“What is happening? What is wrong with me?” – me
Looking back there are so, so many things I’d change about our lives if I could. I’d have started family therapy years ago. I’d have asked for help from friends and family and shared where I was at and how I was feeling. I’d have put up better boundaries. I didn’t know at the time what was happening. I was so naive. It sounds like a weak excuse now, but it’s the truth.
Was I perfect? Absolutely not. I’ll own that all day long. I knew my faults and I reminded myself of them daily. I beat myself up about them so often, I didn’t need to be reminded of my faults by others, especially my husband. I was messy and I mean really messy. I was a terrible housekeeper. I was scatterbrained. I loved my kids too much. I tried to be everything to everyone and failed miserably. I never asked for help. I wanted to do it all so my family didn’t have to. I wasn’t a good wife. I wasn’t a good cook. I knew I didn’t voice my thankfulness enough. I saw how other people lived and I was thankful for our lives every time I bought a donation bag at the grocery store or saw a parent putting items back on the shelf at Walmart. Why couldn’t I articulate that to him? I didn’t initiate sex enough. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t agree with every one of my husband’s views. I didn’t make the kids respect their dad. (How does one even do that?) Yet there were still moments, every once in a while, when I’d think I wasn’t that bad, was I? Certainly the kids weren’t that bad either. I thought they were amazing human beings and I didn’t think I was just being biased. I was, and am, ridiculously proud of each of them.
I’m proud of my husband too. He is amazing and can truly fix almost anything at home and at the office. His clinical skills are incomparable. His way with his patients is unmatched. He is sweet and tender hearted with little old ladies, some of the wisest and most vulnerable members of our community. He is a visionary and a leader. He gives of his time and talents. There are so many things he excels at. I think that’s why I felt so confused for years about the side of him I saw at home. He was an amazing person! Why didn’t he shine that light on me too?
I have felt beaten down mentally and emotionally for years. I can’t even remember when it started. How could I rise up and continually be grateful to the person that gave me everything financially, yet gave me nothing emotionally? For years I never realized that the emotional, the relationship, piece of our marriage was missing. I didn’t know how to ask for it, or how to tell him what I needed. I didn’t even know what I needed. As the years went by, I got smaller and smaller and he got bigger and bigger, until one day I realized I was less than significant in his eyes. I felt like a complete failure in almost every aspect of my life. I was unhappy and depressed. Most of the joy was gone from my life. I was a shell of the person I had been twenty years before. I didn’t like myself and I didn’t like my husband. I had no self worth. I felt about as low as I could possibly get. (Spoiler Alert: It could, and would, get worse.)
Then, finally, I asked for help through therapy and my whole world took a spin into a new direction. I wasn’t going crazy. I had been experiencing emotional abuse for years. I wasn’t solely to blame for the shambles of a marriage we had. I was married to a narcissist. In a matter of months, all my confusion began to get sorted out. The things that perplexed me for years now made more sense. My feelings made more sense. My reactions to him made more sense. My whole life made more sense. I felt like I could finally see, as though my blinders had been stripped away and everything became more clear.
I felt both lighter and heavier with this new knowledge – lighter because there was a reason our lives had gotten to that point and heavier because I knew that now the work would begin. Let me tell you, this has been the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life and I’ve barely started. It’s emotionally exhausting. It’s physically draining. It’s recognizing things I love about myself and things I hate about myself. It’s confronting emotions I’ve squashed down for years and slowly unpacking them. It’s putting names to feelings and emotions I had struggled with for so long and thought were just normal. I’ve cried more than I ever have in my entire life. It’s raw and ugly and emotional and so, so hard. But I’m doing it. I am doing it.
I’ll share my journey of confusion, realization, pain, anger, joy and hope as I navigated through the first year after I realized the gravity of my situation. I’ll share things that helped me, along with some difficult lessons I learned along the way. I changed a lot – and changed my mind a lot – over the course of those first few weeks and months. Sometimes I liked the direction I was headed. Sometimes it was terrifying.
The biggest lesson I learned was this: I can only change myself, not anyone else.
I realized the only person I had full control over was me. I needed to let go of my hope and desire for things to be different in my marriage and take the initiative to change the things I actually had control over: my actions, thoughts and feelings. As much as I begged and pleaded for him to change, my husband needed to do his own work. There was no way I could put in the effort to change both myself and my husband for him, no matter how hard I tried or how much I wanted to.
I needed to take a step back and focus on myself. I needed to create a life for myself that I was happy in, whether it included him or not. I realized I needed to show up for my family and friends as the best person I could be and that was going to take time, dedication and a lot of hard work. I couldn’t force my husband to see what I saw and I couldn’t force him to want to change. I couldn’t shelter my kids from the hurt of seeing their parents separate and realizing their home lives would never be the same again. I could only offer them my love and support while I sorted my own life out.
So, this is how my journey of abuse awareness, gaining knowledge, offering forgiveness and recovering myself began, twenty two years into my marriage and at the age of forty seven. How does it end? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Spoiler Alert: It didn’t end the way I wanted it to. That’s ok. It ended the way it was supposed to.