facing past trauma

October is domestic violence awareness month. Growing up, I knew what domestic violence entailed, my parents and the rest of my family members always made sure to tell me that if a man I was in a relationship with ever put his hands on me, that there were multiple people willing to help me out of that situation. When I left my marriage and went public with the fact that I was physically abused in my marriage, all of my friends and family were shocked. I had done a pretty good job at convincing the public that my marriage was not one full of emotional turmoil, that my family was happy and well adjusted. Every fabrication of the relationship was crafted by me, in an attempt to portray the marriage, family, and lifestyle I had imagined as a little girl.

When the abuse just started I naively wrote it off as stress due to a toxic work environment, but I honestly can’t really tell you why I stayed, I knew what was happening was wrong. There was no doubt in my mind that what was happening was not normal but because we were both stuck between trying to make things work so our son could have two parents, and still trying to hold onto the previous life we had with little to no responsibilities and expectations, it was difficult for me to just “give up.” Between my own transition into adulthood, and knowing that my ex was adjusting to taking care of two extra people after only caring about his own well being, I looked past a majority of the abuse. But while I allowed the abuse to happen for whatever reason, I did not allow my ex to try to lie to ME about the abuse, which was very common, I refused to be gaslit into believing that the abuse never happened. The majority of the abuse occurred while I was pregnant, and once I had given birth, I realized that there wasn’t really anything keeping me from retaliating and protecting myself whenever I felt physically threatened. Once it became clear that I would fight back, the physical abuse tapered off into the realm of every once in a while.

My marriage was full of drama from the start, even though we were engaged before I got pregnant, the pregnancy cast a lot of doubts upon our relationship, I was accused of having cheated, and that I was attempting to baby trap him because I was a gold digger. Because I refused to let him try to gaslight me into admitting these “faults,” the attempts to get me to “admit” to what I had done only got more extreme. It seemed like anything he saw in the world, he found a way to connect back to the accusations he was making against me. It wasn’t really hard for me to know that he was only accusing me so heavily of cheating, because he was guilty of having cheated on me multiple times, and assumed that because he had cheated that I thought it was okay for me to cheat on him as “revenge.” When I look back on the relationship, it becomes clear that a part of my ex felt threatened by me. I honestly cant feel at ease with sharing details of my abuse unless I admit that at some point after I had given birth that, I stopped caring if I had hurt my ex, in the moment, I didn’t feel guilty when I had to physically protect myself against him, and eventually I stopped caring about what I said to him because it never mattered if I was trying to help, he would find a way to twist everything into making my fault. Because I refused to let him push the blame on me, even if I was in the wrong, it only made our relationship more volatile. I knew that I was faithful in my marriage, we had already gotten a paternity test to prove what I already knew. I worked, exhausting myself, to prove that I was faithful and that I wasn’t a bad person, despite having to live with the fact that my ex spread these lies about me. So I didn’t mind when his feelings were hurt, in my mind I felt that he was getting what he deserved for making my pregnancy so miserable, when he never once, in the entirety of our relationship, had any of his accusations proven, and failed to provide the tons of evidence he claimed to have.

We disagreed on everything when it came to our marriage, but there wasn’t really an argument on parenting because we agreed to leave the child rearing to me, which I wouldn’t have had such a big issue with if he had actually done other things outside of our home. For the entirety of my marriage I had to deal with my ex being asleep all day, refusing to spend time with us, refusing to work, and staying up all night. He claimed that there needed to be “sleep shifts” because people were watching our home, and if one of us was awake at all time it somehow helped. I personally just think he was lazy, he didn’t have a desire to work, he didn’t like going out into the public and participating in outings. It was stressful for me to be inside all of the time, I wanted to branch out in our city and meet new people. It took three years but I eventually realized if we were going to argue about everything no matter what that I should still try to meet new people and get my son out of the house. I think that this new found confidence scared my ex, he knew that it would only be a matter of time until he either had to force me to stop my activities or me forcing him to get over his insecurities.

If you were to ask my ex, he would probably go on a rant about why we broke up, but the simple truth is that I was tired of all of the bullshit he put me through, and when he made the choice to sext my barely legal cousin, I was over it instantly. It was one thing to be embarrassed about what your husband does in the privacy of your home, but I refused to be embarrassed in front of my family. It was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. I just couldn’t move forward knowing that he would willingly embarrass me in a setting I made clear to never make me look bad in. The marriage was already falling apart, and my ex had been told many times that if he kept screwing me over, being abusive, or just accusing me of things that he had done, that I was eventually going to leave.

A part of me thinks that a lot of the things my ex did to me was because he was too much of a coward to be a real man and just say he didn’t want to be married anymore. Instead he pretended that he wanted to be married when he needed but always would find a way to devalue what he had said by proving different with his actions. He always wanted to make me lash out so he would be “justified” in saying that I was crazy when he purposefully pushed at my buttons until I reacted so he could use that as evidence of his accusation that I was abusive and unstable. There are a lot of things that I did within my marriage that I am ashamed of. Behavior that should not have been exhibited, I was forced into acting out of order for the sole benefit of my ex. Making me engage in reactive abuse so he could keep hiding his actual abuse. I remember barely sleeping, and finding out when I had left my marriage that sleep deprivation is one of the most common forms of abuse, I was made to feel like I had to stay awake with my husband despite the fact that I had been up all day and was expected to spend all of my time with him at night since he wasted the day sleeping. I was incredibly sleep deprived between raising a child and breastfeeding for the majority of our marriage, trying to manage a failing relationship and fielding the physical and emotional abuse, all with no outlet, no way to vent, no way to leave, and a deep desire to not “fail” at marriage. i admit that it was very difficult for me not to be upset with my ex all the time. I was exhausted from the constant accusations and I have said horrible, awful things to my ex, I have also been physical with my ex, all of which I had apologized for extensively, and still feel awful about. I hate that I allowed myself to sink to such levels, and for excusing the abuse when it first happened.

Because I try to be an optimist in a pessimist body, I can still see the “good” in my failed marriage. I rarely get annoyed by people now, because I was constantly annoyed at one point, my patience for “regular” people is the best it has been. I also have so much more knowledge on how to set boundaries and finally feel comfortable enforcing boundaries when I need to, which is admittedly very rare. i also now know what I am looking for in a marriage, I thought that I had an idea of what I wanted when I would get married, but having actually been married, there is so much more that goes into it than just the surface of being married and having it be legal.

Writing about the abuse has been something I have avoided for a long time, it has been hard to process that these traumatic events actually happened to me, and not some other person. For the majority of the time I was separated from my ex, I was struggling with the emotions I had leftover from ending our marriage. It wasn’t like I ever desired to leave my marriage, I made an executive decision for my family that the best course of action was separation, and if we couldn’t reconcile, divorce. I gave my ex an ultimatum to either choose his family and immediately change his behavior or we just wouldn’t get back together. I felt like I was reasonable in asking for an immediate change of behavior because the physical abuse had begun to escalate into the realm of me being unsure if I would even survive, and he was the one who was the driving force of keeping us from getting along. I didn’t feel that I should have to be the only one who had to make sacrifices and look past things when I had never done anything that would even remotely justify the abuse I was going through.

My ex seems to think that there is an overwhelmingly amount of “evidence” that I was or am a horrible person, that I have cheated, worked with people to take him down. But there has never been any trace of the evidence he claims to have, and if he did have any evidence, one would wonder why he stayed if he was so jaded about being cheated on and why would he stay if he had suspicions (that he claimed were true) that I was working some elaborate plot against him, why would he have to resort to physical violence? Ultimately, I have been working hard to deprogram my mind from being afraid to talk about what went down in my marriage. I spent hours agonizing about whether or not I have a right to share what I went through, and I have always been a person who needs to vent about what happens to me in order to fully process what happened and how I want to proceed regarding the situation.

While I try to remain neutral on my feelings of my marriage, I won’t lie and say that I’m never upset about what has happened to me. Remaining neutral is mainly just to avoid any arguments, one would prefer me to move past the abuse and blindly forgive but I feel like I’m trapped into never acknowledging my own feelings whenever I try to look past the abuse. The abuse brought about many emotions and keeping hidden only makes me feel like my ex still has some control over me. As much as I try to ignore what happened, it does weigh heavily on me, more so even recently. My co parent is doing better, but i feel like I am still expected to ignore everything that happened as if it never happened. For the majority of the time, I am at peace about my past, there is nothing I can do to change what happened to me, all I can do is make the decision to move forward from it and not allow it to influence my life any more. I recently have gotten back into therapy because I finally feel like I am ready to talk about what occurred in my marriage in a safe environment where I know there is no biased ideas against me. A lot of people make comments about how strong, resilient, and self aware I am, and while I enjoy the compliments it makes me wish that I wasn’t always so resilient all the time. Putting on a brave face for the world, even though I’ve spent a majority of the time since leaving my marriage at home, is still hard for me. There are still pieces of me left that feel like I did the wrong thing even when I feel infinitely better than I ever did in my marriage. My marriage experience was overshadowed by my ex partners mental illness, and while I wish him nothing but the best on his journey back to a healthy mindset, part of me still desires the validation that he take accountability for the trauma he has done. But I have also been dealing with the emotions that come with not getting closure, it is entirely plausible that he may never take accountability, in which case, I don’t feel sorry for speaking out about may abuse. One could argue that an apology may not do anything now, but I see it as a symbolic gesture, and in my own opinion, an indication that one is actually trying to get better to be a better parent rather than trying to act like everything still goes by what you say.

But that is honestly another rant for another day. If you related to anything written in this piece, I genuinely sympathize with you. Domestic violence is such a tricky topic because abuse can and will make you act differently than you ever thought and impacts you for years after leaving the toxicity. Know that if you are ever struggling, I am available to be a listening ear and empathize with your grievances.

<3 Tomasi