Lair, Lair, Pants on Fire

As an abuse survivor I am now realizing the magnitude of the lies I've been told by him. "I'm sorry", "I'll change" and "I'll get some help" to "who else would put up with the way you treat me?", "you're crazy" and even "it's your fault I get so angry". These are things I listened to weekly if not daily. 

You would think that once you leave, these lies will stop hurting you. Not true. It takes time to realize all the subtle ways he's hurt you. He's damaged you both physically and emotionally. He's damaged your neuropathways. You're brain doesn't work the same as it once did. It takes hard work to re-wire your brain back to some semblance of normalcy. Leaving him is like coming up for air from drowning. It's bright, overwhelming and you don't fully remember what just happened because shock has set in.

"You're crazy" runs through my head from time to time these days. I know I'm not crazy. I suffer from depression and have been on medication the last 3 years. He would tell me I must be crazy or even weak to go on medication. I had depression as a child and probably my whole adult life but it worsened with him. I medicated myself to help cope with him. Think about that for a second. I'll take this medication so I don't want to kill myself nearly as much when I'm with you. At the time, this seemed logical. What I think about now is, why didn't the doctor question my situation further? Why didn't my counselor ask more questions about the situation I was in? Domestic abuse is a tricky thing, I get that. But why did they let me slip through the cracks? My hope is to over time lower my dosage as I deal with the trauma. 

"Who else would put up with the way you treat me?" I should have held up a mirror to his face when he would say this to me. This is something he would say to me regarding our sex life. That because I didn't want to have sex with him as often as he thought I should, I was abusing him. What women would want to have sex with someone hours after he tore the house apart in his fit of rage? Or called you a names I don't care to repeat? I really started to question if I was abusive? Sure, I would refuse to talk to him for the most part. I would still acknowledge his existence. He however, would ignore me to the point of not speaking a single word to me for days at a time. He wouldn't acknowledge I was even there. 

He is a narcissist. This means that it's never his fault and always about him. I realized this in the second last month we were together. This helped me immensely. Knowing that I would never win an argument so why continue to try. The only solution was getting out. For years, I would try to argue with him but I would never win. He should have been a lawyer the way he would deflect and lie. A marriage is about compromise, this was not a marriage. 

He would blame me for him getting angry. He would blame me for his unhappiness. I knew that happiness was a decision and it was his to make for himself. He never took responsibility for himself. He only finally admitted to anger management issues after 3 years of marriage. He promised to change, to read books and to go to anger management classes. He read a book, he signed up for the classes but "forgot" to go to the first one and would have to wait until the next set of classes that started a few months from then. He never went. 

"We know what the problem is, we don't need someone to tell us". This was said at the conclusion on his fight. He would ask me why we hadn't changed since the last fight. My answer was either "because we're two selfish people" or "I don't know". "I don't know" was a frequent sentence I said. I am a peacemaker, I don't want to fight. I would say this, even though I did know, when I needed to take the fight down a few notches. This didn't always work, sometimes my response angered him even more. His statement was a way to avoid going to counseling. He also gave the excuse that would couldn't afford it (he had benefits that provided counseling for free). In reality, he didn't want someone else to find out how bad it actually was.

I'm a liar, at least I was and sometimes still am. I would lie about the status of our relationship as say how great it was. I would lie about being happy. I even lied to my pastor when we had started seeing him for counseling. These lies however were not really my fault. I was being abuse, my memory would block out the specifics of a fight and he would be sitting right there so I couldn't be as open as I wanted. I now lie, well actually avoid a direct answer, when church friends ask how he is. I don't want their potential judgement. While I haven't encountered anyone who's actually told me that divorcing him is a sin, I have one friend that doesn't want me to make my decision right away. She's hoping for reconciliation if possible but also agrees that divorcing him isn't a sin.  

"I will make sure you always go without". This is something his father said to his mother, sister and him as he pulled out of the driveway leaving them forever. He hated his father and thought he was an evil man. He desired to be nothing like him. "I will make sure you have nothing", this is what he said to me a week before I left. He became what he hated, whether he wanted to admit it or not. He was talking about food. He would frequently throw out food during his tantrums. My lunch, his lunch and even went as far as to throw out all the produce. The bank account was empty and their wasn't a lot of food in the house. This was actually caused by my lie. I lied and said that I wasn't getting a full pay check earlier that month because I switched from temporary to full time at work thus changing my pay schedule. I had money, he just didn't know about it. I had a separate bank account I could use to buy lunches during the week. It didn't come to that, he didn't throw out all the food and I could make a few lunches to get by. He had threatened to transfer all the money from our joint account into his account so I would have nothing. He had a separate bank account but forced me to close mine. 

The lies continued after I left him. He promised to change, that things would get better, that he was going to counseling. He pleaded for me to come back. He tried to make me feel guilty because he didn't know where I was. He'll always be a liar in my eyes.