During my marriage, the frequency and intensity of the abuse got worse over time. By the third and fourth years, it was almost daily: a day of not speaking followed by a day of berating. There were rare moments of peace. It was a roller coaster of mental and physical torment. I told a few people about it but kept most of it to myself. I didn’t even know how to talk about it. I felt isolated. Even though they wanted to, no one knew how to help.
In the early years I fought back, arguing and defending myself against his judgements and insults. Over time though, I realized that fighting back didn’t accomplish anything. It didn’t change the situation. It was a waste of my physical and emotional energy. So I started to stay quiet. I needed to for my own mental health. I let him tire himself out with his deep bellowing and screaming, and physical intimidation. I found my way of coping. Some may see this as my weakness. I saw it as my way of surviving.
For so long I wasn’t really allowed to be a person. And now I’m going through this process of trying to figure out who I am, because I’m no longer who I used to be.
I’ve been “no contact” for 6 months and physically separated for 20 months. I am still processing everything that happened. I still have bad dreams and anxiety. I worry about him coming back into our lives to hurt my kid. I am trying to move forward in the ways I know how. And I am proud of how far I have come. But it’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon.
And I haven’t moved forward on my own. I am incredibly lucky to have a family of support. But it can be challenging for them to understand what I experienced. They feel the pain when they hear some of what I went through, without being able to truly understand it.
The ways people help us aren’t necessarily the ways we need to be helped. It’s no one’s fault. They mean well. They care about us and want the best for us. But there isn’t always a clear understanding of what to do. And sometimes people who love us just feel like they need to do something. So they do it their way. The only option for them is for their support to be on their terms.
The challenge is that it’s not about them to begin with. So often when we want to help someone we turn everything around and make it about ourselves when it really isn’t supposed to be.
So sometimes…I just need to be quiet. There is strength in quiet. There is peacefulness in the quiet. And there is space to process, instead of saying things out of anger or hurt or pain, saying things that don’t move anything toward progress but just more damage.
There is no timeline for healing. There are no one set of action steps that work for us all. There is no specific method to move on. We each do it ourselves, in the ways we know how, at the speed we can. And that is ok.