One of the things I have really really wrestled with throughout this whole ordeal is that I always wondered when people would talk about “nightmare exes” or whatever – I’d think, “How can they feel that way about somebody they cared about so much? Like, how can things possibly go that south? I’ll never remember the fight stuff from an end of a relationship. I’ll always remember the good! At the very least, I will remember the neutral. I won’t hold a grudge or anger. I will never get all wrapped up in whatever dumb reason we ended things.”
And so, knowing that I do view this thing as a nightmare, I have felt this incredible sense of failure and loss – as though there is something inherently wrong with me – like I wasn’t good enough to get him to treat me better, or something… Or that I didn’t have a positive enough attitude (after he harmed me multiple times)? [Who is not gonna think of what happened as a nightmare?]
My goal is to (hopefully sooner rather than later) stop talking about it, and not think about it much. But no matter how much time goes by, it will never have not been a nightmare. Sometimes you talk about awful things and you laugh, just thinking about how ridiculous it was that it all ever happened. So, I definitely hope that someday I laugh. That’d be nice. But it will still have been an awful nightmare (even if it reaches the point of laughing about it).
And I think I need to learn to not take that personally. It was an exceptionally hard lesson that you can try to be so “good” and so “caring” and “thoughtful.” You can go above and beyond to go with the flow while this abuser keeps you on your toes – always trying to contort yourself to whatever it is he wants, as he moves the goalposts. (That in itself is not that great… Even the nicest people shouldn’t work their lives around their abuser. That’s not about being “nice,” just get out. But anyway…)
You can do everything sooooo more than right. You can be the most patient, and try SO hard. And sometimes it’s just not gonna be enough for an abusive person. (Again, just get out. Don’t live your life trying to make abusive people happy).
I’m just saying even if you do do that, it’s not a moral failing when things blow up. You are not in control of the situation. The abusive person is being controlling toward you – that’s kind of a big part of what makes it abuse.
It’s not a moral failing to have been abused. It doesn’t make you a bad person to accept, “This was a nightmare.” It happened too fast. I kept making excuses for him. It got out of control. It affected a bunch of facets of my life. And it was a nightmare.
And that’s hard for me to admit. I said I’d never be “that person” to ever say that about someone I was involved with. Yet now, here I am.
Life is tricky.
[This is from the series on sexual assault.]