Sunday, April 25, 2010

Learning to fight

One of the greatest challenges I faced in standing up to my husband was that I loved him.  I never felt anger for him.   It wasn't until even around the time divorce finalized (which took years), that I finally got to the anger phase.   Thus I had to fight him without anger or malice.

I wast trying to save our marriage at the same time as a divorce battle.   But I knew I couldn't save it by complying with his demands.  I didn't want to go back to what was.

If our marriage was to work, he was going to have to respect me, my feeling, my ideas, my thoughts, my heart.  Not make sport of them.

Well, I was truly, "Slow to anger."  Thus I had to fight a major legal battle with the one person I loved most in the world.  I would laugh at the sick thought of "This hurts me more than it hurts you."

My mood has changed.

Now I have to be careful.  I have to limit my exposure to him.  I consider him worthy of the greatest malice imaginable.  And I must not act on it.

It takes "Trust in the Lord", to a whole new level.

When I See Him Smile with a Sparkle in His Eye

I think of the words he spoke, "I shouldn't have to put up with a wife who complains about pain of feeling degraded during sex."  At 2:30 am when our daughter was 2 and a half weeks old.  And how he spent the next hour lecturing me on how to please him and what he expected of me.   I felt so degraded i wanted to die.

I knew then that all those times I tried to tell him he was hurting me, he really didn't care.

I think of how he partook of the sacrament the Sunday after, unbothered by his conscience.

"You need to do more to please your husband."  From his brother shortly after.

I think of how he smiled with a twinkle in his eye while he lied to his sister about her husbands fidelity for a decade.

I think of how he smile with a twinkle in his eyes at his classmates, then found out at the end of the program they all believed he had 13 years of "strategic marketing experience."  When I confronted my husband who worked loading trucks, and at Airtouch Customer Support, He explained to me that he did have that experience.  Did he think I'm crazy.  That he could just rewrite history and I would go along with it?

I knew if he wanted that he would have to find a wife who knew nothing and would go along with anything he said.

When someone smiles with a twinkle in there eye, why is it we think they have a clear conscience.

What do you need in your life to smile with confidence?

The only way to know the difference between a clear conscience and no conscience in someone else, is to actually see what they do, not what they say.

As much as I wanted to heal our family, his ability to smile with a sparkle in his eyes, when he was guilty of terrible things, scared the hell out of me.

Having someone so close, who shares the most intimate parts of your life, to find out the one you love and have sacrificed everything for, suffered every hardship, every deprivation for their behalf, to find out that they can any immoral act and be so unbothered immediately after, that they can smile with a comforting twinkle, is beyond my moral comprehension.

The scary ugly monsters in the movies are nothing compared to this.

To have someone degrade you as lowly as they possible can in the most intimate moments, and see them stand and play righteous at church.

To know that you can't tell by looking at them what they really are.

To realize that you will never know what reality is while you stand next to them.

Is terrifying.

Then to look at my children, and know they need to have a father they can look up to and honor.

As disgusted as aI felt when I was expected to lie to my sister in law about her husband.   As awkward as that relationship felt, and painfully immoral.

What is right in regards to my children?

I want the father of my children to be worthy of respect and emulation.  So my children can follow after him.

But I don’t want to participate in a lie, a fraud.

I wish he would live worthy and with integrity by telling the truth.

God is a God of truth.  He is no respector of persons.   It doesn’t matter how charming someone is.

The best way to show how I feel when he smiles is an Episode of X-Files.   Leave it to Scully and Moulder to express my deepest emotions.

Scully and Moulder are investigating a murder in the woods and enter a cave.   The cave turns out to be a massive mile wide underground fungi mushroom that oozes an hallucinogen, while it sedates and digests them.

Meanwhile Scully and Moulder both come to believe all their dreams come true while they dream.  Then after a while they realize they are still in the cave covered in ooze.  They climb out and escape the ooze.  Then back at the office, Moulder sees ooze behind his boss, and realizes they are still in the cave, dreaming all is well, while being digested by the mushroom fungi ooze. 

This time their friends come and rescue them, but then again, how will they ever really know what reality is?

Happily ever after with someone who can lie effectively and is willing to, is like giant, mushroom fungi ooze.

So when I see him smile, I see ooze.  How do you ever know what reality is?

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Hope for Change

Like many women, I stayed and hoped he would change. 

After everything fell apart, I believed he would come to a point and realize that everything he did was wrong and cruel.

But I also knew  I had a calling.   I knew for a long time that I was called to speak out and teach others about domestic violence.   Women feel so alone as they endure.   They feel like their family just doesn't understand.

I knew that it was my calling to speak out, so I incorporated my fantasy hope of him changing into my calling.   I wanted him to repent completely.  Then after he repented we would work together teaching others about abuse.  He would be able to speak to the men and counsel them to help them to stop abusing their wives.   And I would help the women stand up to there abusers until they changed.

But he never repented.

And I waited.   The waiting was torture because there was so much I felt I needed to say, to help other women.

The waiting and silence felt like death to me.

But he never repented.

Sometimes he seemed kinder.  But he never said he was sorry.  He never admitted what he did.  I could never have anything to do with him without absolute, unquestionable, reform and repentance.

During our marriage he would act out, then the next day behave normal like nothing happened.

I was used to twhat.

After everything fell apart, I realized that he couldn’t change for real, without apologizing and admitting what he did, and working to make amends.

And that a repentant man should be just as aggressive with his reformed kindness, as he was with his  aggression.

I knew that if it wasn't real, it wouldn't be real, and our eternal family would be a sham.

Finally I realized, after major life events, that the change I was waiting for was never going to happen.   I realized that I was waiting for the man who raped me to give me permission to speak out.   That my waiting was putting my life in the control of a man who raped me.

And so, without the permission I had been waiting for...

I spoke out.

A couple of weeks ago, my playful son put a hole in the wall next to the front door while, "climbing the house".  He covered it up with a picture of the Savior Jesus Christ. Many people profess the Savior Covers our sins, and go on, but the Savior is supposed to help us repair ourselves and the others we hurt, not cover the damage up.  Faiths that teach that the Savior just covers are sins, are as lame as the effectiveness of a picture of the Savior over a 1 foot hole.