Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi you`re my only hope!

I have to start this blog by saying that although it’s a bit of a downer and not what I usually intend to write here, I felt like I should write it. It wasn’t an easy decision, and after much debate with myself and many hours of my pointer finger hovering over the publish button, unsure if I wanted to even put something this immensely personal out there in cyber world, I chose to push the button and take the plunge.

My reasons behind it are simple I guess. Last month was National Domestic Violence month and although luckily, I have never experienced physical violence in a relationship, although like all women I suspect, I have come as close as I would like to get. I have experienced and recently went through verbal and emotional abuse that I have not yet found a way to get over. And although, my friends and family will be the first to tell you that I am not one to talk about deep personal things like this, at least not to them face to face, I have decided that for the women out there that need to hear it, I would publish it.

I don’t like admitting that I allowed a man to control me and emotionally abuse me to the point that although I knew things were never going to get any better, I couldn’t bring myself to kick him out, but I did. I didn’t want to be the one who ended things, although I knew I should have. His stories and heartfelt tears in the early years of our life and marriage over his abusive step mother, the sexual abuse he fell to at the hands of a babysitter that his parents ignored, the kidnapping of himself by his father, his emotionally and physically absent mother; all of it stopped me from leaving him. All he ever asked me, cried about, begged me over the years was to love him no matter what and to never leave him, he couldn’t take the rejection from another woman in his life.

Instead, what I didn’t see was his hatred for those women in his life, and his need to take out on me everything he felt they did to him. By the time I saw that for what it was, I was beaten down by it and trapped between loving the man I married and hating the monster he had become. My daily schedule for the last five and a half years consisted of waking up instantly tense and on eggshells wondering what mood he would be in that day, what lie would be told, what fight would he start, would it be a good day or bad day, and it all hinged on him.

I see that now and wonder how I let it get to that point, but I guess as much as I hate to admit this next part, like most women or stereotypes of women, I couldn’t let go without trying to fix it, without trying to fix him. How could I ever look my son in the face if I didn’t do everything I could to bring back the man he once was, the man who above all else at one time in his life couldn’t wait to be a husband and father? Sometimes though, despite my best efforts he would come looking for the fight, needing someone to yell at, let his anger out on. Usually it was me, I made sure of that, but later when my son was older and a teenager and had a mind of his own, he would get some of it too.

Some days his temper and hatred were so bad I would come home from work and lock myself and my children in my bedroom where we would watch TV together and laugh and have fun, keeping ourselves as far away from him as possible. The kids just enjoyed it like a game, a pajama party with mom, and I know from talking with them now that I was successful in not letting them know why I held those impromptu parties in my room.

I will probably never know why my husband started down the self-destructive path he did and why he chose to take those he claimed at one point in life to love above all others with him. At this point I don’t think I want to know, or care anymore, but it might at least help explain some things, give that closure bullshit everyone is always talking about. I’m not sure, considering I just called it bullshit with a good amount of sarcasm intended in the phrase I seem to doubt it.

I mean, I know what he told me over the years, what led him to abuse drugs and later on everyone around him, but I don’t really accept that. His excuses of his life not being where he thought it should have been by that point, and the weight of financial woes and not having the job he thought he would love etc, just doesn’t cut it with me. Everyone faces these issues, I faced them with him, and I didn’t become a drug addict hell bent on breaking everything we built together for 17 years, why did he? Why couldn’t he bring himself out of the bog he dragged us all into? It isn’t fair, it isn’t right and it leaves those who were around him with no choices and no control.

On a daily basis I faced such intense anger, depression, outright meanness and deliberate lies that I knew nothing else. Part of me I think was consigned to living with it in silence. Well, not always in silence, I am after all Irish and could fight back with him almost as good as he gave to me, but it got me nowhere. Then again nothing I did seemed to do any good. Stay quite and ignore it, yell and scream and fight and throw things, talk quietly to him, try and use reasoning, nothing worked, nothing got through and everything seemed to make it worse.

It kills me now thinking back on it that I spent so much time trying to save him from himself, when I knew then it was a lost cause. He was far-gone and out of my reach the moment he picked up his first crack pipe and took a hit. It was over before I even knew about it, but I hung on anyway. I took the abuse, I shielded the kids from it, lied to friends and covered it up so our friends and family wouldn’t end up hating and resenting him the way I already did. Of course, that never works either, because his behavior did spill out into other relationships he had. Stealing money from my parents and grandparents, stealing from the kids piggy banks and jewelry boxes to pay for his fix. Everyone knew it, everyone knew what was happening and still I lied for him and tried to cover it up or make it seem it wasn’t as bad as it actually was.

I hate myself for that, probably always will. I see now my behavior was just an extension of his emotional abuse. The worst thing I think was when he would suddenly wake up one morning and be the man he once was, loving and caring, fixing things around the house, actively looking for a job and curbing his temper. Those moments in between would keep me in the fight, hoping that this time it would last more than a day, a week, or a month. However, those moments were fleeting and few and far between and now that I look back on it, seemed to always have been timed to when I was at the end of my rope, and he probably knew it.

Sometimes when I’m alone and its quiet I find myself wondering if when he is alone with himself and his thoughts, sober and straight, if he ever realizes what he has done to those that loved him and would have done anything for him. I wonder, but I think the answer to that is probably no. People like him, they don’t see it, they cant, because if they did, if they truly stopped for even one second and saw their actions from someone else’s point of view they couldn’t live with themselves, and that must be scarier than anything.

My son worries sometimes that he has his father’s genes and he could be like him, but I tell him every day, the fact that you see it, hate it and know it is wrong will stop you from that fate. Despite everything he grew up seeing and experiencing on his own at the hands of his father, my son is a good man, kind, nice, everything I once saw and fell in love with about my husband, but with some glaring differences. My husband always had an attitude that the world owed him for his shitty childhood and life should be easier because he had it tough. He used every thing that ever bothered him or hurt him in his youth as an excuse to hurt others in his adulthood. My son is far from that. He doesn’t expect anything from anybody and enjoys working for the things he has. Somehow despite him, or maybe to spite him, my son is and will be a very different man from his father. Whatever good there was in the man I married survives in my son, and for that I will thank him. Thank him for giving my son, the best parts of him, even if in the end that meant, he had no more left for himself.

I see people all the time talk about their bad childhoods and how they cant get over them and I cringe, knowing full well, that if someone cant get over the dysfunction they grew up with, it will end up destroying their lives, and the lives of everyone around them. I knew it; I saw signs that my husband had issues but I loved him, loved him enough to accept him with those flaws and try to understand and help when he was bogged down in the shit that was his family and childhood.

But once he decided, consciously decided that taking drugs and cutting off the only people who cared enough to hate what he was doing to himself, the beginning of the end was already written, there was no way to stop it. I just wish I had realized it then, I could have saved my children and I some bad memories and the absolute heartbreak that comes from a true betrayal by someone you truly loved and trusted. Nothing compares to it, and nothing ever will. This time even Obi-Wan Kenobi cannot help.