The Leaving

As difficult as it is to talk about the pain and terror that happens in abusive relationships, it is even more difficult to go beneath that protective, nearly impenetrable layer we’ve built around our soft parts and allow ourselves to remember the love, the tender moments, the laughter, the hope.

Domestic abuse blurs lines, the understanding and the experiences of love and fear. There is plenty of armchair commentary about how it is easy to leave. Neither path is easy — staying or going.

When I was in group therapy at a women’s center, more than 75% of our group returned to their partners. I feel lucky for meeting the women who stepped gently and kindly into my denial bubble and took me under their wings. Women who have held my hands and cried with me through the days where I couldn’t even find words to explain what was happening. They knew and understood and didn’t judge me.

I have also been witness to and a sounding board for others when they’ve reached out. And I still feel confusion and grief for a few of them who went back to partners after escaping, working on recovery, and trying to start a new life on their own.

One was gone more than three years and recently reunited, announcing the family unit with toothy smiles on social media. I still remember her tearful description of how he pushed her against a wall, strangling her, screaming with froth on his mouth and spittle hitting her face. This was just weeks after she was out of the hospital from giving birth to their daughter and where she had gone into shock and nearly died. It wasn’t the first or last time this had happened. She left, but she was so alone. Trying to put herself through school and raise the baby while her community gave back-pats of congratulations at her achievements, but that doesn’t pay the bills or babysit or feed them.

Another was out of her home for six months and went back under duress. Jay and I had been friends for 25 years. Her mother and stepfather had written “adoption” papers for me when we were teenagers. That summer of change, Jay had asked me and other friends for help one night at a nail spa party. She told us her husband threatened her and blamed her for his affairs and lies, that she was afraid of him. We moved mountains to help her get out. She told me her ex moved all the money from their joint account and said she wouldn’t see another penny until she agreed to meet with their minister. And that she was too stupid to get a good job and would never make it alone on a teacher’s salary. In church counseling she was told it was her fault the husband carried on affairs because it was her duty to satisfy him in the marriage. And now it was her duty to forgive his wanderings. He said he would take her back, but she must never have contact with anyone who had helped her go against her commitment to god and leave him. Her mom called and told me that if she wanted to have contact with her daughter, they had to agree to cut contact with me, too. They didn’t want to, she said, but they couldn’t leave their daughter alone and abandon her on principle.

In my case, I went back and forth for seven years after a huge, in-my-face, irrefutable clue that would have sent most people packing without a backward glance. And in that last year, seeing him on suicide watch in the hospital after being arrested, I still felt a responsibility to our marriage vows, to help, to support, to try again. Throughout the years, we’d have moments of connection over shared experiences with the children, laughter at movies we enjoyed together, intimacy that felt familiar and safe and full of hope. We agreed on how to decorate the house and what to have for dinner. A slice of domestic bliss.

Somewhere in the back of my mind and lodged deep in my body was distrust, fear, shame, self-blame. When our youngest child was just six months old and the other was a toddler, I was on a business trip and the ex called me in a panic. I was driving that night in the rain on unfamiliar streets in Cleveland with two colleagues in our rental car. He insisted that he needed to talk to me and could not wait. I pulled to a side street, called back and he was oddly calm and said nothing was wrong. I called again when I reached my hotel, no answer. My head swiveled in confusion. It was like talking with two different people, as if that first call was something imagined. And where was he now?

When I returned from that trip, I found out that minutes after the first call, he went on Craigslist sharing details about his sexual desires and penis size in a “casual encounters” ad and invited women to our home, offering to pay them.

Marriage counseling and mental health testing followed. He was diagnosed bipolar, with a series of addictions, including alcohol and sex, and a personality disorder. I was ready to walk, but I was afraid to tell my family and friends. I felt like I had failed in my choices and my behaviors. The counselor said that we could save the relationship if he committed to therapy and medication and I agreed to support him. She said that this was a solvable problem. And my catholic guilt weighed in… staying committed in sickness and in health. Wasn’t this what that was about? The marriage counselor was insistent that this was the right path.

He didn’t stick with counseling or medication. I didn’t look too deeply into what it meant to partner with a person who has bipolar disorder. I did have my experience with alcoholics and maybe deep down I felt like this was a chance to redeem that childhood desire to get the addict to choose me over their drinks. I contorted myself for the remaining years to give him what he wanted, all the while looking the other way while he had affairs, went into rages, skipped work for drinking and gambling binges, and ignored me and the kids in favor of any sporting event on TV or a nap.

I started to believe what he told me, that I was the reason he was unhappy, that I made his life difficult, that the way I was and what I did was the root of all our problems. Because what I was doing was trying to control him. Really. I asked him to stop drinking. Then I asked him to stop at two drinks. I’d say we needed to leave family and social events when he was tottering that edge between happy drunk and berating mean drunk. I’d ask him to go to therapy, to take his medication, to exercise, to get a job, to do something, anything that would make him happy. I nagged, I begged, I pleaded. Then I’d disconnect and move on to what I could manage — work, kids activities, overachieving and extra involvement in community groups. Success, or the illusion of it, was my balm and my buffer.

We did a dance where we’d get to a point that I’d tell him to go and live his life and he’d agree that he would go. Or he’d say “I’m leaving,” he wanted freedom. And I’d say “OK.” Then he’d counterpoint with flowers, sweet gestures, a rush of energy to sweep me off my feet. We’d giggle dancing in the kitchen and kiss and the girls would “oooh gross” and laugh with us. We’d have family hugs and cuddle on the couch or reading with them at night. He’d show that he’d been paying attention with incredibly thoughtful gifts. He’d take me on dates. Drinking dates at beer tastings, but it was a start, right. I put that shit all over facebook. Only the highlights, of course.

And around we’d go again and again. Me, always with the hope that I and the girls would be enough for him to sober up. Him, with the promises to be better, really this time. I didn’t want to be a single parent. Our girls loved their dad and I wanted them to be happy too, not in a broken family.

Then one day I came home from work and the little one, who was 7 at the time, greeted me at the front door. With her petite hands covering the side of her mouth, she whispered confidentially, “Dad is mad, he’s drinking beers, so here’s what we need to do so he won’t get mad at us and we can make him happy and everyone can be ok.” And her little, round, cherubic dimpled face, freckles dotted across her nose, those iris deep blue eyes, looked up and explained to my adult self how we, all three of us including her sister, would go through a series of actions designed to not raise more ire in their dad.

Her little voice, so full of concern, mapping out a plan became a buzz in my ears. “This stops now,” I thought, “Now. It is not a child’s job to manage the emotions of a grown man. It is not a child’s job to fix things of this magnitude. It is not a child’s job.” 

This was a repeat of my childhood, my need to fix everything to stop my unpredictable father from lashing out in anger or slamming things or not loving me unless I did what he wanted. And no one ever knew what he wanted, it just had to be right, so I aimed for perfect because that was better than right. What I swore would never happen and what was playing like a highlight reel of every terrible fear in my nightmares had come live again. 

A plan flowed in my mind. “Enough. We are done. I’m getting the kids out. I’m going to save them from the addict’s train wreck that will never end, and give them a chance to be kids. And save myself, because I cannot live, I cannot live like this anymore. I have lost myself in ten years of trying to help him, putting his needs and problems first.” As if the rest of us didn’t have needs and hopes and desires, and there was not room for those in this house with him. He owned the energy and the time and the space. And now, I want to live, I want to be happy.

He sobered up and I confronted him. We agreed, this was the end, finally. He had someone he wanted to be with. He had held on to his new job for a year, past the probation period, so he could be stable on his own. I wouldn’t drag him down any more.

Then my mom became gravely ill.

- - - - - - - 

So back to where I started… it isn’t easy to leave someone you love or loved. As I have been working through healing and writing this story over the last few years, I find it much easier to tap into the terrible, paired with outrage and anger, than to let myself feel the love and hope and excitement that was there when we first decided to create a life together and that I glimpsed in moments of beauty and connection. I had wanted us to heal and be well and make it into old age together.

Unfortunately, hope and love and delusion cannot heal addiction or psychosis. I could only learn how my expectations and behavior in light of the experiences was unhealthy, codependent, self-sabotaging, or enabling, and work to change myself and my way of being in the world. I have challenges now, but I am not trapped in an addicts’ mania and manipulation. In freedom, we have opportunity to co-create our best lives and to love ourselves and what is good again.

Hold on 
to that sliver of 
      light 
inside you. 

The arc of 
  time 
bends toward 
    divine 
 ascension. 

You glow 
  brighter 
every day.