September 2, 2018, turned out to be a Sunday afternoon like no other. What started as a normal hamburger, hotdog, and French fry family meal quickly became the most bizarre of the bizarre confrontations in my marriage.
While my youngest daughter was preparing to make hamburgers, I started prepping the deep fryers for the French fries. This was a common weekend family meal that we made as often as once a month. All seemed fairly normal, but that would soon change. Emerging from his windowless hole...the office in the garage, my abuser stomped into the kitchen and declared, "You know what I always hated about our church picnics?"
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Perhaps you've seen the meme that says, "It's called a selfie because narcisstie is too hard to spell." It's good for laugh, but the more research I do to help heal from long-term domestic abuse the more I find that narcissism is growing to epic proportions. Though I am not entirely surprised by this growth of narcissim in this 2 Timothy 3:2 world filled with arrogant, greedy, lovers of themselves only people, I never thought narcissim fully applied to my abuser.
Your letter to his probation officer was very insightful as to the lies he has fooled you into believing.
It's not your fault. You are dealing with a skilled narcissist and a lifelong pathological liar. You're not the first one to believe all of his lies and fall for his charm. And he is beyond delusional; believing his own lies even in the face of facts. You have to really know him to know how detached he is from reality. The kids and I were talking tonight about "the incident". (That's our term for the day our abuser was arrested for Domestic Battery.) Or more to the point, we were discussing the PTSD that we all suffer from after years of abuse and how it has revealed itself in the aftermath. Some of our tales are rather funny in the light of day, but we could do without the fear, the uncontrollable nightmares, and being easily startled awake.
Tonight's discussion led to one child asking, "How long has it been?" I glanced at the calendar and noticed that tomorrow is 9/27/2019. That makes it 5 months since 4/27/2019. My two adult sons and I listened incredulously to the excuses being offered up by our abuser's parents. They had received jail system phone messages a few days after my husband had been arrested for 3 counts of Domestic Battery. So they called my oldest son (with a nauseating sound of "Oh, this will be good gossip.") to find out what was going on.
My son dialed his Papa's number and put the phone on speaker. The exchange went something like this: One of the biggest (if not the biggest) barriers for domestic abuse victims to leave their abuser is money. Without the means, a victim has a difficult road trying to finance her escape.
This money barrier was definitely a major factor in my own situation. Even though my husband made a lot of money (especially compared to the local economy), he never learned how to save or delay his own wants. So, we often lived paycheck-to-paycheck with most of his income going toward debts. I even had to cover the check he wrote for our courthouse wedding because he was kiting checks. Being on the surviving side of domestic abuse (finally), I have a strong desire to help others. Knowing that a large percentage of women are helplessly trapped in a hopeless life at the mercy of a cruel and selfish abuser hurts me deeply. The abuse is bad enough on its own, but trying to find your way out of it is such a daunting task. I can't imagine going back after finally getting the courage to call 911 and having him removed from my life, but the reality is that far too many women do just that. They go back to their abuser time and time again, creating a vicious cycle.
A friend recently told me that I was the third person she personally knew who was a victim of domestic abuse. "1 in 4", I told her, "those are the statistics for women being victims of domestic abuse."
For those who know me personally, the following might look a little familiar. I posted this on my personal Facebook page on June 1st, 2019. But in light of the conversation with my friend, I wanted to share it on this blog too, You're a well-intentioned person.
You don't like seeing someone you care about suffering in an abusive relationship. You feel helpless. And the answers seem so obvious and clear to you. But before you offer up what seems like logical advice, you need to know why your advice will likely be ignored or miscontrued in the ears of the victim. Well-meaning advice is often oversimplied input in a much more complicated situation. It can even be extremely depressing to a victim or feel like victim-shaming. That's not the outcome you're looking for. It might even be dangerous for the victim. So, here's my (unexhaustive) list of What Not To Say To a Domestic Abuse Victim (and real ways you can help):
I found the following course on the Florida Courts website. In it,Judge Alice Blackwell of Florida's 9th Circuit Court, educates fellow Florida Family Court judges on the effects of interpersonal* abuse on the economic stability of victims; why and what Family Court judges should do to promote economic stability of the victims.
https://www.flcourts.org/economic-security/story_html5.html
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The purpose for this blog is to be a beacon of hope to others trapped in abusive relationships and to educate others to recognize abuse that may be going on in the lives of people you know. There is real help available to domestic abuse victims, but sometimes it is hard to find and hard to take that necessary step to freedom. But there is a way out. I want to share all that I have learned so far on this journey into my new life as well as everything that I will continue to learn along the way.
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Psalm 22:24 "For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him."
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