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[icanwritewords]

Eggshells

For a few weeks one October, his medication “worked” -- somehow, he was no longer prone to blow up unexpectedly over small triggers; somehow, his entire personality changed to behave like a normal fucking person; somehow, I was just supposed to adjust. To accept that he was a changed man. To trust that this was how he was going to be from now on. What I had been hoping for (a balanced, level-headed partner who treated me with basic kindness and respect) was such a massive shift from what my brain was programmed to accept from him that I almost couldn’t handle it. I would “make a mistake” and look up at him, quietly terrified and waiting for whatever comment he would make about how stupid I was, and it wouldn’t come. I specifically remember him looking at me with a smile on his face and a loving look in his eyes that I had never seen before (maybe not real love, but that kind of dead-eyed version of what he thought a loving person should look like) and just feeling a rush of negative emotions. I felt scared, because what alien abducted my abusive husband and replaced him with a nice guy? I felt crazy, like I had been transported to a different reality and no longer recognized my husband. I felt angry, because why had this side of him not been available to me if it was in him the whole time. I felt guilty, because what kind of ungrateful wife feels so negatively about finally being treated the way she ought to be treated? I felt suspicious, because even as good days turned to good weeks, I just felt it in my bones that this new and improved version could not be trusted, that it was not really here to stay, and that if I got used to it, it would surely be taken away as soon as I let my guard down.

But walking on eggshells wasn’t quote the right analogy. Yes, I was tiptoeing very carefully, choosing my words and actions based on what seems to be least annoying to him so that moment, in a way that could be compared to walking on eggshells and trying not to crush them. Only, it was guaranteed that you would crush them. And then, it was just a question of how enraged he might be by the sound of the crushing noise. I had been walking on eggshells for a literal decade at this point, 10 years, an entire third of my life, and now he was expecting me, over overnight, to no longer feel that way. 

I don’t really know how long he took the medicine for because he certainly didn’t tell me when he stopped taking it, but it was no more than a few good weeks, maybe a month at most. Slowly the honeymoon period of his improved mood wore off and he started transitioning back to his normal self. After a few increasingly angry episodes, I finally decided to ask him if he had quit taking his medication and he barked, “It hurt my stomach! I shouldn’t have to take medication that destroys my stomach so badly just to be able to put up with being married to such a dumb bitch like you!” Ah, I remember thinking, there he is. That’s the man I know. It was a terrible thing for him to say to me -- not to mention he was apparently in major denial about his mental health -- but it was strangely comforting to have the normal him back.

[icanwritewords]

Goodbye to my single mom townhouse

I will certainly not miss living practically in another county and an extra 20 minutes from everything in my life. I will not miss lugging a baby up and down stairs or later convincing a toddler to please, for the love of god, climb them just a little bit faster.

My single mom townhouse was not ideal, but that was never the point. It was a stepping stone, a place between my prior life and the next chapter. It was the nicest place available quickly in my price range, and it served its purpose well.

I have a lot of memories here, some good and some, honestly, awful. This was the place my daughter took her first steps and where my son started practicing his trombone (sorry not sorry to my neighbors, a mother and adult daughter who seemed to communicate with each other exclusively through screaming.)

My family celebrated Addy’s second birthday here. I navigated the logistics of timesharing two Christmases.

The first time I brought a date home I hid all the kids’ toys in the closet under the stairs, which my date (a single father who was aware I had children) teased me for.

I had more than one panic attack here during the ridiculously long period of time between filing for divorce and actually finalizing it. I paced up and down the stairs and hyperventilated and felt hopeless and scared about the unknown, about how impossible it all seemed, about how I felt I was surely financially ruined, irreparably so, and wondered if it was all worth it.

But my most distinct memory is from the day I moved in. I was walking up the stairs and thought to myself, “This is MY place and I get to decide what happens here, and the first rule I’m making is that if someone calls me a cunt, they’re getting kicked the fuck out,” and in that moment I felt truly at peace for the first time in 12 years.

[icanwritewords]

[icanwritewords]

the last straw, eventually.

Most of the details escape me but I'll never forget that night. It was now 8PM. The fight started the way so many of our fights had been starting over the past two years. He wanted to have sex; I didn't. He had spent most of the evening laying on the couch watching TV, getting up only to go outside for an occasional cigarette, while I made dinner, fed the kids, did the dishes, washed bottles, prepped bottles for the next day, and got my son to bed. The moment that I took my daughter to our room to put her to sleep, he came to bed and made it clear to me that he wanted to have sex. Here's the part where I blame myself. I'm sure I was a bitch about it. I'm sure I rolled my eyes. I'm sure if I loved him, I could have just acquiesced. I'm sure I was absolutely exhausted, stressed, at the end of my rope in every aspect of my life. I'm sure I did not want to fuck someone who made it clear to me at least 80% of the time that he hated me, that I was the cause of all his problems, the root of all his anger, a total idiot, and that if only I would have sex with him every time he wanted it, we could have a great relationship. So, no, I did not want to have sex. "Babe, I'm just so tired. I'm sorry." He was visibly irritated, but only mildly so, for him. He rolled over away from me, and after a few minutes, he was snoring. Whenever he slept, a weight was lifted off of me. There was nothing to worry about when he was sleeping. Except, of course, him waking up. I nursed the baby to sleep. I waited the necessary 20 minutes to make sure she was *really* asleep, and I gently, carefully, transferred her into the crib next to our king size bed. It was now 9PM. I was the only person awake in the house. Finally. For once. I took a deep breath and enjoyed the silence. I basked in the peace of no one needing anything from me. Then I did what any good millenial does before bed and took out my phone. Who knows what I was doing. I probably spent some time on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, looking enviously at pictures of people who seemed happy with their lives and husbands. I probably spent more than a few minutes looking at condos and townhouses on the Realtor app and wondering if I could afford to leave him. I probably typed out a to-do list of all the things I needed to remember for the next day. I worried about everything. Did my son have all the pieces he needed for his costume for the theatre production coming up that weekend? Did I find back-up care for my daughter for the week my babysitter was on vacation? Was I going to survive my new promotion at work without having a complete mental collapse? It was now 10PM. I didn't notice the heavy, sleeping breaths go silent. That was normally my cue to hide my phone and pretend I was sleeping. As soon as he opened his mouth, his voice was raised immediately and it made me jump. "You've got to be FUCKING kidding me. You're on your goddamn motherfucking phone." "I don't understand what the big deal is. You were sleeping." "Of course you don't understand. You're so fucking dumb." "Can you not yell please? You're going to wake her up." He gritted his teeth. "You fucking cunt. Give me your fucking phone. That's my fucking phone and I want it." The phone contract was in his name, so in arguments, he liked to act like it was some kind of gift, even though we paid the bill jointly. "What? No. Go back to sleep. Jesus Christ." "Give me that fucking phone." "Seriously, I don't understand why you're so mad." "You are too tired to have sex, but not too tired to play on your fucking phone. Like always." "I was tired, but by the time I finally got her to sleep, I got a second wind. I'm just messing around on my phone until I get tired again..." "Give me that goddamn motherfucking phone." He was absolutely seething. Twelve years of experience told me he was approaching his peak. "Jesus Christ. Calm down and go back to sleep." I turned my phone off and set it down next to me, between us. He immediately snatched it up and threw it across the room with intense force. It ricocheted off his closet door and hit the floor with a thud. My eyes darted to the baby sleeping maybe three feet away. She stirred, but didn't wake. The phone could have easily bounced off the closet door and hit her in the head, hard. Don't think about that. It didn't. She's fine. She's asleep and will never know. At least not this time. I was silent for a moment, my mind running with a million different options of how to react. I took the easiest route, but also the one that would make him angriest: I ignored him. I wrapped my side of the comforter tightly around me, like a burrito, and rolled over away from him. I gripped the blanket tightly. Bad move. "Don't fucking ignore me, you fucking cunt." He tried to yank the comforter off of me, but it was more difficult than he expected. This must have infuriated him even more because he yanked again but much harder. The force of it caught me off guard. I could immediately feel the anxiety swell inside of me, like an elephant plopped right down on my chest and sent a tingling sensation through my whole body, through my arms and out the tips my fingers. He was regularly a monster towards me, verbally, but this immediately felt so different. Twenty seconds ago he was sound asleep. Now he was yelling, throwing my phone, and yanking covers. Was this going to be the night he inevitably made it physical? My gut said, "Get the fuck away from him if you want to live." Maybe my gut was exaggerating, but how can anyone ever be sure? I untucked the part of the comforter that was under my body, unwrapped it from me, and flung it off in the span of about a half of a second. I scooped the baby up and headed for the living room. So many things went through my head in the short amount of time it took me to get from the bedroom to the living room. I wanted to get out of there. I thought I probably needed to get out, for my own safety. Certainly for my own dignity and mental health. But what would that mean? It's after 10PM on a school night and work night. I'd have to wake up my son, who would then be a witness to this escalating shitshow. I would have to find my keys and purse and -- oh yeah, I would have no phone, since that was in the bedroom on the floor, if it even still worked at that point. So I could maybe manage to get my two kids into the van at night to flee our own home and -- what? show up on a family member's doorstep unannounced? Hi, I thought my husband might kill me and he took and maybe destroyed my phone, so can we sleep here tonight and maybe indefinitely? There's no coming back from that. That's a split second decision to end a marriage, assuming I was even lucky enough to safely get out of the house with the kids. And what kind of therapy would my son need? I already knew I would never forget this night. I didn't want the same for him. I couldn't bring myself to do what I probably needed to do, so I opted to just sit on the sofa and cry and hyperventilate and hold my baby and rock back and forth and back and forth and close my eyes and pray to a god I don't believe in that he just stay in bed and leave me alone. After a few quiet seconds, I heard him stomping his way out of the bedroom. I thought of that Huffington Post article. Again.

[icanwritewords]

the bad beginning

The words flow easier when I write them in my head. But here goes nothing. Gainesville, 2005. We laid there sleeping, having cuddled all night. We weren't yet having sex; I was still a virgin. He never pressured me, and I thought it was so kind of him. Cuddling in a twin bed with your new boyfriend sounds quaint and romantic until you actually want to get some sleep. I had been restless all night, shivering. He always kept the air conditioning set somewhere in the 60s and the ceiling fan on full blast. It was student housing, though he wasn't a student, so utilities were included, all the electricity you can get. The early dawn light was just starting to shine through the window into his room. I desperately wanted to get some sleep, a couple hours at least, so that I could be functional in French class later that morning. I rolled over towards him and nudged him gently. "Babe?" "Mm" he answered, still sleeping. "Hey, I'm freezing." "Mm." I nudged again. "Can you turn the fan off?" Then, yelling, out of nowhere: "God DAMMIT, Ashley. FUCK!" My name is not Ashley. And back to sleep he went. I laid there, shivering (but now maybe not from the cold) eyes wide, staring up at the ceiling fan that continued to spin at full speed. That was the first time. Of a million, billion times. The first time in my whole life, really, that anyone -- much less someone I thought I loved -- had spoken to me like that. It wasn't just the words. It wasn't just being called by his ex-fiance's name. It was the hatred in his voice and the jarring explosiveness of it, and how he rolled over back into a sound sleep immediately after, like that was a normal response. It was the first time of a million, billion times that I would feel that feeling. That I would wonder if he would eventually hurt me with more than words. That I would justify it (I mean, I was just being an annoying girlfriend, surely I should have just turned the fan off myself -- but wait, if I had done that, wouldn't he have been upset anyway? He can't sleep without the fan.) I knew it was a snake when I picked it up.

[icanwritewords]

unsent draft of empty threats

07.25.12

You have pretty serious anger issues.  I know you're aware. That's why you made an appointment with Dr. Gibbard, do you remember that? You really need to see a doctor again, either for medication or counseling or maybe both. I know that now that you have so much experience with mental health issues you think your problems are no big deal but I'm here to tell you that your anger has ruined our relationship and I am worried that it will ruin your relationship with Max as well. 

Your words and actions tonight were so completely out of bounds that I don't really know what to say. But I will tell you that I am not going to EVER let you call me a fucking cunt or fucking bitch and throw and kick things in Max’s presence ever again. You can talk to me however you want and treat me however you want when he is not around, but that is not how you act in front of your child, how you talk to your child's mother right in front of him.  I know that you're reading this thinking I'm just high and mighty and want to call you a bad father and am just being spiteful. but the fact is that I KNOW you are a great dad and loving dad and that you know that your behavior tonight is inexcusable. When you get mad you are a different person and you can't control it and that's scary.

Sometimes I wonder if you even remember what you did or said while you were angry. Surely if you had any recollection of the way you treated me, you would not have followed me around for 20 minutes this weekend asking why I wanted to break up. It should have been obvious. Seven years of being called a fucking cunt and I'm finally just giving up.

I don't want to tell you this but Max was absolutely terrified tonight. As soon as you went outside he just crumpled. I've never seen him look so scared. He just ran over to me and could barely put a sentence together and cried. I told him dada is just angry and everybody gets angry sometimes. But I do not want him thinking that behavior is normal or acceptable. And I do not want him to grow up being scared of you.

I'm not going to drag this out forever so here is the deal: By August 15th, you need to see a doctor about your anger, or you need to move out. Please know that I truly hope you choose the first option, but if you choose the second option I would plan for everything to be 50/50 and amicable.  

HOWEVER if you ever use the words fuck, bitch, or cunt, or throw or break things in front of Max again, all bets are off.