All Good Things...

Not so long ago, I made the mistake of believing that there were certain things I would never do. I believed I would never leave my husband or end my marriage. I proved myself wrong back in 2009. I believed I would never live anywhere except my hometown, but when my marriage ended I had to find full-time employment at a level that would support my family, so I packed my bags and moved seventy miles away. I also made the mistake of believing there were certain things that other people wouldn't do - I never believed that my husband would stop loving me, but he did. I never thought that the man I dated after my divorce would deliberately hurt me, but I was wrong. I never thought anything could alter the way I felt about the man I have loved for the last eighteen months, but here I am in the aftermath of that catastrophic change, and I feel hollow inside, as if some vital part of me is missing. There is more emptiness than pain. All good things must come to an end. I know this is true, but I do not approve, and I am not resigned...

So here I am, examining the bits and pieces of another relationship that is ending. In sifting through these ashes, I wonder where we went wrong. Didn't we love each other enough? Weren't we there for each other? Was there something we could have done differently, something that would have saved us? How do we re-vision our lives without each other as a part of the picture?

I have some answers, but not enough. Sure we love each other, but love isn't the only important thing in a relationship. There must be respect and trust - love without these fundamentals is a house built on sand. Were we there for each other? Mostly - in some ways, neither of us was able to give enough of what the other needed. It wasn't because we didn't care or didn't try - we both put a lot of effort into making things work out. Was there something we could have done differently? That's the hardest question to answer. In the end, something happened between us that created a gulf that could not be bridged. Sometimes, relationships are just too broken to be repaired. Sometimes it is better just to leave the pieces behind and move forward.

Now we are both tasked with recreating our lives without the other. His absence leaves a hole in my heart. Will I always be empty? No...as much as aching hearts and wounded souls like to believe that the pain of lost love is permanent, I know from experience that eventually the emptiness gets filled. If we are lucky and purposeful, we fill it with things that are right and good and true. Sometimes we treat our emptiness like a landfill and pour in toxic things that end up causing us even more pain. My intention is to just let the emptiness be for a while and fill it with nothing. Rather than rush on toward something new, I'm going to take my time and give myself to the transition. I want to see where it takes me.

In the meanwhile, I'll work, spend time with the kids, and go hiking. I'll finish up my degree, and maybe have time to read something besides my accounting textbook. Eventually the numbness will fade and maybe then I'll actually feel something. Maybe there will come a time when the two of us revisit the relationship; when old wounds have healed and even the scars have faded. One thing I know is true - there is no certainty in life, and we should never say "never".

Restoration

"...your restoration is what we pray for." ~ 2 Corinthians, 13:9
Recently, I have been at odds with myself and with my life. There are multiple causes - difficulties in relationships, in setting healthy boundaries, stress brought on by the significant life changes I've engendered and endured in the past three years...all these things have had me feeling as if I am out of balance, as if there is some fundamental inconsistency inside me that I cannot seem to reconcile.

Today, I realized something about the malaise I've been feeling. I came to understand that at our core, we are truth, innocence, and power; we carry the likeness of the Creator of the Universe. If we are out of balance with ourselves, then we are indeed out of balance with God, since we have within us as an inner truth the animating spirit of God breathed into us at our creation. We must seek to be in balance or to find harmony with our core in order to be the people God would have us be. I have always known that going to the woods was healing for me when I felt out of step with who I was. Now I believe I know why.

Wilderness is healing for this condition because it is in nature that we see the beauty and wonder that lies hidden inside each of us. God's loving creativity is revealed in nature - it is an external representation of our own internal truth. When something is out of place in our lives - an addiction, a fear, old wounds that won't seem to heal, or just burdens from our past - we should look for ways to balance ourselves with God. Nature is a good vehicle for achieving that kind of balance. There are other ways that are effective too - I experienced one a few weeks ago when I participated in a community service event known as ImpactJC. I'll write more about that another time. Creating art, writing, the self-discipline of Yoga or martial arts - all these are ways to restore harmony and balance within ourselves. How incredible that we can be in tune with God simply by coming into harmonic resonance with who we truly are!

I stood on ancient stones today with the sun directly overhead and looked out over a blue sea of mountains and mist. I felt the peace of God wash over me. The burdens from the past that I have carried for so long felt a little lighter. Nothing about the difficulties I've been facing lately changed. Instead, I changed; I recognized the inner truth of who I am - a human made and nurtured and loved by the Creator of the Universe with the power to create and sustain a life that is pleasing and harmonious - and I felt restored into my rightful place as a child of God.

Miles and Years

Ah, could I lay me down in this long grass
And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind
Blow over me--I am so tired, so tired...
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

This morning, the tallest tree in my back yard stretched its naked branches skyward and swayed in the wind. The last amber fragments of leaves spun free and swirled over the still-green grass before coming to rest in a drift of red-gold-brown piled against the fence. The dance of the leaves was beautiful, but now they just look weary and faded like the rest of the foliage that has fallen over the past few days. Today I feel about as substantial as those leaves - dry and wispy, as if a stiff breeze could carry me away.

It is October 31st, Halloween and also the end of domestic violence awareness month. I had intended to post at least five articles about intimate partner violence this month, but personal issues have intruded and I am left struggling to stay level. The difficulties I've been facing have forced me to take a long look at how far I've come in the past two years. I am not displeased at the progress I have made, but I still find myself at risk of sacrificing too much for other people. Love often demands sacrifice, and I am not adverse to reaching compromises, but all too often I find myself laying my desire for consistency and stability down on the altar of another's needs and wants. It is constant struggle to find some semblance of peace between the tension of the lives of others and my own. I don't think relationships should be this difficult, but it is all I have ever known; how do I find my footing on sinking sand?

If I had distance and perspective it would be easier. I could look at this situation from the outside like a stranger peeking in through a window, seeing life in snapshots and glimpses and making decisions with the comfortable surety that they could not really affect me. From the outside the choice is simple - I determine what I can and cannot live with and I act accordingly. But on the inside, I agonize over what those choices will do to people - real flesh-and-blood people whom I love.

Still...how many times have I said that in order to love others we must love ourselves? It is finally time for me to think first about what my own unwillingness or inability to choose will do to me. I cannot afford to let my core be destroyed on someone else's altar. We are adjured to love others, to put others first - those of us who have been abused have not only been told to do so, we have been forced to, in the most painful of ways and because of this, acting in my own self-interest is well-nigh impossible for me. I have been preconditioned to feel selfish and evil when I even consider it. I have been taught to deny myself, to sacrifice all that I am so that others can have what they want in the moment, whatever that might be. The question is no longer "should I put myself first?" but has become "how can I reconcile a lifetime of learned behavior with this voice crying from my own inner wilderness that a straighter, better path must be made?"

Oh, but I am tired. My mind swirls like the early morning mist. My heart is withered and wasted with the struggle to find balance between myself and another. I know the journey is worthwhile but I am so tired; there may be miles and years ahead, but I can't bring myself to care. Like the leaves, I want to let go and just be carried away, to drift, and float, and fall...

The Courage to Change

“There is a price that is too great to pay for peace…. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.” ~Woodrow Wilson

Those of you who read this blog know that I have been on a journey toward recovery, self-acceptance, and healing for the past year. In the process of that work, I have come across several valuable written resources. Some of them were given to me by friends, some I found through exploring the ideas of others, and some I just happened upon by chance. A small publication by Al-Anon which I recently read falls into the last category. I have never been to an Al-Anon meeting, though I would likely benefit from attending. I have been in relationships with alcoholics on and off for more than half my life, and my patterns of behavior, coping, and living have all been affected by alcoholism. While I was not specifically seeking assistance in dealing with those issues, something about the title of this book – Courage to Change – caught my eye. That spoke to me because it seems I sometimes lack the courage to make necessary changes in my life. The book is a collection of daily meditations or devotionals for use throughout the year. Some of the writings were meaningless to me, but others reached into my heart and brought comfort or challenge, like the following passage:

“One of the first things I heard in Al-Anon was that we didn’t have to accept unacceptable behavior. This idea helped me to see that I need not tolerate violence or abuse, and that I had choices I hadn’t even recognized before. I set some limits, not to control others, but to offer myself guidelines so that I would know what was and was not acceptable and what to do about it.” (Courage to Change, 1992; p. 51)

This goes along with something that I learned while reading Boundaries by Drs Henry Cloud and John Townsend. You can love someone without loving his behaviors, and this love cannot be allowed to prevent you from having healthy boundaries that protect you and enrich your life. Setting limits is not a way to force others to change. It is not a refusal to share or show love. It is a means by which you keep you keep your identity and your sanity intact. Healthy people seem to do this without effort. I have never been able to set limits or boundaries in my relationships until now – and it is still extremely difficult.

The author of this particular meditation goes on to state that though she considered herself healthy these days, there was one person from whom she still accepted unacceptable behavior – herself. She berated and blamed herself for everything that went wrong and never gave herself credit for her efforts. She told herself how ugly, lazy, and stupid she was. Then she realized that those were things she would not say to someone she cared about and that she would not accept those words from anyone else. She learned to start treating herself as though she were a treasured friend. Only then was she assured that she was truly in recovery.

I have spoken before about how Christ’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself” is a double-edged one; it assumes that before we love our neighbor, we love ourselves. This is still the most difficult hurdle for me to cross. It is so much easier for me to love others, to give myself completely to someone else’s wants, and to forgive them for the most painful hurts while continually castigating myself for the least little imperfections that I often feel as though I have spent my life binding up the wounds of others while I slowly bleed to death. It is not enough to say that I won’t continue to do it – despite my best intentions, I still find myself falling back into the pattern of giving people what I know they want, even when it hurts me to do so.

What is the solution? There are plenty of days when I feel that it would be easier to withdraw from every relationship until I am healthy enough to set my boundaries and hold to them. Then I wonder if I will ever be that healthy. Will it simply be that I hold firm until I am faced by the challenge of someone else’s needs? In the face of someone else’s desire will I just collapse into the old habit of saying, “Do whatever you want, it doesn’t matter”? There is a part of me that knows that withdrawal is not the answer and that I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life. Another part of me is so damned tired of the struggle to maintain my sense of self that it frankly doesn’t care if I have relationships or not. That part of me says it’s better to be alone than to feel used, hurt, and resentful. For a long time I seemed to be divided this way, with two modes of thought and no way to choose between them. But lately, as I’ve been working to heal, there is another way of thinking that is emerging. This other part of me recognizes that I have the right and the power to determine what goes on in my life, and if someone else’s behaviors are unacceptable then I do not have to accept them. I can draw a clear boundary that says, “You have the right to choose what you do, and I have the right to choose what I will tolerate. I will not tolerate this behavior.” This feels healthy to me, and yet it also frightens me terribly.

The fear stems from several sources, but the strongest is the abusive relationship I was in two years ago. In the beginning, my partner often said that he appreciated my independence and my desire for autonomy. Later on, he told me I had no rights in our relationship and that I was the most selfish person he had ever known. When I did try to assert myself in that relationship, the emotional abuse was immediate and horrific – diatribes and alcohol-fueled rants lasted for hours and at the end of the eight months I spent with him, the screaming sessions were interspersed with physical and sexual assaults. Now when I even think about saying “I choose not to tolerate this” my heart races and I tremble all over. Panic attacks and flashbacks threaten and in order to keep peace, I end up saying nothing at all. This is a kind of self-protection that is detrimental because it leaves me in anxiety over the things that I did not have the courage to change.

Nearly everyone is familiar with the Serenity Prayer and how it asks for the courage to change what can be changed along with the serenity to accept what cannot be altered. I know that I can't change what others choose to do - they are free to exercise their will in their own lives. Their choices are their own, just as my responses are mine to determine. Where they are unhealthy I must change them – now I just need to find the courage to do it.

Stop Ignoring - Start Acting

Domestic violence isn’t easy to understand. From the outsiders' point of view, it just makes no sense that someone would stay with and continue to love and protect an abusive partner. From the insider's point of view, there's a whole host of fears interlaced with shame, hurt, and longing which keep us enmeshed in a web of deceit and pain. It is possible to love someone when you do not love their behaviors or actions, and love doesn't just go away because someone is cruel or abusive. For these reasons a culture of myth and secrecy has grown around domestic violence and society perpetuates these secrets and lies with comments like:
   “It’s none of my business.”
   “That’s between the two of them – it has nothing to do with me.”
   “A man has the right to keep the peace in his own home.”
   “It only happens every now and then, and only in lower class families.”
   “She must like it, or she’d leave.”
   “He says she provokes him.”

What would the world be like if we told the truth about domestic violence?
   “I’m afraid for her safety.”
   “I could do something to help.”
   “No one has the right to harm someone else.”
   “It can happen to anyone.”
   “She doesn’t leave because there’s no one to help her, no one to keep her safe.”
   “He should practice self-control instead of hitting when he’s angry.”

This October, commit to looking at domestic violence in a different way. Don’t turn a blind eye to the victims. Don’t ignore what you witness. Domestic violence happens to one in three women, and one in fifteen men. Chances are that you know someone right now who is suffering or has suffered. Ask what you can do to help. Here are some ways to start:
   “I’m afraid for your safety, and for your kids.”
   “It’s only going to get worse.”
   “I’m here for you. What can I do to make this better?”
   “I can help you find somewhere to stay.”
   “You deserve better treatment than this.”
   “Let’s make a safety plan for you.”

Get a list of the shelters and helping organizations in your area. The information is readily available with a quick Internet search. Get a list of phone numbers for crisis lines – 1-800-799-SAFE is a good place to start. Be willing to listen and be supportive, not judgmental. You don’t know what kind of hell the victim is living with – she may have been hearing for years that she isn’t worth helping, isn’t worth saving. She may believe it. Yours may be the voice of reason that cuts through the destruction in her life and makes her know that she is worthwhile and that someone cares. Stop ignoring. Start acting. Someone's life may depend on it.

Be the Change

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
~ Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.

Our culture is one that promotes violence. Turn on network TV at any point during prime-time and you're bound to see half a dozen murders, beatings, muggings, or rapes before the 11:00 news comes on. We are enured to violence. Once we have become desensitized, it is hard to care about the neighbor in the apartment next door, even when we hear her crying at one in the morning because her boyfriend just punched her in the mouth. We may see the bruises but until we feel them, the pain we witness is remote and doesn't have any impact. In the same way we are able to sit comfortably at home with a bowl of chips and salsa and watch news reports about the starving people in Somalia. Their pain is miles away - it is meaningless because it cannot affect us. It cannot touch us.

Our society happily enslaves millions of people just so we can have conveniences like ready-made clothing, designer-knock-off purses, and discount stores where we can pick up a case of beer anytime, day or night. If we stop to give thought to the plight of the ten year old workers in Indonesia who made our fake Prada bags, we often smugly state that they must be grateful for the money they earn. Never mind the fact that in some factories in some parts of the world, children whose thigh-bones are broken so they can't run away are forced to sit and sew those purses that we paid $30 for. Never mind the fact that workers the world over go home to starving families subsisting in tar-paper and tin shacks and know that even the money they earn with their eighteen hour work-days can't feed their kids and their aging parents too. We live as if it is only our comfort and needs that matter.

So what does this have to do with violence against women? After all, that's my usual subject. Well, in a word - everything. When we refuse to fight oppression, we give license to the oppressors. When we turn a blind eye to evil, we are propagating evil. When we ignore the neighbor who sits on her porch, staring blankly out through swollen, bruised eyelids because it isn't our place to say or do anything about her suffering, then we might as well throw the next punch.

October is domestic violence awareness month. I've thought for a while now about what I should post to help raise awareness, make my readers think about intimate partner abuse and what it does to people, but I confess that until this afternoon, I've had trouble deciding what to say. Not because I have run out of words; not because everything that there is to say has been said, but because it seems like an uphill battle and just now, I am really tired of fighting and climbing. I'm tired of trying to make a difference in a world that doesn't seem to give a damn. I'm tired of working to change attitudes and then watching commercials where women in bikinis are used to sell everything from cars to cheeseburgers as if their bodies were just another commodity to be bought, sold, or traded. But if those of us who have suffered do not use our experiences to bring light into the darkness, then who will? The media? The government? The church?

No - it is individual voices that begin to affect change. It is up to us - to me and to you - to raise our voices in solidarity until society can no longer ignore what we are saying. In every situation of injustice, if those of us who see and understand choose to remain silent, then we join the oppressors and the enemies of humanity. Your cause may not be the same as mine, but whatever you believe in, don't make the mistake of staying silent because it "isn't your place" to speak up. Speak up! Be heard! Do not be silent about the things that matter. Victims of all kinds need you, because their voices and their choices have been taken away. We must live the change we look for - if we don't, then who will?

To Thine Own Self Be True

This morning, I received a link to an article in the August 2 Huffington Post – “Women Show Deep Drop in Church Attendance.” The newsletter from which I gleaned the link spoke about the problem of declining church attendance in general and wondered if this was related to a decline of spirituality, or if attending church was truly reflective of belief, faith, and spiritual engagement.

Those issues aside, reading the article and the newsletter led me to do some deep thinking about women, our changing role in society, and what statistics such as the 11 percentage-point drop mentioned above might truly reflect. I also acknowledged my inner struggle as I work to find a way to be true to myself without compromising my beliefs, needs, or boundaries, and I can see a correlation between my current state and the state of women in general. The newsletter suggested that fewer women attend church because women have learned that they have the right to eschew the standards that the religious systems have imposed upon them for centuries. The statement is valid. As women become better educated, we resent always being relegated to the roles of care-taker (can you clean these classrooms, please?), nursery attendant (I know you’d like to lead the adult class, but we really need ladies to watch these two-year-olds), and cook (ladies, it’s time for our annual pot-luck). Within the church roles with decision-making power have traditionally gone to men while the roles with mind-numbing, repetitive tasks have gone to women, and until recently, both men and women have been complicit in keeping it that way. Many denominations have not yet begun to change, but others have, and those denominations are experiencing increased vitality because of it.

In my forty years, I’ve witnessed incredible changes in feminine roles and expectations. As a child, I was assured by my mother that women could aspire to a total of four functions in life – I could choose between being a teacher, a nurse, a secretary, or a housewife. It is a testament to the power of our parents over our lives when I admit that I have been or have been on-track to be each of these four things. As I grew up, I had the usual dreams about what career I might pursue; veterinarian, artist, designer, writer. My mother ridiculed these desires and told me that such ambitions were out of my reach. She did not do this out of cruelty. She sincerely hoped to cure me of daydreaming and cause me to choose a practical life path, one that would support me financially and help me to be less dependent on the man I would someday marry. I insisted that I could be whatever I wanted to be, but the reality was that even though I had better intentions, I ended up following the trail that my mother laid out for me in those early years.

These days, our daughters are told that they can be anything they want to be. I hear my own mother telling my girls that they can be doctors, attorneys, engineers, or meteorologists - anything, in fact, that they want to be. I am gratified by the fact that my mom has grown and changed so much, and that she has accepted and admitted that her ideas about my potential were too limiting and just plain wrong, and I am happy that she isn’t making the same mistake with my girls. I accept that she was speaking from what she knew and understood when I was a child, and that she truly believed that she was right. I forgive it, but I still struggle to find my footing and to accept that the limitations she placed on me are not real and that the weight of those chains only exists in my imagination.

The struggle I mentioned takes many forms, but right now it is mostly about relationship roles and expectations – what others want from and for me held in tension with what I want from and for myself. I have fought and am fighting to become a better person. Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus, rolling that boulder up the mountain only to chase it back down into the gulf again. I make progress and then I lose ground. I guess that can be said of most of us. Case in point – in 2007, I began working actively to be physically healthy and I lost 130 lbs. That was a wonderful change and I maintained that weight loss for more than a year before gaining 20 lbs back. That isn’t so bad and I shouldn’t kick myself for it, but the truth is that I am severely disappointed in myself. I hold myself to higher standards than that. And I know how fatally easy it is to gain weight and how frustratingly difficult to lose it. So now I’m halfway up the mountain, shoving that boulder and promising myself, “Never again.” I experience terrible pressure in my personal relationships and am at war with myself to find a way to balance my needs with my mate’s. This is incredibly exhausting and I question whether it is possible for me to stop being “his woman” and start being my own - when just eighteen months ago, I came out of a bad relationship and promised myself that "never again" would I abnegate myself in favor of a man. I will graduate college next year, but this is the third time I’ve attended and each time my intentions were good; I promised myself that I would finish my degree and keep my life and career on track. Life intruded, and those goals became secondary, but as I plow through Principles of Accounting, I can feel the weight of the boulder pressing down and I swear, “Never again.”

Never again will I allow someone else’s ideas about who I am or how I should be to inform my judgment. Never again will I allow someone else to tell me that I can only aspire to certain levels of success because I am female or for any other reason. Never again will I choose to continually meet my partner's needs and ignore my own boundaries in order to do so. Never again will I take as truth someone else’s opinions just because they are pushed on me, when my own opinions are just as intelligent and just as valid.  I will not allow anyone else to define my abilities or my life; I will define myself.

Self-Empowerment

I’ve spent the past two and a half years searching for empowerment. I’ve looked everywhere – self-help books, religion, healthy habits, unhealthy habits, relationships, other people…you name it, I’ve tried it. It’s kind of like diets – I’ve tried just about every kind you could imagine, from cabbage soup to Scarsdale to Atkins to South Beach and everything in between. I’ve taken Dexatrim, fiber pills, Alli, and even Phen-Fen. Nothing worked, until I was ready to take responsibility for making the right choices. Once I admitted I had the power, losing weight was possible. Before that, I might as well have been trying to catch stars in a butterfly net.

So here I am, hanging out in a quiet house and enjoying the silence, reflecting on the fact that this is the two year anniversary of my divorce becoming final. Not to say that I got a divorce so I could be empowered – that is certainly not the case. But self-empowerment was a goal of mine as I left that relationship and entered life on my own. It was a dark time in my life and I was vulnerable, as those of you who read this blog already know. It was easy for me to be deceived and misled. I ended up in a bad relationship that took what self-esteem I had managed to gather and destroyed it just about completely. And that’s the problem with progress that comes from extraneous sources – it is given to us and can be taken from us very easily. It’s a cheap kind of empowerment, the kind that makes a mockery out of the amount of work it took for me to lose 130 pounds. But because I didn’t know what empowerment should look like, I didn’t recognize that what I had was a poor imitation of the real thing.

Yesterday, a friend of mine gifted me with a copy of Tapping the Power Within: A Path to Self-Empowerment for Women. Just the title reminded me of something I had forgotten – or maybe I had never known it in the first place: that empowerment, if it is to mean anything, must come from within.  So what does self-empowerment look like? How does it begin?

I’m not really sure, but I think I have an idea about that. I think it starts with love. Not love from an outside source – there’s nothing wrong with being loved, in fact, it’s great, but being loved by another can’t fill the emptiness that exists in the face of self-loathing, and that’s the way I’ve spent the bulk of my life. God adjures us to love our neighbors the same way we love ourselves, but it can also be said this way, “Love yourself the way you love your neighbor.” So, if I am to be good to my neighbor, I should also be good to myself. Please don’t mistake my statement for stupid self-indulgence, because that isn’t how I mean it. I don’t mean I should put myself before everyone else. I am talking about treating myself with kindness and respect. I don’t do that – how many of us really do?

If it is to begin, it must begin in me. I need to find a way to appreciate myself, to be compassionate with myself, to give myself loving kindness. I can’t rely on anyone else for this kind of nurturing. So I am making a pact with myself to learn self-love. I'm going to start by allowing myself to do things that I enjoy; yoga - meditation - prayer. Writing, singing, target-shooting; it may sound contrary to my nature, but I do love to shoot - and gardening. I'm the proud owner of a shovel now, and there are lots of plants out in the yard that need some attention. Wish me luck.

Choices

I’ve never believed I had a lot of choices in my life. As a child with three older siblings, I ended up with a lot of hand-me-downs. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is difficult to develop a strong sense of your own likes and dislikes when most of what you own has been chosen by someone else. My first car was a Ford Maverick that had been wrecked by both my older sisters. I was really glad to get that car but it wouldn’t have been my first choice. My second car was chosen by my father – a Mercury Marquis that resembled nothing so much as a battleship – it was even the right color. When I was thirteen, I was invited to join a college-level math-and-science class that met on weekends, but my parents decided not to let me attend. I wasn't allowed to participate in sports or to join clubs that met outside school hours. And of course, sexual assault takes all your choices away. Some of these things may seem small, but as I aged without being allowed to form opinions or make decisions of my own, the ability to even know my own needs and wants gradually faded away.

I left home and got married when I was nineteen years old, and I transferred the decision-making power from my parents to my husband without so much as the blink of an eye. He didn’t always like it, but we both took it for granted that our marriage would be that way. I had never seen any other behavior modeled in any relationship. His approval was so important to me that I negated my own sense of self in order to become what he wanted, at least at first. Later on things changed between us and I became more autonomous, but neither of us really knew how to exist with each other once I was no longer agreeable to everything he did and wanted. It made for some deeply stressful times. Ultimately our marriage dissolved.

When we divorced, I promised myself that I would never again give away the power of decision. I would have the power to make my own choices. Sure, I would always give due consideration to what was best for my kids and the other important people in my life, but my own needs would also be a huge part of the equation. After all, only I can live my life. I was going to be kind and fair, but firm; I was going to make sure that my needs and ideas were an equal part of any relationship I entered. 

I went into the first relationship after my marriage with a very healthy set of boundaries only to have them torn down and destroyed by my abusive partner. Because I had always lived my life without choices, I had no defense against his controlling behavior. I believed him when he told me that it was selfish of me to want to know where we stood, to want him to talk to me before changing our plans, to want to know that he was going to be faithful. I had no clue about how to get my needs met, or even that it was okay to have needs. He trampled my rights and left my self-esteem shattered. The first time he hit me, I was so concerned about what would happen to him if I reported his abuse that I decided not to tell anyone. I was so numb and so convinced that I deserved the treatment he had given me that for months after that relationship ended, I had no boundaries or limits at all. I could ask for nothing. I could pursue no rights of my own; I had no concept of what that would even look like.

So here I am, more than a year later, and I am in a relationship that is mostly positive. The man I’m currently with is a good man; kind, loving, and intelligent. There are a lot of good things in the relationship, but - as with any coupling - there are also some negatives. For the past fifteen months, I’ve sold out my needs and behaviors to match what I felt he wanted. I’ve laid aside any notion of who I am so I can be the person he wants me to be. He has never asked for this – I did it so unobtrusively that neither of us had any idea what was going on. A recent incident opened my eyes to how completely I had subverted myself to him, and when he failed to reciprocate in even a small way by placing me first when I really needed him to, I realized that I had allowed and even encouraged him to ignore my needs and boundaries and to discount my feelings. I don't know how to start over in this relationship and be the person I am, instead of the one he wants me to be.

So, how do I stop doing this? How do I throw away a lifetime of training and behavior? How do I become the strong person I am determined to be? I am sick at the thought that I’ve done it again – why don’t I just get “WELCOME” tattooed on my forehead and be done with it? I’ve made myself into the most accommodating of doormats; go ahead, wipe your feet, I don’t mind. Maybe I stop by just stopping. Maybe it really is just a choice – one I’ve never been allowed to make before. Christians are encouraged to meet the needs of others before meeting their own, and women are often forced to do so. But I don’t believe that God wants me to be miserable, worried, and hurt. I don't believe that God intends for me to put myself dead last and to treat myself as if I don't matter. After all, it was God who told us "love your neighbor as you love yourself" - this assumes, of course, that you love yourself. I have never really loved myself or treated myself with compassion. Maybe it really is as easy as saying, “This time, I choose me.”

What Happens Next

It has been a difficult couple of weeks. Stress is cumulative, as I’m sure most of you know from experience. Take the stress of buying a new home, packing, and moving, and add the stress of an impending court case, the surety that somewhere out there is someone who wants to cause you harm and who cherishes his rage against you, and you have a recipe for total exhaustion. So last week, when I got news about the hearing from my attorney, it was a pleasant shock to find out that the communication sent from my abuser which broke the order of protection I got last year was apparently sent by mistake.


I sat at my desk, holding a letter from an online jobs-by-fax company, which was written “to whom it may concern”, that stated that my abuser had paid for their resume dissemination service, and that he had specified that no resume be sent to my work-place. The resume and cover letter I received was sent in error, the letter explained. It was all a misunderstanding. Upon reading this communication, I felt nothing but relief. My attorney asked me if I wanted to pursue charges or getting an extension on the order of protection, but I declined. It had always been my intention, I told her, to leave him alone if he left me alone. And according to the notice I held in my hands, he intended to leave me alone.


A weight left my shoulders then. It had been traumatic, seeing him again, being in close proximity – turning around while holding the gate in the courtroom for the next person and finding out that HE was the next person. Even with the knowledge that he did not send that fax on purpose, I’ve still been having nightmares about him. Last night, I was unable to sleep because my heat-pump stopped working and the house was hot and uncomfortable. Lying on the couch in the living room, I heard the sound of a car approaching. It slowed and came to a stop in front of the house. I sat up, checked the clock – 1:51 am. I had started to lie back down when I heard someone shouting – a high-pitched, male voice, screaming obscenities. I pulled back the curtain and looked out. The car was speeding away. It was small and dark, but I couldn’t make out any features. It could have been anyone, I guess, but it made me wonder…


I wonder why we never received another of these faxed job applications from anyone else, for example. I wonder why, the weekend before we received his resume, I saw him twice near the house where I was cat-sitting for a friend. I wonder why he was looking for work in an area two hours away from where he currently lives. I wonder…


I've said it before: once trust is destroyed, it is impossible not to question motives. Where my abuser is concerned the only things I believe in are his duplicity and the uncontrolled nature of his rage. I guess questioning is fruitless. Maybe I’ll never know what his intentions were – or if he had intentions at all. At this point, it’s just back to waiting to see what happens next.