When I was in my twenties there was no way a person would have been able to convince me I was in an abusive relationship. I was tough and had learned to fight back. So, there was no reason to believe I was putting up with anything bad being done to me. However, I did not know how to identify all bad behavior. I grew up being convinced by my mother that "that is the way men are!", get used to it. In my experience it was true. Like-minded people tend to associate and interbreed. All the men in my family were the same as my father's friends and their families. All the women were just like my mother, her family, her friends and their families. I thus drew to myself and let in only people like them. Any others were considered weak, too soft, naive, something too pure or innocent for me. The one time I experienced any different than my 'norm' was at a school friend's house. The house was well-kept, mom was baking after school cookies, dad came in warmly greeting the mother. I had a panick attack and wanted to flee. Something in me screamed it was all an evil lie, a taunting. It could not be real. It was not normal. Sure saw it on tv and some people acted like that in public but everyone knows you can't believe everything you see on TV and public behavior never reflected (in my experience) what went on behind closed doors.
When I was a teen and had gotten very drunk for the first time, I gave the keys to my mom's truck to a family friend whom my mother trusted. He arranged for his cousin to give me a ride home. Feeling I had fulfilled my responsibilities about the truck and was safely moments from bed, I allowed myself to pass out. I came to lying on the ground in the woods off a dirt road. The cousin was getting up from on top of me, zipping up his jeans. I was angry so I kicked in his windshield with my bare feet. He left me there to find my own way home. A few days later he threatened to call the cops about the windshield and I replied that I would just tell them how he had raped me. He walked away with his girlfriend hanging off his arm and I went on with my day. No big deal. Just another normal type event in my normal experience of life. Men are always trying to "cop a feel", right? Did I not awaken from sleep with my father's hand under my nightgown.... under my sheets.... muttering something about him worried because I must have been having a bad dream? When I told my mom of the uncomfortable touching, did she not simply use the information to blackmail my dad out of everything she wanted in the divorce....... then repeatedly return to him for playdates in the shower when they thought we were sleeping? My husband with a knife to my throat? No big thing. Just another day of living. Just like when another boyfriend held a boxcutter to my stomach while he had me pinned to the ground. That last guy? No way, he never even hit me. What are you talking about abusive?! So, he got mad when I told him not to slap my daughter's butt playfully. My dissatisfaction means there is something wrong with me! He is an accountant and well respected in the community. It's just me. Ask my mother, she'll tell you........ she'll tell anybody and does anyways, usually.
It was when I was in my thirties and had left the Jehovah's Witnesses (I had joined them in search of God and 'real family') that I began reading books on cults and cult recovery as well as "The Science of the Meme". I learned a "cult" could be as small as a one-to-one relationship with the abuser being "the charismatic leader". I began to see how my relationships were abusive. I learned how to protect my children from becoming victims with small things like defending their right to choose not to show affection or not allowing others subject them to emotional blackmail. I vowed the familial cycle of abuse would end with me and my children. I wasn't out to change anyone else, I was just out to change my children's experiences. The reactions were explosive. I didn't understand the reactions, didn't they see I was simply holding to my children's right to respect? Wouldn't they want the same thing? Wasn't I otherwise constantly criticized for not doing what was right?..... Nor did I understand that a war of consciousiousness had just been created. It was suddenly me, alone, against ALL of them; family, boyfriend, and friends.
I have lost 4 children and two grandchildren in this war of "let it begin with me". In abusive environments, children feel insecure, unstable, and so they seek to emulate the one in control: the abuser. No matter how peaceful and respectful I was, the children always emulated them. And so my oldest daughter is abusive to men, her son and tries to be very controlling of me. I asked her to leave recently because of it. I have not heard from her since. My second-born I am not allowed to see, any attempts at contact are always ignored despite my legal rights. My third-born was allowed to see me, however she decided she no longer wanted to because I refused to be used by her to rebel against her father inappropriately. He supports her in this and does not respond to any attempts I make for contact. (Though he thought nothing of showing up on my doorstep unnanounced any time HE wanted before that). My fourth-born was actually moved, divorce papers intentionally served at wrong address, announcement placed in out-of-state paper, and custody granted to him without my knowing or being given a chance to respond. I finally located their new address after 4 years of looking, but like the others, all contact goes unacknowledged despite my legal right for visitation. They were, and still are, definately abusive and controlling. They continue unchallenged by our community, our families. They are even supported in their behaviors by the legal system. The advice I get from law enforcement, free legal aid and DV advocates: don't bring up what what they did or are doing wrong in court, simply ask for a change in visitation. How would a change be honored any more than what is ordered now?
My mother would still disagree with me about attempting to get more involved in my daughter's lives. She tells me it is best to leave them alone because those men are doing such a great job with those girls and I should be happy with what I have. The only reason, I believe, she is not yet in cohoots with my two youngest's father to take them from me is because I have a restraining order against him. I am leary about what she will do when that expires. When I began to tell her what he put me through, she told me she could not really deal with hearing it. But, she is presently entertaining herself with my nephews' fathers, pitting them against my sister. My mother succeeded in helping get one of my nephews taken by his father already. She has one more nephew to go!
It's been over ten years since I made that fateful vow. Breaking the cycle of victimhood and abuse within one's self is not an over-night recovery. It takes us weeding out the big things and discovering many more smaller "memes", and then even more smaller than those. It's layers upon layers that had been layed as our inner foundation our entire youth and possibly beyond, reinforced by assossiation and, in many ways, society. Such little things, like the neighbor who playfully pokes you from behind despite no former significant interacting. Isn't that just playful flirtting? Even his wife would agree. It's what everyone says makes him such a nice guy, he is friendly. I have to snap myself out of it: what, in fact, is he doing? Displaying innapropriate familiarity, using the element of surprise to position himself in control, and deceitfully using "just being nice/friendly" to get attention he is innapropriately craving. And what is my weakness in this? Receipt of flattery. The need for a man's approval which is the driving force of my mother's life and the formula I was nursed on my entire life before this. Exactly what I never wanted to be after witnessing it's destruction while growing up. But if I were to point out such dysfunctions in my neighborhood, it would be met with angry resistence.
There are other challenges as well: dipping our toes in the pools of association with people whose relationships are respectful. Will they view me as sick and reject me? Am I good enough for them/deserving? What if I make a mistake and act innapropriately, will I drive them away from me? It's so scary, it is often times easier to return to abusers where everything is familiar and you know the rules. In a way feeling safer and more free, in control of things. In a way, you are absolved from all responsibility and feel relieved. The control freak wants all control anyways, right? So why put my self in a position where I have to make all the decisions, am overwhelmed by a sudden responsibility for everything when I could not have any at all before this? Scary for others to know that is how we think when we are on the brink of recovery, no doubt. But it is not just a lazy, fearful way of thinking. It is a true belief adopted from years of being ingrained with "you can't do anything right", "you are stupid, incapable,, going to be a loser all your life", etc.
Then there are the aspects we might not want to admit, such as: how am I abusive? We may have developed a method of self-defense that includes emotional retaliation, manipulation, etc. Do we unconsciously resort to them before abuse even starts...... just to avoid it, even if we do not know for certain it is coming from someone we just met? Do we misinterpret intentions, our own children, take their behavior personally when we shouldn't, or let them walk all over us for fear of losing them or being abusive to them ourselves? Do we yell when we think we are just talking because that is the level of speaking to we are accustomed to? Do we fail to respect healthy boundaries of others out of habit? Do we invite others to cross those we should practice for ourselves as well as a loving service to those we want to interact with? Then there is sarcasm, "pie in the face" playfulness, wrestling, joking at someone's expense, etc......the things polite society might call "in poor taste".
We are forging new pathways in our brains. It is a physical endeavor in that way. Like exercising muscles to get in shape, it takes exercising new ways of thinking. It takes practice. But when that day comes, towards the end of this process, when you can stand before your 'mother' and/or abusers With all your dignity in tact, no matter what your life circumstances look like on the outside, not a shred or shadow of self-doubt within you..... Then you know your new foundation has been laid and is being cemented in. You know that with faith in God's help, responsibility will be returned to you at a pace you can handle gracefully. He has given you victory in the war of "let it begin with me". You know you will never be able to do any convincing, but you can be a quiet light in the center of the swirling storms of conflict around you. Then maybe, just maybe, someone will begin to convince themselves and come looking for or be led to you to support their new decisions. There is always the hope that what was lost might return as one of those making for themselves those new decisions. But in the least, you have inner peace, the greatest achievement anyone can achieve. I am convinced. It ended with me.
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