Dinner without my abusers
My abusers have been in Florida for a month. Someone I met not that long ago says I should not call them my abusers because that gives them power over me. He is wrong. Calling them family gave them power over me. Calling them abusers is about telling the truth and truth=power.
When they were away I got to experience a family dinner without them and I will be grateful for the experience until I have the privilege again. It was my beautiful niece Sunny’s birthday. It was held at my brother Henry’s house. And my abusers were not there. My body felt so different the entire meal. My muscles could relax. The whole experience was calm. Importantly, I did not have to avoid their gaze.
The gaze of my abusers... It is mostly my female abuser’s gaze that I MUST avoid. My female abuser, with one exception, never smiled when I walked into a room. That exception was when strangers or guests were around. On those occasions she adopted this fake, insincere smile that read, “aren’t we a happy family” and “you better not say or do anything to embarrass me or there will be hell to pay”. Except on those anxiety provoking occasions, my female abuser has only ever looked at me with alternating disgust, revulsion and hatred. I cannot even imagine what that would feel like to walk into a room and have her smile at me. I am crying writing that sentence. At some point after I moved into this apartment, I made the conscious decision to avert my eyes from now on when near her to avoid seeing disgust, revulsion and hatred reflected back at me. My feelings for my male abuser and more complicated and the reason I cannot look at him is different also. I was only ever abused by him in relation to my mother abusing me. How to explain that?
From my perspective, my female abuser was angry daily. She seemed to wake up angry and go to bed angry. She managed to control it around ‘certain’ people…not around me. She could smile and ‘seem’ happy toward my brother Thomas and five seconds after he walked out the door explode in rage at me for how I balanced the broom in the corner…at the wrong angle. She would NEVER have DARED treat him that way…EVER. After I had started the process of unenmeshment from my female abuser, I experienced a moment of our differentiated treatment that was like fireworks going off in front of my face. It occurred a few years ago when my brother Thomas felt that my female abuser had shouted at him. I was floored by that moment and it will in its entirely be burned into my brain until the day I die. He genuinely felt that she had shouted at him and in response he ironically shouted at her, “Don’t shout at me. I don’t come into your house and shout at you”. If I had spoken to my female abuser like that, I would have been hit shortly after covering my face and eyes to protect myself from blows from my male abuser. My female abuser was subdued and not the least bit upset with my brother Thomas. I don't now how to describe how she looked…almost empathetic to whatever had caused him to shout at her. It was bizarre to me. Why? Because:
1. She had not shouted at him
2. He genuinely felt she did
3. She had only ever spoke to me with that level of ‘nicety’ once…on a day in November 1998.
4. What I wouldn’t have given to have her speak to me that nicely on a regular basis and to him that was shouting?!?
The differentiated treatment was so glaring in that moment I felt like I might throw up on the spot.
As I said above, from my perspective, my female abuser was angry daily. She carried with her this daily level of anger, which would involve me receiving looks of disgust, hatred and revulsion for committing the crime of existing. If I committed the sins of say putting too much water in the tea kettle, or leaving my shoes on the shoe tray at the front door (Thomas could leave them wherever he wanted), running the dishwasher or washing machine or dryer in an unacceptable manner (acceptable changed by the hour …you could never predict acceptable) then my female abuser would get right in my face screaming about how I was “a monster who did not deserve to live with her”, “an animal who was lucky she let me live with her” and many other verbally and emotionally abusive statements.
Nothing was ever good enough and certainly I was never good enough.
My female abuser also has what I call longer cycles of anger. After living with these cycles for so many years I can identify when they start and I can pinpoint where she is on the cycle.
Over a period of time, which is not consistent from cycle to cycle, my female abuser’s level of anger rises day by day. She becomes more and more abusive and coping in that environment becomes more and more difficult. A few years ago, I realized that when my female abuser reached a certain point of anger I would start to feel suicidal. I would then change my sleeping schedule at that point to avoid her as much as possible.
After the rising anger levels comes a period of time where my female abuser is raging all the time. The length of that raging time has varied over the years from several weeks to one horrible period of six months that started around December 1998. During the raging time I was at risk of being hit by my male abuser at every moment.
The raging time period always ended with some explosion on both my female abuser and male abuser’s parts. See Elina Grace Edwin, Saturday March 20. 2010 for an explosion example. After their combined explosion their anger would decrease for a time, but not before the next morning. How I hated the next mornings. The next morning after I had been physically abused for whatever innocuous thing, such as in the March 20 blog entry example above for spraying air freshener in the bathroom, I was then treated the next morning as though “I” had done something horrible…me, the victim.
After they were done punishing me, their anger would subside and then I was supposed to pretend nothing had happened and my mother would expect me to treat her as though nothing had happened.
Dinner with my abusers
As I said above, I was so grateful to experience a family dinner without my abusers. After that dinner, I felt that I did not want them to come back from Florida. That was the first time I thought such a things or felt such a thing. It is a heart complicated feeling, because while the longer I stay away from them the more I realize that I do not want any contact ever again, there are people I love who love my abusers and who were not or are not abused by them and they would be in pain if my abusers were not around and I do not want them to feel pain.
I felt a very high level of anxiety and dread as the first post-Florida family dinner with my abusers approached. It was Easter Dinner to be held at my sister Elizabeth’s house. When I arrived I drank two cans of coke within minutes. Coke has always been my beverage of choice when stressed. I have many times in my life quit coke as I feel I was/am addicted to it, but I drank two cans without even thinking and sadly without even tasting.
I physically avoided my abusers as much as possible and except by accident avoided their gaze. I will not look at the hatred and revulsion being reflected back at me from my female abuser and I cannot even look at my male abuser anymore since I processed enough of the shock of the night I left their house to be able to say aloud to myself that I thought he was going to kill me that night. I do not wish to look at a man ever again, who I thought was going to kill me.
The coke calmed me a little, though I am not sure why coke inherently would.
I just continued to physically avoid them and avoid their gaze. Inherently I find both choices to be hostile, but both are necessary for my mental health.
Then, while I was doing something in the kitchen, what I cannot recall, my female abuser walked toward me and starting talking as she walked. My brain froze. I could hear her. I could just see that see was talking. I was terrified. I couldn’t breathe. The area I was standing in seemed to get smaller and I felt myself moving backwards away from her. I don’t know if I was walking backwards or just leaning farther back the closer she got to me. I don’t know how long she talked and I don’t know if she walked away when she was finished talking or I did, but I think she did.
At the time I did not think I heard one word she said, but afterward I remembered one word, “Fiona”.
I stayed far away from both of them after that and when it came time for people to leave I hid in my sister’s basement until my abusers were gone or actually until my brother-in-law came looking for me.
While I was hiding in the basement, I heard my female abuser say that some of the people she met there stay in Florida for six months.
Please.
Elina Grace Edwin
and as I picked up a small hand weight that was in a wicker basket to the right of my feet and clutched it to my chest and as he seconds later screamed, “you think that will protect you?”
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