That Time I Forgot Who I Am
August 2015
I learn I am in full remission from the cancer I have been fighting for a year.
When I, on the happiest day of my life short of the day my son was born, told the man I had been in a relationship with for three years I was in remission his response was, "Good, maybe now you can start doing more around here. I'm glad because I was getting really tired and a little disgusted by the sickness." It hadn't been the romance of the century but I had thought we were at least friends. The next morning I left.
September 2015 I wrote:
If I ever decide to be in a relationship again, this has to be my boundary list.
I have thought long and hard about every serious relationship I have been in (very few by what most people would count) and although I was abused differently in all of them, there were red flags they (ALL**) had in common. Red flags I CANNOT ever ignore again because I really don’t know if I can emotionally survive another abusive relationship.
If they lie to you about another woman, end it. Do not listen to excuses. **
If they do nothing for you on special days, such as birthdays or anniversaries, do nothing for them. Do not give unreciprocated love. **
Tell them about your number one bucket list item. Your dream date. If they do not do it for you, leave. You deserve to be with someone who will go to the effort of putting together a small picnic and bringing you to a place near the water for your dream date. You deserve effort.**
If they accuse you of things with no reason, leave. You do not need to be mistrusted.
If they regularly leave you alone for weekends when both of you work during the week, or long periods of time, leave. You deserve someone who understands how afraid you are when you are alone and someone who wants spend time with you.
If they disappear for hours with no explanation or bullshit excuses that don’t jive, leave. Trust your gut. It has never failed you in the past. **
If they lie to you about money, end it. You are completely self-sufficient. There would be no reason for anyone to lie to you about money.
If they get blackout drunk and mean then tell call you a liar when you tell them how they acted, leave. You grew up in an alcoholic household. You need to remind yourself this is not acceptable. It is not normal and it is abuse.
If they can’t respect that you have had a cocaine addiction and can’t be around it, leave. Period. No explanation to yourself needed.
If they make plans with you and break them for other options, leave. You are worth more than being cast aside for other plans. **
If they will not stand up for you and defend you to other people, leave. If they love you and choose to be with you, you should be their number one priority short of their children.
No one with underage children. Period.
Explain the seriousness of your illness and that it could come back at any time. Be with someone who will be there for you. Someone who will go to some of your doctors’ appointments with you, Take care of you on really scary days and be compassionate if you ever go out of remission and have to get chemotherapy again. You deserve someone who will be supportive and not make you go through hard times alone.
If you can’t picture yourself old with them, don’t be with them.
If your friends hate them for you, listen to your friends. They want to see you happy so if they are telling you something it is because they see your happiness is being jeopardized.
Don’t keep explaining yourself and why you deserve to be loved. If you are with someone who can’t see for themselves all you do for them when you are with them, leave. Don’t beg. **
Don’t ever let anyone call you names and put you down. That behavior is abusive and juvenile. Do not engage. **
Lastly, if you do meet someone, don’t lose yourself for them. Don’t keep putting aside what is important to you hoping they will see your worth. Never ever be someone’s doormat again. **
March 2021
I. Broke. Every. Single. Rule.
He believes I hate him. I don’t. I hate myself.
There is zero point pulling every way he wreaked hell on my spirit out of the mud and hanging the rotting corpse of a battered mind out to display the grotesque details. I allowed this to happen to me. I was so confident in my intelligence and ability to see through it all I allowed myself to be neglected, forgotten, cast aside, berated, insulted, and repeatedly lied to. I saw it happening and I refused to believe I had made such a poor choice. I kept telling myself as long as I knew what was happening it was okay. I couldn’t allow that voice telling me I deserved better, that someone who loves me wouldn’t treat me this way. It was the way I grew up. Alcoholic household, same town, same disregard for anyone but himself, his wants, and his needs, his drugs, his way. Any scrap of compassion or help expected to be praised, thanked, and shown over-the-top gratitude for or be told I don’t appreciate anything. Lies about talking to and being with other women. Giving up my vacation time to help him go through withdrawals only to have him start using again and lie to everyone about it. So. Much. Cocaine. Doing cocaine with his daughter. Buying stolen merchandise. Drug dealers coming to his house. Going to drug dealer's house and leaving me in a friend’s driveway in the freezing cold while he scores cocaine. Disgusting! I consciously set aside my own morals and made myself be “okay” with everything. I told myself I had to be more accepting. I told myself I am too “black and white”.
I became my co-dependent mother; making excuses for, and excusing behavior I wouldn’t accept from a casual acquaintance. This was pointed out to my by a friend who had lost my trust. She said, "You will forgive him time and again but you won't forgive me". (She thought she was making a case for herself when all she was doing was making me realize that last point) All the while losing myself, dropping walls and boundaries, settling for less and less because I was little by little being made to feel guilty for wanting to be loved despite my disease and grateful for any scrap of “love” I was shown. Zero support dealing with my illness. Being told he never would have gotten together with me if he “actually realized what he was getting into but by the time he realized what it actually meant, it was too late.” Bullshit, manipulative, mind fucks like that to wear me down and make me feel grateful to him for being with the cancer patient. Saying to me he tells customers how strong I am and how hard it is for him to see me go through it. It made me feel like he wasn’t ashamed to be with me. It made him look like a hero in the world's eyes. It changed many people's poor opinion of him. It improved his reputation which helped him personally and with his business. Yet he did literally nothing. I cannot recall him ever even asking to talk to my doctor or come with me to an appointment. It was always, “I’ll come with you if you really need me to. I mean it would fuck things up for me with my jobs but I’d go if you need me to.” Um...no fucking thank you. I should have realized it when his own father was dying of cancer and the statement was made, “I hope it doesn’t happen during deer season. That would fuck everything up.”, I was dealing with a person completely devoid of compassion, empathy or the ability to see, for more than a drug induced moment, beyond their own tiny sphere of existence.
I felt guilty, grateful and tired. So tired all the time. So tired of explaining to him why it isn't okay to forget my birthday. Why it isn't okay to be texting and talking to another woman while hiding it from, and lying to me about it. Tired of doing more and more to show him how much I appreciated him and how much I wanted to make a happy life together for us. Tired of fighting my own intelligence constantly whispering, sometimes screaming, at me to stop. Tired of being told I had never said something I knew for certain I had told him. Tired of being told no one had ever treated me as well as he does. Tired of being told "no one else would see it the way you do" or "everyone I told agrees with me and thinks you're overreacting." Tired of feeling confused and emotionally exhausted because I was being told one thing and shown something completely contradictory. Tired of wondering what was wrong with me and knowing I had to try to do more to show him that I accepted him as he is and I would do or give up anything if he would only show me a little thought and compassion. Tired of begging to be shown I'm loved instead of told.
I tried to leave a number of times for my own health and sanity because I could see myself becoming a person I no longer recognized. The love bombing and hyper-focusing when I would leave or try to break up. The ups and downs of being ignored and hurt then words, words, words. So. Many. Words. Drunken, cocaine, induced almost incoherent ramblings that at first broke my heart. After 10th, 14th, 20th time...I could recite them in my sleep. Started putting up boundaries. Refused to deal with him in that state. The last time, the most pathetic and final time I took him back, I had been healing. I missed him and still had some tender feelings for him. I didn’t want to hate him. I needed peace. I wrote the most pathetic letter I ever have. It listed, one by one, the very bare basics of what I needed in a relationship. I have since, with the clarity only hindsight can offer, read that letter over...several times and I am left, each time, feeling disgust for the person writing it. Explaining why I should be treated as a person? Really?
Let me offer anyone who has waded this far through my chaotic thoughts put to words, a bit of unsolicited advice: If you ever find yourself explaining to a grown ass adult why you deserve respect, consideration, compassion, honesty, and trust; save your breath, turn, and walk away. If you must explain why ANYONE deserves these basic human decencies, the person you are explaining them to will not and is not capable of understanding or caring that you are saying these things to them. I’ve heard him called a psychopath, a sociopath, a narcissist, a drunk, a cokehead, and a dirtbag. The reality is it doesn’t matter what his particular malfunction may be. I’m quite certain there is some medical or psychological diagnosis that pretty much wraps it up in a tidy bow. It doesn’t matter. A little louder for those in the back, IT DOESN”T MATTER. Don’t try to fix them. It is not your job to fix them. Don’t try to understand them. Answers will only lead to more questions and you will only drive yourself crazy thinking in circles. Don’t think if you love them enough or show them how much they mean to you they will see what they have and appreciate you, You will be fighting a losing battle. And the sad part is, if you’re in it right now, you probably are reading this and recognizing some of it but thinking, you have to keep trying, or your situation is different. The details may be different but the damage this type of monster will leave you with will be devastating.
And if you have a serious illness, never, ever, be grateful to someone for loving you. Never settle for being treated like a nothing just because you are afraid of being alone. Don’t allow yourself to get to the point where you are sitting and wondering when you went from the strong, independent, confident, person to someone who closes themselves off from the world because they have been broken and put back together so many times they don’t have it in them to try again.
I never understood people who didn’t embrace life for all it’s beauty. Now I do. I hate this broken me who is slowly, painfully picking up the pieces and gluing them back in place. I hate this me who chases peace and contentment at such a frantic pace I’m exhausted and edgy at the same time. I hate this me who has to get stoned out of my mind to slow the racing thoughts that scream at me all day. I hate this me who would rather be alone because I can’t focus for more than a few minutes on conversations and I’m afraid to feel happy. For this moment I am content to be off the maddening, insane roller coaster I have been riding for the past five and a half years.
And while my head is still spinning, my knees may still be shaking, and the world may feel slightly disoriented right now, I know in time I will feel steady again. He may have taken my self-esteem, pride, dignity, sparkles, and too much precious time but he didn’t take that teeny spark of hope I hold that tells me I won’t always feel the way I am feeling right now. For today, tomorrow, and while I find my new path to peace with this new me, it is enough.
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