Tag Archives: abuse

“I’m the real one!”, I shouted to the spoon.

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spoon

Mkay, y’all. Prepare yourselves. I’m gonna do something completely unheard of in this blog. I am going to cover issues so serious they should be the topic of a therapy session… only I’m not going to take them seriously in the slightest, because emotions freak me out.

Get it? It’s funny, because I do that all the time.

female soldiers

One hundred years ago, I met Gail at the Battle of Bud Bagsak*… wait. No. It was ten years ago at the Hometown Mid-High and we were in the ninth grade. It just feels like a hundred years ago, because… well, stay tuned.

* Yeah. I looked that up.

At 15, Gail wore the same grey sweatpants and oversized blue t-shirt with flip-flops every single day, rain or shine, and it was around this time I had begun my “overall phase.” Gail had fake teeth that she nervously clicked and neither of us wore make-up. We were social outcasts with smart mouths and rocky home lives. We met in Yearbook class, stereotypically enough.

carrie
Most days of high school…

Awkward 15-year-old Me: “What the hell happened to your teeth?!?”
Awkward 15-year-old Gail: “Well, I was at this party… and this guy had these piercings.”

We were fast friends.

As kids, our pastimes included telling Gail’s parents we were at Key Club meetings and taking photos in the middle of nowhere. We sat in her bedroom floor making collages of scantily clad women, because we thought it would be funny to convince her parents we were lesbians. I used to alter her report cards to raise the low grades and lower the high ones so her parents would never expect more than average and ground their strong B student for getting a low A. My mother never even asked to look at my 4.0 report card. We wrote blogs and did crafts. We fantasized about how we’d both meet country boys, get married early, and have babies. We’d escape our toxic parent/child relationships and our lives would be perfect. No matter what, though, we were always each other’s shelter from the storm and there was nothing we couldn’t tell the other.

Then things got… weird.

Neither Gail nor I had ever been kissed when we got our first boyfriends at 17… within months of each other. For realz, our first real dates were the same movie. Logically, we each lost our virginity around the same time, though Gail much sooner, due to the opposing magnets in her kneecaps.

smilingdog1
I’m so funny. Fo sho.

We each got very serious very quickly in these relationships, so boys and sex were a brand new thing for us at the same time. Then came our second semester of senior year. You see, while most of our white middle-class classmates were excited for graduation day and the cliché Felicity college years, Gail and I were both just… uniquely lost. Her parents had made it clear that she was to move out if she wasn’t attending college and that they were neither going to pay for her college nor give her the information she needed to receive loans, because they didn’t want her taking on that kind of debt. My mother had… well, she was gone. She’d moved to a town about two hours away to live with her boyfriend and my ex-husband was living with me in her house. She brought by gas and grocery money, screamed about how messy the house was when she left a child alone for months, and then she’d be off. Gail and I both had zero guidance… no clear plans. So, instead of feeling elated when we threw our caps in the air, we were just terrified.

felicity
Who needs this…

lord of the flies
… when you could have this?

As summer took hold, Gail and I drifted. Gail was my maid-of-honor, but we both got so busy, we didn’t have time to maintain that high school relationship. About a year and a half later, though, I randomly called her and we chatted like we were 15 and stringing our own necklaces in the floor. It was then that we started to catch up… and realized the odd similarities in our lives.

Just a year after I married my ex, Gail married Shane, the rebound after her first boyfriend. She’d clung to him when her parents had made it clear she had to leave.

I’d clung to and married my ex-husband when my mother had left.

Gail and I struggled to pay the bills on our own as our husbands refused to work. Oddly enough, neither of us ever discussed our near identical marriages at the time. As close as we were, we still hoped that the next morning, they’d magically become good and competent men, get out of bed, go to work, and help support their families. In the meantime, if they could stop abusing the pets (mine) and looking at child porn (Gail’s), that would be super, too. Gail once told me that she didn’t mind that Shane was only working at Blockbuster, because at least he was working. I once told her that it didn’t matter if I didn’t trust my ex. You get different things from different people and there are other people I trust. I just needed him to work. Our best case scenarios involved minimum wage jobs they’d actually keep and no trust or security… ever. Once they grew up and stopped mistreating their wives, though, we couldn’t very well have our best friends and families hating them, could we? Besides, at this point we wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore, because we’d be pulling in millions harvesting fairy dust from a rainbow!

rainbow_magic_land_003
Remember that time we took a group trip to Candy Land with our wizard husbands?

So, as we’d done when we were kids, Gail and I clung to each other, sharing the occasional breakdown. Then Gail got pregnant.

Me: “So are things better with Shane now, or…”
Gail: “I don’t want to talk about my marriage. I want to talk about my baby.”

Okey dokey.

Then I got pregnant.

Me: “I’m not ready for this.”
Gail: “It’s good that you know that, because raising this little girl is the hardest thing I’ll ever do.”

Then I lost my baby in my late-first/early-second trimester.

Then Gail filed for divorce.

Then Gail lost Grace at eight months old.

It was at this point that we’d begun to think our life parallels were… startling.

Then Gail was raped at a party.

Then I woke up one morning, unsure why I was naked and the sheets were clean.

Man taking washing out of washing machine
Jeez… he was just trying to do something nice. Must I complain about everything?!?

Then I filed for divorce.

Gail ended her first relationship since her divorce.

We both took up dating again… navigated the treacherous waters of online romance, of boys who don’t call back…

Then we got jobs in our desired fields within months of each other.

What the fuck?

At this point, I could pretty much be attacked by a polka dot pink kangaroo and Gail would know to be on the lookout.

kangaroo attack

So, we decided some time back, that these similarities were just too bizarre. One of us has to be fake while the other is left rocking in the corner of a psych ward, eating her own lips, and mumbling about the other. The debate has now turned into exactly who is the real one.

becca convo without name

Every time we say something in unison, we’ll try to beat each other to the punch with “I’m the real one!”

I think I make a pretty strong case for why I’m real, though a good portion of that case is “I’m me” and that has yet to convince Gail. But I’m always first damn it. I had the boyfriend first, the abusive marriage, the miscarriage. I just inflicted these things on my imaginary friend Gail, so I would have someone who could relate to me. As I vomited on the side of the road on Thanksgiving night of 2010, weeping about my ex-husband leaving the dog tied up so long he dug a hole through the floor until his feet bled, Gail held my hair… in my imagination. I was really just projectile vomiting in a padded room, because the new medication didn’t sit well.

padded-room
This is a party.

In the last two years, my life has completely lit up. It’s been wonderful. I have great friends and can financially support myself. I didn’t eat free popcorn from my job at the movie theater all through last summer. I know why the mattress is bare. Soooo… after I found a job with the library system, Gail got her job, which she fully intends to turn into a career. After I got an apartment that my ex-husband wasn’t breaking into to steal from me nightly (after the divorce was finalized), Gail moved out of her parents’ home, where she’d been living since Grace’s death. I’m not sold on the idea that having a man in my life will improve it, so I’ve inflicted one on Gail, in the form of Terry, to test it out. I’ve even sent us running in completely opposite directions in regards to gender roles, so I can experiment with both. I regularly say “the boy does that” while Gail changes a tire or pees standing up.

I actually did have an imaginary friend once. The Jolly Green Giant lived in my parents’ ceiling light and only visited me.

jolly green giant
Pictured: Gail.

I make a pretty convincing case here. I’d bet even Gail is starting to believe. In the meantime…

crazy buffy
See what I did there? See how I totally referenced Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this blog again?

I WISH I had married Lord Voldemort.

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“If I had been a better wife, he’d have been a better husband.”

I wept that sentence so many times. Even after I stopped saying it, a part of me truly still believed it. Then, one day, I was cleaning out my hard drive and I found the conversations online. I only read a few lines. I didn’t need to read more. I thought of the time he had to go “work” out of town for one of the jobs that wouldn’t pay him. I thought of his indignation if I even touched his phone. I told Gail via text message and she responded with…

“And how do you feel about that?”

shrink

Emotions freak me out, y’all. A tenderhearted moment by text was not going to help the raw humiliation coursing through me. I’ve never been a fan of therapy and called it witchcraft through the several college courses Gail had taken. It was a mutual joke, but her asking me such a Black Couch question made me feel like a case study. Defensively, I responded with…

Me: “Oh, don’t try that voodoo crap on me. Go shake your rat bones at someone else.”
Gail: “Well, fuck you. I was just trying to help.”
Me: “Did they teach you that in your Intro to Psych class? I’m glad you changed your major if you’re going to tell your patients to fuck off.”

I can count on one hand how many times Gail and I have fought in ten years and this would be one of them. It didn’t even escalate. We stopped texting each other about it and spoke in person. Calmly, I explained that she’d made me feel like Test Subject 9. She apologized and clarified that that wasn’t how it was meant. I apologized for being a bitch. End of fight.

cat fight
Just like this… only halfway through, we lose steam and it turns into an awkward hug.

I remember setting his clothes out for him the rare times he had work, so he’d have no excuse not to go. I remember telling him how proud I was that he was providing for his family so he’d keep it up. He never did… even when he wasn’t lying about having a job in the first place.

“If I’d been a better wife, he’d have been a better husband.”

I told Gail that day that I didn’t believe that anymore, but I was lying to us both. The conversations I found were dated from the last year of our relationship. A part of me still thought that if I’d motivated him properly, he’d have gotten a job early on in our marriage and would have become someone else, someone faithful.

dumbledore
Hmm… it may also take the greatest sorcerer that ever lived.

Then, one day, I was lying in my living room floor. I wasn’t upset at all and was just trying to ease the pain in my back by resting my legs on the couch. I let my mind wander. I thought of all the times I’d left candles burning, forgotten to turn the stove off, microwaved a fork, left my Chi plugged in… and nothing happened. Fires don’t just start themselves. On July 12, 2007, my ex-husband lost his job… and I came home from work after less than an hour and everything was gone. What could be salvaged still smells of smoke and sometimes, just opening the right DVD case is enough to bring tears to my eyes.

The skill in my ex’s deception lay within his conviction, not his storytelling. He was always too innocent. He was the only one home, but claimed he’d never even turned on the stove. There was no insurance and therefore no thorough investigation, but there was still cash. The Red Cross and our landlord combined gave us around $1,000. That doesn’t include what we got from family. The devastation took everyone’s mind off the fact that he’d lost his job. The rent for the next month had been handled. The fire report stated that the cause was unknown, there were no wiring problems, and that the fire had started in the kitchen. The firemen speculated someone must have left the stove on.

My pets lay on the lawn with a blackened sheet over them. They looked like they were sleeping. The firemen said the cats hid from the flames. The stray puppy we’d just taken in was crated. They died of smoke inhalation… scared and confused. We acquired the kitten and the stray together, but the black cat had been mine since I was 13. I brought him into her life when I was the one who was supposed to protect her. I still hate myself for that. She must have been so terrified… and I wasn’t there.

Gail and I had drifted after high school. We hadn’t been close since my wedding, seven months earlier. We had both been so busy being miserably married that we hadn’t had much time for each other. She was still Gail, though. So when my heart was broken, I called her. She says the worst way I’ve ever opened a conversation was with “They’re all dead.” Hearing the story, she knew then that my ex had started the fire. She also knew better than to tell me that, because I’d feel I had to show loyalty toward him and defend him. It wasn’t until I lay in my living room floor a year and half ago, crying with the kind of sobs that shake your whole body and make you look uglier than a crying Anna Paquin, that I put the pieces together. When I relayed it all to Gail, she just said sadly “I know.”

sookie crying
Really… they should just make her stop doing that.

He wasn’t sad the pets had died. He didn’t cry. He even told me he was relieved not to have them anymore. He tried to get me to spend the Red Cross money on a new XBOX. He swore he’d never used the stove.

He swore he’d never used the stove.

He swore he’d never used the stove.

Fires don’t just start themselves.

I slept next to that man for three more years.

Our junior year of high school, there was a man in a nearby town who had killed a little girl and contemplated eating her. I remember discussing with Gail how awful it would be to be the woman who lost her virginity to that man. I was right. I want to scrub my skin off thinking I ever let such a monster touch me… that he’s the only one who has.

I don’t know if my ex-husband ever loved me or if I was just his meal ticket. I tend to think he did at one time, but that he truly and thoroughly lost his soul that day, at 19 years old. I realize now that it doesn’t matter. He made his choices and I made mine. He used and abused me and I took it… for years. He honed his skills with me and he’ll only get better. Regardless, I’m waiting for the day he ends up in federal prison for targeting the wrong person. Nothing gives a gal peace of mind like knowing her psychotic ex-husband has a warrant out for his arrest in her home state. He’s not my problem anymore, though. Thank you, Jesus.

If I’d have been a better wife… he’d have just had a sweeter deal.

Thank God I lost the baby.

The Top Five Ways He Broke Me: A Valentine’s Day Tribute

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I was never huge on Valentine’s Day. I always thought it an excuse to either exclude single people or make your spouse (usually the husband) try to top whatever romantic thing he did last year. You can’t do something nice for your love just any ol’ time, such as when the restaurants and movie theaters aren’t packed? But, I used to participate anyway. It was just harmless fun.

Then Gail’s daughter died the day before Valentine’s Day, right around the time I had begun to suspect my ex-husband was cheating on me.

Then, three days after the following Valentine’s Day, my divorce was finalized.

Fuck Valentine’s Day.

There’s nothing to make you apprecieate being single like your Divorciversary and looking back. So in honor of Valentine’s Day, I post the top five ways he broke me. Keep in mind these are only the top five. The other day I almost threw out my only glass baking dish… because he once touched it.

i hate you sweet heart

1. I am a food hoarder.
It’s true. After spending the summer of 2010 eating free movie theater popcorn and explaining to the neighbors that I didn’t know why my dog’s ribs were showing, I will never go to bed hungry and neither will my beagle. I’ll never know for a fact that there is literally nothing to eat in my home. I have a framed receipt for corndogs on my bedroom wall, because corndogs were $4.95 for a box of 16 and it was the most food I could get for $5. It’s a reminder of how far I’ve come. It’s symbolic. Duh. My ex-husband constantly complained that it’s all we had, though he still wouldn’t get a job. I had to start carrying unperishables around in my car, so he wouldn’t eat them, leaving me nothing. I will never go back to that. As a result, my kitchen looks like that of a mom of three… or a doomsday prepper. I take care to buy canned and frozen items, because they won’t go bad before I get the chance to eat them and throw out anything that does. At the time of writing this, though, I had:

3 pounds of chicken
2 pounds of turkey franks
2 pounds of ground turkey
1 pound of breakfast sausage
3 pounds of turkey lil’ smokies
1 pound of ham, two pounds of cheese
2 dozen eggs
8 bags of frozen vegetables
1 container of fresh spinach
2 onions
2 avocados
4 cans of soup
4 cans of spaghetti O’s
4 boxes of cereal
2 loaves of bread
2 bags of frozen fries
1 bag of oranges
1 pound of grapes
5 pears
5 cans of fruit
4 cans of tuna
2 cans of beans

I. Live. Alone.

2. I panic whenever someone is at the door.
From the time I graduated high school in 2006 until I moved to this apartment in 2011, I moved 10 times. Literally. Nine of them were in only three years. Once, I just came home to a housefire and his suspicious lack of tears. Though he swore he was paying the rent, I had an anxiety attack every time the doorbell rang and would have my ex-husband answer. Ocassionally, it was someone telling us to get the hell out… now. I never knew where we’d go. Once, it was his mother’s house, for several months. Then, it was a motel room for a month and a half. We lived below a registered sex offender, who’d committed offenses against children. I was far away from my Gramma and Gail. I cried myself to sleep at night or drowned myself in fiction and alcohol. It was bad. Though I’ve been settled and able to pay my rent for about two years now, my heart still jumps into my throat whenever I hear a knock at the door. A part of me will always be unsettled.

3. I can’t even masturbate without crying.
Psh. I won’t even tell my therapist the details of this one. I’m kidding, of course. I don’t believe in that voodoo crap. Feelings and animal entrails gross me out equally. I just talk to Gail, who majored in that Black Magic for 9 days.* Regardless of the cause, however, the result is the same. I can’t do anything sexual without crying most of the time. I’ve yet to try it with a man, but explaining that sexual hang-up should be haaaaawt.

*I believe in therapy plenty, which is the precise reason I’m not letting anyone crack my head open and take a shit inside.

4. I cannot sleep without my wallet.
During the last year of my marriage, a lot of things went missing, such as my iPod, that cherished bracelet my Gramma bought me, the video camera I bought my senior year, my guitar, $600 in cash, a jar of pickles from my car. Incidentally, the XBOX never disappeared. On the night of my four year anniversary, the car even vanished, just before I sliced my hand open on a broken candle. I was alone and bleeding and had no way to get to the E.R. He didn’t return until morning. I began stuffing my keys in my pillowcase at night and leaving any valuables in the car. I forgot once and noticed my wallet wasn’t in my bag, where I left it, and realized the last $15 I had for gas and food had disappeared. I called my Gramma screaming and crying as if someone had died. She couldn’t even understand me and immediately promised to give me $25 once I “quit yelling.” Then I threw up from crying so hard. It was glorious. Soooo, after that, I began keeping the keys and the wallet in my pillowcase every night and to this day cannot sleep without my wallet in reach.

5. Sometimes, I sleep with my gun.
I was defenseless when I was married. I never will be again. Some nights, I wake in a panic or in tears. The next night, I sleep with Cecile, my guard issued Smith and Wesson 681 revolver in its bright pink gun sock, with home defense bullets in the side pocket, which were personally reloaded by my daddy. The gun’s not loaded. But if anyone ever threatens me or my puppy again, it will be. I’m damned accurate with Cecile and with .357 home defense rounds, it wouldn’t matter if I wasn’t.

Time may heal most wounds, but in some ways, I will always be the frightened 23-year-old driving around with her Gramma’s jewlery in the car. The perfect Valentine’s Day gift is a giant Reese heart, an equally disproportionate box of ammo, and respect for the fact that I don’t fucking do Valentine’s Day.

In defense of E.L. James… from an unlikely source.

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So, if you follow my blog, you know it’s no secret that I, like many bloggers, enjoy a good Fifty Shades roast… and by that I mean:

roast

/rōst/
Verb

Cook (food, esp. meat) by prolonged exposure to heat in an oven or over a fire.

burning books

If you follow my blog religiously, you are awesome. You are also aware that I was abused for a good portion of my life; so, I fully recognize the abusive relationship chronicled in this swill. I recognize that it triggers  survivors and it’s painful for them, because the “murcurial” moments of Christian Grey stressed me the fuck out and that whole belt scene was just damned hard to read for personal reasons. I seriously almost stopped reading the first book, despite my curiosity, because it was making me physically sick and giving me nightmares. So I get it.

I’ve also read reports of E.L. James’s response to the claims that this book romanticizes abuse, which pretty much amount to “Nuh huh!” before she blocks them. This and… oh, I don’t know… her writing… are proof that she’s an insensitve moronic twat. I am intensely enjoying this hilariously spot on, chapter by chapter analysis over the entire series. So… maybe I just made a really good case for the execution of E.L. James. All that being said, however:

All she did was write a book…
I’m certain I’m not the first to say that E.L. James did not create domestic violence. Sure, it’s super disturbing that she thinks it’s sexy, but apparently, so do a lot of women. I did read the trilogy, from the library’s e-media collection, because I didn’t want to touch the paperback. I didn’t purchase the book or any of its paraphenalia (I saw that display in the sex store), because I didn’t want to further support E.L. James in her degradation of women, but I was curious. I pretty much came to the conclusion that Fifty is just sexy to people who’ve never been abused or manipulated ever, because I didn’t get the appeal… at all.

Where’s the personal responsibility in the Fifty Shades of Domestic Violence discussion, though? I am absolutely not referring to the idea that women need to be more vigilant about not-getting-hit. I’m referring to the fact that we’re grown ass women. We schedule our yearly gynecological visits, report the broken faucet to maintenance, pay our bills, make sure there’s food in the kitchen and the oil gets changed, do something-with-children if we’re moms, and oh, I don’t know… hold full-time fucking jobs, but we’re not capable of putting poorly written erotica into perspective and realizing that it’s only good in a fantasy? It’s like when you fantasize about something that would make your grandma cry while you masturbate, but in actuality, you know you’d feel disgusting and degraded if you did that in real life. Fifty Shades of Grey is exactly that… unless you’re stupid and irresponsible.

How is it the fault of a woman who couldn’t come up with another word for “crap” with a gun to her head that our teenagers are secretly reading what has always been dubbed “erotica” cough:: porn:: cough on their Kindles? How is it the fault of a shitty fan-fic writer if we fail to further research the whole dom/sub thing before giving it a go with that guy off Craigslist? If the concern is that this is “normalizing” domestic abuse, then we need to be talking more about what constitutes abuse in society, so people can differentiate fantasy from reality and realize that this book is not a fucking how-to guide. It’s been advertised as one, but again, we’re at fault if we don’t understand how advertising works.  We need to monitor our children’s media better and sit down with them and ask what they’re getting out of Twilight and explain what’s wrong about it. However, we also need to let adults take responsibility for what they’re reading and the ideas they’re getting from it, because they’re fucking adults.

“So help me God, Anastasia, if you don’t eat, I will take you across my knee here in this restaurant, and it will have nothing to do with my sexual gratification. Eat!”

I don’t even kind of fucking get what’s so hot about that, even in a fantasy, but in an actual restaurant, it’s a reason to blow that rape whistle. I think the majority of women who read Fifty do get that.

… that’s been written a hundred times…
This is my biggest defense of E.L James. Sure, it’s been a few years since we heard the whole dom/sub thing, but the Alpha Male shit is prevalent across most romance novels and every other media. It’s not new. From Darrin Stevens to Edward Cullen, this shit is hold fucking hat. Samantha Stevens literally gave up the power to provide for herself so Darrin could feel needed. That’s from an actual damned episode where she conjures herself a fur coat and he’s livid. Edward Cullen regularly told Bella what she was and was not allowed to do and she swooned. E.L. James adding some handcuffs to the mix, doesn’t create a new genre. Men have been abusing women to cheering crowds since caveman days. Does that make it right? Fuck no. It also doesn’t make E.L. James any worse than all of those other authors of books, spanning all genres, where men overpower women who secretly want it. Such as in:

Twilight – young adult
Club Dead – mystery: Bill fucking rapes Sookie in this book and it slips her gee dee mind.
A Hunger Like No Other – paranormal romance
Dark Lover – paranormal romance
Bared to You – erotica (to be fair, this one came after Fifty)

Those are just off the top of my head, but let’s see… how about every single book on this Good Reads list titled “Alpha Male“?

The fact that this book is BDSM related isn’t what makes it abusive. It’s the way he talks to her and treats her and threatens and belittles her. Sadly, though, E.L. James is still no trailblazer in this.

… and that no one was forced to read.
Fuck yeah, it gave me nightmares and made me want to vomit… because I chose to read it. I saw the movie The Collection with the guys not too long ago. It was absolutely disgusting, but I sat through the whole thing, because they were watching it and I wanted to know what totally anatomically implausible thing would happen next and couldn’t stop wondering what the popularity of this gore said about society. That right there is exactly why I read Fifty Shades of Grey. It was offensive and upsetting and I’ll admit, it was a trigger for me in a lot of ways. I could’ve put it down. I didn’t. That is not the fault of E.L. James. That’s the fault of the moron who started it in the first place, knowing what it was after Googling it and loudly asking a coworker “What does BDSM mean?” even though she’s twenty-fucking-five. I swear, I may as well be a virgin.

Ultimately…

Fifty Shades is one of my favorite things to hate, as you can tell, since I said so here, here, here, and here. This post, however, was brought on by reading some blogs trashing E.L. James. Don’t get me wrong. I read what she said about domestic violence and her book…

James says she “freaks out when she hears people say that her book encourages domestic violence. “Nothing freaks me out more than people who say this is about domestic abuse,” she says. “Bringing up my book in this context trivializes the issues, doing women who actually go through it a huge disservice. It also demonizes loads of women who enjoy this lifestyle, and ignores the many, many women who tell me they’ve found the books sexually empowering.”

… and I’ve read reports of her just refusing to discuss this issue with the people who’ve basically said “Um… I don’t feel trivialized by those people. I feel like you’re high-fiving me in the black eye.” I find her horribly inconsiderate. I’ve also been convinced for a while now that she sold her fucking soul to make these books popular, because they’re not even good porn. There is no plot, which is standard for erotica, but even the sex is redundant and awkward. As someone who’s been there, I can admit that yes, it’s upsetting when people call abuse sexy. However, E.L. James is not responsible for domestic abuse and has never actually compared the battered wives shelter to a brothel. Sure, it might be nice for her to come out and say “This book is not a how-to guide. It is meant for your enjoyment, not your replication,” but credit should be given where credit is due.

It’s not the porn industry’s fault that your marriage collapsed. It’s your ex-husband and his chafing dick that resulted from all of those downloads.

It’s not Alpha Male erotica that punched you in the kidneys. It’s a husband with anger problems who needs professional help.

Teenagers are not misinformed about sex because of an inaccurate erotic novel. They’re misinformed because their parents let them read it at 13.

It’s not the fault of a poorly written and irresponsibly advertised novel that someone ended up in the E.R. after misusing a spreader bar. It’s their fault for not taking advantage of the wealth of instantaneous information to research possibly unsafe bedroom activities.

Toasters, Marriage, and the Good Ol’ Days

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Not long ago, I was substitute teaching at my suburban high school and heard a 10th grade girl say:

“I would never get a divorce. I mean, unless he cheated. Maybe then.”

Oh, sweetie. I’m so glad you think that’s the worst a man can do to you and I hope you never know differently.

I can only assume that she’ll turn into one of the happy couples on Facebook who’ve been married all of eleven days and are posting the following. picture

Because if it’s true about toasters, it must be true about marriage. Fine. I’ll get on board with that idea. In 1953, your toaster starts sparking. So you pay someone to fix it. Then, because it’s a faulty piece of crap that broke for a reason, a few months later, it causes a kitchen fire. Today, in a world of mass consumption, your toaster breaks and you throw it out and buy a new one. Guess who just avoided a fucking kitchen fire, bitches?

The reason people fixed things when broken back then, was because it was cheaper, which is the very reason people just buy a new one today.

In 1953, your husband hits you in a rage, because dinner wasn’t ready by 5:00. So you make sure dinner is ready by 5:00. Then, because he’s a bastard with anger management problems, a few months later, he beats you to a pulp because his chicken was undercooked. Today, in a world where you don’t have to defend your reason for not wanting to be with someone, your husband hits you in a rage and you leave. Guess who just avoided being beaten to a fucking pulp, bitches?

The reason people stayed in bad marriages back then, was because it was easier, which is the very reason people just leave today.

If you long for “the good old days” when people stayed married, then you don’t remember Ricky Ricardo bending Lucy over his knee to spank her for going against his will, while America roared with laughter. You’ve never seen Archie Bunker call his wife stupid while no one stood up for her. This was comedy. Abusing women is funny, y’all!

Today it’s just haaaawwt, but that’s a different rant.

The reason divorce rates were lower 60 years ago, is because it was harder to get a divorce, not because people were just so much more willing to work on their problems.The divorce rate in 1953 was 25%. Once a couple was able to declare “irreconcilable differences” in 1970, that increased by 10% and had more than doubled to 52% by 1980. It’s 50% today. Prior to the no-fault divorce, anyone wanting to do so was required to prove “adultery or cruelty in a marriage”. Tell me, how does a housewife, who hopefully has a high school education and likely no further, prove that her husband is cheating on her, to a bunch of men who also think wives  are property and need to be controlled? How does she prove he’s being cruel to her when he can argue it’s part of that controlling? Furthermore, if she’s granted the divorce, how does she support herself when women made up a WHOPPING 34% of the workforce? Why the hell would they hire a woman to do the job when they could get a man? If she is hired, she can hope to make 63.9% of what she’d be making if she brought a penis to work. Even daily survival, such as purchasing a lawnmower on credit, is going to take the signature of a man, whether she’s got the full-time job or not, as it did for my Gramma in the 1960s. It was just easier to suck it up and stay. The good ol’ days, indeed.

In the 1960s, my Grandma Kay went to her devoutly Catholic parents, head held high and said:

“I have done everything you’ve ever asked of me. I have been the best daughter I can be… but I hate him. I will not stay married to him. I want out. I don’t care what the church says. I can’t even stand the sight of him.”

She had four babies in under 5 years and he refused to use any method of birth control, including the rhythmic method. She was his baby machine, he wanted her to coddle him more than any of the children he ignored, and he expected her to do every one of the household chores alone. She tried to fix a broken toaster and got out before the kitchen caught fire. She reclaimed her life with more than 60 years left and gave her babies a happy mother and a wonderful step-father who adored them. She was the extreme minority. That’s not a time to boast about or envy. That’s heartbreaking.

Sure there are some happy couples joyously celebrating year 65, such as my great grandparents who died within a few weeks of each other, but there are also some women who wish they’d had the nerve to stick their heads in the oven 50 years ago and some men who haven’t retired because they can’t fucking stand her. This country is no doubt filled with elderly men and women, looking at the lives behind them thinking “if I’d just left 60 years ago…” Today, there are 72 day marriages and that guy who told me on a first date that the reason he was divorced was because they made better friends than husband and wife (?????), but that’s not the majority of our reasons. Irreconcilable differences can translate to anything from “he painted the bedroom orange” to “he burned my fucking house down.”

As infuriating as it is to hear a 15-year-old say “I would never get a divorce,” I don’t comment. She won’t listen. I didn’t. I thought the exact same thing 10 years ago. Several fake jobs, a house fire, a hundred bottles of Everclear, thousands of dollars in debt, an eviction, some dead pets, a miscarriage, hundreds of missing dollars, and a whole shit ton of lies later and I know better than to judge. Yet, these people on Facebook are my age and they don’t. Maybe they will turn into that judgemental old couple. He’ll work and she’ll do the dishes and life will be fantastic while they look down on everyone else for shitting on God’s law and getting a disgusting divorce. To that, I say: Fuck you. Fuck you for having the perfect life I wanted and taking it for granted, because you’ve never known how they could’ve hurt you. How dare you judge me or anyone else for escaping abuse? You have no idea what went on in anyone else’s relationship.

A marriage takes two. TWO. That means there’s no room for the opinion of a third party, because no matter what, “irreconcilable differences” always means, “none of your fucking business.” So while some people long for the Archie Bunker days and pat themselves on the backs, I think I’m going to enjoy shopping for a functioning toaster.

Yes. I did research this.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0193820.html

http://www.divorcerate.org/

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/05/art2full.pdf

http://divorce.lovetoknow.com/Historical_Divorce_Rate_Statistics

I would not give my mom a kidney.

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mom and daughter

It’s true.

I wouldn’t.

I would not endure any more discomfort in my life than she already causes, so she could cause it longer.

I would not take any more physical pain than I experienced growing up with her.

You don’t get it, unless you wouldn’t give your own mom a kidney.

“She’s your mother.”

“She brought you into the world.”

That’s what they say in outrage.

These people didn’t beat the dog when they were eight years old so they could cuddle her afterward like their own moms did them.

They didn’t spend their teen years medicated, because it made them easier to handle.

They don’t regularly comfort their Gramma, the woman who did make them feel loved growing up, because their mom tells her she stole her children.

They never got the “What happened to the daughter I loved?” text, because they couldn’t go to lunch.

They were never beaten for refusing to see a therapist for “behavioral problems.”

They don’t suck their thumbs as adults, because it was the only thing that made the rages stop.

They didn’t lose years with their father, convinced he’d molested them, because she was angry.

They can suck my dick.

Because I still wouldn’t give my mom a kidney…

… until I did, because she’s my mom and she brought me into the world.

When she dies, I’ll cry because I spent my life hating her…

and the woman who made birthday pancakes with candles in them disappeared when I was eight…

and I don’t know why…

but I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t give your mom a kidney.

I have this stuffed bear…

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Me: “Okay.. so you’re poised over your ex-husband’s sleeping form…”
Gail: Interrupts with choking laughter

We have this thing, where we can’t deal with adult emotions on the things that hurt too much, so we giggle instead. It’s really pretty awful if anyone overhears a good rape joke… in a Target… with their seven-year-old… at 9:45 on a weeknight? Sir, I really think you should be more concerned about your child’s sleep schedule than my quiet discussion with my best friend about her vaginal trauma (he hadn’t actually heard the joking portion).  Fortunately the above was just a phone conversation.

Gail’s answer was that she’d do nothing.

Mine was that I’d be so threatened by his presence that I could kill him.

I think hers was healthier.

Me: “Every time I see this kind of thing on the news, I worry I’m going to see my ex-husband’s picture. How fucked up is that and how broken am I?”
Gail: “Yeah, I could see him doing something like that.”

I have this stuffed bear. It’s in a box in my storage closet.  I kept it out of spite after all of the things he stole from me, literally and figuratively. It’s covered in soot from a fire I can’t bring myself to discuss. I’m not sure why I keep it. I’m too afraid to contact him to send it back. It feels hateful to throw it out. So it’s just there… in a Wal-Mart sack to keep the soot off of things.

I haven’t woken up with my wallet and keys in my pillowcase since I moved to this apartment. I don’t lock the bedroom door and can usually get through the night without getting up to check the patio and front door locks more than once. I rarely sleep with my gun anymore.

I still can’t sleep without my purse and wallet next to me.

I still have nightmares.

They’re not usually violent. Sometimes he’s texting… counting down the minutes until he breaks down the door. Usually, I’m just still with him. I never did it. I never left. My life never turned upside down to right itself in a completely different universe. I’m still fat and alone and hateful. I lie in bed and can’t breathe. Sometimes I wake up crying. I cuddle the dog and promise him I’ll never let anyone hurt him again. I kiss his paws, even though they’re dirty dog feet, because I’m so happy they aren’t caked with blood. I think the dog has nightmares, too. He’s yipping in his sleep right now.

jude in chair

Maybe I’ll set the bear on fire.

Why am I writing this instead of my final? I suppose I get a nice divorce rant every now and then.