portrait of an abuse
I’ve been Free and Safe for eleven years, and yes, you can clap your hands!
Instead of wasting my remaining years on hate, sit alone and lament my fate – and was savagely beaten, shot, stabbed, strangled and suffocated, then spat in my face – humiliation, rape and other psychological injuries – Little by little I rebuilt my life.
Yes, I believe in a higher power. No, I do not attribute my recovery to being “born again” as I have known my Creator since I was born. That is a beautiful transformation that can remove all your self-hatred, but my experience was solely my own.
Mine was not an instantaneous occurrence, I spent as much time fixing myself as he spent brutalizing and breaking me. Along my way I learned a lot, who I am, who he was, why and how to break the chains of that codependent relationship syndrome.
For the most part, the word “abuser” is anathema, a mental image of a hulking beast waiting for a chance to pounce, and that’s a pretty accurate image!
We know that women fall for the tricks of these men because of low self-esteem, Shadow Women wanting to be loved and praised. However, when we look honestly and candidly at abusers, our perspective changes. It’s not enough to keep us from fearing and hating them, but a deeper understanding of why they abuse.
My abuser was a child born in abject poverty to a single woman in West Virginia. As the eldest of her six brothers and sisters, she relied on him as provider and ‘man of the house’, a heavy load for a six or seven year old. There was no welfare system in those days and most people would have preferred to do without welfare rather than ask their “betters” for help. So my abuser walked six miles to a country store to “get” canned milk for his little brother. Of course, the man in the store knew that he was stealing, but he was sympathetic to the situation.
So here we have a child who is forced to be an adult instead of being able to play and have fun. Here, too, is a small boy of malleable age who is taught to steal. How do I imagine that? His mother taught him by complicity. She knew those milk cans were stolen, but she had a fragile baby to feed. Instead of learning that stealing is wrong, it became a noble duty for him. Add in the silent teachings of a grocery store clerk who looked the other way, and you have the seeds of a thief.
The people of that region, the working people who had nothing, were often hard-hearted. Hit that kid over the head and show him something! Yes, teach him to suppress his anger inside, teach him that passing that fist of anger to another person makes him feel better. They didn’t teach him that violence is wrong. And this goes for kids anywhere in the US, in the ghettos, in the inner city, even in the high-end neighborhoods. Then we have to keep in mind that in the 1950s era and back in the years before, women were not a prized package and many considered a punch to the face to be nothing more than if you disciplined your dog for littering.
Yes, there have been gigantic advances in women’s rights and equality, but that vague “value system” still remains, especially among the poor and uneducated.
The Shadow Men are insecure, they think they are nothing. So for a relationship to work, they have overcome the woman’s will until she is submissive, then he sees her as an equal. He has drugged her to her slime with him.
Abusers are ignorant, self-absorbed, ego-oriented to the point that all they care about is the instant gratification of their wants and needs. Abusers never learn love and devotion. If a woman fights back, she’s replaced with a more accommodating role model.
For an abuser, “love” is: a woman who does whatever it takes to make her man happy. She has nothing to do with oneself, just selfishness. My abuser would get angry and deny me attention from him, look at me with hate (which was a trigger for my abusive relationship with my father) and I would give up. He so wanted him to be nice to me that he would agree to anything just to be in his favor.
They may not really understand how they manipulate, but their instinct is spot on. Shadow Women yearns for heroes to take them far and make a whole world of fantasy.
Thus we come to violence. I was so abused as a child that I didn’t think about the first slaps and shoves. That was the ingrained pattern in me to accept. Things that a healthy woman would have broken up with were things that I thought were “normal.”
He was blind to the fact that I was smarter than him, stronger than him. That I actually did the relationship work, got him out of jail, bailed him out, and made sure we had what we needed. I was blind to the fact that he had a medical degree and made eleven dollars an hour, and 14 years ago that was a good salary for someone with my education.
He was blind to the fact that I owned the car, the duplex, I gave him money. . . and for those of you who shake your head, it’s just a fact. The Shadow Women want love so much that they cry tears of joy and boast about the flowers he gave her, blind to the knowledge that she had given them the money in the first place.
Abusers are disgusting. Abusers are broken and discarded little children with no life skills. An abuser who acts like a pile driver at home will cower before a police officer or jail employee. “Yes sir, boss” is a familiar phrase in prisons and jails.
THE BULLIES BULLY WHO THEY CAN. My father-in-law was a bully and he mistreated my mother-in-law. Those were the days when I was up against men of any size. Bill would be drunk at Christmas dinners. One day I accidentally saw him squeezing his arm for some infraction of his world. The grip was so strong that flesh bulged around his fingers.
He would make a sloppy mess, devouring his food, some of it always dangling from his mouth. He didn’t want us there, violating his home, he was the stepfather of his wife’s children. Long before the others finished eating, he would get up and take their plates away. The second dinner, when he took my plate, I rapped my butter knife across his knuckles and told him he wasn’t done. It was unpleasant, but he backed away, as he would have with any of them strong enough to set limits.
We are who we are taught to be. For men it is a stronger teaching because they crave love and acceptance, but it drives people away from them, never understanding why.
I have no sympathy for abusers, but I feel it’s healthy to understand what makes them who they are. Until women are aware and educated, the abuse will continue its ugly cycle.