It has been my life-raft for the last three years.
After events of this week, it is fair to say that I am now treading water on my own.
I feel physically ill thinking about it. Not by the loss of hope, but by the situation I find myself in once hope has gone.
I am trapped in this dysfunctional mind, trapped in this broken and pain-ridden body, trapped in this relationship and in this house in a volatile situation. I am in a box within a box within a box and it doesn't matter how much I might scream no one can hear me and no one can help. I am suffocating in here and the one person who can do something about it refuses.
Here I am again, powerless. (Yes, actually powerless, unless I want to lose my kids.) I'm wondering how I managed to subconsciously see this in someone who was so totally different 9 years ago. I must have, because I can pick 'em every time. No matter the beginning to the relationship, the ending is always the same. My programming has been impeccable.
I am so well programmed from my childhood to live this situation again and again. To accept it, to see it as normal. Nothing was ever done in my childhood until things had reached boiling point and there was violence. It was even made my responsibility to deal with it. Thanks for that, mum.
And yet now I do not accept it and I do not see it as normal. I see it as chronically abusive but I know there is no help, there is no way out until we get to the crisis and by then the damage is done. I have been here before.
No two year old should have to hold her mother's tear-stained face in her hands and say "Its alright mummy, don't you listen to him."
image copyright Emmy Ryan
I don't want to know what's next after that. For there will be a "next."
There always is.