Obsessive?

After my last post, I felt this nagging, nagging, nagging inside. So much happening in my heart and mind but the one word that stuck out most for me was "obsessiveness" - he accused me of being obsessive.

God.

My ex - with whom  I spent five years of mine and my son's life - was fake. The whole thing was fake, at least on his part.

I don't obsess. I simply hurt. I can't take the week he took, to get over the love I felt for him. He also said, "I wish you no ill or good will" which dug deep because I have tried - I have things that belong to him, rightfully, that I wanted to return to him, but to which he has never responded. Photos of him and his family and his son. Things that are irreplaceable and which I consider important.

When I met him, there were no family photos. Nothing. In fact, there was no semblance of his own life. He simply allowed people to manufacture a life for him, while he "finagled" and wormed his way through this and that.

I cannot fathom loving someone, and not wishing them good will.

He threatened me because of my posting of my experiences with him online. He doesn't want others to know how perverse he can be. And yet, I humiliate myself by posting these very blogs. I do not do it out of malice, but out of introspection, self-examination.

And pain.

According to him, his new relationship began weeks before I left him (a pattern actually because he - by his own admission - did the same thing to his girlfriend before me).

I found this song I'd written about him. I cared. I still care. I just don't know or understand how someone can get so close to you, only to kick you when you are at your lowest.

Why?

I still care. God, I would never want to see him hurt - not that I ever want to be with him again, but I want him to find peace and happiness which, I'm sure, he swears he has, but he doesn't. He doesn't know love, and he doesn't know that he doesn't know love. Not for women, anyway.

I learned a lot through my years with him - some good, some bad - but I learned. I hold onto sentimental things and teach my son (and his new girlfriend) that from every relationship, there comes something valuable, you just have to find it, embrace it and let it enrich you.

But my story is different; it is full of pain and a history of abuse, mostly the kind rarely seen in the sheltered and safe communities of Connecticut (not that Connecticut doesn't have it's 'parts') but nothing, in my opinion, like what I experienced.

Compassion is lacking here because people - like him - wish not to acknowledge that such atrocities happen to children, to people, to women.

And then there are others who dare to listen, who dare to believe. To me, they are heroes because they know, they learn, and they listen and through this, make such a huge difference.

For me, this love I felt - this deep, honest love I felt for him - was, to him, expendable, The same as I have always been and now - because I tell my truth - my experiences, my feelings, my heartache, my confusion and pain - I am the monster.

Though I've yet to truly reveal the true monster. And I won't. Because I have more compassion than that.

I don't write my stories out of vindictiveness or some need to get revenge.

I write my stories because I am afraid to speak and always have been. The stacks of journals going back to 1995 can attest to that. There were more, but they have been lost or taken or thrown away.

I mean no malice and have spoken well of him, as well as poorly of him. I have spoken honestly of him. Of my experiences with him.

And there will be more.

I will never falsify myself again. I will never degrade myself by being something I am not, again. I will continue to be honest, authentic and attempt - through this - to heal.

I am not obsessed with him. I am terrified of all the reasons he gave me to never set foot outside my door. I am afraid to go anywhere, be seen by anyone. I am terrified in my own home. I have nightmares and flashbacks and heart-wrenching memories that make me feel might heart may explode because of the cruelty through which he put me.

I also have fond memories.

All are true.

He didn't always have it easy growing up. He shared, tearfully, with me, things that he endured. Some might compare them to the rapes and beatings and abandonment I endured, but I do not because his tears were real, his pain was real, no matter the degree.

It mattered to me and many nights, I sat stroking his hair, drying his tears, listening intently as he shared with me the pain of growing up the way he did.

The following is a song I wrote for him:

Help Me

He drew 'help me'
in the basement
tiny teching fingers
carving his lament
eternal marks of
his torment
the words 'help me'
on the floor
of the basement

His baby tears filled
the jagged grooves
with every letter
his tiny hands drew
and later when
the fighting was through
he went to his bed
with an empty 'I love you'

It's for his own good
they said....always for him
they'll hit him
beat him, again and again
they'll glare in anger
-make him a man -
with the belt
that papa
holds in his hand

with the critical eye
of a mother who cries
who tells him his wrongs
 never his rights
he'll become a man
afraid to move or try
live or die, afraid
to see or look or feel....

...but he'll become a man...


He never commented on this song I wrote but God how I felt the words as I wrote them, even though it seemed so small. Back in the day, being beaten by a belt was the way it was. For me, it was just...whatever was handy. But I understood and I cared. Truly cared.

And I knew  it was because of a suffocating mother that he would never be a good partner.

Emotions, for him, are black and distant, charred and gone.

Obviously.