Veil Lifted - Tumblr Posts
He will admit to some moments of physical abuse but narrow it down to one or a small handul of times where I made him so angry that he lost his temper.
He will justify what he did with a 'but'.
He will deny the severity.
He will deny the frequency.
He will deny all the emotional, psychological, financial and sexual aspects.
He believes that I got what I deserved.
He believes that he tried his best.
He believes that he tried to help me but I was too fucked up to save.
He would tell you that I was abusive and hurt his pride.
He will say I ruined his life.
Does the person who abuses you know they are abusive?
Reblogging this will work. Liking this will work. Messaging me will not work. Email me at chronic.survivors@gmail.com
A text from January 31, 2017
wow all you need to do is surprise me with dinner, a new job, a three some, a vacation and a apartment (or your own home big enough for me)
and i would be dating you.
Complex trauma from abuse can cause chronic exhaustion, and chronic pain. This means the recovery, aside from being filled with guilt, shame and rage, will include long time spent in bed, feeling to exhausted and pained to move, or do anything.
This is happening because trauma is hard on the human body, and your body will spend all energy just trying to fight it, or repress it, or process it. The emotional pain of trauma being processed is enough to cause physical pain, chest pain, pain in all of your joints, headaches; your body will be so tense you can end up in chronic back pain and muscle pain just from all the tension and inability to relax. Your mind will be re-living the past and your body will react accordingly, getting terrified, shocked, tense, and finally showing all the damage you couldn’t feel when the abuse was happening. Even if you felt nothing while it was happening, there was no way to avoid this, your body can’t keep the trauma hidden inside of you forever.
One thing common for recovering victims is to feel intense shame for resting, for spending so much time in bed, feeling sick and worried about their future because they can’t get it together enough, or can’t get their tasks done due to pain and detachment from reality. You’ve all experienced being shamed for resting, being blamed for your own pain, and told you have no value if you’re not productive and hardworking. However, none of this applies to you right now. You need to rest. This rest is for survival. This is comparable to recovery from life-threatening injury, you cannot be expected to function or shamed for being lazy if your body is broken and barely hanging onto life. You are surviving, and you need rehabilitation and care, not feelings of inadequacy or shame for still daring to be alive.
It’s alright for you to exist just to rest only. In rare moments you do manage to get up, it’s okay to just do soothing non-productive stuff. There is no limit to how much care you need right now and you are obliged to give that to yourself. If the chronic exhaustion is caused by trauma, it will get better, not fast, not all at once, but slowly, during months and years, your body will let enough trauma out to allow you to use some of your energy for yourself. It’s vital you rest and let the trauma do its thing, and then eventually you will get your body back.
His last text to me was nearly two years ago. Every unrecognized number that calls still makes me sweat, but I have found peace living out from underneath his thumb.
Look at you, living everyday without the person you thought you needed.
Lesson learned: relationships take investment; they're not supposed to hurt like this.
I wrote this years ago, and finally had it in me to search for the article properly. Apparently I was a little off on the title, but I remember the content well enough.
He read this as a list of accusations that he applied to me even when they didn’t. He should have seen me for my rotten core.
There is nothing of substance or value here; likely a severely misogynistic incel's fantasy world. So many trigger warnings, but if you're curious:
here it is, an article from 2013 written by a person who hopefully never breeds.
I need a breather
I was composing a post regarding him sending me snippits of an article ( generous term, since I seem to recall it being a reddit gem) entitled ”How to Know You’re Dating a Slut.” It’s as charming as it sounds from what I remember but details will have to wait for another post.
You see, I made a horrible, horrible mistake: I tried to search for the article. Like, by typing the title above into Google.
You should try it. Actually don’t; it’s horrible. The results you get are just…. ludicrous. I’m barely keeping myself from drowning in my own guilt and self loathing, and it was too much.
So that project above is on indefinite hiatus. The internet is an awful place. Who knew.
Who would I be if I had broken up with him the first time he cheated on me? Fifteen years later I can barely tell you who I was before I met him.
you do things despite feeling afraid. you get out of bed when your mind aches. you ask for help when you need it and try not to stay inside all day. you try to talk yourself out of bad choices. you search for the good things and beauty that are hard to notice. you tell yourself that things will get better, despite feeling otherwise. you treat yourself gently, even though you’re never far from wanting to return to square one. you try your best despite feeling tired. you’ve come a long way from where you started. you want to heal and you’re getting there. that’s something to be proud of.
I wrote this post in the early weeks of freedom. Nearly three years later I'm still discovering new impacts of the damage.
Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.
I have started writing a number of my posts with “The worst thing about an abusive relationship is….” and then having to erase it because it isn’t true. I can’t call this particular aspect or experience the worst thing. It’s all the worst thing.
One time he nearly choked me out because he wore one of his socks inside out.
Coming up on 3 years this month. Can confirm: best thing he ever did for me.
He cut me off a year ago today.
Best thing he probably ever did for me.
I could have learned more if I hadn't been so afraid all the time.
i would have learned, you know. i know violence teaches, and it teaches well. but i would have learned without it.
Lights at the end of tunnels
From time to time I receive messages from survivors at various stages in the recovery process.
First, I am honoured that you trust me with your stories (some of you telling someone for the first time!), and that you think I may have something of value to say to you.
Second, I’m sorry I don’t always respond promptly. I can get overwhelmed easily and that slows my response time. Sometimes by, like, months.
Third, if there is one thing I wish I could have convinced myself of earlier it would be that being alone is not the worst. It takes practice, but it can be pretty great.
You are awesome (yes, I promise), and spending time nurturing your interests can be an amazing part of your healing. Someone tried to erase my personality; I took it back, piece by piece, doing new things or re-discovering the old ones that make me happy.
Being beholden to no one is freedom, and it was important for me to get to know, sort out, and trust my head again.
Alone there are so many possibilities that don’t exist in the vacuum of an abusive relationship. So many possibilities for a content, peaceful existence.
I hope you believe me.
Happy New Year.
Hope to Despair in Minutes
You know that scene in the animated Cinderella were Stepmother tells her she can go to the ball if she finishes all her chores and finds a dress to wear? Then she and the stepsisters load on the chores so that it’s impossible for her to finish sewing her dress?
That was him. He'd tell me at 8pm that we should watch a movie that night, but he’d have to be in bed by 11pm. I’d also have to finish cleaning the kitchen, making his lunches for the week, prepping dinner for the week, all the laundry, vacuum and scrub the floors, clean the bathroom, change the sheets, and bake something for a snack before we could sit down.
When I inevitably failed, it was my fault, once again, that we couldn’t do anything nice together. I was never to forget that it was always my fault as I was such a lazy cunt. It was an excuse for him to be angry and hurt me, and an excuse for me to feel bad about myself
I still have a hard time looking forward to things.
Double Standard Series - Episode 1
Example 1. When we were still teenagers, he had a bearded dragon. One of its favourite things to eat was mixed greens.
He made me wash and scrub each leaf individually. An entire package of this shit. It would take me over an hour.
On a rare occasion where he volunteered to do the cleaning, I walked in on him washing the lettuce en masse in a colander. You know, the way any other reasonable person would.
I asked why I was forced to clean it in such an over-the-top way. He told me that I was inherently lazy and that if he didn’t give me very specific, detailed, and meticulous instructions that I would slack and his animal would die.
He was protecting his animal and making me a better person at the same time. He was insulted that I didn’t see it that way.
I've been alive 35 years today, which is at least 4 more than I was expecting.
Au revoir
The memories feature on Facebook can feel like a kick to the stomach sometimes. But they can also remind you that you were brave enough to take out the trash. Even if it took you a little longer than it should have.
Double Standards Series - Episode 5
He could be pretty gross.
His belching ranged from ground shaking to ear piercing. He farted anywhere he liked, and as loud as he wanted. He would hock loogies all the time.
This is all forgivable. Human beings are disgusting.
The problem was, that it wasn’t forgivable for me to be human. One time, I had snot on the outside of my nose in public, and he made such a big deal about it so other people noticed to embarrass me.
I didn’t fart in his presence. Ever. I would go outside, or go to the washroom, or go to any room away from him where he wouldn’t hear it.
Still anytime there was ever a bad smell, it was always be my fault. He would look at me with disgust on his face and say my name with disdain. He would then accuse me of lying and force me to apologize when I insisted that I didn’t ‘do it.’ It was extra special if he could do it in public.
This might sound trivial, but it was a big part of my life. And it was humiliating. I had to fit into a neat and tidy and wholly unrealistic image of femininity that meant that I couldn’t even be comfortable in my home.
It reminded me how completely inept I was at being a woman and a wife.
More on him being disgusting
This adds more to the “shitty person who doesn’t care about other human beings especially those in positions he considers inferior” column.
He blew his nose into a FABRIC napkin at a restaurant. AT THE TABLE. I was so mortified at the thought of our server having to open that up to throw into the laundry that I actually said something.
I told him it was gross, and he should be going to the bathroom to blow his nose INTO TISSUE.
He got so angry with me that he left me in a dramatic and humiliating fashion.. Conveniently I also got to to pick up the tab that he’d racked up. He messaged me about 30 minutes later telling me he was a block away and that he didn’t want to pull up in front to pick me up.
He was embarrassed and couldn’t go back there again because I had made him act so poorly.
Oof.
“You were forcing me to feel guilty about having wounds, you pretended my emotions weren’t real, you dramatized your most tiny problems until they looked more important than my whole life struggles, you punished me over and over again for “not following your rules” and you had the fucking nerve to pretend that I was the toxic one.”
— (via furiousgoldfish)