Your Story is Important

I have been honored to have many people thank me for telling my story.  They tell me it helps them not feel so alone.  They tell me it helps them believe that their feelings and experiences are valid.  They tell me it gives them hope.

For whatever reason, sharing my story has helped people.  What an incredible privilege. 

It took me many years to get to a place where I was ready to tell my story.  Many years and lots of therapy.  And sometimes I still struggle.

But even though it's difficult, I believe it is important.  I believe prejudice about mental illness is so common because people don't talk about it, except to mock.  I believe abuse runs so rampant in part because people look away.  People don't want to know about the dark stuff.  Or they are afraid that they carry some shame or guilt because of it.  They are afraid they will be judged, looked down on, or in danger if they tell their story.

And, unfortunately, sometimes that's true.

I am blessed that I am at a place now where I do not fear those things like I used to.  I do not tell everyone I meet, but if asked I will own these things as part of my past.  And part of my present.  Part of who I am.  I speak because I can.  I speak for all those who cannot.

But I believe every story is important.  I believe everyone should get to tell their story even when others don't want them to, even when they are afraid.  I believe strength comes from saying, "This is what happened to me.  It is not who I am, but it does affect me.  And it was wrong."  I believe healing comes from saying, "This is what I did.  I hate who I was.  I am trying so hard to change."  From saying, "This is what I struggle with and I am ashamed."

Whatever your story, I believe you will be stronger and more whole when you are able to share it.

I offer to tell your story for you.  If you want your story known, but are fearful of the outcome, share it with me and I will share it here.  I have had people ask about this, if I would be willing to post their story here.  Yes, I am willing. 

If you do not want to share it publicly, I am still willing to listen.  Feel free to email me and we'll "talk" electronically (without your story being published here).  I am not a therapist.  I will probably not give you any advice.  But I will listen and honor your offering.  If you are uncomfortable talking to me, please find someone who is emotionally safe for you, someone who has never violated your trust.  Talk to them.

And if you aren't ready to talk about it, I suggest writing about it.  Electronic or paper, writing will help get the toxins out.  You are not your past.  Don't let it keep holding you hostage.

Please don't feel pressured to do this.  I do not mean to push.  Everyone comes to their moment(s) of healing in their own time.  But if you've felt like you might want to move ahead, I would be honored to help.

Staying

I don't know if I've been able to capture well what it was like.  I don't know if anyone who hasn't experienced it can even see why it was abusive.  I'm sure that people who have been there know exactly what I'm talking about.

He was controlling and domineering in every area of our relationship.  And punishing when things didn't go his way.  That's really all I can say about that right now.

Trying to understand why someone stays in an abusive relationship is like being dropped in a country where you don't speak the language and trying to communicate.  Unless you've lived there, it is all foreign to you.  The customs don't make sense.  You don't understand why a person does something.  And each abusive relationship is like a separate tribe with its own unique qualities.  What works in one doesn't in another.

All I can tell you is my story.  Why I stayed.

I went into marriage believing that divorce was not an option.  I had my mind set on this.  Unless there was an affair or a crime I couldn't see myself divorcing.  Divorce was failure.  Divorce meant that I didn't try hard enough.

And failure is shame.  Failure is weakness.  Failure is unacceptable.  These are beliefs I have carried with me for as long as I can remember.  I am still working to change these beliefs.

Early on, before I believed divorce was an option, it was about love.  I loved him.  He wasn't always angry.  During those times that he wasn't angry things were good.  He loved me.  He loved the kids.

And as much as I've tried not to in my life, I need love.  I was relieved to learn in therapy that all people need love.  Needing love and acceptance does not make you weak, does not make me weak.  It is a part of who we are as human beings.  I needed love and he was the first person that I truly felt loved by that didn't have to.  If a parent or grandparent loved me it didn't carry the same weight.  They are kind of required to (which is funny because I didn't feel my dad did and didn't see the conflict in this statement).  But when someone outside of my family chose to love me, to value me, he won.

To this day I struggle with this issue.  If someone is kind to me and expresses value for me I am instantly their friend.  I trust them and forgive almost anything.  I will try to do whatever they want in order to keep them in my life. This is something I have learned about myself and have to be mindful of.  It has put me in dangerous situations before.

He loved me.  I'd waited so long to belong to someone who loved me.  Someone I could talk to about my feelings.  He was that person.

Until things got ugly.  When he raged, because that's what he did, he wasn't the same person.  He even had a name for the person he became.  When he was angry and vile and hateful the other person did those things.  Maurice did those things.  I guess Maurice had been with him for years.  His temper had gotten him into trouble before, such as getting into fights at school.

And he really was a different person.  I think that made it easier to stay.  It wasn't him, the real him.  The real him loves me and is kind.  If I can just figure out what it takes to keep Maurice at bay, we'll be fine.  I still felt it was my fault and mine to fix.

I don't know if he knew how much I craved his love, how desperate I was to have it, how badly it hurt to have him angry with me.  It seemed like he did because it became a tool.

When he was angry he withdrew his love.  From me and the kids, who also need to be loved.  He treated us with disdain.  It was like starvation.  Sometimes he would just not acknowledge our existence.  Other times he would push us away.  He wouldn't let the kids near him, even if he was only angry with me.

That was the other really tough part.  When he was angry at me he frequently took it out on the kids.  They had done nothing but they were being punished.  He broke promises to them.  He refused to hug them.  He yelled at them.  Because I had misbehaved in some way. 

And it was tough to abide by his guidelines because the rules were constantly changing.  That way, he kept the power.  It was about his whims at the moment regardless of what had been acceptable in the past.  I was frequently punished for not living up to what he expected without having any idea he'd expected it in the first place.

So, I did what most mothers do, I tried to protect my children.  I had no idea how, I just did what I could.  I tried many things until I found something that worked.  Usually that meant apologizing for not being or doing what he wanted and promising to do better.  Then performing whatever penance he required.

This was another reason I stayed.  If I left, if we separated or divorced, he would have opportunity to be alone with the kids.  He is their father.  I knew he would have visitation rights.  He would have his weekends when they would stay with him.  And I wouldn't be there to protect them.  No one would be.  They would be at his mercy.  That thought frightened me.  And knowing how he used them to punish me, I fear he might hurt them or turn them against me.

Even though I can say he didn't hit me or the kids, I can also say there were times I believe he would have if I hadn't stepped in the way.  There were many times that I physically interevened because I thought they were in physical danger.  There were many times I put my body on the line, in one way or another, to protect them.

Also, I was a stay at home mom.  I had no training.  I could not provide for me and my children.  I was at his mercy for the food and clothing that my children needed.  The only financial option I thought I had was to go back home to my parents and let my dad support us.  No way did I want to do that.  And I wasn't even sure my dad would agree to it if he didn't think my reason was good enough.  Knowing that he didn't believe in emotional abuse, I doubted he would relent.

All of these reasons are typical.  I believe many abused spouses would give similar reasons.  But there are other reasons.

I stayed out of commitment to my temple covenants.  I had promised God that I would give my marriage my all.  At that time I didn't fully understand what that meant.  I do now.  I know now that God would not want me to be treated that way.  That forgiveness does not mean staying in an abusive situation.  But I did not know this then.

I also stayed because I believed his anger was part of his OCD.  I believed it was an illness.  Having struggled with severe PMS since I was fourteen, I knew what it was like to have something chemical take over my mind and body, diminishing my ability to control my emotions.  I wouldn't leave him if he had cancer, why should I leave him because of his mental illness?  Again, this was twisted thinking.  If you are in danger it is your job to protect yourself, even if that means getting out when the other person is sick.  Yes, it is my job to protect and take care of him where I can but only after making sure I am safe, and that means emotionally safe as well.  I am my number one responsibility.  That has taken me years of therapy to understand; I am still working to convert myself to it.  It's still easy to get lost in my life and lose track of that responsibility.  It's too easy to serve and care for others at my own expense.

Learning that physical safety is not the only safety was also huge for me.  I could say he didn't hit me.  I couldn't tell anyone that he slammed my soul up against the wall with his words and his rage.  I couldn't tell anyone that he felt he had the right to punish me when he didn't get what he wanted or what that did to my psyche.

It's nearly impossible to descibe the wounds that develop as a result of this experience.  There are so many mind games.  I came to doubt myself.  Maybe I am making a big deal out of nothing.  Maybe he is right.  Maybe I'm not good enough.  Maybe I don't remember it correctly.

Memory.  I do not remember most fights.  I do not remember a lot of things.  I don't know if others experience this or if it has to do with my childhood.  But I have a tendancy to forget these experiences once they are in the past.  If I don't write about it or tell someone about it, it leaves my memory.  This is a coping mechanism I learned as a child to survive the things I experienced.

This is how I see it.  There are only so many wounds a person can take.  You can be nibbled to death.  If it was a small wound, I ignored it.  If I didn't learn to ignore all the arrows shot in non-life-threatening places then I would die.  And I had to survive for my children.  So I let them go.  I pretended that they were in the past and so they didn't matter anymore.  And I ignored all the scars.  The many, many scars.

My marriage was a war.  My soul is a warrior and it carries the wounds of battle.

Mental Illness Isn't Funny

Hollywood has made a lot of money portaying the quirky side of mental illness, making it funny.  In fact, What About Bob? is one of my favorite comedies.  Bob is silly and strange and quirky, which makes him kind of cute and cuddly.

But what you usually don't see is how difficult mental illness is to live with.  I've experienced it from both sides of the coin.

My husband has more than moderate OCD.  Sorry to keep using that descriptor (more than moderate), but it's tough to place it on a scale.  People with severe OCD usually can't function in society or hold down a job.  And he has not been 100% on those fronts; he has lost employment because of his obsessions.

But for the most part he seems pretty normal, maybe a little quirky.  Unless you live with him.

We see the side that has to throw his dinner away, his favorite dinner, because someone breathed on it.  We see the side that won't eat the birthday cake at a party because the child blowing out the candles didn't seem clean.  We see the side that scalded his hand, scoured away more than a single layer of skin, and wouldn't touch anything or anyone for days because he'd accidentally touched a dead mouse.  He wanted to cut his finger off.  He really did.  It took a lot to keep him from doing it, including a call to a therapist.  He wore a glove for a few days so that it wouldn't touch anything.  To this day he says it still feels dirty.  It happened a few years ago.

His OCD also led to something that I just learned about, although it happened many years ago.

I was in the kitchen rinsing dishes in the sink.  My daughter reached toward the water as if to rinse her hand.  I warned her that it was very hot water.  In fact, it was steaming.  She told me that she had a very high tolerance for hot water since her dad had taught her to wash her hands.

I don't know how old she was when it happened.  She was in the bathroom washing her hands.  He came by and checked the water.  It was warm.  He told her that she would never get her hands clean that way.  Then he turned the knob almost all the way to the hot side, grabbed her hands, and proceeded to help her wash them.  She told him it was too hot.  She told him it hurt.  He told her that's how she knew they were getting clean.  She laughed as she told me this story.  She'd spent years thinking that if her hands were bright red after washing them it meant they were clean.  I did not laugh when I heard this story.  I did not know that it had happened.  All those years I thought I was protecting my kids and he hurt them in ways I couldn't imagine.  It turns out she was not the only child whose hands had first degree burns after their dad helped them wash.  It makes me so sad to even type this. 

OCD is only funny when it's not part of your life.  It takes over.  It controls.

The way I understand it, from observation and converations with my husband, the anxiety is intense.  There is intense fear that may not make sense.  Imagine a fear you have, not something small but something you're really afraid of, something that makes your heart beat faster just thinking of it.  Now imagine purposely experiencing this thing over and over.  You are afraid of snakes so you stand in a snake pit.  Will it cure you?  Maybe.  Does knowing this make you want to climb into that pit?  Not likely.  It depends on how crippling this fear has been for you and what the payoff will be.

OCD is like that.  Refusing to act out the compulsion is like facing your greatest fear over and over again.  All day.  Every day.  The anxiety climbs and climbs.  The only thing that brings it down is acting on the compulsion.  But as soon as you do the obsessions start again and the desire begins again.  Acting on it feeds it, makes it stronger, gives it power.

That's what I've watched from the outside.

From the inside I've had different experiences.  I've struggled with depression, as I've discussed on my other blog.  I've struggled with PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder, severe PMS), also discussed on my other blog.

But the one that I haven't written about is the PTSD -- post traumatic stress disorder.  The abuses that I've talked about so far each have their own PTSD.  I also have PTSD from things I will discuss in the future.

PTSD as I understand it and experience it is when something happens that reminds me in some way of a traumatic experience from my past.  It's as if I am living it all over again.  All the emotion comes flooding back, my body tenses, and usually I shut down and withdraw from life.  There is so much fear.  Sometimes I can work through this quickly, sometimes it takes several days or weeks.  Especially if it brings back one of those memories that has been hidden.

A certain smell and I am back at that place in the canyon.  A certain phrase and I am cowering from my dad.  A touch on the shoulder and I am  . . . sorry, I can't finish that one yet.

When my PTSD is triggered my anxiety climbs.  I am flooded with adrenaline and fear.  I have an intense desire to run and hide.  It's not unusual for me to pace or rock.  It feels like all my nerves are on fire.  If someone touches me, even lightly, I am in physical pain.  I am in such a severe state of aggitation that it's tough for me to function at all.  I can't feed my family.  I can't go to my appointment.  And I can't explain it.

All I can do is stay in my room in my bed, hoping to be alone.  If someone comes into my room I may yell at them or snap at them that they need to stay at the threshold.  If they cross the threshold I am likely to back into my headboard like an animal trying to skitter away.  I beg and plead that they back off.

My family has learned to work around this.  My children don't get it.  They know I'm having a tough time and need to be alone and they try to respect that.  It has taken a long time but my husband has learned to recognize it sometimes.  Unless things are really bad he is very respectful of my need to be left alone.  He doesn't understand it.  Unless you feel it there's only so much you can understand.  But he tries and that means a lot.

Enough for now.  My anxiety is high just from writing this.  It's going to take me a while to calm down and feel safe enough to sleep.  But it needed to be written.