No-Name Bloggers | D., Part 1

No-Name Bloggers is a series that features posts from individuals who do not have public blogs of their own. No-Name Bloggers are encouraged to write about one of four themes: feminism, anti-racism, recovery, or personal introspection.

No-Name Blog Posts must fall within Harriet J’s usual guidelines for appropriate discourse on the site: no cross-talk, no value judgments, and speaking from personal experience (instead of generalized beliefs) is highly encouraged. Fugitivus is normally not a Feminism 101 space; however, to encourage a wide range of No-Name Bloggers, that requirement is not enforced for No-Name Blog Posts.

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No-Name Blogger D.

Unpacking some guilt and self loathing.

Be warned. This is ugly. Triggers for rape and abuse and flailing incoherency as I try to sort myself out. I’m sorry, this is heavy shit. But I do need to talk about it, and I don’t feel comfortable doing it out loud yet.

I’ve been hermitting quite a bit lately, and by lately I mean the last six months. Before this I had a flurry of social activity that lasted almost a full year. Before that I was in a dark, dark place and completely unable to conceive of making any sort of positive connection with another human being. This lasted from 2007-2008.

The only reason 2004-2006 is not counted in that is because while I was with Stewart and quietly miserable, I was not acknowledging the fact that he was a big part of why I was miserable.

I had other things on my mind, you see. 2004-2006 were years of Big Changes and Shitty Circumstances.

In July of 2004, I was happy, secure and outgoing. I was working as an aircraft mechanic and loved the actual work, if not the atmosphere in the company I worked for. I was dating a sexy guy who made me laugh, even if he didn’t do much for me intellectually. But hey. I had tonnes of smart friends, I could deconstruct esoteric themes in trashy sci fi novels and philosophize about the principles of Art elsewhere. It was working. I loved laughing. And sex. And laughing during sex.

These were GOOD THINGS.

Then, I got pregnant. I didn’t even know until the cell cluster blew up in my fallopian tube and almost killed me. Cue almost a day of internal bleeding, emergency surgery, multiple blood transfusions and two months of bed rest.

The first thing I hate about myself now comes from the moment they were taking me away on the hospital bed into surgery when I reached out for Stewart in fear and lied. “I love you.”

I didn’t. I knew I didn’t. I was already debating calling it off with him before this happened because there was just something off about him sometimes. Nebulous signs of misogyny that I couldn’t quite put my finger on because he always treated me with respect, my girlfriends with respect. But sometimes, some of the comments he’d make about those other women, be they our waitresses, a singer in a band or just some girl on the street… He took crudity and turned it into an art form and I was blind to the specifics, but there was an undertone that made me uncomfortable when he’d go off on his ex, or sex workers, or whomever.

So I stayed with him.

Long enough to get pregnant, almost die and tell a stupid, stupid lie out of terror.

I started changing that day.

Suddenly, going to shows wasn’t very appealing. I didn’t like crowds. Loud noises started bothering me. I spent a lot of time in my own head.

I stayed with Stewart and never told him that I didn’t really love him. It was hard because I have this image of myself, or rather I did, as somebody who is honest. I was the person that told the hard truths, I was the person who called you out on your bullshit, I was the person who’d been raised in a toxic environment with so much rampant dishonesty that the very idea of lying made me angry. (Brutal confession time – I was a pathological liar when I was younger. I actively made the decision to never fall back into the habit of easy lies and this is a lot of why I am so angry with myself now.)

So, I convinced myself that I did love him and let myself use that to gloss over what he was doing and how he was changing. But I knew, inside. I could see it and I could never completely silence the person inside of me screaming that this was WRONG.

He started getting very jealous and possessive. On our first date I was really impressed with him because he didn’t hover the entire night, he didn’t expect to come back to my place after and he didn’t even try to kiss me. This threw me and I respected him so much for just being decent. When we went out with friends, the next day he would make a round of phone calls to all of the girls and make sure they got home OK, that they were all right. I thought that was amazing, and thoughtful, and it made me like him as a person.

I thought I had an ally.

It took a lot to kill that first impression.

Oh fuck, this is hard. There were just so many signs and it’s not even that I can see them in retrospect. I saw them then, and recognized them and didn’t fucking do anything. He asked me to marry him after I told him my view on marriage and why I would NEVER, EVER get married. (Maybe this is black humour deflecting, but I personally find this story hilarious. He proposed one night after we were in bed. I’m not sure if he thought I was asleep or what, he said it really quietly, but my immediate reaction was to bolt upright and stare him down, without saying a word. He mumbled some sort of apology and I laid back down and went to sleep. It was a year before he even broached the subject again.) He told me that he didn’t think I could be bisexual and monogamous, even though I have never cheated on anybody (the closest I came was holding another guys hand when I was 15 and I felt so bad about it I called the guy I was seeing and broke it off immediately). He waited 3 months to tell me he had 3 kids from previous relationships. I told him about being raped as a teenager and he wouldn’t talk to me about it because he couldn’t get the image of me “being held down and having my pussy filled like that” out of his head. (Harriet J to D.: SPLECH, jerkass creepfuck to the MAX. End transmission.)

Where was my inner crusader and righter of wrongs in that moment? I knew, I fucking knew, that his reaction was callous, insensitive and just plain awful and I reacted by trying to calmly to discuss it with him and being hurt by his response instead of punching him and getting the fuck out. Pronto. I have no excuses for myself. And I am still, 3 years after I finally left him, bitterly disappointed and resentful. It doesn’t linger in my head all day, every day anymore – but it still crops up with depressing regularity. When these flashes of moments between him and I come up, I hate myself. I can see it now in the way that I still retreat from the real world. In the way that I still don’t feel ready to form a new relationship, friendly OR romantic, because these are the things that occupy my brain. In the way that even the thought of having sex again sober leaves me conflicted and cold.

I want to have sex again.

But the thought of intimacy and vulnerability shuts me down.

If I think about sex in the abstract, I’m fine. But as soon as the particulars of the mechanics of sex enter my head – in relation to me being penetrated by another person – the urge dies.

I’m paralysed by the fear that I will want sex, I will be in a position where I can have sex, and then when the time comes to actually do it I will break down and I will cause a very messy scene.

Or even worse, I’ll go through with it, fake my way through the motions and hate myself for it later.

Anyway – back to the narrative of Stewart. I need to tell all of this.

First he started making vague insinuations that I was sleeping with my male friends. Then they stopped being vague and shifted into outright accusations. I defended myself and called him on his bullshit and was ridiculously proud of myself for not being a doormat.

But I still stayed. An ugly part of me liked arguing with Stewart because I was much, much smarter than he was and I always won. I would talk circles around him and he would cry and apologize and promise never to do it again until he did. This is another thing I hate about myself and I’ve never admitted it to anyone else before. I ignored a lot of what Stewart was doing to me because I liked winning the arguments. How fucking awful is that?

Whenever I went out without him he would call me dozens of times and pout when I didn’t rush home. I was proud of myself for standing up to his attempts to control me and not giving in. It wasn’t abuse because it didn’t affect me, see?

So I stayed.

Then, going out without him just didn’t seem to be worth the fight, so I started staying in more and making excuses for why I didn’t want to go to this movie, or out to this club or see this band if he couldn’t come with me.

I knew what was happening, but I loved him, right? And as long as I was cognisant of the reasons that I was turning down these invitations I wasn’t becoming one of those women. You know, the kind that are in abusive relationships with angry, controlling men and not being strong enough to leave. I could dispassionately recognize the Honeymoon Phase and the Escalation and the Blow Out, but it wasn’t really affecting me. I wasn’t Putting Up With It, I was resisting it, and it was almost like a sick joke I was playing on myself.

I could leave if I wanted to. I knew what was happening, but the idea of having financial security and a stable relationship was worth more than silly things like shows and parties.

I grew up in a very unstable environment. After my parents got divorced I chose to live with my mentally ill mother because my father was just the kind of asshole that would sue her for child support even though she hadn’t worked in over a year and was living on disability. I was a crusader for the underdog even at 15.

I didn’t eat regular meals because my mother would often lie in bed all day and not have the energy to buy groceries. But there were always, ALWAYS alcohol and cigarettes in the house.

My mother bought me a carton of cigarettes (8 packs, 200 cigarettes) every week. I was 15. I started smoking when I was 11. (That’s another story – for another time. I’ve mostly made my peace with my fucked up early childhood.) But I didn’t smoke 200 cigarettes every week, so I would sell the extra at $0.50 each if I liked you, $1.00 each if I didn’t. I made enough to buy fries at the school cafeteria for lunch and have a sandwich at the coffee shop for dinner most days. (There weren’t too many people at my old high school that I liked). See what I did there? I deflected a shitty anecdote with black humour. This is my favourite avoidance mechanism.

It doesn’t hurt. It’s funny. Why are you looking at me like that?

Idiot.

Anyway, it wasn’t long under her roof that she turned to the bottle and things got very ugly. She never hit me or anything like that, her abuse was much more insidious. I wrote most of it off as her illness but there’s a part of me that hates her now too for what she put me through and what she continues to try to put me through since I cut off all but the most spurious of contact (we don’t talk on the phone, I will see her if she’s in town but not if she’s drinking, we will occasionally chat on facebook if I’m feeling up to it). She says she’s better now, my sister says she’s better sometimes but that’s not good enough for me. There’s just too much bad history there and it’s not worth my sanity to try and maintain that relationship.

In February of 2005 I was living with Stewart and we went out a lot together so I didn’t have to confront what would happen if I chose to go out alone. I stopped making art because he got jealous of the time I spent away from him, locked in my studio because I can not create with an audience outside of a classroom setting. But I didn’t need to make art anyway. I had gained weight after the surgery and didn’t like the way I looked anymore, things still hurt inside but we were still having sex because he would pout and whine if we didn’t.

It wasn’t bad every time and he didn’t push every time, but sometimes I would feel bad about not fucking him and want to reward him. It got harder to actually feel desire because all of the discomfort, physical and emotional, kept piling on and turning sex into this capital I Issue.

But it’s not like he was holding me down and forcing me, right? I was consenting. I was participating. And if I stopped getting off, well, I was sure that would go away if I just pushed through it.

(It didn’t)

In February 2005 my mom finally decided to leave her physically abusive (because that’s the kind that counts, right?) alcoholic asshole boyfriend Rick. She was finally going to go to rehab and clean herself up. She needed me to watch her house for her.

It was perfect. I could quit the aircraft maintenance job that was becoming toxic due to rampant chauvinism. Stewart and I could go to my hometown and make shitpiles of money while we were house sitting, thus enabling us to save up enough money to get our own house. My mom would finally, finally get the help she needed and I would no longer live in fear of what my phone ringing at 3 am could mean.

I had a chance at a real family for the first time since I was 10.

I took a temporary contract position at one of the major sites for $20/hr (my highest paying job to date at that point, by $8/hr!), Stewart got a contracting gig that paid $25/hr + $125/day Living Out Allowance. We were giddy with the possibilities for our future and things were very, very good.

For about two weeks.

My mom crawled her way back into a bottle, took all of her pills and wandered down to our bedroom in the basement so we could watch her die.

We rushed her to the hospital, my sister came up from the city and we tried to get the Doctors to force her to stay in the hospital and detox.

They didn’t. She was released under her own power two days later and what followed were the worst seven months of my life. We were trapped together in that house, he said and did horrible things to me but I was too distracted by the horrible things that my mother, and eventually the abusive alcoholic ex when he moved back in, were doing to me. And I needed somebody to be there for me, even if it wasn’t perfect, or good, or anything close to it. He was there, finally somebody was there, and could see the things I dealt with when I was growing up. Could see that it really was that bad. He was there, and that had to be enough.

There were several trips to the emergency room, a lot of fighting and crying and I was numb to everything but my disgust.

I asked my father and stepmother for help and was greeted with a list of conditions that I would have to follow in order to attain their help. This notion was so odious to me that I decided to stay in the cesspit that was my mother’s house. I do not think I was wrong. There are many, many very good reasons that my father is no longer part of my life. My only shame here is that THIS was not the incident that drove me to cut him off entirely. I was locked into my contract for seven months and I couldn’t afford to break it and start again from scratch because Stewart refused to give up this Incredible Opportunity to make shitpiles of Money just to save my sanity. It was only seven months after all, why was I so upset?

And so I stayed. I got more withdrawn, more reclusive and almost left Stewart a couple of times. I got fatter, veering up into the obese part of the BMI spectrum. I stopped being able to drink for fun because every time I smelled alcohol, I smelled my mother, and the hospital and couldn’t help but see the black smears around her mouth from when the nurses forced her to drink charcoal to combat the 26 ounces of rye(or vodka, or rum) she drank.

Rick and I couldn’t be in the same room together without fighting, and it was a very small house.

Stewart and I were working opposite shifts so I only saw him for a couple of hours a day and those were awesome. Since he was on night shift, he required a detailed account of how I spent my evenings, culminating in a screaming match and me walking out on him for the first time when he accused me of cheating because I spent the night watching movies with a male friend in my jammies, in his bedroom, which happened to include the entire basement of his house.

I came back and we talked and he apologized and even though I knew it was bullshit I still stayed because I was too damned tired to deal with his shit too.

We started going back to the city every weekend after that. To get away from that house and those people. We saw our friends there and that made it easier. Almost good, but only in contrast. I see that now.

We found a house.

When my contract ended we moved in. I had it out with my mom in a huge scene where I ranted, raved, threw things and told her I never wanted to see or hear from her again until she left Rick for good and dried out.

And things were very, very good again. I started the job I have now and it paid just as well as the job in my hometown. Stewart was still working in my hometown and staying at my mother’s for the first couple of months and he called every day, even if he had nothing to say, and I made a joke of it. My mom still called and dragged me into her drama, but there was enough distance now that I could cope and hang up on her if I wanted to. I was happy.

Stewart had given me a list of chores to get done around the house for winterizing and I meant to do them, I really did, but I was busy with work, and just revelling in the fact that I wasn’t in my mother’s house anymore. My best friend Romy, who’d moved out East just after my surgery, came to visit and we hung out at my house and drank wine and watched stupid movies and giggled like little kids for a couple of days. I was having so much fun. I felt like myself again for practically the first time since the surgery.

Then Stewart phoned and started yelling at me for not doing the chores he’d given me. He started the conversation yelling at me because he knew I hadn’t finished them, even without my telling him. We fought for hours, and it was awful. I hung up on him and he kept calling. I turned off the phone and he called my cell.

Later, my mother told me that he came home from work absolutely furious with me. Fuming and yelling about how lazy I was, before he even talked to me.

I have no idea how he knew. Unless he had somebody watching me, which I didn’t consider until much, much later, when things got really fucked up after we separated

He came home in December, we made up, and it was good again. We went out together, we stayed in together, we had some good times.

Sex only happened a couple times of month when I finally caved to Stewart’s requests. I still wasn’t getting off, but it stopped hurting.

Then I stopped being so relieved to not be THERE anymore that I started waking up to the fact that something was rotten in my house.

Stewart found out that Romy had been over while he was working out of town and we fought about how I was keeping things from him. I shut down the conversation by explaining to him that since we were fighting over the stupid chores I didn’t really have a chance to tell him anything good: “Work’s going great you ignorant asshole, how DARE you fucking talk to me like that?! Oh by the way, my best friend Romy is in town and I hope you choke on bitterness and die you son of a bitch!” I told him that he could either trust me or he could walk out the door and fuck himself right out of my life. He apologized, we made up.

I was really good at explaining things to Stewart, so he’d understand and not get so mad all the time. I didn’t see how fucked up that was at the time. Well, maybe I did, because I never talked to my friends about those fights. And they were many. Every little thing I did had connotations that I wasn’t aware of. If I wanted to go out with friends, it was because I didn’t want to be around him. I didn’t want to marry him because I didn’t love him. I still talked to my male friends because I wanted to sleep with them. I got angry for him calling me all the time because I was cheating on him. I was fat and lazy because I didn’t want him to find me attractive anymore. I wanted him to go out and make his own friends and cultivate his own interests because I wanted him to cheat on me so I’d have an excuse to leave.

Some of this was true, I didn’t want to marry him, I wanted time away from him, I was fat and lazy, so I couldn’t fight it. Everything was a possible platform and I got so caught up in constantly defending myself that I wasn’t seeing how fucked up I was getting. The individual fights were what I was seeing, not the overall big picture.

And I wasn’t talking about it, since I won the fight and it was done in my mind, so I had nobody to point that out to me.

Stewart and I had been embroiled in an ongoing custody battle for the better part of a year and it was finally coming to a close. He was granted access to his son with supervised visits, oh shit, I don’t even remember the exact month. I think it was January 2006 – but every other Sunday I faithfully drove him to his visit (his truck broke down in early 2005 and I taxied him around for two years. It took me a long time to clue in to the realization that if he was dependant on me for transportation, he had another avenue to control me. He could regulate what time I went to work, what time I came home, when I could leave the house without him. The only reason I figured it out is because of how mad he got when I finally drained my savings account to buy him a new vehicle.)

Now, during the custody battle I took charge of his defence, because even though I don’t particularly like children and definitely don’t want any of my own, I fully believe that children should be raised by both parents (provided they aren’t mine, or variations thereof) and I am an advocate for father’s rights. Stewart genuinely loved his son and he was heart broken when his ex started proceedings to forbid him access.

Her reasoning? Stewart had been abusive to her and she was afraid to leave their son alone with him.

I OWE that woman a sincere apology. Even if, and this is a big if, the stories that Stewart told about her and the drugs and the cheating are true – I refused to believe that Stewart had been abusive and controlling towards her. Because that would mean I had to face what was happening in our relationship. (This is a retrospective realization, at the time I was much happier to have a new crusade to distract myself with and threw myself in ECMAS meetings and shared parenting seminars.)

I would apologize this instant if I thought she wanted to hear it from me. I think it’s pretty fucking arrogant of me to think she would. I’ve had many addicts go through my life and every single time a bad memory from my past showed up with their ‘heartfelt’ apologies and need for absolution, I just wished they’d stayed the fuck away.

Anyway, I took the courses, coached Stewart on what to say and what to write. When to send a letter, call his lawyer and all of that. He made no moves of his own. I had to force him to go to the anger management course and the parenting after separation course that were required by court order. But, we won. He was granted access and I took him to his visits

It was only after the supervision was lifted and his son could visit us that it really became an issue.

I’ve never wanted children. I’m not comfortable around them, I have no idea what to say to them and well, Stewart’s son was a brat. He called me fat, told me his mom thought I was a prostitute (maybe I don’t need to apologize? No, not my issue. She was a bitch, but that doesn’t give me a right to interfere in her life or her parenting decisions. Stewart would not have made any gains in his case without my help and while he does love his son and never treated him with anything less than adoration, he didn’t deserve to win because he was such an apathetic bastard about the case and did not earn it) and was just a generally unpleasant shit when I was around.

So I stopped being around. (Stewart never failed to mention every Sunday that my inability to connect with his son was because I was fundamentally broken. I didn’t fight that because I agreed. I am fucked up when it comes to dealing with people sometimes.)

Sundays became girl’s days and I would meet up with Mel and Shay for coffee and we would sit around and gab for hours. Hours uninterrupted by Stewart’s persistent phone calls demanding to know when I’d be home.

Huh. Imagine that. I was out of the house, interacting with friends, without him looming over me or touching me, asserting his presence in every aspect of my life (he always, always had his hands on me when we were in public together. The only place he didn’t follow me was to the bathroom). Suddenly Stewart wasn’t there. I could talk about Stewart

And I did, carefully editing myself because I knew the stories sounded bad, but they weren’t really. They were funny, right? I just had to put them in the right context. They didn’t need to hear about the self-doubt and how much it hurt when he yelled at me. Or how scared I got the time he ripped the closet door off its hinges and threw it across the room. The funny part of the story was in how clever my responses were and how silly he could be sometimes and how I showed him he was wrong and he admitted it. I was still a strong person. I was still myself.

I got a raise at my job – they jumped me up to $24/hr and I had additional responsibilities. I was thriving in my career because I was working unlimited overtime because being at work was so much better than being at home. I was also making more money than Stewart now. If anything happened to him, I would be able to support myself just fine. (and yes, this thought did run through my head, however briefly.)

Stewart started complaining about my job. It was taking a lot out of me. He was concerned for my mental health. I didn’t want to end up like my mother, did I? (He KNEW, because I told him, that my biggest fear in life is to end up like my mother. Depression is hereditary, and this is why I’m so fucking careful with my feelings – to the point where I ignore my instincts – because I must never seem hysterical, or blow things out of proportion, or be sad. Those are the things my mother does. And she is crazy and awful and does horrible, irrational things to hurt people. Every emotion I have goes through her filter now. I am sad today – why am I sad? Is this an acceptable sadness? Or is it my slide into depression and alcoholism and seventeen different drugs to balance my moods and mitigate the side effects of the drugs I am taking to balance my moods? I am happy today. Why am I happy? Is this the beginning of a manic phase? I don’t feel anything about this. Why don’t I feel anything about this? Is this because I am becoming numb and apathetic? Oh shit, I’m confused. Why am I confused? Are my synapses misfiring and leading me into dementia? Is this an anxiety attack? It’s fucking exhausting.) My mother was Stewart’s secret weapon after 2005 when he’d seen for himself what a mess she was and how it affected me.

My unwillingness to fuck him was because of my mother. My working sixty hours a week was because of my mother. My irrational anger at him phoning me to ‘check in’ was because of my mother. My mom was fat and I was fat, couldn’t I see it had already begun?

The Sunday sessions with the girls continued and I kept bubbling over to talk about Stewart and the stupid shit he did and wasn’t it hilarious? They were awesome about it, they really were, but it took them months to call me on it.

“D…. why are you with him?”

“Uh… because I love him?”

“Do you really?”

“Of course I do! I bought a house with him, I live with him, it’s really not that bad, I just need to vent, blah blah blah blah.”

“We’re worried about you.”

Uncomfortable laugh. “Don’t be. I’m fine. I’m sorry for freaking you out!”

And I was very careful about how I talked about Stewart from that point on.

I started staying even later at work. I manipulated my birth control pills so that I was always on my period and thus couldn’t have sex. I bled for months and made vague promises to go to the doctor and never did. I knew what was happening. I stopped cooking because Stewart liked my cooking and when it was my turn to make meals, I’d spring for dinner at a restaurant. These petty revenges felt so good. And they were my secret.

I started painting again.

This drove Stewart nuts, but he would never attack it directly. He was supportive of my work, you see. He wanted to encourage my talent. So, if I stayed up all night painting on a Wednesday, he’d turn off my alarm so I’d be late for work on Thursday (what do you mean? Why would I do that? You sound like your mother). If I wanted to paint on Saturday, there’d be a distraction or some sort of crisis that he absolutely needed me to help him deal with RIGHT NOW. (he lost his custody documents, had I seen them? The computer’s broken, can I fix it? Hey, we haven’t spent much time together lately, let’s go see a movie! Why don’t I take you shopping for books today? Don’t you love me anymore, I only want to be with you!)

I started posting on an art website and started making friends with online artists. It was amazing, actually connecting with people who cared about the same things I did, that could understand the particular lens that I viewed the world through, where things could be beautiful and transcendent without having to slow down and define the terms. I talked about it constantly, bubbling over with enthusiasm because I was Making Art again and Seeing Art and Talking About Art with Fellow Artists.

Then I made some comment about how one of the artists I was talking to offered to do a plaster cast of my body if I was ever in his neighbourhood (which was Austin, Texas – so not likely, but still pretty cool, right?) which Stewart turned into a rant about how I was cheating on him. This fight lasted days and I was struggling to define my world view to him and he was telling me that all men wanted the same thing and the only reason this ‘friend’ made the offer was so that I would fuck him, and since I wasn’t really fucking Stewart anymore and I dared to be excited while talking about talking to this man, obviously I wanted to fuck him too.

I didn’t even know where to start with that. I made a very passionate speech about Art and Artists and the body as a thing of beauty that doesn’t need to be sexualized to be be appreciated. I told him fucking rights I would model for another artist without shame (provided of course I knew them and trusted them, but Stewart could never make that distinction. If I was willing to take my clothes off for one person, I was willing to take them off for every person). I don’t even really remember how that fight ended, but I didn’t stop painting and I didn’t stop posting, but we did stop fighting about it, so I must’ve won, right?

Then there were the money issues. I has a good job, I was making good money. Stewart was a in one of the trade unions, which somehow precluded him from getting steady work even though the economy was booming and everyone was hiring, for top dollar, everywhere. Here’s a fundamental difference on our life philosophies – I believe in showing up every day, putting in an honest effort, being rewarded for my labours. Stewart believed in working as little as he could get away with until he had enough hours to claim EI and take time off. I was often regaled with how fucked up Union politics are, how stupid his foremen and bosses were and clever he was for exploiting the system in this way. He’d tell me stories of how he got fired, or written up, shining the best possible light on himself and not see why I got so mad at him for buying masking agents to cover the pot, instead of NOT SMOKING POT when he was unemployed so he could get another job. It’s such a fucking cliche, and I’m angry at myself for not noticing.

I stopped arguing with him about it because it wasn’t worth it and I’d pretty much stopped respecting him entirely anyways. I’d tune him out and make the occasional non response and that satisfied him.

Anyway, our arrangement was this: I would pay half the mortgage and all of the utilities (except cable, I refused to get cable and if he wanted it, he’d have to pay for it) – he would pay half mortgage and cover the costs of renovation supplies (barring certain large expenses which we would discuss and I would pitch in for). I also took it upon myself to put a little bit extra into our joint savings account, for the purpose of starting a rainy day fund, in case one of us lost our jobs and couldn’t make ends meet.

Whatever I did with my money after that was my business. Sounds fair, right?

Guess not. We fought constantly about how I would waste money on eating out (he made me lunches that I didn’t like, packed with things I wouldn’t eat, even after I asked him to stop), blow money on things like art supplies and books and comics and video games. He was a paragon, you see. He grew up in poverty so he knew the Value of the Dollar. Never mind that he had bills that had gone to collections, no credit to speak of and his RRSP contributions were only there because his Union automatically deducted the amount from his paycheque.

I had also had a bill go to collections, but it was because I had moved so often that I never received the notice for arrears on my Health Care. I didn’t even know that it wasn’t automatically paid for anymore! I found out and fixed it immediately, and the collections guy helped me get it off my credit statement. Stewart got mad at me for not fixing his credit too and I told him he had to do it himself, actually take the time out of his day and spend several hours on the phone with somebody. But I was selfish for not doing it for him and giving him the numbers to call wasn’t enough and he worked out in the field all day while I had an office job, so why wouldn’t I just do it already, didn’t I love him?

Never mind that he worked shift work and routinely had weekdays off. Never mind that I had told my boss I need a few hours shut in my office to do this and he was cool with it and I didn’t want to bring up any more of my personal shit into my job because it was humiliating.(The secretary had started screening Stewart’s phone calls. I was in a lot more ‘meetings’.) But I took that hit, for myself, because it was important.

Until this job, I had never been in a position where I had a disposable income. I was enjoying being able to walk into a bookstore and buy three new releases, in Hardcover, without having to wait for them to show up at used bookstore or come out in paperback. I got into Batman and I could buy all of the relevant graphics at the same time, so I could read them all together!

But, rather than fight about it, I just started hiding it.

Books would stay in my car until he wasn’t home so I could put them on the shelf. Stewart wasn’t a reader so I knew he wouldn’t notice. Art supplies went straight into my studio, tags removed and mixed in with everything else. We coasted along, developing our own routines of avoidance. We stopped going out. We talked about our days at work and not much else. We watched a lot of movies. Did things we could do together without actually interacting.

I loved sleeping in the same bed with him. I loved having that weight and that heat around me. Our relationship actually seemed good when we were lying down together, just lightly touching and not necessarily being sexual. He smelled good. I felt safe. He’d still beg me for sex and I’d give in, but I’d long stopped initiating. Sometimes, I even got off and that was a good sign.

These were the good times. I was hiding things, never fully myself around him anymore. I didn’t see my friends because i was ashamed of how quiet I was now, how fat I’d gotten and how disinterested I was in everything. But there weren’t a lot of fights, so this was fine.

This was going to be my life. And I was OK with it. Kind of. If I didn’t think about it too hard. I had a nice house, a good job and a relationship that wasn’t perfect, but one I could accept. Whether or not I should accept it stopped entering the equation.

Then there was Beth.

Beth was Ann’s roommate.

Ann is my best friend from high school, though our relationship was starting to devolve because I hired her to work for me and she was the worst possible employee you could have, bright but lazy, entitled and completely unable to separate our working relationship from our friendship. I was also her unofficial taxi service, giving her rides to work and back, even after she had enough money to get her own car. She didn’t think she was being selfish by expecting me to ferry her around, oh no. Her decision made Sound Financial Sense. How on Earth could I expect her to afford her weed and cigarettes if she had to make a car payment too? (In much the same way I handled Stewart’s use of the D. Taxi Service, I eventually drove her to a car dealership and made her get a vehicle. I didn’t pay for this one though.) Also, she would invite Stewart over specifically for the purpose of smoking pot with him and that pissed me off. Still pisses me off, sometimes. She knew how I felt about Stewart smoking pot, she knew his job was at risk if he got caught and that his visitation with his son could be revoked, and yes, those are things that Stewart was aware of too, but still – she knew it bothered me, her friend, and that enabling him wasn’t a bold stance on freedom of choice, but an act of active disrespect.

Anyway, another Ann rant, and the moment I realized I would never be as close to her again.

She asked me if I wanted to go out for coffee after work, and I said sure. Work ended up running a little bit late, as it so often does, but she said it was cool, she could wait. Warning bell one should have gone off then. Ann has always been really good at making people wait for her, but got antsy and irritable if her schedule was disturbed.

I finally finished up and we went to a diner where she started talking. She asked me for advice, using pseudonyms and coffee creamers to illustrate the scenario. She told me about how person A was a really close friend of hers, person B was somebody she was kind of close to and person C was dating person A but she didn’t really like them. Person B and person A don’t really know each other very well. Person B had told her that person C had come over to her house and made some really inappropriate comments. Person B told Ann that person C had wanted to cheat on person A with person B. Nothing happened and it was only comments.

Ann wanted to know if she should tell person A what had happened.

I’m sure you see where this is going, but I didn’t. I played along and took it as another one of Ann’s intellectual exercises. I asked a whole bunch of questions in regards to the nature of the comments and the reactions and the relationships and possible consequences. I asked her if she thought person A really needed to know or if it was harmless. She said she didn’t know because person B isn’t particularly reliable but she didn’t think person B was lying.

I said I’d probably tell person A what had happened.

So she looked at me and paused for dramatic effect. “D.. It’s you.”

OK, I’m not going to get into a rant on how fucking immature and disrespectful this was. Or how badly I wanted to hit her for turning this into an opportunity to be clever. But I certainly wouldn’t have condoned telling someone that you think their boyfriend might be cheating on them using fucking coffee creamers and pseudonyms.

Turns out that Stewart had gone over to Ann’s house to smoke pot one night. Beth, the roommate was the only one home so they smoked up together. Stewart then turned to Beth and said he really liked her and wouldn’t mind getting to know her better.

I wasn’t there so I have no idea what his tone of voice was, or if he was leering or what. The only part I have is what words everybody agreed were spoken.

Of course, nobody told me what those words were, exactly, until after I already started freaking out. Making teary phone calls and grand statements that this was the last fucking straw.

Yeah. I sometimes feel guilty for not making more of an effort in my relationship with Ann. I need to stop doing that. This was cruel. I understand, in retrospect, that she just wanted me out and blowing this incident out of proportion was, in her mind, the best way to do it. But still, this was the worst possible way to go about it, because after I phoned Stewart and made him sit in the same room with Beth and I and the whole truth came out, I went back home with Stewart, not completely certain that things weren’t shady, but 100% certain that Ann, at least, had betrayed me, and our friendship.

I stopped painting again.

I told the hippy in September of 2006 about the Beth thing and that I didn’t think I loved Stewart anymore. I could tell him this because he was in Vancouver and he couldn’t look at me and make the statement real, or turn it into something I had to act on.

I was too tired to act on it.

He sent me a response that fully engenders why I love him and why he will always be part of my life. He understood my inertia, he read between the lines, he pointed out the lack of trust but at the same time he told me that I had to do what was right for me, whatever it was. He offered me a place to stay if I wanted to come out and think things over away from the situation. He did not tell me I couldn’t stay with Stewart, or that worrying about money and the situation with the house was irrational, or that I was an idiot for staying with him if I was so unhappy. I knew all of this and I didn’t need to hear it from anyone else.

He also called me on my real fear, which I was so careful not to mention. He said I had to do what made me feel safe.

And I was afraid of what would happen if I left Stewart. I knew it was going to be ugly. I don’t think I was afraid for my life, but I knew he had a temper and I knew he was the kind of person that would stalk me and follow me and make my life hell. I didn’t want to leave my job and move to another city. I didn’t want to go back to constantly having to struggle to make ends meet and get by.

I just wanted to be left alone, more than anything.

I stayed. Ann moved to BC shortly after so I didn’t have to deal with her passive aggressive anger at me for staying anymore. She told me that Stewart was no longer welcome in her house. She did not appreciate the irony when I pointed out to her that he only ever went there to smoke pot, which i didn’t want anyways.

A month later my mother made an appearance back in our lives again. She finally left Rick, for good this time (honest! Why are you looking at me like that, D.? Why don’t you ever support me? Don’t you love me? Don’t you want me to get better?) She moved to my city and I cringed inside because I was still a long way from forgiveness or trust with her and I didn’t want to be sucked back in.

I made an effort to support her. I bought concert tickets and opera tickets and theatre tickets so we could do things together to get her out of her house so she didn’t start drinking again out of loneliness and boredom. My sister and I would take turns having her over for family dinners. Sometimes, we’d all meet together and it was fun. I had a family again, sort of. Stewart supported these efforts because he believed family was important and he used to push me to make amends with her. I couldn’t fucking believe he’d have the nerve to push the sanctity of Family on me after what we’d been through a year ago.

It got bad again. There was another hospital visit and charcoal chugging incident in November. I told her I hated her and never wanted to see again and ended up spending Christmas with her at the urging of Stewart and my sister. Because she loves me, and she was very sorry, and she was trying.

I don’t know if anybody else reading this has ever had to cut family out of their lives before, but it doesn’t matter how many horror stories you tell, or how many awful things you can say they’ve done to you, EVERYBODY wants you to forgive and forget and stop being so angry all the time. You’ll be sorry when she’s gone. It was bad but she’s trying. We need to be here for her. You’re all she talks about. It would mean so much to her. She misses you. It doesn’t stop. It’s in every interaction. You’ll show up to a dinner or something and she will be there, and nobody thought to tell you because hasn’t it been long enough?

And I caved because I’ve always wanted a normal family. I’m still eaten with jealousy when I hear people talk about their mundane family events, and sitting down to dinner with your parents and knowing, absolutely, that they’ll always be there for you. Did you know there are people out there who don’t start dreading Christmas in September and worrying about how awful and awkward it’s going to be and how you can’t say this because your dad will jump down your throat, or this because your stepmother will start hinting that maybe you and your mother aren’t so different after all and you have to smile and smile and smile, no matter what they do, because otherwise you’ll start a fight and ruin the holiday for everyone?

I leave town for the holidays now. I’ve cut both sets of parents out of my life but it’s still hard to face Christmas and know that I won’t be invited, even though I didn’t want to go in the first place. And it’s less lonely in a hotel room or on a friend’s sofa. I could, I guess, spend the holidays with my sister and her husband’s family, but I don’t know them very well and I’m not comfortable around them. I feel like an outsider and I know that they know some of my history, about my relationship with my parents and it feels like they invited me because they feel sorry for me. And that it’s an elephant in the room that makes every interaction excruciating but no one will address it directly.

Anyway.

In February of 2007 we hit meltdown, just in time for my birthday. (My family has the uncanny ability to implode around my birthday. My dad told me he was divorcing my mother on my 14^th birthday. He didn’t tell me he hadn’t told her yet, so I was the one who got to break the news to her. When she was in the hospital for her depression. That was a great year. The first time my mother showed me that she cut herself was on my 15^th birthday. It was my fault of course, because I was a bad daughter and that’s why she had to slice her thighs to ribbons. I spent that birthday in tears, apologizing over and over and promising to be less wild. It didn’t take. My father and stepmother kidnapped me on my 16^th birthday to drive me out to the middle of nowhere and yell at me for six hours about how fucked up I was for staying with mother and not coming to live with them because they loved me so much. I agreed just so they’d stop yelling and ‘changed my mind’ the next day, further proving to them that I was not to be trusted, because I was such a liar. My mother kicked me out on my 18^th birthday because she was drunk and angry and I shouldn’t get so mad about the fact that we always had alcohol but the only food in the house was from the take away place that made me sick. My mom tried to kill herself on my 24^th birthday. I don’t celebrate birthdays anymore. My friends know not to plan a big party. We go out for dinner and that’s about it.)

We went to a concert, I busted her drinking in the bathroom during intermission. I took her home but she’d passed out and I couldn’t carry her into her apartment, so I took her to my place. She woke up on the way there and started freaking out, raving and yelling. At one point she grabbed the wheel of my car and we careened across four lanes of traffic at 100 km/hr. I got control back and screamed at her. I’ll never forget how smug she looked for scaring me. I wanted to kill her.

When we finally got to my place it was worse. She was yelling and raving because I didn’t want her to smoke in my house.

I ended up flushing every single cigarette we had down the toilet and she looked at me like I’d just broken her heart. “D…. how could you do that?” As if this were the worst thing that had happened that night.

After I finally called her a cab and kicked her out, I went to bed where I fell apart. I was shaking so hard that I woke up Stewart.

Who proceeded to berate me for waking him up. He went to sleep on the couch because he had to work in the morning and what did I expect? I knew what she was like.

This, out of everything that happened – the accusations, the fights, the screaming, the punching holes through the walls, the phone calls, the gradual erosion of my autonomy, the sex I didn’t like or want, his threats against my cats – this is the moment when I started hating him.

Unfortunately, it was not the last straw, but our relationship changed again. I stopped caring what he did, said or thought about me. I started reaching out to my friends again, and it was hard, because I wanted to talk about it but couldn’t. He slept beside me and if he touched me I would push him away.

He really started in on me then, about my weight, about how lazy I was around the house. I ignored him. He screamed and yelled, stomped through the house and slammed all of the doors. I threw a vase at his head.

There were weird interludes of peace between us. I don’t know how to describe it, but I couldn’t hate him full time. Things would calm down and we would talk and laugh and joke, then he’d make some careless comment and it was back to civil war.

We were in one of those peaceful lulls and I woke up to Stewart eating me out. I woke up as I was getting off, and I was freaked out and paralysed when he started fucking me. I didn’t say no, or move, or react at all. I just laid there and let him fuck me.

When he was done, I retreated to the far side of the bed and shook. He didn’t understand what the big deal was, I had been enjoying myself. I had an orgasm. Why was I being so fucking weird?

I didn’t even have the words to confront him. I tried. I told him he couldn’t do that to me. That he couldn’t just assume that he could just fuck me like that. I cried and said he couldn’t touch me anymore. I couldn’t deal with this. He just shook his head and laid down. I didn’t sleep that night. I just listened to him breathe beside me and started making plans to get out

I came home one day and found my cat in the basement, yowling in his kitty kennel. It was tilted at an angle and Stewart had put sharp pieces of wood in the vent holes so he couldn’t sit down or get comfortable. He had been in there long enough to soil himself.

I started crying. I took him upstairs and bathed him. He was so traumatized, he didn’t fight, he just kept trying to get closer to me, looking for comfort.

The cats had been a bone of contention between Stewart and I since we got into the house. I realize now that I haven’t written anything about them. It’s because I am ashamed, deeply ashamed that I stayed with him even after the way he treated my cats. I have no excuses. There are no excuses.

I had three adorable cats, one was mine, one was Stewart’s and one was Stewart’s son’s. They were with us in our first apartment and later on at my mother’s, until Rick came back into the picture and started making veiled threats about what he’d do to them when I was at work.

They went back to our apartment in the city and were left essentially alone (my buddy Chris fed them and played with them once a day, but still). When we’d commute back to our apartment, there’d usually be messes. Stewart’s plants would get knocked over, my books would be chewed up, they’d occasionally miss their litter box. But no big deal. They were adorable, healthy, and very affectionate.

I loved them. In a genuinely awful period in my life, they were what made me happy.

When we got into the house, Stewart started being abusive towards them. He’d hit them if they jumped up on the counter or on the sofa or if they knocked over his plants. I let him put up a door between levels so the cats could only come upstairs when we were home and could keep an eye on them. They were no longer allowed to sleep in our bed and he’d yell and scare them when they cried about it.

Then one day, he flipped out and he threw his son’s cat so hard against the wall that I thought he’d killed him. We fought bitterly that night and I told him that if he ever hurt my cats again I would call the police and I would press charges.

That was the last time, that I knew of, that he was ever physically abusive towards the cats. But still. I should have left then. I should have called the police. But I knew that he’d lose access to his son if he got arrested and I convinced myself that it was enough of a threat and that I’d handled it.

My cat is the biggest suck in the entire world. And he loves me, absolutely. He crawls into my lap and tucks his head under my chin and purrs for hours.

We were sitting on the couch like that and Stewart made some comment to the effect: “That cat really loves you.”

I smiled and said, “Yeah.”

Two days later he was in the basement.

That night I told Stewart I was going away to think about our relationship. And if he so much as laid a finger on one of the cats I would make sure he never saw his son again. I meant it.

I spent a week in BC with Ann and the hippy. Stewart phoned me every day and I hid in the bathroom to take his calls because I was ashamed to let my friends see that I was talking to him still. I had told them the highlights. What he’d done to my cat. How I hated myself for putting this off for so long.

I didn’t tell them about the last time we had sex.

I got home and told him we were over.

It took awhile for that to sink in to him. We agreed we would try living together as roommates until we figured out what to do with the house. His sister was due in from the east coast in less than a week. She was coming to stay with us, with her son, so she could escape her own abusive relationship.

The day she arrived we had another huge fight and the next day me, my very pregnant sister, and Shay packed my shit and I left for good.

Two of them went to the Humane Society where I volunteered until they got adopted.

My cat went to stay with a friend of a friend on an acreage.

The first time I cried was for my cats. I got to keep mine with me for a week before I had to send him to the acreage, but Mel’s husband hated cats and I didn’t want to make them fight over me. I was ashamed enough.

I freeloaded in Mel’s spare bedroom for 8 months because I was still paying half of the mortgage, while draining my savings on lawyers because Stewart was doing everything he could to drag it out and make me miserable. There were threatening phone calls where he told me had people watching me. He called me at work and I started crying, much to my mortification. He’d phone at all hours, begging me to take him back, calling me a bitch and a slut and a whore. He told the lawyers that I had stolen his son’s birthday money, tried to sue me for $60 000 for damages my cats supposedly did to the basement (humorous aside : did you know cats could make bathrooms smaller? One of the items on the assessment of ‘damages’ he sent me was for remodelling the basement bathroom) and just generally made things unpleasant.

I didn’t leave my room at Mel’s very often. I couldn’t bring myself to face people. Or run into him.

My mom tried to get in touch with me to offer her sympathy and I told her to fuck off.

I didn’t talk to my father for a year because when I went to him and my stepmother for help they told me it was all my fault and handed me an actual point form list of conditions I would have to meet in order to be eligible to stay at their house.

At the end, it cost me $100 000 to get rid of him, between lawyers and buying him out of the house. But it was worth every fucking penny.

I’ve reached the point where I hate him more than I hate myself, and I know, intellectually that I’m a victim of abuse, but it still feels like it was my fault and I knew what was happening and I was just too stupid and lazy to do anything about it. I’m still tripping over this.

Every time I feel angry or sad, this is what comes up, and I’m tired of it. I’m tired of being ashamed and angry.

I need to figure out how to deal with this.

This is the first step.

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