Sleep Walking

Is this a dream or Is this Reality?

I don't know when I woke up. When I realized I could no longer live the life I was leading. There were fits and starts of reality. Or was reality the dream? The possibility of what could be? What should have be?

I think many of us sleep walk through life. We don't question our experiences or wonder, if this is what life is meant to be like. Is it meant to be, "thick" and heavy or is it meant to be, "light" and joyful. If it's the latter, how do we get there?

At some point I lost my bearings, no longer knowing which way was up. What is normal? I knew enough to be ashamed of what was going on in my home. I couldn't bring myself to admit it to even my closest friends or family members. I also knew it wasn't that bad, was it? I mean, he never actually hit me. He never actually touched me. Just insults here and there. Some put downs. Everyday. In front of the children, at the children. I mean he does pay for everything. Who am I to complain?

Who am I to complain?

I wanted to be a good wife, a good partner, a good mother, a good friend. I wanted to make everyone happy. I didn't realize it was too much to ask for me to be happy too. Was it?

I was the confident one, I was the strong one. I was the one he preyed on. I was the one he fed on. Beyond the smiling facade, I was lost in a wilderness of chaos. Each day I woke, exhausted from my nightmares that continued through the waking hours. Planning every minute, trying to avoid any semblance of conflict, hiding myself and my children until the day I could make our escape. Oh to dream!

What did he want from me? I never seemed to do anything right? I never had the right answer. I tried explaining, I tried arguing, I tried silence, I tried therapy. Nothing could stop his thirst for the fight. He was unquenchable.

What's most interesting to me, and I know this only years later, is how ignorant I was to what I was going through, how bad things truly were. It was a slow burn, slowly building up into a raging fire. My friend told reminded me of the old parable about boiling a frog: if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water it will quickly leap out, but if you put one in a cold pot and slowly increase the temperature, the frog will remain until it dies (this myth has since been debunked). I was definitely the ignorant frog waiting to be boiled.

As the years passed, his temper only increased. What started out as being minimized, increased to passive aggressive insults, to name calling, cursing, screaming until I was hiding in closets to make it stop, etc. He would strike out not only at me but at our children. While he had yet to physically hurt any of us, our situation was escalating along with threats of physical violence. Should I have stopped it sooner? Could I have stopped it sooner? I begged to go to counseling. He went once. I threatened to leave, took the kids to a hotel, came back when he agreed to go to marriage counseling. We went 10 times.

Marriage counseling was heart wrenching for me. It was an opportunity for him to vomit every nasty, cruel thought he had about me in a sanctioned environment. And he would walk out feeling cleansed, happy, satisfied. I felt beat up and victimized. Almost worse, I felt vindicated. I suddenly knew that all the horrible things I was thinking in the back of my head, "Is this verbal abuse? Does he have any concern for my physical of mental well being? Would he hurt me if the right circumstance arose? Wold he hurt the children?", were right and true and cause for concern.

I'm never going to change. Take it or leave it.

He repeatedly told me that he had no intention of going back to therapy, going on any medication, or working to change at all, "I'm never going to change. Take it or leave it." I knew I would leave it, this wasn't my reality, I just had to figure out how and when.

This is where the true purpose of this blog and website begins. That decision to leave, and so many decisions since then, have enabled me to become my own dreamer. To wake up every morning to THIS REALITY and choose joy - choose what will bring me and my loved ones joy. Every day is a journey and some days are much "thicker" than others but every day I am grateful for new awakenings.