abuse

How to Heal when the World Wishes for Your Silence

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What do healing and recovery look like within a world that you feel wishes you did not exist?   What does it mean to speak up about being a survivor of sexual violence in a society that, despite everything, is still maintained by silencing victims and glorifying misogyny and violence?   What does it mean to be a person with scars, a visible psychiatric survivor who is struggling to meet the criteria of “normal” in a capitalistic world which glorifies busyness and productivity?  What does it mean to be a queer person trying to create self confidence and pride in a world which contains homophobic and transphobic violence and microaggressions all around?

How does one heal in a world which wishes for your silence?

I’ve been struggling a lot with intersecting experiences of mental health stigma, abelism, sexism, transphobia and queer/homophobia.

I’d like to be proud of myself or even to accept myself as I am.  I’d like to believe that being a survivor makes me strong and brave.  I’d like to believe that my scars make me unique rather than disgusting.  I’d like to believe that being queer is just as acceptable as being straight.  I’d like to believe that I’m not broken, dirty, shameful, guilty or weak.   I’d like to believe that I am not TOO MUCH to handle, not too sensitive, too radical, too depressed, too whiny, or too demanding.   I’d like to believe that I live in a world which fights for the rights of people who are different in various ways.

I’d like to believe that I’m okay, just as I am.

Recently I feel like there is no place for me in this world.  I don’t feel I’m living up to my potential.  I feel like a disappointment to those around me.  I feel like an inadequate parent and am consumed by guilt for not being able to protect my children from violence.  I’m currently unemployed and this makes me feel like I have no worth in society because I’m not being productive.   I don’t feel well enough to be working full time and taking care of my kids full time, but I’m having trouble finding a suitable part time or flexible job.  I feel lonely, isolated and full of self doubt.

Last week my daughter described experiencing sexual harassment on the school yard.  She’s not even in Junior high school yet.  She was walking across the yard towards her friends and was briefly alone when a boy she did not know yelled “Come here pussy” at her and then chased after her when she said “No” and started to run away.  The most disturbing aspect of the conversation was how she went on to describe various ways that she could get boys to leave her alone if they didn’t listen to her.  She talked about saying “I already have a boyfriend” and various other things she could say or do to protect herself.   She told me these strategies matter of fact, and it broke my heart to realize that such a very young girl already had a clear idea of being vigilant around boys and men  and had already concocted tactics to protect herself.

I don’t know how not to be broken-hearted about how little things have changed in the world since I was a child.  The media and the #metoo movement would have us believe that we are making progress in the fight against gender based violence.  I disagree.  I don’t think we are making much progress at all.  Generally, perpetrators of violence are still walking free with very few (if any consequences) and survivors of violence are still being held responsible for protecting themselves at every moment.

The only thing I can identify that has changed is that my daughter knew that this was wrong.  This was the second time she was sexually harassed at school this year and both times she told me about it.  She knows that without consent any type of sexual action is assault or harassment.  She knows that she has the right to protect herself, to run away and to say whatever she has to say to stay safe.  She knows that it isn’t her fault and she knows what consent means.

When I was younger, and until shockingly recently, I just assumed this was the way things were.  I didn’t understand the concept of consent.  I just assumed that I was the one who was wrong, strange or broken because I didn’t enjoy sex or sexual comments.  I thought I just had to get used to it, endure, zone out, and put up with it.  I didn’t even understand the concept that sex was something that was supposed to feel good and/or be enjoyable and collaborative.  I didn’t know that it was an option for me to be queer, bisexual, a lesbian or gender non-conforming.  I didn’t know women could be with other women.   In essence, I didn’t know enough to have the option to know myself or protect myself.  I didn’t know enough to even know how to begin telling anyone I was being abused because I didn’t have vocabulary to express it and I thought it was my fault.

I’m learning and unlearning these things as an adult in my 30s.  My own children knew more about consent, gender, sexuality and sex by the age of 10, then I did at the age of 30.

Things seem quite bleak lately.  It’s winter and I’m longing for the summer sunshine warming my skin.  My kids are struggling with the impacts of past abuse.  Schools and services are not trauma informed.  I’m watching my child experience stigma and lack of understanding around her mental health issues.  I’m struggling with the impact of past abuse.  There doesn’t seem to be much to look forward to.  I don’t see a clear path forward and I don’t have answers to many of my questions.  I feel overwhelmed, hopeless and anxious most of the time.  Almost everything online, in the news and social media triggers me and makes me feel more hopeless about ending gender based violence and oppression.

The one thing that seems to have improved is that my children have more tools that I did.  They have more knowledge and more understanding.  I might not have been able to protect them completely, but at least they know that violence is not normal and that it is not their fault.

 

I wish I didn’t care.

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Intellectually I know that it is counter productive and makes no sense to expect anything at all, anything even remotely approaching care or consideration, from my children’s father.  I know he is a narcissist and I know that he hates me.  I know that he will always be the victim in every situation and that I will always be wrong, bad, crazy or plain evil.  I know that it is unhealthy to expect anything else.  I know that the very definition of insanity would be expecting him to change.   In a way, it is easy to accept that he abhors me and probably wishes me dead.  I can accept that he wanted to be on the other side of the country to me and basically never speak to me again.  I’m okay with that.

What I’m not okay with is how completely he disregards the needs and feelings of his children.  I find myself entirely filled with rage, disgust and despair.   And I get disappointed, angry and upset EVERY SINGLE TIME he fails to meet even a minimum standard of decent parenting.

In March, my younger daughter scratched her eye on a school field trip.  It was luckily fairly minor and healed within a few days with antibiotic drops, but it was still her eye, and it was still scary.  I took her to the ER at the children’s hospital here and I notified her father about the injury and need to seek medical care.   I’m legally required to notify him of doctor’s appointments and medical information, but he never replies or acknowledges the information I send.   It makes me SO angry that a parent, living across the country, would not even text or call to check to make sure his kid was okay.

This week my daughter fell playing soccer and got a concussion.  Again, I took her to the ER and again I notified her father.  I sent him the handouts the Dr gave us and let him know how the injury occurred.  His child has a mild brain injury and he couldn’t even text or reply to the email to check on her?  Really?

I can’t imagine under any circumstances that I would not want to check to make sure my child was okay.   I would be on the phone or texting back the minute I got the email.  I’d be calling her myself to see how she was feeling.

An empathetic, kind person might even ask me how I was doing.  Thank me for taking her to get prompt medical attention.  Thank me for taking care of her during the recovery period.  Apologize for not being there.  React like a normal human and a loving parent.

It’s isolating being a solo parent.  It can be lonely and it can be scary when your child is sick or hurt.  It is a lot of responsibility making the decisions alone.   It’s hard caring for children without much of a break.   It’s bad enough if you are fully alone, or if the other parent is supportive but far away, but it is terrible when the other parent is absent, but not gone and completely working at cross purposes to co-parenting.

I find it very triggering.  I’m so angry and I just want to scream at him.  But he isn’t here and he won’t be here.  I don’t even know if he reads the emails I send, so there isn’t much point in screaming endlessly into a void.  On the other hand, I’m legally required to continue keeping him informed so I feel trapped.

Sending him a message about his child’s health and not getting a response makes me angry.  But if he replied I can almost guarantee that the response would upset me just as much, if not more.  It’s a lose-lose-lose situation.   And the worst part of it is that my kids can see just how little he cares.   He almost only ever engages with them on his terms.  He rarely directly answers their questions (if at all) and often gives roundabout confusing half-answers and suspects them of sneaking around (when they are just asking for a simple password!).   It is truly maddening.

We are all trying to get on with our lives.  A lot of positive things have happened over the last few months.  A greater sense of stability and normalcy has settled into our days.  I’ve been struggling to know exactly what to write about in this blog and what direction to take it in going forward.

For much more of our day to day lives we are freer now.  I can make decisions more easily and accomplish more in a shorter amount of time.  But weeks like this I still feel caged.  I rage at the legal system which has literally forced me to stay in regular contact with my abuser, no matter whether or not he actual responds (or even reads my messages).  I still don’t feel free because he still has some level of control over aspects of our lives.  I try to rise above and to think as little as possible about him and the harm he has caused, but it’s not always possible to block it out.

It’s difficult to move forward knowing that he will never face any legal consequences.  He was able to pick up, move to another province and more or less start over.  He still thinks that I’m “mental” and his mother still thinks that I belong in a mental hospital.  “Once a mental person, always a mental person” she told my daughter.

People who can repeatedly call a child’s mother “mental” to their own children are not good people.  He is not a good person.  I know that, but I’m still angry.  And I’m angry at myself for the strange twisted hope and disappointment I feel every time he fails, yet again to ACTUALLY CARE about any of us.

And the fact that I care SO MUCH means that I am an empathetic, kind, loving human who wants what most people want: connection.   My humanity allows me to be deeply hurt, but I would not trade it for his empty life.

The Minutia. Barriers after Leaving: A rant.

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I’ve written quite a few posts about the struggles of leaving an abusive relationship.  Those posts were mainly focused on the large barriers, things directly related to the abuse and fear.  Today (4 years, 2.5 months) after leaving, I’m still facing minute and incredibly frustrating barriers.  This is a rant about jumping through fucking ridiculous hoops.  Hoops that would be frustrating after any separation, but downright impossible and dangerous after leaving an abusive situation.

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Four years ago, when I physically separated from my ex-husband, my cell phone was registered on a bill that was in his name.  We had all our cable/tv/phone services under one bill which was in his name.  Thus, even though I was living in my own home, the bill and all the information about my cell usage was sent to him.  I wanted as much distance as possible from him.  I didn’t want him to know if I called my doctor or a crisis line, or which of my friends I was in regular contact with.  I called the cell phone company and, even though my name was an authorized contact on the file, they would not consent to transferring my cell phone to my own bill without his consent.   He was the account holder.  They required him to call in.  I asked him to make the call.  He ignored me.  I asked him again, he refused.  I called the company multiple times, I begged, I cried,  I explained that I needed to keep my cell number because I’d sent out job application and resumes.  I told them about the divorce, the abuse, and I cried again.  They absolutely WOULD NOT release the phone number and contract to me without his consent.

I contacted him and told him that if he didn’t release the phone to me by X date, I would return the phone to him and he would be responsible for paying it to the end of the contract.  That date came, he still had not cooperated.  I wiped the SIM card, dropped the phone off at his place and got myself a new phone.

I lost my address, my home phone number and my cell phone number.  I’m certain he would not have passed on any mail, or messages to me.  I have no idea what I might have missed in those months following the separation. My home phone had recorded voice messages from Marian, which I had saved.  When she died, I knew they were gone and I wouldn’t hear her voice again.  I had to re-do my resume, contact doctors, schools etc. and give them not only my new address but my new cell phone number too.

It was frustrating.  It didn’t seem logical.  I felt the power of his control over my life.  He knew I wanted to keep my phone number, so he refused to give it to me.  He would have had to pay out the end of the contract, but he was willing to take a financial hit just to punish me.

***

I need to renew my kids passports. I already delayed doing this for over a year, waiting to get custody, so I could put my address on the forms.  Ideally, they want both parents to sign the forms.  Do you think he would sign them? No.  Of course not!  He said that he forgot.  Then he started ignoring my emails.  So now I will have to bring the court order and divorce papers to the passport office and plead my case.  Maybe they will issue the passports, maybe they won’t.  But I will have to stand there and dredge up this embarrassing awful story about how we are separated, how he moved out of the city and I can’t contact him.  I will have to take my chances on whether or not the person working that day will process the forms with only one signature, or not.  And if they won’t?  Either we won’t be able to travel, or my lawyer will have to try to get him to sign.  But if he won’t sign?  Then what?  Go back to court, just to get a passport renewed.  Sigh.

***

About 18 months ago, I received extended health benefits through my place of employment.  I was so pleased and felt so good about being independent and self sufficient.  I was proud of my ability to work, after many years of being disabled by the violence and ensuring mental illness.

But my good feelings quickly diminished when I learned that I could not put my children’s health claims through my own insurance without claiming through his insurance first.  The rules are that the person whose birthday falls first in the year is the primary insurance, which made mine the secondary.  Since we were divorced, I was not an authorized contact on his insurance.  This meant that in order to submit extended health claims (psychologist, dentist etc) through my plan, I had to submit the claims through his plan first.  Which meant I needed his signature.

FUCK.

In 18 months, he was never once willing to coordinate the benefits.  All I needed was for him to submit the claims through his plan, then provide me with documentation about which portion was not covered.  I could then submit it through my  plan.  With the plans combined, most of the kids expenses would have been fully covered.

But he wouldn’t do it.  Absolutely just refused, ignored and at the same time, told the kids consistently that they didn’t need counseling.  He told them not to trust the counselor and that it was a waste of money, too expensive and it wouldn’t help because I was the crazy one.

So I wasn’t able to use the extended benefits.  I paid for my kids expenses on my own.  Legally we were supposed to be splitting the costs in proportion to our salaries, but that would require even more communication and the more he knew I wanted it, the less he would cooperate.

I’m extremely lucky, I’m in a position where I can pay for my kids extended health care.  But imagine how deep of an impact this would have on someone without a full time job.

The abuse, power and control can continue, financially and administratively for as long as the abuser wants.   There should be protections, that in cases of abuse, rules can be bent or made more flexible.  There should be recognition that continued contact with the abuser is mentally damaging to the survivor at best, and physically dangerous at worst.

***

Fast forward again, to today, years after leaving.   My children’s father quit his job and moved to another part of the country.  Thus his insurance is no longer active.

But I STILL haven’t been able to use my own insurance.  I went to the pharmacy yesterday and his insurance was still on file.

Today, I spent probably 30 minutes on the phone with the provincial drug benefit.  They said they can’t reactive the coverage for my kids, unless they have a letter from Dad’s insurance company saying the insurance was terminated.

FUCK.

There is no way in hell I could get that letter.  I’m not an authorized person on the file for his drug plan.  They won’t talk to me.  If I email him, to ask him, he will ignore me.  He’s in another part of the country.

The frustration is immense.  I wanted to burst into tears and hang up the phone.

Luckily, there is another option, the pharmacy can write a letter to the drug benefit company explaining that the coverage through Dad was terminated.  So I spent another 10 minutes on the phone with them.  I’m hoping it will be sorted out within 1-2 weeks.

These are “minor’ frustrations.  Administrative hoops.  But for a survivor of violence, these hoops are a continuation of the power and control wielded by the abuser.  These phone calls and details can trigger me, make me feel powerless, angry or hopeless.  And they are still continuing 4 years after separation.

No, survivors can’t JUST LEAVE!

I’m writing this, partially to vent, but  partially to share details about WHY leaving is so hard.  WHY people stay in abusive relationship.  WHY the impact lasts for so long.  It’s not just the major stuff.  It’s the giant toppling pile of minute barriers which unite to form a wall of frustration.

It takes a lot of strength to keep climbing the wall.

If you are a survivor, I believe you.  I’m sorry you have to go through this.

If you know a survivor.  Believe them.  Give them a hug and tell them you are sorry for what they are going through.  Offer a helping hand. Let them vent, even if it was “a long time ago.”

The impact of intimate partner violence is long lasting.  Today, November 15th, SHINE the light on violence against women.  We all need to be a part of the solution.  We all need to work to end domestic violence.

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Leaving. Living.

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It started to go off the rails quite soon after I told him I was leaving.  Gradually, as the reality of the magnitude of what I was doing sunk in for him, the angrier he became.  When I told him I’d hired a lawyer and wanted to discuss what it would look like to divide our finances he got angry.  When I explained how child support might work and that I’d been informed about my rights he got angry.

He tried to convince me that we could put the money for the children into an account that we’d both have access to.  That I could buy the things they needed from there.  I explained calmly that child support didn’t work that way, that he’d have to pay me and that I could legally use the money for anything related to caring for the children.  He was furious.  I tried to explain that child support wasn’t just for the children’s clothes and activities, but for anything related to their care.  That I could use it for things like utilities bills (so they had heat and electricity) or repairs to the car (if the brakes were broken and it was unsafe for them) etc.   He got angrier.  We fought.  I was so hurt because I felt like he didn’t trust me to manage money, even though I’d been paying our bills and managing household finances for our entire marriage.  I didn’t understand at that point, that the issue was power and control.  I wanted him to trust me.  I kept trying to explain.  He got very angry.  I thought he might hit me, but he just yelled at me to drop it, to walk away.  We were in the basement of our house, near the stairs.  He wanted me to go upstairs to let him calm down (he’d been sleeping in the basement as we were separated within the same house).   A part of me knew I should go upstairs, but I was so hurt and so upset and I needed him to understand.   He was full of rage and I was afraid and crying.

When I didn’t go upstairs he got angrier.  He smashed his head through the drywall of the basement wall.  I didn’t understand why he would destroy his own property.   I was the one leaving, this would soon be his house, not ours.  Why damage it?

I was really scared at this point and I wanted to leave.  I told him I wanted to take the children to my parents’ house until he calmed down.  I needed to calm down as well.  I couldn’t stop crying and shaking.   I went up to the main floor, but he blocked my way to the upstairs, blocking me from the kids.  He told me I could go to my parents’ but I couldn’t take the kids.  I kept trying to get by him and he kept holding me back.  I told him I was going to call the police.  At this point we were upstairs, near my older daughter’s bedroom.   He snarled at me “if  you call the police I will tell them you are mentally ill and hysterical and they won’t believe you.  They will believe me.”

Defeated, I knew he was right.  I was too afraid to call.  I grabbed my medication and some things and ran out to my car, locked myself in and sobbed.  It was late.  Maybe midnight.  I cried and cried.  I called a friend who’d told me that I could call him if I had to leave in an emergency.  He didn’t pick up.  I was too afraid to tell my parents.  I wasn’t willing to leave my kids.

I remember him coming out to the car.  Asking me, through the glass, to come into the house.  Eventually he went back inside the house.  I cried in the car for a long time before realizing I was out of options.  I went back into the house, went upstairs and went to sleep.

I could have run with the kids while he was sleeping.  But I was too afraid.  We lived together, separately for a few more weeks after that night.    More recently, I learned that my daughter heard us fighting and me crying and she was afraid.   She never told me at the time.

He took the kids to visit his mother.  I packed my belongings and moved them to my parents garage.   I tried to make the house look as nice as possible before the children returned, so they wouldn’t be afraid.  I finished staining the new fence.  I  hung pictures of his family in place of the ones I took down.  I spent hours looking through my photo albums, taking out all the ones of his family that I thought he’d want to keep before packing the albums.  I left our wedding album on the bookshelf.  I spent 10 days mostly alone, slowly taking apart my life and putting it into boxes.

When he came back from the trip he was cold.  He was a white hot, cold rage.  His eyes were changed.  I knew on some level he was dangerous, but I still wanted to believe it would be okay.  I wanted to believe we could separate, and co-parent peacefully in two separate houses.

When he came back there were 3 nights until the day I took possession of my new place.  He told me he would be sleeping in our bedroom now and I could sleep downstairs.  I didn’t argue.  I slept on the couch and lying numb and afraid in my daughter’s bed.  I remember having a terrible nightmare on the last night I spent in that house.  It was 4 years ago tonight.  I dreamed that one of my friends died.  It was horrible and sad and I woke up crying.

I woke up and he was gone.  The kids had a medical appointment and then we were supposed to go to my parents’ house for the night.  I packed up some last things, the children’s clothing and left them by the front door for my Dad to pick up while we were at the appointment.   I got an email from him telling me that the plan had changed, that he wouldn’t allow me to take the children.  He insisted he would come to get them later in the day, that he didn’t want them exposed to the move and my new house empty.  He said the kids would stay with him most of the time until school started.  I didn’t agree, I tried to negotiate with him. I remember lying curled up on the floor of my childhood bedroom, crying, sobbing on the phone with him trying to convince him to allow the children to stay with me that night.  I’d already been away from them 10 days and they were confused and upset.

My Dad tried to pick up the kids things and he wouldn’t allow him into the house.  He was angry and like an animal.  My Dad asked him to calm down but he wouldn’t listen.  He allowed my Dad to take the things that belonged to me, but not the children’s clothing.

Before dinner, he showed up at my parents’ house.  He wanted the kids.  We were standing on the front porch and I was asking him to let the kids stay with me.  He dragged them away from me.  They were crying, especially my older child.  He took them anyway.  Took them out to dinner to try to bribe them into being okay with what had happened.

I remember lying on the floor of the bedroom, sobbing.  Trying to reach my lawyer.  Trying to get advice about what to do.  Feeling defeated, less than 12 hours after leaving him.  It already felt like too much.  I was scared and I knew that I’d been living in a dream world for the past 6 weeks, thinking we could live separately and co-parent.

But it would take me another few months, until October of that year, before I truly realized the depths he would go to to take my kids away.  It would be a few more months until I  realized it was hopeless and there was no chance of a reconciliation, common ground, shared parenting or co-operation.

I spent a few more months telling people that it was “just sexual abuse” and that he was basically a good guy.  I spent a few more months believing that it was about sex.  I spent a few more months believing before someone told me that abuse was about power and control, and that I had to stop making excuses for him and acknowledge the severity of what was happening.

Every year since then I’ve spent the last few days of August re-living every moment of those last few weeks I spent in my old life.  I might have already written this exact blog post last year.  Every year I struggle.   Every year I feel hopeless.  Every year I’m forced to confront the reality that my marriage was abusive, that my ex-husband was very definitely NOT “basically a good guy.”

This year, I received the verdict of the four year long custody battle and family law trial only a few weeks before the anniversary of the leaving.

It took me a year to plan to leave and to execute that plan.  It took me 4 more years to get custody of my children.

It took 5 years to leave him.  5 years.

I feel like a chapter in my life has closed.  The court verdict drew a line after the last sentence on the final page of the book of my leaving.   The book closed.  I got free.  For a moment I breathed out and my entire body has almost collapsed with the exhaustion of the fight finally ending.  I had to hold it together for 5 years.  I had to be sane for 5 years.  I had to cope.  I had to go to work.  I had to act normally, when inside I felt like I was being torn apart with the grief of knowing my children were being abused and I couldn’t stop it.  I felt like my brain shattered into a million pieces during the last few days of court when my children’s psychological records were disclosed, against their wishes and the wishes of their psychologist, to their father. I felt like I would not survive the anxiety of waiting over 8 months for the verdict of the trial.

But I did survive.  I’m not the same person I was 5 years ago.  I’m not the same person I was a year ago.  This has changed me.  It has fundamentally shifted any belief I had in the world being a fair and just place.  It has created a dark, sad, hopeless place inside of me that I don’t know how to soothe.

And almost as soon as I breathed out.  Almost as soon as the chapter book closed, with the verdict in my favour…before I had a chance to rest or come to a full stop…while I was still almost immobile with exhaustion…

It carried on.  A new book opened.  A book full of empty blank pages.  I have no idea what the future holds.  I know that it contains more struggles and more fear.  I know that my kids are still not safe, that he will still emotionally abuse them when he has access to them.  I know that I will continue to have to fight for my trans daughter’s right to exist safely.  I know that I will need to fight every day to hold onto hope and to see the good in the world.

The leaving has ended.

I just don’t know what the living has in store for us.

Body distortions.

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I’ve struggle with distorted perceptions of my body since I was 9 years old. I vividly remember the first time I felt hatred towards my body.  I was 9 and I was sitting on the floor in the upstairs hall of my parents’ house.  I must have been getting ready to get into the shower.  I was sitting with my legs out in front of me and all I could think about was how fat and ugly my stomach was.  I thought it looked disgusting.

I remember during my years as a dancer how much I envied the other girls who were thinner and had more delicate frames.  I was always cast in the role of the boy in the group choreography and I assumed this was because I was the largest, tallest and least delicate.  Intellectually I knew some of the girls were younger and hadn’t gone through puberty yet, but emotionally it hurt.  I didn’t want to be in the boys costume, pants, vest and button up shirt. I wanted the flowing dress.  The main reason was because I assumed my body shape was to blame.

I remember feeling slightly more confident in my body for a few years, at the beginning of high school.  My style changed fairly dramatically over the years, from dresses, to jeans and baggy sweatshirts, to grunge plaid shirts and doc marten boots, to short kilts and boots, to hippy long skirts…in high school I wore skirts and dresses the majority of the time and I never felt comfortable in shorts.

When I was sexually abused, I started linking my female body with being assaulted.  I wanted to take up less space.  I wanted to disappear so I couldn’t be abused.  I changed my style again, and stopped wearing skirts and dresses and more feminine items, expect for special occasions.

It took many years for me to make the link between being abused and hating my body.  I believed all the negative thoughts Ana was screaming at me.  I believed I was fat, even when I was deathly thin.  I saw things that weren’t there.  I struggled with body dysmorphia and distorted body image, never seeing myself as others saw me.  I became so used to this that I stopped questioning why it happened.  I became increasingly invested in hating my body and blaming my body for being abused.  I forged an even stronger link by engaging in severe self harm for many years and abusing my body by overdosing and attempting suicide.  All my destructive behaviours distracted away from the root causes of my eating disorder and self harm.

I remember the moment the link became crystal clear to me.  Up until that moment it was a complete mystery to me how my view of my body could change so drastically from day-to-day.  One day I might see myself as thin, or even worry about my weight and health and the next day I’d wake up feeling obese, disgusting and unwilling to eat.  I had a hard time intellectually believing that it was impossible for my body to change that much over night.  I tried to control the dysphoria by altering my eating habits and/or exercise.

Around 2011-2012, during the years leading up to me leaving my ex-husband, I had a sudden realization.  My weight was low towards the end of 2011, partly due to the ECT treatments and lack of appetite and partly due to Ana and depression.   I remember feeling like I’d lost too much weight.  I remember feeling concerned about how low my weight was (this was during the brief time period I owned a scale).  I went to sleep one night and my ex-husband touched me sexually when I was asleep and drugged.  Quite likely after I’d said no while awake.  I remember us fighting about it in the morning.  I went into the en suite bathroom and got ready to shower.  I remember and overwhelming feeling of being fat. I hated my stomach. I felt massive and ugly.  I wanted to harm myself and restrict food.  I felt disgusting and shameful.

Then a light bulb went off in my mind.

“Wait a minute, just yesterday you felt you were too thin.  Just yesterday you were worried about your weight being low. It’s impossible that you have gained that much weight over night.  These self-destructive thoughts are linked to being assaulted and to the argument.  You feel fat and dirty and shameful BECAUSE of what happened.  It has nothing to do with your weight.  Your weight hasn’t changed.”

Things started to shift for me after that realization.  I suddenly had a clear intellectual understanding that I needed to try living alone before giving up and completing suicide.  I realized that I hadn’t truly “tried everything” to recover because I hadn’t tried removing myself from my marriage.  I think this realization saved my life.  I began to slowly get stronger, to seek different types of help (from a rape crisis centre) and to talk to a few trusted folks about what was happening in my marriage.

It took me a full year to get strong enough to leave.  But the leaving started with that realization.  For a moment, I stopped blaming my body and myself and started blaming my abuser for my ill-health.

In the last two days I’ve had some incredibly frustrating text interchanges with my ex-husband.  Trying to co-ordinate co-parenting with a narcissist is impossible.  It is like pushing a spiky boulder up an icy hill, where you are blamed for the ice, the spikes and for not succeeding in getting the boulder up the hill.

Yesterday, Ana was screaming at me.  Ana did NOT want me to eat.  Ana was telling me I was fat and I’d gained too much weight.  Ana was telling me to hurt myself.  Ana was making me paranoid that my ex could see things on my computer, or hear things we were talking about at my house.  Ana was activated and was not letting me rest.  Noises startled me, I had a hard time relaxing to sleep.

All of this happened because of a 5 minute text exchange with him.

Co-parenting with an abuser is enough to make anyone miserable.  But I need to remember that my body is not to blame.  In fact, the healthier I am, the stronger I can be at resisting his abuse.  I need to be healthy to take care of my kids and protect them as much as possible from his lies.  Ana tells me to hurt myself, to shrink myself, that it’s my fault.  But Ana lies.

I’m willing to bet that if you have an abusive voice in your head, it is lying to you too.  Ana never makes us stronger.  We are not to blame for the abusive patterns of another person.

I read a quote once…

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This was certainly true in my case.  I realized that hurting myself was not the way out.  There was another way, a sometimes more difficult way, but a more productive one!

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Mystery.

/ hopeforsanityblog / 2 Comments

I’ve spent time over the past few weeks reflecting on the roots of my abusive relationships.  What I try very hard NOT to think about is the answer to questions like these:

Was any of it ACTUALLY real?  Was there every REALLY any love between us?  Were they lying to me from the start?  Were the entire relationships just elaborate gaslighting schemes design to facilitate abuse?

It’s quite painful to cope with the potential truth that my entire marriage was abusive. It’s sometimes too difficult to believe this.  It’s too difficult to hold that truth in my mind for more than a few moments.  If none of it was real, the loss becomes immense.  I can’t go back in time and re-live my children’s first  years with a non-abusive partner.  I might never know what it feels like to parent a child with someone I truly love and respect.  I won’t get my 20’s back.

Sometimes I search my memory, grasping for pure memories.  Moments that weren’t tinged with discomfort or abuse.  I try to find some moments to hold onto that feel REAL, where we were both happy, genuine and authentic.

Sadly, I can’t find very many.  I remember a lot of distance.  I remember a lot of me questioning myself, changing myself, adapting myself, trying to fit in with what I thought I should be.  I remember me hurting myself, starving myself, judging myself, disassociating, making excuses for him, and blaming myself.

I remember being alone.  I felt alone. I was alone.  I remember the isolation and desperation of post-partum depression and the loneliness of parenting two young children without much help.

I wonder if I ever really knew the man I was married to for a decade.  Today, I can accept that I never did.

I can remember one genuine moment.  It was in the hospital, after my first child was born.  We were tired and happy.  New parents.  It was the first night after her birth, before he went home to sleep for a while.  We were singing a ridiculous Hugh Laurie song that we’d both found amusing over the weeks before the birth.  I remember laughing a bit, holding the baby in my arms.  I think that was real.

But maybe it will always just be a mystery…

I’m reclaiming “crazy.”

/ hopeforsanityblog / 2 Comments

I’m so tired of crazy being used as an abelist, stigmatizing slur against me by my ex-husband.  I’m fed up of being called crazy as an insult, as an excuse for his abusive behaviour.  I’m tired of gaslighting which blames my PTSD for the sexual violence he perpetrated.  I’m tired of being seen as less than, being labelled with things that don’t apply to me.  I’m tired of the implicit assumption that having a mental illness is a terrible thing, something I should be horribly ashamed of.  It’s problematic on so many levels.  He accuses me of having borderline personality disorder (which I don’t have) but even if I DID have it, so what?  Would I be “crazy?”   Would this warrant being mistreated and shunned and ignored?  Would it mean everything I say and do is suspect?

I reject all this.  I want to reclaim crazy.  I want to fight mental health stigma.  I don’t want to be ashamed that I’m not neuro-typical.

I’d like my ex-husband to stop spreading awful rumours about me in the community, but I don’t have control over that!

Things I would like to stop hearing as I reclaim crazy:

-Be more neutral

-You are too emotional

-You are too sensitive

-Tone down your feminism

-Your past is impacting your parenting

-That was a long time ago, why don’t you get over it

-Just relax

-Calm down

-Don’t worry so much

-You are over-reacting

-Why didn’t you just say no?

-Don’t you know how to defend yourself?

-Why didn’t you just fight back?

-She’s crazy (from anyone unless they are also reclaiming the word)

I celebrate being crazy in a positive way, because it means that I’m NOT neutral.  It means that I am an advocate, a social justice warrior, an ally and a support worker.  I’ve harnessed some of the energy of the bad things I’ve survived and I’m using it to help others, to fight injustice and to try to leave the world a better place than I found it.    I’m proud of my feminism.  I’m proud of my anti-oppression principles and the way I strive to unlearn and learn in my daily life.  I don’t want to calm down.  My feminism gives me energy and it keeps me alive.

And if that makes me crazy, then I embrace it.  But let me define crazy.

Nevertheless she persisted.

 

Be Your Own Hero.

/ hopeforsanityblog / 6 Comments

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It’s been a difficult time for me.  I’ve been waiting 90 days+ for the verdict in my family law trial.  I’m experiencing a lot of triggers and finding it harder to stay positive and optimistic about the future.

Quite frankly, it is terrible for my mental and physical health to have contact with my abuser.  It upsets me, it triggers me, it causes flashbacks and disassociation, it confuses me, gaslights me, makes me doubt myself, my abilities, makes me feel crazy and like nobody believes me.

Unfortunately, he is the father of my children and I can’t just go no contact.

It’s awful.  It’s awful being told I have to “get along” with someone who treated me so badly.  It’s frustrating being told by many institutions such as the kids school, the CAS and some doctors, that I should be more neutral, not let my past impact me, that he’s a loving parent and basically a good person.

Hold on a minute….basically a good person?

That’s what I told myself for years.  It’s just sexual abuse.  It’s just the sexual stuff, he’s otherwise “basically a good person.”  Telling myself that kept me locked into the relationship for years longer than I should have stayed.

Someone who doesn’t believe in consent is not “basically a good person” they are an abusive person.  He is an abusive person.

Privilege in society allows abusers to “pass” as basically good people.  They know how to act, to charm, to make their victims look crazy or unreliable or unbelievable, they know how to discredit others, they know how to tell different lies to different people to suit their needs.  Most abusers can make you think they are basically good people, but in reality, the signs are there that they are not good people.

The saddest part is that because abusers are expert liars and manipulators they can often convince everyone who might be able to help you, that they are good people!   So the abuse they perpetrate goes unnoticed and unacknowledged by anyone who might be able to support or rescue you.

Suddenly, they are “basically good people” and you are perceived as mentally ill and crazy.

Abusers gaslight the system.  That, combined with the societal privilege, rape culture, and patriarchy, allow them to pass unseen, and unnoticed through our world, abusing people as they please and not being stopped.  In a parallel experience, the survivors are believed less and less, as a web of lies is spun about them by the abuser to those around her who might assist her in escaping.

This is what I’m experiencing in my life.  It’s been 3.5 years since I left my abuser but I’m still locked in a web of abuse.  Very few people within the “system” believe me, and those who DO believe me and my kids, are seen as biased!  It’s an unbelievable, frustrating and maddening situation.

The more I protest, advocate and fight for myself and my kids, the more I am labelled radical, crazy, not neutral, too angry etc.

So what are my options?

I feel like the only option is to be my own hero.

At the end of the day, my ex-partner would like nothing more than for me to fall into a crisis and commit suicide.  He wants me to kill myself so that he can be right.  So he can prove that I’m crazy and that I don’t care about, and have never cared about, my kids.  He won’t stop punishing us until he reaches this goal.

But it’s been 3.5 years, and generally I’m more mentally healthy than I was before.  Generally, I take care of myself.  I’m working full time.  I’m becoming more confident in myself and my career.  I have some supportive friends and a supportive family.  I’m not falling into a crisis.

I won’t let him destroy me.  I’ll stay alive as long as I can just to spite him.

I’ll be my own hero, if nobody else will step up to protect my kids.  I’ll protect them and myself and do everything in my power to survive.

Survival is the best revenge.

If you are experiencing abuse, be your own hero.  Believe yourself.  Support yourself.  The rest will slowly follow.

Reverse Sexism isn’t a Thing.

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I’m angry, frustrated and upset about some comments that were made to me by a male friend this week.  We’d been disagreeing and at odds recently, and he told me in a string of texts a few things that really stuck with me and were triggering given my current situation.

He accused me of treating him badly because he was a man.

First of all, that’s like accusing me of reverse sexism, which isn’t a thing.  It’s just not.   I was angry at the unreasonableness of the comment.

Then he went on to say that he feels like my court case and my job have changed me (implication was that it wasn’t a change for the better).

I didn’t read everything else in the texts. I deleted them because I wanted to scream and was triggered.

#obvious

Of COURSE my highly prolonged, extremely traumatic, family law case has changed me.  It would be miraculous to the point of ridiculous impossibility for an experience as stressful and difficult as facing my abuser in court, fighting for custody of my kids and being re-traumatized by the legal system over and over, not to impact me.

When I’m struggling, when I’m having a difficult week, it’s even more important for people in my life to be more gentle with me, more understanding and more patient.  Because when I’m dealing with my court case (and thus my ex),  I’m triggered.  I feel vulnerable.  I’m not always as kind as usual. I’m impatient and irritable, and it’s rarely to do with the people who I care about.  Memories from the past and feeling tones from the past are driving me.  I’m more suspicious, less trusting and more wary.  I need space, time and comfort in order to ground myself.  The court case changes me, and I need help from my friends (not their judgment) to get back onto the path to kindness and safety.

My job has changed me too.  It has changed me immensely and completely and wonderfully.  Working in a feminist organization, helping women and learning from women has helped me grow and gain confidence.   Over the years I’ve been working there, I’ve slowly and painstakingly gained back some of the self confidence I had lost during years of abuse, self hatred and isolation.  My job has changed me, as I’ve learned a greater appreciation for my own privilege, and a greater respect and depth of understanding and empathy towards the many faceted situations of others.

Feminism is important to me, because without feminism I might not be alive today.

Does that mean that I hate men?  Of course not!  I hate the patriarchy and white supremacy and heteronormativity and ableism and cis-sexism and sexism and inequality.

And I hate folks who I have to justify this to.

I don’t exist merely as a sexual object for others.  I don’t exist merely to uphold systems of privilege without question.  I don’t exist merely to please others.  Feminism helps me believe that I am worthy of so much more than that.  Feminism empowers me and gives me strength and a path towards a meaningful purpose to my life.

A life that, a few short years ago, I considered meaningless and worth ending.

I wouldn’t change this about myself.  I wouldn’t want to go back in time and not have this job.  I love what I’ve gained from it and I love myself more than I have in years because of the sense of community I’ve gained from feminist allies.  I think that not working, and not being able to work outside the home, was an aspect of the abusive environment within my marriage.  For that reason, I celebrate my new abilities, my ability to work and my ability to have a greater purpose.  I don’t take my ability to work for granted, because I worked hard in recovery to achieve this.

I have changed.   I will keep changing.

And I won’t apologize for it to anyone.

 

Depression meets PTSD. Crash.

/ hopeforsanityblog / 2 Comments

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I’ve realized over the past three years that depression is often more of a secondary problem for me.  It’s very situational and very linked to PTSD.  By the time depression flares up, it generally means that I’ve been coping with PTSD triggers for too long and I’ve started to crash into exhaustion.  Depression sometimes means feeling literally nothing, while PTSD can mean feeling everything and things that are from the past vaulted into the present, clear as day.   This can be a confusing progression.

Lately it’s hard to tease out whether I have a whole host of mental health diagnosis or just one (PTSD) causing a host of symptoms.

Abuse triggers can lead to negative feelings about my body which can then trigger my good friend Ana…yes, PTSD comes first and anorexia is a symptom.   For me anorexia is mainly a series of obsessive compulsive thoughts and behaviours which are linked to extreme anxiety around changing my food rituals.   So anorexia comes first, and OCD traits follow.

When I have a lot of PTSD symptoms and flashbacks, I start to have trouble sleeping and I have vivid nightmares.  Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night to a full panic attack.  Flashbacks can lead to panic attacks during the day as well, and also to anxiety in crowds and enclosed spaces.  So PTSD comes first, and anxiety and panic symptoms follow.

At the end of the line comes depression.  DEPRESSION.  It feels so heavy.  Depression to me leads from coping to constant suicidal and self harm ideation in what seems like mere seconds.  For me, suicidal thoughts are often the first real indicator that I’ve slipped into depression again.  This may seem backwards, but for me the most severe symptom tends to come right at the start, even if I’m depressed for only a few days.

When I’m depressed I feel like I’m walking through a thick soup of fog.  Every fibre of my being hurts and feels heavy and leaden.  Sometimes I have to lie down after just showering and getting dressed in the morning because I feel too exhausted to continue with the day.  When I’m depressed I have no energy.  I want to crawl into bed and hide.  Unfortunately, I’m a single parent and I have a full time job.   It’s not an option just to crash.

So I keep going, but the time crawls by.  I feel unsure if I can get through the day.  I feel unsure if I can stay safe, and resist the negative thoughts.  My self esteem crashes.  I start to feel a lot of feelings from the past.  Or maybe that is backwards, maybe I feel the feelings from the past and it triggers depression.

When I feel out of control of important aspects of my life, I am triggered and I think about suicide.  This is the way my life is.  It’s been this way since I was 17 years old.   It’s both normal to me, and completely terrifying every time it happens.

The depression always lifts and these days it lifts more quickly than it ever did in the past.  The lights come on again, I see the world clearly and not through a haze.  I feel connected and I feel like I am competent at some things.  When I’m depressed I feel alone and I feel utterly worthless.  I feel like a burden and a problem and someone that people I know put up with, rather than care about.  I have trouble making small talk.  I spend a lot of time silent.  I feel an immense amount of social anxiety and discomfort in social situations, especially those involving food.  Depression, anxiety, anorexia, PTSD….it’s a perfect storm of misery.  I’m caught in the middle of a storm of symptoms and I don’t know when they will abate.

Right now I’m triggered because I’m worried about my children.  I’m triggered because of the way my ex-husband treats my children and me.  I’m triggered because this is the time of year, 3 years ago, leading up to my physical separation from him, when things were at their most tense and scary.

I’m triggered today because my daughter told me that her father’s avatar/icon for me on his phone is a piece of raw meat.  Raw chicken.   The father of my two children sees me as nothing more than a piece of meat.

Fuck.