Tag Archives: domestic abuse

~black and white wednesday~ international day of women

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manger ~ gertrude kesabier ~ 1899

 

on this international women’s day, i want to share some thoughts i’ve been collecting since before the election, concerning the experience of victims/survivors of domestic violence. i realize domestic violence is not a rainbows and butterflies topic, but it is one of the most important topics i write about, and on a day that is all about women, it’s important to me to remember how very alive this problem remains.

there are a few statistics that jumped out at me when i went a-googling, in order to give some context to just how big a problem we are talking about. the national coalition against domestic violence says that in the united states, about 20 people per minute are abused physically by a significant other. also, although we know that toasters don’t make toast; people make toast! it does seem significant to me that the risk of homicide in a domestic violence situation increases by 500% in the presence of a gun. this article portrays the problem in another shockingly succinct statistic: “The number of American troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2012 was 6,488. The number of American women who were murdered by current or ex male partners during that time was 11,766.”

with that i would like to share a friend of a friend of a friend’s words that i saw posted as a comment on one of dan rather’s pleasantly sane facebook essays. to me, it reads as a poem of sorts. it explains exactly how i feel about certain refrains i keep hearing about the current administration.

“Karen Rose says: A few things I’ve heard the last two months:

  1. Give Trump a chance.
  2. Maybe it won’t be that bad.
  3. All politicians are horrible.
  4. He’ll get better once in office.

.
Just a few things I’ve heard from victims of domestic violence.

  1. I’ll just give him another chance.
  2. It’s not that bad.
  3. All men are like this.
  4. He’ll get better once we’re married.

.
Just a few things I’ve heard months/years later from victims of domestic violence:

  1. She’s dead
  2. She’s in a coma
  3. He killed her child.
  4. He’s now beating his new girlfriend. “

this article is probably the one that hit home the most during an election campaign cycle that i personally experienced as déjà vu. many other women experienced it the same way. roughly, i’d say, one in three women, might have experienced listening to one particular candidate as traumatic or triggering, because of how it reminded them of emotionally violent partners. physical violence is only part of the story, of course, and almost always goes hand in hand with psychological/emotional abuse. in my case, the emotional violence was far worse, went on for far longer and was far more responsible for eroding my coping skills and morale than the one physical attack i endured.

 

actress margaret vale howe marching in 1913 for women’s suffrage in washington d.c.

(public domain, found for me by my fiance)

i’ve talked about memory issues that i have, and one of the reasons i write is a need to put my storyline back in order and keep it in order after it was fragmented by trauma. this fragmentation in domestic abuse situations can stem from the way in which the rules of fair discourse go out the window, and the rapid fire pace at which lies, denial, and fallacies of logic are lobbed at you. the shifting of blame, the abuser framing himself as victim (and finding plenty of folks who are willing to assert his victimhood!), the gaslighting (aggressively denying objective truth is a definition i like for this term); the way the subject gets abruptly turned back on you when you try to address an issue; the appeals to “everyone” who is said to agree with him about whatever egregious claims made about you; the use of voice as a weapon (the therapist who mediated between my abuser and me told me privately that he observed me becoming meeker and quieter as he got equally louder and more forceful in his speech); the confusion of being accused of dishonesty by the person who was a seasoned veteran at dishonesty (confusion, because i was receiving these accusations before i knew that he was a cheating liar. my mom saw that coming, and  knew the accusations were a red flag. i now see it in other people the same way she did, and know to avoid them.)

these tendencies in emotionally abusive individuals became normalized during the election. everything i just said is represented in the way the president has spoken and acted these past months. insistent denial of a very clear public record of lying; when confronted on his appalling record with women, bringing up the other candidate’s husband’s past record with women; when confronted on tax returns, bringing up emails; grossly overgeneralizing; making sure his voice is the loudest one in the room. jane goodall, renowned expert in ethology (the study of behavior) calls it like she sees it: he behaves like a male chimpanzee asserting dominance.

the article on emotionally abusive debate tactics didn’t mention physical intimidation (since it’s not a verbal debate tactic) but invading someone’s space and positioning one’s body in threatening ways is another thing survivors are familiar with. i’ve had door frames filled by a man’s bodies who wanted to trap me, i’ve had my own space invaded in order to back me down from sticking up for myself. there is a whole world of women who know what that looks and feels like, along with me.

i’m weary of the way people are treating each other. i’m disheartened by the descent to the lowest common denominator, the name-calling, the number of times i’ve heard people i thought were otherwise decent human beings use terminology such as “libtard” (and much worse) on other human beings. i was condescendingly criticized for my “thinking style” and accused of twisting words by a childhood friend on another friend’s facebook post. i stood up for “lefty liberals” when another friend of a friend slammed “them” for bringing the demise of recreational salmon fishing, since i was able to speak firsthand about my own work to ensure that there are any salmon left for future generations (including but not limited to recreational fishing). i’ve also chimed in when called out for “crying victim” which is how some “friends” would summarize the intent of the women’s march. there is a whole post to be written on the subject of shaming and invalidation of emotions such as fear and sadness, the natural and proportionate responses to things going on in the world.

this violent, careless way of speaking to people is not limited to the political divide. sitting in karate with coparent a few months back, who shares many liberal political views, he passive aggressively spoke about what an idiot his Psych 101 professor must be, because when he asked her to define codependency she failed to respond that it is, “the refusal to take a look at your own issues.” it’s been almost 9 years since i had a restraining order, but some things (victim-blaming) still haven’t changed.

and my situation, as tough as it was at times, reeks of what a place of privilege i experienced it from, and am able to reflect on it from. there are others with far fewer resources and who are therefore far more vulnerable to the effects of domestic abuse. you caught that 98% of domestic abuse cases also include financial abuse when you read through the statistics, right? my case did as well, but i had a way bigger safety net to jump into than many women.

which is why i don’t buy that anything this administration says they are doing in the  name of protecting women is really motivated by actual care for women. this (very current) article sums up how clauses in executive orders targeting domestic violence (of a certain religious bent) are more likely to pose an increased barrier to reporting domestic violence, and more like to threaten the very group of people they are claiming it will protect: immigrants. as if financial hurdles and the common threats of losing child custody and housing stability weren’t enough, these women have to deal with potentially being deported on top of it all if they speak up about abuse.

migrant mother (florence owens thompson, who at the time was a single mother of 6, and worked farm labor jobs during the depression) ~ dorothea lange ~ 1936

“After September 11, 2001, we had abusers from certain communities who affirmatively used anti-Muslim hostility as a tool of abuse… ’If you contact that police, you’re exposing our entire community, our household, and you’re likely to be treated as a criminal as well.’”

any provision to target the violence of only one religious group (and ignoring all the other religious groups with domestic violence issues), is a thinly veiled targeting of immigrants, rather than a source of help for victims of domestic violence. this administration’s threat of removal of funding from all 25 VAWA grant programs makes this case; this executive order is motivated by something other than care for the welfare of women.

which is why when it comes to abusive men, something we all need to learn (i needed to learn it!) is that even if you can’t trust anything they say, you darn well better watch their actions. as maya angelou said, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

i’ve quoted her once, and i’ll quote her again. she and the women in the photos i’ve borrowed to celebrate today, are great examples of women to look towards for inspiration, as women step into the strength that is already ours, but that the world still hasn’t embraced.

one unbroken line

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“first you go under

then coming up gives you the bends

and when you break the surface

all you can see is your friends

so you grab your purple crayon

and flesh out the picture behind

and finally the whole world is made of

one unbroken line

one unbroken line”

-ani difranco red letter year

 

i went under about 10 years ago this coming fall. i have alluded to that period of time in my life before, but i don’t think i have come right out and said what happened to me. it’s not a time i like to dwell on, but throughout my healing process, i have had a growing realization of how important that time was, and how important it is to my integrity for me to own it, to include it as part of my ongoing personal narrative, to acknowledge that it got that bad, to remember why i committed to never again sacrificing my integrity for anyone else. part of why i blog is to help me curate my personal narrative, to keep track of myself in an ongoing unbroken line that is my story, my understanding of who i am. at first it was a research endeavor, an archaeology dig back into my journals and emails to figure out how the pieces all fit, and i will admit to actually entering key life events into a spreadsheet that i could perform data sorts upon. (card carrying nerd. you can laugh. i do.) now the ongoing note-taking it has evolved into is essentially a maintenance strategy to keep my story intact and refuse to let it fragment as it once did.

in 2005, i was so broken down by emotional abuse that i was starting to dissociate from myself. you have to leave yourself briefly when you lash out in ways that aren’t true to who you are. i was awful to friends, because i was forced to prove my loyalty to my relationship by adopting someone else’s opinions and inflicting them on people who had been good to me. i became increasingly isolated and debilitated, and had trouble with basic tasks, to say nothing of the way i was floundering in my master’s degree program. i started to lash out at the abuser, becoming abusive myself out of sheer desperation. i blocked out seemingly unforgettable moments, such as him lighting my mattress on fire while i was lying on it, and only retrieved those memories years later from journal entries i had shared with no one. he cut phone cords while i talked to the very few remnants of support i had left, he cut my houseplants. my daily experience had so eroded away at me that i began to scratch and kick, and even brandish knives back at the other participant in the suffering.

unable to bear myself anymore, i pondered dying, i wished to die, i craved a way out as concise as death. i wanted it to be all over. i contemplated whether i could pull it off. i despaired that i might not be able to. i was tortured by sleep deprivation and the emotional abuse hit new plateaus of awfulness. i couldn’t bear who i had become, what was “happening to me” (because i did not believe or perceive at the time that i bore any responsibility for the circumstances i was in, nor that i had any choice in exiting the scenario) until one day i walked out the door with a bottle of pills in my hand.

he called the police. they drove up to me and asked if i was carrying pills. i said yes. they asked if i planned to use them and i said i didn’t know.

my answers did not inspire enough confidence in them to let me keep walking, so they put handcuffs on me and drove me to the county mental health inpatient facility.

i spent the night in a chair in the intake area at the county facility. as soon as i was there i was begging to leave. not a pretty place. out of the frying pan and into the fire.

i was transferred to where the other overwhelmed grad students go to have inpatient mental health care, and 48 hours after i was cuffed and stuffed, i was home sweet home. but a home in which i couldn’t rest my weary bones. a home in which i lived in constant survival mode. a home in which i found myself longing for home.

i had committed to a treatment plan in order to be discharged. i had committed to weekly counseling. i think my 48 hours as an inpatient shook me awake.

i followed through on the plan. my counselor was great. she helped me make a self care plan. she listened to me say “he… he… he….” then reminded me, “think about youuuuuu!!!” she got me into a psychiatrist who wrote me a prescription that really helped me balance out my chemistry. she encouraged me to go to al-anon meetings. i went faithfully. i went from one yoga class per week to four or five. i was planting seeds in pots, making cups of tea, eating fresh fruits and veggies, taking baths, remembering other little things i had forgotten i liked to do for myself, and little by little, those self care actions turned into actually caring about myself again. new neural pathways opened up, and i followed them more and more. i moved out of the apartment.

over time, i realized those police officers and inpatient personnel did not do anything to me, though at the time i felt very wronged. over time, i realized that i had been unable to recognize my actions as a loud and clear call for help, and i was fortunate my call was heard and responded to by people just doing their jobs.

as time passed, i learned a lot about what was going on in my brain at the time. speaking scientifically, there were neural pathways i was over-utilizing and they held me in a downward spiral. speaking spiritually, i learned how impoverished i had allowed my soul to become. i have read books like trauma and recovery, by judith herman, which helped me to understand the mechanisms by which trauma triggers a brain to fragment, and how fragmentation is essential, at first, to survival in the face of real threat, but also allows distortion to become the chief way a traumatized individual handles information, even in situations where one is not threatened. i learned how it was possible to overcome this non-adaptive strategy (non-adaptive once one has emerged from survival mode), and i learned why i wanted to: distortion is lying, to oneself, and to others, whereas i had always thought of myself as an honest person. i slowly came to be able to articulate that by committing to “never going back there” i meant “to always maintain my integrity.” i read books like the four agreements, and lots of others, that helped me put my finger on what integrity even meant to me. be impeccable with your word; don’t take anything personally; don’t make assumptions; always do your best.

omitting definitions related to calculus and desegregation, here is how webster defines integrity:

integrity 1. the quality or state of being complete; unbroken condition; wholeness; entirety 2. the quality or state of being unimpaired; perfect condition; soundness 3. the quality or state of being of sound moral principle; uprightness, honesty, and sincerity.

integrate 1. to make whole or complete by adding or bringing together parts 2. to put or bring (parts) together into a whole; unify 3. to give or indicate the whole, sum, or total of 6. Psychol. to cause to undergo integration; to become integrated.

integration 1. an integrating or being integrated 3. Psychol. the organization of various traits, feelings, attitudes, etc., into one harmonious personality.

as i delved into my research on myself, i strove to leave no stone unturned. i found that judging my choices and being hard on myself didn’t help. it turned out, i needed to be gentle with myself. when i was able to extend myself some compassion, i had an easier time remaining present, instead of dissociating any time the going got tough. yet, i found that i needed to know what had happened, so there could be no further denial. just the facts, without judgment. i waded through old journals and emails, and inserted the fragments of my life story into their places, until the thread was once again whole and continuous, integrated. integrated, integrity.

i let go of the relationship that kept me poised having to choose between it and my integrity. more ani: “i looked up to see integrity finally won over desire.” this did not happen overnight, oh no. domestic abuse, to paraphrase something a friend recently said, is so ongoing you start to not notice your new normal is so bad. it takes time to undo all of that and make a new good normal for yourself. i kept showing up for myself, stayed honest with myself, got more counseling even after several moves and having a baby had made life more complicated. i chose interpretations of my circumstances that felt empowering, that celebrated my strength and resilience in the face of adversity, over interpretations that dwelled on negatives or encouraged self-pity.

there was retaliation in the aftermath. it didn’t go along with someone else’e plan that i was getting so healthy. the aftermath subsided. my integrity held.

year eleven came along, and all the “beyond your wildest dreams” stuff they used to talk about at al-anon? turns out it’s really real.

now i have a man who validates and supports my whole being and loves all of me, containing my feelings by refusing to allow my self-loathing neural pathways to open back up. this is truer to the core of how i see myself (a person of integrity) than any desire to have my self-loathing “validated” in the ways an abusive partner would “validate” it, by encouraging that self-loathing and feeding that monster.

“darling, you will not find

in the well into which you fall

what i keep for you on the heights:

a bouquet of dewy jasmines,

a kiss deeper than your abyss.”

-pablo neruda, except from his poem the well, from the captain’s verses

new lessons have come my way. new opportunities to use what i have learned, or to try to share my experience with friends whose circumstances remind me of mine 10 years ago when i was hospitalized, or 9 years ago when i gave it one more try “for the baby”, or 8 years ago when i was hiding the atm card underneath said sleeping baby to try to keep some money in the account for bills instead of just beer, or 7 years ago when i got hit and walked out with my one year old, or a little over 3 years ago, when i stopped paying my ex’s rent, or whenever ago. i have new appreciation for what i struggled through, because it gives me street cred with people who might otherwise have no use for my suggestions. because it’s true, if you haven’t been through it, it is probably impossible to understand why someone would (and probably will, for a long time) stay. my past connects me not only to myself, to who i was, who i am, and how i got from point a to point b, but also connects me to others in a web that just continues to enhance my life as it expands outward.

new opportunities where i have to choose how to best maintain my integrity come along. i have less and less trouble identifying how it all fits into the one unbroken line of my narrative. i see more and more signs that say “yes” to me, that reinforce the positive choices i make, that affirm life and love and abundance. i recognize them sooner, sometimes even in the moment when i am looking at them, like the morning when an eagle flew along beside our car for about a quarter of a mile, in one unbroken line, as we drove into town. i have more and more success following my intuition, which is better and better calibrated to keeping my path unbroken, unfragmented, connected, intact, whole.

eagle IMG_6771