D-Day

Not sure if I'll leave this status up very long, or if even if I'll actually hit post when I'm done. I don't know exactly what I want to say, how I want to say it, or even the idea I want get across.

Today is the 19th anniversary of my last first date. In 3 days, it'll be the 2nd anniversary of the day I left. It's been 33 days since quarantine started and 11 days since my divorce was official.

I spent most of February being reminded of why I was okay getting married young, why I went out with him in the first place, and why I gave up on love, romance, marriage, and men at 19. I've spent 9 months reliving the reason I gave up again at 20, having met someone who changed me as fundamentally now as another guy did back then. I've had 13 months to come to terms with the lies. 2 years of distance from all the things that went wrong, all the fights and pain and awful. 3 years since I accepted the truth of what was really going on. 7 since I told him I was done, 5 of which we lived as nothing more than coparenting roommates keeping up appearances (because heaven forbid people know we were doing something *weird* like learning to be the friends necessary to be the parents we needed to be for our son, and surviving the only way we could financially). Almost 10 years since the day I fell into darkness, emotionally abandoned and alone with my newborn who couldn't stay asleep and had no tolerance for cuddling. A few months more than 15 years since shame, blame, disgust, rejection, and worthlessness replaced my value and existence as a person, a wife, and a woman.

Just typing those last three has my heart racing in fear. People aren't supposed to know. To see. To hear. Hide it. Bury it. Paint the pretty picture and let it rest. If they know, he'll hate me. Hate himself. Hate everything. I can't live in the hate. In the cold. In the silence filled with seething drama. He would never hit me, not with his fists. Mine was a better life than many because of that. But his words? His anger? His off-hand dismissal and calculated disgust? They hit even harder and left no mark for anyone to see. He didn't do it on purpose...usually. He was always so scared. Of failure, mostly. Of people finding out the truth. I'm not sure what truth, only that it was buried within him and no one was allowed to get close to it, including me.

I knew 3 months after our wedding that he didn't love me. A year after that, I knew he didn't even care about me as a person, not all the way down. On the surface, where he was supposed to, sure. But he would have let me die without lifting a finger to help. Even though it turned out to be panic attacks and not a heart attack, he didn't know that. I can't watch My Name is Earl without transporting back to that moment when my reality fractured. When I wasn't even worth saving.

"I thought you just wanted attention," he told me later. Of course he did; he knew that's what my parents used to tell me because I trusted him with all my secrets. All of me. He knew that saying it would hurt me all the way down, leaving me without the power to be angry with him, to hold him responsible for his actions. Just like he knew that calling into question my love for my baby and my fitness as a mother would keep me from remembering that he went to work instead of getting me the help I needed. Just like he told me that maybe if my thighs were thinner, he'd want to sleep with me three months after our wedding. Maybe if I weren't so demanding, so emasculating, so much work, he'd want me. If I wasn't such a chore, maybe I would be worth desiring.

My heart is beating erratically as I type this. My hands are shaking almost badly enough I can't keep hitting the right keys. My body is trying to keep me safe. To keep me from tripping the wrong wires. To keep me from making him lose face as a man, as a husband. I never had panic attacks before that day, 15 months into our marriage, and I haven't had one since about 9 months after I left. 

How did I spend so many years with a person who made me feel like nothing? Especially when I didn't even really want to go out with him in the first place. That question plagued me from our 15th anniversary in November until a night I was sitting at my cousin's bar beside a very drunk girl making out with a guy she just met. 

I was 20 when we started dating. I was done with guys - the Universe had handed me the boy I was supposed to be with in no uncertain terms, and we didn't even make it to the first kiss before he started treating me like I didn't exist. If I couldn't make that work, obviously it wasn't my path. And I was okay with that. "I'll just turkey-baste my babies," I figured. I didn't need a man for the parts of my life I dreamed about, just a donor and a solid enough career to raise a family on a single income. But I also didn't want to get to be 40 and regret never finding out what the fun parts of dating were like. So I decided I'd go out with the next guy who showed an interest. (And maybe, I thought, my problem was actually that I always chased the boys who didn't want me and never gave the ones who did a chance. Might as well try it the other way for once.) He just happened to show an interest in the window of opportunity. 

Boy, did I pick wrong.

But I've also had months since that realization to understand - and accept, which was harder - that he was wholly committed to keeping me. Even though he knew we were a terrible match. Even though I told him I wanted things he didn't, and had no intention of being what he did want. I showed him my cards because I believed in honesty and openness and honor. He...didn't. He lied to me for 18 years about his integral nature and beliefs in marriage, sex, and life in general. 18 years of deception. 18 years of incongruity and pain, of isolation so no one - including me - ever found out the truth.

No wonder he was always exhausted, his emotions explosively close to the surface.

I tried to mark the day of my divorce. My brother made me cake. I got beer delivered from my safe haven. But in the middle of quarantine, it still doesn't feel any different. I can't move on until I get a job - the one thing I'm most terrified I'll fail at because he leaned on it and my surrounding weaknesses so hard, like my social anxiety. I can't get a regular job due to the virus (my son's already been hospitalized once for pneumonia; I have no interest in letting it happen again). And I have a way to make a job for myself from home...but I'm too scared. I have too many years of terrible things told to me about me stacked up between me and success. And that feels like such a cop out. I want to do it, even if I didn't need to. And yet...I can't make myself actually start. His voice, his fears, his "supportive criticism" still drown out everything else in my head.

What if I can't hack it? Not because I'll fail - I learned to fail well way back in high school - but because if I do, it'll be proving him right.

So many things still scare me out here in the real world. But I'm getting better. I kicked my social anxiety's ass. I've worked through so many things, enough to ask a guy to lunch (which I'd never done before), to hang out in a neighborhood pub where people can talk to me, willy-nilly. I've started making friends and letting people in again (TERRIFYING). I've done so many things that prove I'm not what he always said I was, what he made me stay in order to not outdo his male ego. And yet still, I have this one block I can't shift.

19 years ago, I went to the museum and had a nice day with a nice boy. I want to be able to say that everything that came after it was a huge mistake, but I can't. Because the one thing I've come to understand over the last two years is this: I am exactly where I'm supposed to be. Just like when I got my first job 20 years ago, I'm standing at a cosmic node of awesomeness where synchronicity, connection, and weirdness rule everything. All I can do is hang on and believe. Knowing it doesn't stave off the loneliness or the impatience or the worry, but it does offer a sense of deep peace.

The last 19 years may have been almost entirely painful and destructive and toxic (minus the last two - those have been pretty good, if exceedingly challenging), but it's okay. I am where I'm supposed to be, meeting the people I'm meant to, and forging forward the way I can. I get to do everything from a place of love, honesty, and delight, and I'm kind of in love with that place. It hasn't stopped me from crying really hard for the last week, or kept me from feeling like a loser, or dispelled the loneliness that comes from missing my people. But I've healed SO MUCH, and that's what matters most. I'm me again, and that's worth all the worry in the world.

{Note: Emotional abuse is painful, destructive, and no less serious than physical abuse. There is no point at which the abused's behavior will reach "appropriate" levels because the tiniest slip will cause the same consequences as the biggest slip. We are not perfect. I know how shitty making excuses made me feel; listen to that feeling when it shows up. Get help if you need it. And if there's one thing I can pass on above all others, it's this: Nice, good people can still hurt the ones they love...even on purpose. People are complicated; "goodness" or "such a great catch" doesn't go away when they hurt us. My ex is a decent guy. He doesn't wish other people ill, and he agrees with the concepts of helping others and being kind. He buys homeless people food. Cheers people up when they're having bad days. He's a fantastic manager and everyone who works with him inevitably loves working with him. None of that kept him from being an abusive spouse or emotionally abandoning me whenever I needed him most. Nor do his actions as a spouse change who he is to other people. He doesn't fake it; he really is a good guy. He's just also abusive in the places he was abused growing up. They can and often do coexist within a single person. "He can't be abusing me if he's a good guy," was the false truth that kept me stuck for years, especially because it was often reinforced by others. Abuse is abuse is abuse; extenuating circumstances don't change that fact. Love shouldn't make you feel worthless.}