Not Me Too - Part 4 Yes, You too.

There's so much, too much and I find myself on a daily basis cycling through all of it. I do the journaling. I listen to the podcasts, yoga, mediation as a necessity for daily morning bouts of anxiety. I keep so extremely busy that I can barely take breaths in between one activity and the next. I do all the steps and yet, I can't process. I can't fathom it all. I thought I'd be impervious to this kind of abuse as an adult. I, of all people, should be able to spot it. I was bullied mercilessly for years ( being chubby dark-skinned and the smartest girl in class did not earn me much social favor with the kids at school). I'd been abandoned by my father and hurt by my mother so much as a kid. In some way, I have an understanding of her actions. She was blinded by her own trauma but also regurgitating the childrearing techniques of our own culture , in which emotional, verbal, and physical abuse is a staple of childrearing. It doesn't excuse her behavior. There are still memories that are still burned into me. There's a still a sting on my cheek from the time when she slapped me for not wanting to wear this hideous yellow dress to a party we were invited to. She slapped me so hard my nosebleed, and in defiance, I purposefully bled on the dress. I used to think of how clever and funny that was. I think about it differently now.

But I learned to forgive her knowing that, unlike Nitehawk, in her culture, most forms of abuse were permissable. And so it left me in a position where despite these actions, that abuse could come from my caregivers. And so I had to love her despite these moments. But now I think of how moments like that set me up to be tolerant too skilled at handling dysfunctional and angry people. I pushed past, learning to manage difficult relationships, and had come out of it with two degrees, a house, and a wee doggie. I'd earned the peace and joy I carried. But I let one white man in my life for a year and a half and I have to go therapy twice a week, do EMDR, have racial, emotional, and sexual trauma?? BYE.

He once said in therapy that he'd been experimenting with me, by taking me to meet his family. This wasn't some intentional step as confirmation of the importance of my presence in his life. It was a test. In a large way I think this is what he was doing the entire time, not with me out of a desire , out of genuine affection for me. He was experimenting with himself to see how he could function in a relationship. I was an object within an experiment, a guinea pig to be poked and prodded to see what outcomes would arise. But it explains why he so often chose such abject cruelty, why my feelings never were considered, how he could handle me with such staggering lack of care, why he often closed me out of parts of his life. He told the therapist he pushed me away so I wouldn't fall more in love with him. I was shocked out how blantantly narcissistic and also completely fucked up that was. On the other side of things, this means that he had been purposefully hurting me in order to receive the benefits of me while purposefully depriving me of an authentic care and connection. This relationship was not something to be cherished or protected, nor was I. It was something to help him, something for him to try out, to try on like a pair of pants at Old Navy. Maybe this time I'll open up. Maybe this time I can learn how to care about someone. I was useful. I could help him sort out his demons with my ever available shoulder to cry on with a bonus of unlimited comfort and sex. To be used this way by a white man, at THAT, throughout the course of the year and a half, like this is maybe even an added layer of degradation I wasn't prepared to face. My ancestors are weeping. Honestly, I could've taken not being the one, but I wish he could've treated me like a human, like I was someone.

I try to be empathetic with myself because this would be a lot for anyone. Maybe he was right to say I was naïve, always believing him and rooting for him, trying to encourage him to be his best. I pushed him into improv, rewrote his job applications so he could teach film, critiqued his writing for his writer's room, re-organized his desk, sent him articles on emotional intelligence, read his mail, bought groceries when he was away, took him to see The Amber Ruffin show when he was feeling down. I gave too much and freely. But I still get angry with myself that I couldn't pinpoint that this person was harming regularly me. It still doesn't make sense to me. He can come off nice and friendly and charming. He was so well-read, read books I read, seemed introspective, seemed to put on this front of being healed and working on just one tiny issue. Yet with all the tools of healing and language of trauma at his disposal, he managed to harm me in a way I still can't figure out. But in reality, he knew better, he just chose to do worse because he could get away with it. There's no "justice" for this kind of abuse. I can't put him in jail. If he hit me I could, but emotional abuse doesn't have a sentence. I just have to swallow what happened. But I will still wear invisible scars from a man who read The Body Keeps Score and kept making marks on me.

I know in some ways, I'm responsible. I know I should've left. I should've put together the pattern of degradation, disregard, hurting, lack of care I was faced with. I should've stopped asking him to explain why he acted the way he did, why he treated me so poorly. I didn't need clarity from him. His behavior was the clear sign. My confusion was already the answer. I joked in the letter that I was taking the bitter with the sweet a la Carole King, but Christ not this much fucking bitter lol. They say in narcissist - empath dynamic, it is common for victims to stay because of the never-ending cognitive dissonance. You get good and bad and don't know which one is real , so you hope it's the good. But it's all them. And trauma or no trauma (a good Deal or No Deal spin-off), people choose to hurt you. He once even said to me "If I hurt you so much, why are you with me?" Disregarding momentarily the irony here (why do you keep hurting me if you actually want to be with me ), while it can be obscured by good times, enjoyable moments, the issue is not the frequency of the bad. It's easy to say this was a one-off or just a bad moment. But it was many, some of which are not included here. Regardless, it's not just the frequency of the bad, but the volume of it. The bad is so horrifically bad that the volume outweighs the frequency of the good.

I think in a relationship you consent to giving certain things away - your time, love, attention, respect, consideration. But there is a layer that you keep just for yourself - your self-respect, your dignity, your pride, your confidence, your inner peace, your joy, and your self-love. He took all that I had to give to him, and yet still reached his hand into that last layer, attacking the things within me that he should've never touched. He took shots at who I was at core. How he treated me, how he left me, naked and undignified in that bed scraped at my dignity. Some days it feels like he took something from me, something I didn't think anyone could take from me. I think there's a part of me still there on that bed. And even on my best days, I'm not always sure I can get that thing back. But I'm trying to take my things back. I'm rebuilding myself.

I believe in the campsite rule "Leave things better than you found them". I love people deeply and freely. I want them to feel valued and seen when they're in my company. I don't want people to hurt the way I did when I was a kid. I want them to leave me better than I found them, either happier or feeling heard or supported. I left him better than I found him. He got a partner, a friend, a life coach, a cheerleader, a confidant who set up a life for him where he could grow and flourish. And, he left me worse than he'd found me and worse than I've ever been. He burned the fucking campsite. But I'm building it back. While there is often shame for people who've been emotionally abused , I don't want to feel it anymore. I don't regret being loving and supportive and kind. I communicated. I was honest. I was so calm through everything he put me through, so kind even when he hurt me. I know I should've channeled some Real Housewives energy and called him a musty bitch while throwing a lamp or table. But I try not to be ashamed of that and how it may have led me here. That's who I've always been. That's who I am.

He asked me that night before his first date if I thought he abused me and the letter was my answer. His response was "For your sake, it seems like we shouldn't be in contact for a while. Nothing I do will probably help you anyways". Two weeks earlier, he was trying to think of what he owed me ethically and thinking of how he could make amends for the harm he caused. Another ingenuine gesture. Tasked with my ask of actual self-reflection on who he's been this year, how he could do so many awful and degrading things , how he could lie to me so many times, he snapped back with cruelty again. He wasn't sorry. He did all these things without real guilt or regret, maybe shame for how these things would reflect upon him. But in hindsight, he never apologized to me first. He didn't' apologize at dinner after calling me unassertive or mediocre. He felt justified in saying it. I always had to point out the grossly cruel behavior, from which he would then utter a "Sorry, wasn't thinking of you or that wasn't great". But here I was, at his doorstep not having learned my lesson, discarded again. Used again. I think in some ways, I had to feel this last jolt, to face the harsher reality. I had seen what was happening all along , not wanting to believe that this is who he was. Fundamentally he was someone who could hear his partner say "This is hurting me" and just keep going, someone who could fall asleep hearing her cry next to him, someone comfortable with putting someone down to make her feel beneath him, and then exploit the large gap in power-dynamic to take advantage of them. Those are the beliefs that underpin that behavior. And as much as I don't want to believe that, I'm no longer in a position to suspend my disbelief. And that last bout of betrayal and cruelty and apathy made me really see it, really see him in full.

Nitehawk told me once that I see the world the way I do because I hadn't been tested, whatever the fuck that means coming from a privileged cis white man to a black woman. I wonder if this was the test. Did I pass or fail? I guess we'll see. But regardless of this or him, a new journey begins learning to recover from this, from the CPTSD, trying to restore what's been lost.

As I chart this unknown course, I am still wrestling with so much still unresolved and unanswered. How do you restore your dignity after a year of being lied to and humiliated over and over again? How do I restore my body's dignity after it was used and discarded in a 20 minute span and myself in my vulnerable state told I was unloved and unwanted? How do I remove this numbness from my body and my spirit? I don't know yet. Will I ever get honest answers? What was this entire thing?

Many days, I feel like I'm living in a glass container where I can see all my emotions and intuit what my feelings would be , but the glass wall is keeping me from feeling and experiencing life in the way that I used to. This is common for people with CPTSD , the numbness , clinical depression, dissociation, constant feelings of fight of flight. I am constantly afraid , on edge on the look out for danger echoing loudly the fear of being harmed that I felt in the relationship. I have panic episodes in Trader Joe's. I can barely sleep a full night. There's brain fog and memory loss that's making working a job I could do with my eyes closed feel so impossible. It's debilitating, I don't recognize my self or body any more. My characteristic joy is unreachable. My lightness is gone. I'm heavy. I try to be who I was, but I know I'm not as fun or as a free and I feel bad about not being able to be the person my friends and family all rely on and enjoy so much. I hate being so messy, such a bad example for my brothers, especially Jonas. He's 15. He shouldn't have to ask me 4 times in a day if I'm ok.

But with all the pain that CPTSD is fueling, I'm grateful for the people who are with me on this journey. They've taught me how powerfully transformative love and real care can be. They are extremely warm and gracious and helpful. Dr. Lex is my savior, sending me funny articles from the New Yorker, checking in on me routinely. The best thing to come out of that improv class is our friendship. Kay, is doing much better, her health restored. She's my rock , empathetic and understanding, my first call in what seems to be intermittent emotional turmoil. S.E is my best friend and gets me. I don't have to explain myself. She just knows. The black women around me are rallying, knowing there's a particular pain here that only we can see. They tend to me. My community now knows and is holding me accountable and is holding me together. The letter, my disclosure of what's happened led to many conversations , important, challenging, restorative to some degree. No "I told you so's" although they all did. I know they're worried. I try to give them reasons not be.

I'm trying not to be dramatic, to tell the story as honestly and fairly as I could. And of course in between all of this shit, were some moments of kindness, ephemeral as they were, good memories,. We watched many movies(ironically I have a hard time watching movies and TV now, thank you CPTSD which often has ADHD as a comorbidity). We loved comedy, and spent Sunday mornings watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, a ritual I loved. All of that forms a cloud around you that makes it confusing when the abuse happens. It feels like a foreign object, an intruder in your almost "happy" bubble. And that's why people who stay in these situations are often unable to grasp the depth and volume of the abuse. But when you zoom out, look at all the harm, you see it, all coming from one direction. You can be healthy, but still be trapped within a toxic or abusive dynamic. You can do your best and communicate and address issues as they come and still be unable to stop the harm. And so I have to honor that truth as plainly and as honestly as I can regardless of the perception. But I know now. And I'm saying it all now.

I think a lot about how women who express themselves are often discredited (because of misogyny). Their abusers can coin terms like "crazy ex gf" to escape accountability for what they've done. They can tell half-true versions of the truth and go on to fool and deceive other women who do not know what they're capable of. These same men can tout themselves as feminists all while privately berating and breaking a woman down, using her for personal gain, and then turn around and call her crazy and unhinged. And no one stops to question, what did you do to her to make her that way? What was she like before? But in our society, we routinely discredit women who have feelings and express themselves. We bend over backwards to find ways to justify the bad behavior of men. Men are justified; women are not. We talk about this often when it comes to women on the political stage , but it is more egregious and prevalent in the interpersonal realm. It's easier to believe that a woman is "crazy", "hysterical" "overdramatic" or "bitter" than it is to believe a guy that we like is abusive or cruel. That's why "Me Too" movements have taken so long to find a foothold. We love those men. We want to protect them, not hold them accountable. I loved that person and it kept me reticent to ID him as an abuser or use that label to describe some of that behavior. In some ways, I know in my own omissions here I'm still protecting him.

But I'm honoring the truth, the full truth of this part, even if it makes a fool and victim out of me, and an "abuser" out of the person I loved. It's not that simple. It's not complete, but this part of things is true.

I miss my old self, the lightness and ease of that way of being. It feels so unbecoming and foreign to be like this now. I wasn't weak (even though he thought I was and would often call other people weak in front of me). He'd also been expressly critical of people in their 20s and their lack of self-knowledge etc. But I knew myself. I spoke up every single time, but I couldn't stop what happened, problem-solve, relationship check-in my way into being treated with decency. No matter what I said or did, he didn't care, he would never stop treating me poorly. I had no real control, which in a way is both sad but almost liberating. It frees me from the guilt of that past self. But I still hate that this happened. I look at myself these days and sometimes think : "The horror, the horror. Surely not me ". I can't have brain damage from this. But it happened, and it's impacted me deeply and changed me in a way I couldn't anticipate. It changed the way my brain works on a neurological level. And despite what I thought about myself that would make me infallible to this or would push me to get my ass up and leave, it happened to me too. It can happen to anyone.

So alas, yes girl next door, yes empath, yes Libra, yes big sister, yes captain-save-a-hoe, yes heart-on your sleeve, shirt off your back, named most likely to succeed in middle school, yes, you too. It can happen and it did happen to you too.

Theoretically I feel it all is All is a part 5. But Take a breath. Have a snack. It's been a long road.