5 months 18 days post divorce

In the end, it is not so much the neck grabbing, pinning down incidences that haunt me- though I still suffer at times, unhappy flashback moments.  A glimpse, a thought, an item-- all those things can remind me of those times and that fear.  

But really, what I remember are those words, words like daggers that I relive.  "Everyone leaves you in the end, don't they", he had said- pointing out a once-dear friend who no longer called.  "Get off your fat ass, and go talk to the neighbors- as he sauntered over to the nice irish Catholic elderly neighbors who we have known for years- kind people who ignored the tears silently streaming down my face as I stood silently next to him, surely seeming the odd one.

Or the confusing messages I felt, when I was deep into the "pick me" dance (as Chumplady calls it).  Making love to my husband, trying to reconnect, he would say he loved me to my words offering the same.  But my words had been sincere, while his were not.  He would subsequently come home later the next day (and then everyday)..drunk and late (long after the kids were asleep).  I would ask where he was, and he would respond, "I was out getting laid, want to see the lipstick marks?", and then he would laugh at his jokes and rollover to pass out on the couch- it being too gross to come upstairs to our bed.  After one particular night when we had been together, and I thought we had reconnected, he came
home even later and more drunk-- stating he only was with me because he had
been "horny".  I was devastated and humiliated. He accused me of "f*cking me because I'm a cashcow to you", the morning after when I asked him to leave money for the kids haircuts.   It appeared that the more he would "fall back" into our relationship, the more he would immediately fight to leave it, with worse and more atrocious actions meant to devastate and humiliate me.  To let loose of the "power" he said I had over him.  And "I am taking care of that", he had said.  My husband of 20 years, at that point (partner for 25) had become a devil..

I started to pretend to not see him if he came home. I thought about hiding the knives as he became progressively more hostile, threatening that he was afraid he might "lose control".  Or stating, perhaps, he just kick me out of our house on my ass and into the street, taking the kids.  The cumulative amount of verbal abuse astounds me now, as I can not believe...for the man with whom I had literally grown up with since the time we were 21...who was he?? What had I done to deserve this ("you should know...!", he would shout).

So now, when it is late into the night, his words that I have told my therapists, friends, all who would listen and cluck and shake their heads...none of them truly helped, despite their well intentioned efforts.  Its the demon result of those words, from the man who was once my everything (even as we disagreed, or disconnected over the years)...it is those words that echo in my ears..late at night as I try to sleep.  The damage that he tried to inflict...that he DID inflict and I am trying to recover from.  Those things that undermine my belief that I might find someone to love and to love me, as my "forever" family.  And the fear that, no matter whom I meet, that I will "ruin them the way I tried to ruin him".  Heartbreak and insomnia. Sadness. Loneliness. Damn.