On Forgiveness

I feel like there will always be a disclaimer at the beginning of my posts. This time, let me tell you that I have no idea where this blog post is going. If you are sensitive to it, here is a preemptive abuse trigger warning.

You probably saw the title of this post and thought it was going to be incredibly churchy and preachy. It isn't. I'm not taking about religious forgiveness. I am talking about personal forgiveness, as in forgiving those people in your life who have hurt you. Maybe to you this is a type of religious forgiveness, but to some of you it may not be. Anywho here goes.

I had a really strange experience lately. One involving many coincidences and no real facts. I won't get into it, because I think someone involved in this strange experience is either watching my posts here or passing information to someone else. Either way, I won't allow myself to be victimized again. Did you read that? I will NOT allow myself to be victimized again. I spent way too much of the last several years allowing myself to live in fear. And regardless of where my abuser is in his life, regardless of where I am in my life, I will forever live with the feelings of inadequacy I once had thrust upon me. But I do NOT need to live my life continuing to feed myself those lines that I was fed. I had a very sweet person recently inform me -for lack of better word- that I needed to be telling myself words that matter. I didn't really understand at first. "I do tell myself words that matter," I thought. But I don't. Especially when I am stressed. When I am stressed out, or feeling particularly run down, I find myself repeating my old mantras from when I was being abused. "You're worthless. You're nothing. No one loves you. No one will ever love you." And sometimes I find myself missing my abuser. Isn't that crazy? But it's true. In those times of distress, I miss him. Because he made me feel grounded. In a world that I thought didn't want me, he did, I thought. But he didn't. I know that now.

Onto forgiveness. I don't know if I can ever forgive him for the things he did to me. I want to. Some days. Mostly I just want him to feel as miserable as he made me feel, though, so I don't know. Maybe that makes me a bad person. I think it just makes me feel human.

But this odd experience that I had, it got me thinking about someone else in my life who hurt me. This person has been part of my life since I can remember. We have been in and out of one another's lives more times than I can count. We have been spiraling in and out of control, orbiting one another's madness longer than anyone knows. But through it all, I have shown him forgiveness. He has hurt me in ways that are unimaginable, but I have forgiven him for all of it.

It makes me wonder if one can use up their forgiveness. Have I wasted all of my forgiveness on someone who I now only speak to once every six months? Or are our hearts truly able to generate forgiveness for anyone?

If our hearts are full of this unlimited forgiveness, why can't I forgive my abuser? Is our forgiveness limited only to those who hurt us in certain ways, but not in others? How do we grade the hurt that one has caused us to be greater than the abuse that is caused by another?

There is another individual in my life who I cannot forgive. I have only spoken to this person twice in my life, and yet he has ruined me in ways that I cannot explain to you, because I don't want to. I keep the pain he caused me close to my heart and I refuse to share it. It is mine, and I do not ever want to share that pain with anyone other than those who are very very close to me and know everything there is to know. However, this incredible pain that he has caused me shouldn't be reason enough for me to not forgive him. I don't know if I am choosing not to forgive, or if I really can't. If I dwell on it too long, it causes me an incredible amount of sadness.

Why do we hold on to these things? Why do I keep this man so close to me, a man who barely knows me, who probably forgets I exist on a day to day basis? Why do I let his words, his actions, mean so much?

And how do we forgive ourselves? How do we keep the thoughts of inadequacy from creeping in during our most vulnerable moments? How do we forgive those moments of weakness when we entertain old temptations? How do we let go of those thoughts of doubt and low self worth? How do we keep them from recurring?

I have no answers. And I don't expect answers. I just needed a place to put all of my questions, and this seemed as good a place as any.



*side note, this is not to say that no woman has ever hurt me. I have been hurt my females in my life too, but I have a particularly long background in male-dominated pain in my life, and that's what I choose to write about. If you don't appreciate that or don't want to hear about it, don't read it.

Emily on Emotional Abuse

Let me begin by warning you, this post isn't pretty. It may trigger you if you've been in any type of abusive relationship. It includes information about my own abuse, mostly emotional and verbal, but some sexual. Some of you reading this post may know my abuser. I will never mention him by name, but if you are concerned that you know him or that you may be related to him, please stop reading now. Close this page and don't ever think of it again. There are things here that you don't want to read. Finally, a word to my husband, do not feel obligated to read this. Many of the things found within this post we have already talked about, and it may not be worth it for you to relive those initial feelings again. Proceed with caution, readers. It's about to get ugly.

I was 16 when I met him. Actually I was younger when we first met, but I was 16 when we started being friends. "Friends" didn't last long, and soon we were dating. The warning signs were there from the very beginning. He would puff out his chest as my ex boyfriend walked by in the hallways at school, he would run into him in the hallway on purpose and then feign innocence. But it took about six months to really get into the abuse. But I'm skipping ahead of myself.

Let me tell you a little about who I was when I was 16. I was an A/B student. I was in show choir and drama club, English and school work were really my passion. I had just gotten a tattoo and I thought I was bad. I was a very outgoing person, and I had no social phobias. I wanted to be friends with everyone, and I wasn't afraid of anything. I knew I was going to do something with my life.

When I met him, I had just gotten out of a short but rocky relationship. I am a serial committer. I had to be in a relationship because I liked the attention. But my last relationship had ended rather poorly for a few different reasons, mainly because I was good at picking real "winners". I thought he was a winner. He was in the grade below me and I thought he was so great. He was interested in things that I had no idea about, but I learned to appreciate them more as time went on, like video games. Of course, as you'll read, I became very disinterested in those things.

It starts like any other abusive relationship, he let me think he was amazing. It was about six months into our relationship when he had his first episode. He laid on his bedroom floor having some sort of panic attack, I think. He wouldn't get up. He was cold. He was emotionally unavailable. And I fought to bring him out of whatever fog he was in.

I won't give you every instance of abuse, but I will highlight a few that stick out in my mind.
-He once ran away from home. No one knew where he was. His dad had to drive from out of town to come find him. He wouldn't get into his dad's car as his dad drove along the side of the road. His mom later had to pick him up from the police station. "You don't understand him" I remember saying to her. I didn't understand.
-We got into a particularly ugly fight one evening. He wouldn't drive me home. I had to call my best friend who lived in a different town as I walked home. My friend called his grandma and she came to pick me up. He had been following me and as she drove up, he got into the car too. She and I never spoke of that day again, and I was too afraid that he had followed me so silently to even know what to say.
-He threw a hanger at my head. He intentionally missed, by inches. And he didn't just toss it. He threw it with all of his strength.
-He slapped me in the face.
-He would make me lay with him while he slept. I wasn't allowed to move. I couldn't get out of bed, I had to lay beside him. Often times, he forced me to have sex, because I felt like I had to. I didn't have a choice.
-We would have all out screaming matches when we were in his house by ourselves. I was always the bad guy. When I would leave, he would call me and tell me he had swallowed a bunch of pills and was going to lock the door. I had to come back to make sure he was okay. He always told me he threw them up.
-I would go to his house in the mornings to wake him up, because at 16, 17, 18 he couldn't be trusted to get himself out of bed. I would beg him to get out of bed so I wouldn't be late to school, but instead he would make me lay down with him and wouldn't let me leave. I still have panic attacks to this day trying to wake people up.
-He told me to kill myself. I wanted to die. I would have done anything to get away from him. He told me if my life was so bad that I should just kill myself. I tried, and when I failed he laughed at me.
-I had an emergency surgery when I was 18. He wouldn't leave my hospital room, even when my family came to visit me. He never left the hospital the entire week I was there. He failed out of summer school because he wouldn't attend his classes while I was in the hospital.

Most of the abuse though were the little things he told me every day. "No one else will ever love you" "you're getting fat" "you're bipolar" "no one loves you"

He threatened several times to blow up my church and kill my entire family. He told me I'd be divorced by the time I was 30 and that no one would stay with me because I was crazy.

I had no friends because he wouldn't let me spend time with anyone.
I went to college and when I went for my orientation, I tried to break things off. I was afraid of him and tired of fighting. I thought it was time to move on. He threatened to call the cops on me because I wouldn't drive the 45 minutes to bring him his house key during my orientation. He called me time and time again, probably close to 100 times during my school orientation.

Why am I telling you this?
I'm not sure.
I'm just tired of hiding it.
This is part of who I am.
Chances are, you don't know much about me at all.

For two years, I couldn't make eye contact on the street with anyone because I was afraid of them. I was afraid of everyone. I didn't talk. I didn't sing. I didn't laugh. Mostly I cried.
I miss him still sometimes. And it makes me sick. But he was my "best friend" and the only one there for me, because he forced everyone else out.
Sometimes, I still can't look people in the eyes, because I don't want to see the emptiness that I saw in his eyes.

If a man stands over me, I have a panic attack. If he puffs up his chest, suddenly I am small. I do not do intimidation well, and I have a general fear of men.
I have a hard time accepting love.
I gained 60 pounds in the course of a few years. I stress eat, because it's the only thing I could control.

What is left of me is a shell of a teenage girl. I was emotionally stunted at 16. I have problems processing things as an adult and seeing myself as older than that 16 year old girl, though 9 years have passed since I turned 16. I am empty.

But I am rebuilding myself. I am focusing on me. I am working towards health, mental, physical and spiritual. I am learning to rely on those people around me who show me love rather than just spewing hate and disguising it as love.

I am still afraid. But I have friends and family who love me. I have a church that supports me when I am weak, and I have Christ, who has felt every pain that I have, and who carries me when I cannot carry myself.

I am committing to you, who ever you are who is reading this, I will be better. I will not fail. I will not let myself remain empty.

-Emily