Compassion Not Guilt
For almost half of my life I have loved, married and shared parenting duties with one man. When the end came it was not like turning off a light switch. If it had been both his and my life would certainly have been easier emotionally. Still, real love cannot just be switched off anymore than the memories that intermingled and carried us through those 15 years of marriage.
If Love is like a river then marriage, I suppose, would be the ocean...If both people have mutual respect, love and compassion for the other, the sea can fill and, in time, hopefully, over flow with love and bliss. Yet when one or both of the partners pulls back and meanders off course, whether because they are selfish, scared to love or whatever the reason may be, the ocean becomes dangerously low and soon dries up. To say our marriage had stopped flowly and that the ocean was dry is quite of an understatement. On my side of things I felt like I kept forcing my love, shoving all the hope and sweetness and whatever else I could muster into what was our day to day life for over 10 of our 15 years. Still he, it seemed, only wanted to receive my love and emotions and the many gifts that love gives and not give back...I kept giving and giving and he kept taking till my body, heart and mind was so exhausted I went myself into an emotional coma. Still playing the role of Mom and doing the best I could with what little support I had, I went into a deep depression. I started fearing everything, even leaving the house. Why wouldn't I though? EVERY single job I got my husband would ruin. From dropping the kids off to my work place and expecting me to care for them while working so he could go off and go fishing to expecting me to take weeks off of a brand new job to stay home with one of our sick kids instead of him staying home instead or working it out so neither of us would miss work and on and on...To him I was worthless. As a stay at home mom for the first 5 years he said I was useless because I made no money. Then when I worked from home selling Avon, doing a mail job and writing my poetry, he still wasn't impressed. So then I finally found a job doing something I loved, making good money and health insurance but he hated that. He needed me to be where he wanted me WHEN he wanted me! It was when my Mother died and I started to take care of everyone else that the world and the realization that my own heart could stop as suddenly and as broken as Mom's did, that I awoke to such an intense fear that I would too die alone--or worse, die lonely with my husband at my side.
Still, all that was just in the past few years...Before that, I was willing to put aside everything I wanted and needed in order to make my husband happy, We created and began bringing up our 2 kids those 15 years ago. Through them our love for eachother stayed even at least. We went through wonderful and awful experiences--from having our kids both born healthy to buying a home. Then we had things come along that might have ended us like almost losing that home to a fire then later losing it to foreclosure...but we kept at our relationship. Well, I kept at it, I would say. He seemed to sleepwalk through it. But he wasn't always missing, there were some days, some really wonderful moments, where he would look into my eyes and I recongnized love there. He was there for me taking care of the details when my beloved Mother died and he was there as my father grew sick and lost his memory. But so often when my own demons were rising up, like when my rapist was coincidentally the person who our construction guy hired to come to our home after the fire to lay carpet.The man didn't recognize me and I wanted to be sure he left without doing so.I called my husband where he was at work and asked him to come up with an excuse to halt work at our house that day...to get this awful man out of our home and away from our kids and me. I needed my husband to stick up for me but he would not. He even told me that I should get over it. When I needed him to not push me around, to not hold me hostage and throw tables and chairs at me, he let his anger win. It was stronger than both of us and no amount of begging him to get help worked. He refused.
As for our kids, I did what I could to hide my hurt and to mask the abuse. But they were not fools. They are happier now that I am safe. He never took it out on them, his anger, but I always wondered if it was just a matter of time. Its difficult to look into the eyes of your own flesh and blood and seeing their father there in the color of their eyes or blondness of their hair, not long for the days when love between me and their father was new and overflowing. And safe. Now we are separated, both with new people in our lives, but our 2 kids will forever connect us. It might be an emergency room visit, a graduation or a wedding that will slam our lives back into eachother. To spite no longer being in love with him, I will always have a kind of love and respect for him as the father of my children...Even when I don't exactly understand why he does this or says that... At this point I am very very let down by his pushing one of our two kids out of his life and home for the sake of his new girlfriend but all the crying, screaming and pleading with him and God is Not going to make him a responsible father.
So, here we are. His job status has changed and with it his salary. He has petitioned the courts for a reduction of the child support he pays for our kids. Because both kids live with me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and because I am at the unfortunent place where I need help from the state for health insurance because he lost his job, I am the one who receives the child support from him to raise our kids.He has never argued with me about the fact that I want the kids with me and with all that is going on now even the one night that our daughter stays at his house is based on many things, including whether he stays even-tempered. I want him to spend as much time as he can with our kids. I do not want to take away the relationships that he can have with his son and daughter. But I've put my foot down finally and told him that he can only spend time with one if he spends the same amount of time with the other. Its a tough decision I've had to make but imagine how it must feel to our child who is only getting a few hours with his father while he sees his sister get days! I cannot and will not be part of a plan where either one of our kids gets treated unfairly by their own father!
And raising kids takes a whole lot more than money. It takes alot of patience, time and dedication...All of these things are mine to take care of while he only has to pay support. Of course he has complained about the amount of money he's paid so far. He has even told me that he has thought of moving out of state to work under the table so that D.O.R. cannot take child support from his income anymore. As for health insurance, he's made whisperings to us that he can get it from where he works but that his boss, the owner of the company, has lied to DOR and stated that he is not eligible. Why does my husband tell me all that? Doesn't he worry that I will tell DOR? No, he doesn't worry... Because, while he has been controlled by his new girlfriend to say hateful and mean things to me on the phone he only does it while she's in the room. Yet when he is outside the home, he talks openly to me, even entrusting me to the details of his own relationship (Which I've asked him to stop) Still, he trusts me. After all, he was married to me for over 15 years and with me for 17. I am one of very few people he has let see his heart and opened up to. He's seen me at my best, at my worst...He knows all my secrets and I know his.
When you have spent such a long time with someone and you have traveled long and hard through their ups and downs....When you have been the one to lay awake all night praying to God into the darkness and until the morning air blossoms, you want whats best for your loved one. Even if its all for them and none of the sweetness of their blessings will reach you, you want to know that when they leave the house with your kiss fresh on their lips that they will have the best of everything in their day. Just because one day I finally woke up and realized that I was no longer going to allow this same man to be part of my future, to disrespect and control the rest of my life, doesn't mean that all that love, admiration, hope and prayers for him have just vanished. Especially with kids who are either blessed or hurt by each and every good and bad thing that affects their own father...
So, as I look toward the day that I have to stand before a judge and ask him to keep my children's support the same (especially since their father can no longer pay for their health insurance), I will feel pangs of ....what? What is the emotion? Guilt? No, I do not feel guilty for asking my childrens father to pay into their lives...to ask him to help me buy them food, clothes and warmth. Is it sorrow? I cannot place what this feeling is. All I know is that the last and only other time we had to appear before the judge for child support was right after we separated. My husband had bled our checking account dry leaving me with debts for our mutual use of groceries, electricity and so on. He left me with so many other bills, including our car, unpaid, that I had to borrow money from my father to buy my car out of repossession and so on. Still, with guilt in my heart for leaving him and making him feel something...anything, I asked the judge to be kind. I told the court that I didn't want to leave him with no way of paying his own bills. I still don't want to cause him to go without. If only it wasn't for himself that he was trying to withhold more money. But its for the 5 kids that he took on when he moved in with his new girlfriend....I will not allow my wimpy (or sweet) emotions to take over this time. If he can pay for another woman's kids and 2 cars and dinner out almost every night then he CAN pay some money for ours...
If Love is like a river then marriage, I suppose, would be the ocean...If both people have mutual respect, love and compassion for the other, the sea can fill and, in time, hopefully, over flow with love and bliss. Yet when one or both of the partners pulls back and meanders off course, whether because they are selfish, scared to love or whatever the reason may be, the ocean becomes dangerously low and soon dries up. To say our marriage had stopped flowly and that the ocean was dry is quite of an understatement. On my side of things I felt like I kept forcing my love, shoving all the hope and sweetness and whatever else I could muster into what was our day to day life for over 10 of our 15 years. Still he, it seemed, only wanted to receive my love and emotions and the many gifts that love gives and not give back...I kept giving and giving and he kept taking till my body, heart and mind was so exhausted I went myself into an emotional coma. Still playing the role of Mom and doing the best I could with what little support I had, I went into a deep depression. I started fearing everything, even leaving the house. Why wouldn't I though? EVERY single job I got my husband would ruin. From dropping the kids off to my work place and expecting me to care for them while working so he could go off and go fishing to expecting me to take weeks off of a brand new job to stay home with one of our sick kids instead of him staying home instead or working it out so neither of us would miss work and on and on...To him I was worthless. As a stay at home mom for the first 5 years he said I was useless because I made no money. Then when I worked from home selling Avon, doing a mail job and writing my poetry, he still wasn't impressed. So then I finally found a job doing something I loved, making good money and health insurance but he hated that. He needed me to be where he wanted me WHEN he wanted me! It was when my Mother died and I started to take care of everyone else that the world and the realization that my own heart could stop as suddenly and as broken as Mom's did, that I awoke to such an intense fear that I would too die alone--or worse, die lonely with my husband at my side.
Still, all that was just in the past few years...Before that, I was willing to put aside everything I wanted and needed in order to make my husband happy, We created and began bringing up our 2 kids those 15 years ago. Through them our love for eachother stayed even at least. We went through wonderful and awful experiences--from having our kids both born healthy to buying a home. Then we had things come along that might have ended us like almost losing that home to a fire then later losing it to foreclosure...but we kept at our relationship. Well, I kept at it, I would say. He seemed to sleepwalk through it. But he wasn't always missing, there were some days, some really wonderful moments, where he would look into my eyes and I recongnized love there. He was there for me taking care of the details when my beloved Mother died and he was there as my father grew sick and lost his memory. But so often when my own demons were rising up, like when my rapist was coincidentally the person who our construction guy hired to come to our home after the fire to lay carpet.The man didn't recognize me and I wanted to be sure he left without doing so.I called my husband where he was at work and asked him to come up with an excuse to halt work at our house that day...to get this awful man out of our home and away from our kids and me. I needed my husband to stick up for me but he would not. He even told me that I should get over it. When I needed him to not push me around, to not hold me hostage and throw tables and chairs at me, he let his anger win. It was stronger than both of us and no amount of begging him to get help worked. He refused.
As for our kids, I did what I could to hide my hurt and to mask the abuse. But they were not fools. They are happier now that I am safe. He never took it out on them, his anger, but I always wondered if it was just a matter of time. Its difficult to look into the eyes of your own flesh and blood and seeing their father there in the color of their eyes or blondness of their hair, not long for the days when love between me and their father was new and overflowing. And safe. Now we are separated, both with new people in our lives, but our 2 kids will forever connect us. It might be an emergency room visit, a graduation or a wedding that will slam our lives back into eachother. To spite no longer being in love with him, I will always have a kind of love and respect for him as the father of my children...Even when I don't exactly understand why he does this or says that... At this point I am very very let down by his pushing one of our two kids out of his life and home for the sake of his new girlfriend but all the crying, screaming and pleading with him and God is Not going to make him a responsible father.
So, here we are. His job status has changed and with it his salary. He has petitioned the courts for a reduction of the child support he pays for our kids. Because both kids live with me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and because I am at the unfortunent place where I need help from the state for health insurance because he lost his job, I am the one who receives the child support from him to raise our kids.He has never argued with me about the fact that I want the kids with me and with all that is going on now even the one night that our daughter stays at his house is based on many things, including whether he stays even-tempered. I want him to spend as much time as he can with our kids. I do not want to take away the relationships that he can have with his son and daughter. But I've put my foot down finally and told him that he can only spend time with one if he spends the same amount of time with the other. Its a tough decision I've had to make but imagine how it must feel to our child who is only getting a few hours with his father while he sees his sister get days! I cannot and will not be part of a plan where either one of our kids gets treated unfairly by their own father!
And raising kids takes a whole lot more than money. It takes alot of patience, time and dedication...All of these things are mine to take care of while he only has to pay support. Of course he has complained about the amount of money he's paid so far. He has even told me that he has thought of moving out of state to work under the table so that D.O.R. cannot take child support from his income anymore. As for health insurance, he's made whisperings to us that he can get it from where he works but that his boss, the owner of the company, has lied to DOR and stated that he is not eligible. Why does my husband tell me all that? Doesn't he worry that I will tell DOR? No, he doesn't worry... Because, while he has been controlled by his new girlfriend to say hateful and mean things to me on the phone he only does it while she's in the room. Yet when he is outside the home, he talks openly to me, even entrusting me to the details of his own relationship (Which I've asked him to stop) Still, he trusts me. After all, he was married to me for over 15 years and with me for 17. I am one of very few people he has let see his heart and opened up to. He's seen me at my best, at my worst...He knows all my secrets and I know his.
When you have spent such a long time with someone and you have traveled long and hard through their ups and downs....When you have been the one to lay awake all night praying to God into the darkness and until the morning air blossoms, you want whats best for your loved one. Even if its all for them and none of the sweetness of their blessings will reach you, you want to know that when they leave the house with your kiss fresh on their lips that they will have the best of everything in their day. Just because one day I finally woke up and realized that I was no longer going to allow this same man to be part of my future, to disrespect and control the rest of my life, doesn't mean that all that love, admiration, hope and prayers for him have just vanished. Especially with kids who are either blessed or hurt by each and every good and bad thing that affects their own father...
So, as I look toward the day that I have to stand before a judge and ask him to keep my children's support the same (especially since their father can no longer pay for their health insurance), I will feel pangs of ....what? What is the emotion? Guilt? No, I do not feel guilty for asking my childrens father to pay into their lives...to ask him to help me buy them food, clothes and warmth. Is it sorrow? I cannot place what this feeling is. All I know is that the last and only other time we had to appear before the judge for child support was right after we separated. My husband had bled our checking account dry leaving me with debts for our mutual use of groceries, electricity and so on. He left me with so many other bills, including our car, unpaid, that I had to borrow money from my father to buy my car out of repossession and so on. Still, with guilt in my heart for leaving him and making him feel something...anything, I asked the judge to be kind. I told the court that I didn't want to leave him with no way of paying his own bills. I still don't want to cause him to go without. If only it wasn't for himself that he was trying to withhold more money. But its for the 5 kids that he took on when he moved in with his new girlfriend....I will not allow my wimpy (or sweet) emotions to take over this time. If he can pay for another woman's kids and 2 cars and dinner out almost every night then he CAN pay some money for ours...
Reading this, I realized once again what a blessing it was (and still is) that I never actually loved my ex-husband, that there were no memories of a time when things were good, no messy mixed emotions about walking away. I know that to some people that sounds tragic, or cold, or dishonest, but none of them ever walked in my shoes; it's possible that only other DV survivors can appreciate how lucky that makes me. It's truly a luxury, being spared the guilt, the heartbreak, the regret-- the things that make it hard to walk away and never look back.
ReplyDeleteI never had to look into the eyes of the man who was terrorizing me and see the man who owned my heart looking back, never had to go through the crazy-making emotional whirl-- horror,disbelief, pain, confusion, betrayal, misplaced guilt-- that can paralyse even the strongest woman. My kids witnessed some really horrific violence, and once we were safely away they were unable and unwilling to forgive and forget; they didn't want him in their lives, and I didn't feel compelled to try to change their minds-- we were all very clear on the fact that I didn't turn them against him, he did that all on his own. In a lot of ways I had it relatively easy, emotionally if not financially.
I'm a little in awe of the emotional strength it must take to survive and thrive in your situation, to acknowledge all that shared history while putting it behind you, to feel some necessary and unavoidable bitterness without being controlled by it. Keep up the good work, and good luck in continuing to move forward in your life, the one you've reclaimed as your own.
- Carol (MacGregor) Maloney