOT an abuser. Nor an emotional abuser. We are a couple who are trying VERY, VERY hard to leave the legacy of the things done and the attitudes forced on us, into a new and better ones. We want to be balanced, loving, supportive individuals – we know exactly what we want because we have seen the opposite in many forms. And we work toward that. Why yesterday/last night happened is something we will work together to find out and to stop, particularly to stop falling at times of crisis into old patterns. But if anything, it is about some people who are hurting and vulnerable, which I think could include a lot of people out there reading who are hurting and vulnerable in different ways. Now, this is a partial explanation of last night. If I could please, can ask that you please try to treat it with the respect as if this WAS a safe space instead of the big bad internet.
I want to be a good person, and I want to be honest. To do that and live by my values, today that means I have to share with you something very private and rather horrid about me as a human being. Because I want you to understand that to Linda at these times I am like a cat or dog from the SPCA who has been abused. She wants to take care of me when I am in those states, but sometimes, I am so far back in that abuse mentally, I can’t even really see her. I don’t think there are bad people in this story but one person who is and was hurting and couldn’t control herself and another who is hurting because the person she loves had to beat herself to the point of semi-consciousness. All because she (which is I) couldn’t break the chains, couldn’t believe that there was love, unless there was abuse.
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