The line in the Sand

I had my fill.    I felt dead inside, there was nothing left to concede.

I spent many, many, many hours pondering everyday,'how can I manage the twins in the double buggy, my daughter & son and a suitcase?'

It was an impossible escape to visualize.  

So I started to try and make it smaller.

I started to imagine just taking two children.

But this became a conundrum whose answer was only heartbreaking abandonment.  I could never turn my back on any of them.  

It was my Achilles' Heal and He know it and used it against me.

I have this memory of a very loud fight we had when the twins were just at the stage of crawling.   I remember him picking them up, he held them by their bellies, not in supported and secure way.   He shouted,"You won't take my babies!"   I was gobsmacked and panicked.  I was worried for the twins safety.   It was a very clever ploy, as I would not leave without my children and all I wanted in that moment was to ensure they didn't fall!
{What is really harsh?    As I write from this perspective;- that being 6 years since I fled and having the legal paperwork all signed, sealed and delivered,  it hurts me in another way.  Although I can see how he was manipulating my own convictions against me, I can see how damaging all this must have been for my young children}  

This type of emotional blackmail, the reversal of truth is also a common theme with those who bully and abuse others.   It is like, they have to invert your thinking so as to get your compliance.

It does work.   As my Blog clearly tells you.   Just remember, it is your choice, if you think chaining someone to your side is security.    There is a place in the Bible where the meaning of the words were, what you do to another, you are doing to yourself.   When I became aware of how many messengers were trying to get me to see, hear and awaken to the fact that he was hurting me in a way that was not within the 'normal' or 'acceptable' parameters of long term relationship 'stuff'!

{Oh, yes!, treat 'em mean to keep 'em keen.}   This is a great way to keep your lover by your side.  But it is just like using a tissue with sneezing powder in it.   Momentary relief, followed by the action that you so dreaded coming to fruition.    I would recommend to you, if you think you are going to keep your partner by your side by putting them down?   It is my prediction You will end up bitter and alone.

So, it is nearly a year to the day that we were alone with the twins in America.   We are going to visit my family again this July.   As, pretty much been our pattern since I married him.   But things are 3 day old fruit rotten.   A really lovely, wonderful, beautiful, helpful, compassionate young woman once shared with me how she understood her first husband's abuse.   She called it 'Bubble and Squeak'.   What the pattern was, as they would drive to visit her family, he would spend the entire journey nipping at her head.   So, she was all brow beaten before she got to family's home.   {Which if you think about it, this should be her power zone.   Any Football team plays better at home, I know it is a generalization but you get why an abuser has to ensure alienation between the family and their partner.}   Then, as they walk in the door, he asks if she would like a cup a Tea, as sweet and gently as a loving partner, then my friend would explode!   Her family then would turn on  her, why are you being so mean to him?

Within the month of our departure, my X Husband and I had a this argument.   He had me cornered in the lounge.   He was screaming at me.   It wasn't a housework chore that I had failed in.   I think this was just about me and my family.   That my family don't love me, they really only love him.  We have to go because of you and the kids and  I don't want to.   He carries on until he is standing just an inch from my face screaming at me, "You are crazy, Your whole family knows you are crazy!   Why should they bother with you at all!   Fiona and I don't want to go the States!   Why do you insist on forcing us to go every year!"   I think I had no true come back or support for my side of this argument, as I was beginning to see as he 'showed' me certain information about my family.   I think I screamed at him,"You make me so angry!   I want to hit you!"  Standing there with his closed hateful expression before me, he shouted back,"Hit me!   Go On!   I want you to hit me!   Then I can call the Police and finally get you put away!"

That wasn't the end of it.   He kept on at me for another ten minutes before departing with the cutting shot, "I knew you were to pathetic to hit me!"   Oh, great.   More self loathing for me.

But it was, the threat of being institutionalized, which spun out of the You are crazy campaign.   Also, this new level of intensitiy, to get me to be the one guilty of some breach of basic human decency.   Then to have the utter gaul to make me feel like a useless person for not crossing that line!


If I tell you he had me screwed coming and going!   Can you begin to see it?    Because there is more.   But this is one of the clearest examples.   Also it really left me in a profound confusion.   It was scary and horrific to be threatened into that corner, but to be made to feel like a slow minded, ineffectual person for Not Losing Control?
I didn't know how to express what was going on.   As I said, the amount of physical abuse was minimal.  It was more these clever mental labyrinth's.   I am only now able to express all this to you, because of the distance and because of the great work the Councillor through Women's Aid.  


It was my Mother, the child Psychologist who mockingly said to me,"you don't think he is sitting on the bus trying to figure out how to create an argument that cuts you in two ways!"

My Councillor said to me,"With violent abuse you can dismiss a small amount due to passion.   However, with Mental/Emotional abuse, it is premeditated."

{Sorry Mom, go pick up a recent journal because you really haven't kept up.  No points this round}

To say, I didn't feel supported by my family, would be correct.   This summer, my X got my mother, stepmother and brother all to host a intervention for our marriage.  He accused me of being unfaithful. 

 {If it weren't for my friends, the ones from the hospital Breast Feeding support group?   I think I would have just caved in and become a complete non person or found a way to end my life.   One of my friends from the group, after I shared with her what happen on our summer holiday, she laughed so hard!   "Right, Cyn", she said.   "When exactly is this affair taking place?   3 am?   You have four kids, the twins are in Nursery, one in the morning class and one in the afternoon.   You work a part time job 3 days!"   Thank God for friends, because I really think my family still think there is some truth to that.}
But their decision to support him and his lies, have put a Military grade Barricade between our hearts!  
The only tiny kernel of truth in the statement that I had an affair, was that my heart, was dead to the man I was married to.   I had fearfully approached telling him this.  Because I had nothing left to give, I was beginning to hide the things that I did care about, so that he wouldn't have anymore ability to hold things over me.

So, we came back from the US.   I had such a profound sadness returning to Scotland that year.  It was due to the fact that I could not see my family understanding that I would leave my husband because of his cruelty alone.  
I felt entirely unheard,  even worse, not listened to and ignored.  I would have to act alone.  {In the end I had such a tremendous amount of support, from true friends, who helped me get to a Women's Aid worker and prepare for when the apartment was ready.}

Before this date, before I knew I would run, with all four of my cherubs, he would cross the line that ensured there would be no way I would ever consider any reconciliation.  

 It was the week before the schools went back.  My spouse should have felt relaxed, after all he won over all my family to his side.  Our relations were like the Russians and Americans during the Cold War.  So, we had another round of him standing in my face screaming, "Hit me!   I want you to hit me!"     I had seen a sign up at the Gymnastics club were I was coaching part time.  They were looking for a Women's Artistic Coach.   I just felt within me a level of excitement when I saw that sign.   But, I had forgotten my place.

The next morning, I woke up, in the mornings I would either duck into the twins bedroom, there was a small TV there and I could do a morning work out, or I would hunker down in bed until he left.   He never left for work that morning.   So, reluctantly I got up and went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea.
He was standing, chatting to the kids and cooking bacon for them.   I was going to stay to the edge of the kitchen and out of his road.   However, he launched at me!   He had my back up against the patio doors and the knife he had been cutting the fat off the bacon with right up to my face.  It was between my eye line and nose.  I could see his hand was shaking and my mind was reeling!   He started shouting at me,"Tell the truth, tell the children the TRUTH!"  

I don't remember the children making a noise.   I do not remember speaking back.  I just remember  the light on the knife and the trembling of his hand.  

I ran to the phone, I called my Mom, I called my Brother.

My Mother's husband has forbidden me from calling.  He said,"I don't care how bad your fights are."

My Brother however did try and talk us both down.   He was on his way to work and really didn't have much time.   I remember my X trying to show my brother how bad I was because I used a few swear words.   I probably didn't articulate well.  

The line that he crossed here, was that this act took place in front of all four of our children.   They were not playing, they were all up in seats facing him, as he made that show of being home and cooking their breakfast.   I have never asked the kids if they remember.   I have been told I could use them in court as witness'.   But, how could I?   Would you be able to stand up and say bad about one parent?   You are a product of both parents.  It is not their place.

So that was the final straw.   I had my date.   I had less than a month to wait.  I just had to keep my nose clean.