The Blame Game

CW: domestic violence, abuse, consent violation

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Sometimes I wish he would have had the decency to just hit me.

Everyone can agree it's abuse when he hits you, and everyone agrees that it's not your fault. I tell myself that would have made the abuse easy to see. The black eye, the busted lip - they say, with unequivocal conviction, This is not okay.

And then I feel ashamed.

I feel ashamed because there are so many women who wish he would stop hitting them. For them, it's not as easy to see. Or it is, but they don't have a way out. Or they think they don't have a way out. I know how all of those feel, so I should* just be grateful that I didn't have it worse. 

... Right?

I feel ashamed because the following is a list of some of the times it should* have been clear that the relationship was at least prodigiously unhealthy if not plainly abusive (as I've come to recognize in the time since it ended through a whole lot of therapy and research).

- When he cheated on me. While I was unexpectedly expecting with the world's worst "morning" sickness all day every day. I was also studying for final exams that weekend. During the "weed out" term of my grad school program. Right before Christmas. Then when he excused himself (i.e. implied it was my fault) because I walked out on him during an argument (to go to class, which I was late for).
- When he guilted, manipulated, and straight up coerced me into an open relationship that I told him time and again that I didn't want.
- When he drove around in a reckless rage while I cowered in the passenger seat. Because I said something that upset him (i.e. the reckless endangerment, like everything else, was my fault). When I worked up the courage to ask him to drive more carefully, and he didn't.
- When a particularly nasty fight ended in him slamming the car door so hard in my face that it rocked the whole car. He left and walked home. I was so afraid of him that I called a neighbor on my drive back and asked for a place to stay for a while. Just so I wouldn't be there alone when he got back.
- All the times he was so angry that he was slamming doors and... punching walls? Kicking walls? I'm not sure; I was usually hiding in the closet. When I texted my best friend from the closet to check if I was just overreacting because of previous trauma.
- When he was uncomfortable with me being nude with a bunch of gay men in a sweat lodge prayer ceremony in the woods, but "couldn't understand" why I would be uncomfortable with him not using protection with the other woman he was seeing (even though she was with three other people, all of whom I'd never met) and attempted to coerce me into agreeing that it was fine.
- When he called me "a monster" and told me it was my fault that he'd lied to me because I was "impossible to talk to."
- When he refused to hear my No the first time, or the fifth time, or any time. When I stopped saying No because I finally realized it wasn't an acceptable answer, and he accepted that as consent.

This is far from an exhaustive list, but I think I've made my point.

In hindsight, it would seem that there were more than enough glaringly obvious signs that were shouting THIS IS NOT OKAY!

It should* have been clear as day. I shouldn't* have needed him to hit me.

I spent months walking around thinking that if the people around me could see my emotional body, I'd be completely covered in cuts and bruises. How is that in any way unclear?

But... I loved him. (In my head, I say this with the jaded inflection of a villain mocking the fallen heroine after "true love" brings her to defeat and disgrace.)

But I did. I loved him. So I excused him. I took the blame. Over and over again. On the rare occasion that he hadn't been the one who accused me in the first place, he was still happy to let me have it. I was understanding and compassionate. I was terrified and browbeaten. I was waiting and waiting for things to settle down, praying they would go back to the way they were Before. And there were little tastes of that lost sweetness - just enough to keep me hopeful. To keep me blind. To keep me stupid.

I have a lot of trouble keeping my balance on the tightrope between empowerment and self-blame.

I know I've taken too much responsibility in many situations and relationships, not the least of which being the abusive ones. If only I'd taken responsibility for taking too much responsibility...

I think that if I'd seen what seems so obvious now, I could have saved myself a lot of pain. Maybe if I'd caught it early, I wouldn't be losing ... investing ... losing so much of my life - all the energy, the precious time, my physical health, and so much money - trying to recover.

I don't know how to reconcile my determination to never let this happen again with the fact that it happened. If I can heal to the point where I can't be abused again, it means that if I had healed enough before, then he wouldn't have been able to abuse me. It means I was abusable. It quickly degenerates into my fault.

I find that analogies are helpful in my process. Seems reasonable, as humans have been using stories and symbols to make sense out of their world since time immemorial.

So, for now, I see myself as a featherless phoenix. I went through the flames of an intense experience of initiation. I have been resting in the ashes - learning, healing, growing. Searching for meaning, for understanding. Taking inventory of what survived the blaze, what was destroyed, and what has been transmuted into something entirely new and unknown. My new self taking form.

Now I'm rising from those ashes. I feel small, fragile. Flightless. I suspect that in time I will discover my power. My wings will grow feathers, because that's what wings do.

I believe that when I come into my power, I'll have compassion for my previous form. I imagine myself throwing back my feathered head, a musical laugh becoming phoenix song.

How could she possibly have expected to fly before? It was the fire that gave her wings.



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* I fully recognize that the shoulding is unhelpful, but it's the voice in my head and I am committed to accurately recounting my process. I'm choosing to give space to all my parts and pieces, regardless of my judgments about them. I'm getting better at listening to the parts that don't serve me with an ear to hear the wisdom and an ear to hear the bullshit, and at discerning which is which.