Friday, January 18, 2013

Where it all began

"You can’t be controlled unless you allow yourself to be controlled."


After being in an abusive relationship for a year in a half with my ex, five years later I finally realized what could have led me into that relationship in the first place.  In my blog, I wrote that I was never abused and that I didn’t understand why I whine up in an abusive relationship.  I had an epiphany after the birth of my first child when my parents started to intrude in how my husband and I should be raising our son.  How we should be raising him like they raised me.  How they would compare their marriage to ours like they have the perfect marriage.   Growing up, I saw their marriage as less than perfect and not the ideal marriage that I wanted.  I did not want to be abused emotionally and mentally like my mother was and still is; not like I was as a child.

I notice the pattern of abusive behavior growing up but I didn’t recognize it as abusive but only that the way my parents treated my sister and I wasn’t normal. I was running away from that type of controlling relationship when I moved out when I was twenty-two years old and when I found myself back in that type of abusive relationship with my ex when I was twenty-six, it boggled my mind.  I see my parents relationship as a dictatorship where my father was the dominate figure and my mother was a subordinate. In other words, he was controlling and narcissistic and she was the co-dependent. In my parent’s house, what my father says goes not matter if he’s wrong.  If he doesn’t get his way, he would yell, guilt, and threaten and would invade your space by get in a persons face or pointing his finger in a persons face to get what he wanted.  My father is a tall, big built man so he comes off as intimating to a lot of people and hardly anyone would challenge him.

Then there’s my mother.  She is a small framed woman, quiet and reserved.  When my father wouldn’t get his way, he would yell at my mother.  He would sometimes guilt her to get her to do what he wanted and while my father was raising his voice and making idle threats, my mother would just sit there and let him yell at her like a child. My mother once in a while would speak up about something my father said or did that she didn’t like or if she wanted to pursue something that she wanted to try, my father would turn and twisted the situation to make it about him like he was the victim and she’s hurting him on purpose. I could not understand why my mother would let my father talk and treat her like a child and that would anger me.  “Why doesn’t mom speak up for herself?” I would ask my sister.  My baby sister would be dumbfounded like I was.    I should tell you a little history of my parents in order for you to get an idea of where I’m coming from. 

My father was raised by a very religious and dominating mother. According to my father, she would send her children to church everyday. She would make them call her everywhere they went, she was abusive mentally, physically, and emotionally to her sons.  When there wasn’t enough food to eat, she would feed the girls and not the boys, except for her favorite son.  My father claimed that my grandmother was so mad at him one day that she threw a knife at him and tried to kill him but he moved and the knife avertedly hit his baby sister.  She would force him to pay rent which is a way to control him financially while she didn’t work.  The way my father describes his mother was that she was very controlling and if he didn’t obey the rules he would get abused one way or the other.

My mother was born to a teenage mother but had a strong grandmother as the head of the household.  My maternal grandmother married and it went down hill from there.  My maternal grandmother became an alcoholic and my mother helped raise her 8 brothers and sisters so she became a mother to her siblings.  My mother was also molested by her stepfather for years and didn’t tell anyone until she was in her late thirties when she seen her molester at her mothers house for a visit.  I remembered that day because I thought it was weird that my mother didn’t hug this man and she stood there with this forced smile on her face with her arms crossed.  My mother didn’t say a word to him.  So my mother was abused sexually, emotionally, and mentally by having an alcoholic mother and a molester as a stepfather.

Getting back to how their abusive experience led to me and my sister being abused emotionally and mentally when my parents especially my father tried to control every move we made as far as making decisions for ourselves and being our own person.  I don’t know how my sister felt but I felt that I wasn’t allowed to be myself when I was with my parents.  My sister and I were very sheltered in a sense that we never played outside, never went to camp, we didn’t have friends come over the house and the only friends we had been in school.  If we had interested in school or outside of school that didn’t coincide in what they or should I say my father wanted us to do it wouldn’t happen.  Even if we tired to convince him we wanted to try an activity he would guilty us and make us feel bad about our choices and we wined up giving in to what he wanted. We had to call everywhere we went to even if we where in the same shopping area or complex, we would call at every store we went to.  If we were home and didn’t answer the phone in 3 rings we, especially me, would get yelled at and thought that we were ‘up to something’.  I remember times when the phone was downstairs and I was upstairs in the bathroom and the phone rang, I would have to get off the toilet and run down the stairs to make sure that I would get the phone at 3 rings.  I also remember that I had to take the phone upstairs with the long phone cord if I was going be in the bathroom to pick up if my parents called. I remember times when my mother would run to the phone when my dad would call so she wouldn’t miss the rings. He started to tell us how to think and feel. If we expressed an emotion, then he will tell you that you don’t feel that way.  If we thought a certain way that didn’t coincide in his thinking his response would be ‘Who put that in your head?’  We weren’t allowed to think for ourselves.

As I got older, I started to stand up to my father and express what I wanted in my life and my own thoughts.  But still he tried to control my movements even though I was of age to make decision for myself. One example is when I wanted to join a bowling league at my university.  We would have to travel to different cities to compete.  He didn’t like that.  His justification was that didn’t like the idea of me being around “white people” and traveling to different cities.  He treated me like a child and yell at me until I coward down.  That’s when I decided to save up money and moved out at the age of 22 to get out of the controlling grips of my father. My mother was controlling too but more subtle like working in the background.  I remember my mother still wanted me to call her when I got to work, when I'm getting off of work, and when I got home when I moved out of their house.   I told her “no, I’m not doing that because I’m living on my own.” I remember the last time my father yelled at me when I was 26 years old. It was about my ex living with me and how he didn’t like that he was living with me.  I had enough of them telling me what to do and interfering in my life so I hung up on him. My father didn’t like it and told me I was dead to him.  I didn’t speak to my parents for 2 weeks.  That was the last time that my father ever yelled at me.  So in a sense, I ran from one abusive family into the arms of another abusive relationship and it took me until I had my child to finally realize and admit that growing up, I was in an emotionally and mentally abusive relationship with my family.

I was what you would call a scapegoat in a narcissist family.  I was the one who spoke up when I thought that my father was wrong while my mother and sister said nothing because they didn’t want to enrage my father.  My mother or sister didn’t defend me even when they knew I was right.  I would tell my sister the arguments that I would have with my father and her response was “Why argue with him? He’s going to think what he wants to think anyway.”  I helped my family out financially when my father didn’t have a job for almost two years. I helped get them their first computer on a credit line, I’ve even lent them some money for a roof that they never got fixed and lent them money to put my sister through a prep class for art to enter into an art program in college.  My family paid some of it back but never offered to pay all and I had to finish the payments myself. I remember when I was 16 years old and had my first job. I couldn’t open a bank account by myself until I was 18. I didn’t trust my parents to open an account for me because I didn’t want them to have access to my money and for good reason. I’ve gave my father some money that I would hide in the tin can if he need help. This was the time when my father was out of work for 2 years. My father would go in my room where I hid my money in a tin can and would ‘help himself’ to take some money to buy weed.  Then my mother would have to pay me back. I was the rock in the family and my parents knew that.  The stronger I became, the more they tired to control me.  I knew I had to get away and when I was with my ex, I thought I did.  I thought I broke away for the control of my family and landed in the controlling hands of my ex.  When I was with my ex, I felt like I was losing myself again. With the yelling and guilt tripping my ex used to give me; I realized that I was losing myself again, I had to get out.

My parents still try to gain control over my life when it comes to my marriage and my son. Figure that they will try to impose their views of their marriage and how they raised me and my sister on us.  But I realize that you can’t be controlled unless you allow yourself to be controlled.  I don’t discuss my married life with them or my son as far as intimate deals of our lives.  As long as they know that everything is fine, that’s all they need to know and nothing more. Also, I realized that they can try to impose their views on my family but the bottom line is this is my family, not theirs so they have no say so in how my life is and how we raise our son.

I don’t know who my mother was before she met my father but I don't think it’s the woman that she is now.  Sometimes I see the aggressiveness in my mother, the fire and passion that she has for life when she’s with me and my sister. But when my father's around, she’s turns into his shallow and follow him whatever he goes. I remember my mother telling me that she could have gotten a job working with computers or learning computer programs.  I’d asked her why she didn’t go for it; she responded ‘I don’t remember’ but I think I know the reason why.   I guess after years of being with a controlling and narcissistic person, you tend not to fight anymore and to succumb to the person they want you to be. I refuse to be that person.    I wonder sometimes if my mother will get fed up with my father and the true personality of my mother will come out. I remember my father telling me that my mother said to him that she wasn’t happy for over 25 years of marriage on her birthday 10 years ago, but why did she still stay?  My sister and I was grown and moved out of the house but she still stayed.   

I decided not to marry a person like my father because if I have to lose myself in order to be loved, then I don’t want that man’s love.   After almost 35 years of life, I’m trying to build my self esteem up more and to find the person that was met to be but still I second guess myself. I got to a point where I know I deserve more in life but a part of me has this voice in my head that says I shouldn’t, I can't, and then guilt comes in for wanting more. My husband tries to help me through this and say that I need to ‘believe in my own convictions’ no matter what people think.  It’s hard not to care about what people think when you’re condition to having thoughts implanted in you or to feel that you need approval in order to do something. It’s a hard process but I refuse to live in someone else’s shallow, it’s time to find the real me.   

I shared my story to say this: when we find ourselves in an abusive relationship and we can’t decipher how and why we end up in an abusive relationship, take a step back in your early years and see if there is a pattern of abuse.  Physical abusive can easily be identified where the origin originated, but emotionally, mentally, and financial abuse you have to look deeper because it’s harder to point out. A person may think this type of interaction with people is normal but they sense something’s not right but can’t put their finger on it.  Abuse is a cycle and unless a person realize what it is, then they have the ability to stop it or continue it.  I refuse to be apart of it. I refuse to continue it.

 

 

                                  

 

Friday, July 31, 2009

Showing you love yourself...Birthday Present

To love yourself is to show yourself how much you love you! Yes, I know it's sounds simple enough but its an easy thing not to do. With work and family, what time to you have for yourself? Sorry sleeping does not count :). As my birthday is coming up, I have to think of ways of celebrating the day that I was born and to show how much I love me over the 30+ years that I've been on this earth. This is one of the times where you can show yourself some love. Granted, you should show yourself love everyday, but when it comes to your birthday, you should love yourself so much more. You don't have to do anything special, if you want to then that's good too. You can reflect how over the years, that you've grown into the person that you've become today. Think about all the positive things in your life e.g family, friends, career, happiness etc. Also, think about the challenges that you've faced over the years and see what you've learned from the experiences that made you a better person today than your were yesterday. Celebrate your day with a day of something that you like to do; whether its going to a spa, a movie, a play, sitting reading a good book, or just doing nothing...make that day YOUR DAY! Love yourself enough to treat yourself. You are one step closer to love yourself first.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Love Yourself First Pledge

I wanted to share a pledge that I have written that may help to love yourself first. I've written this pledge as a reminder to always "Love Yourself First" and hopefully to prevent anyone from getting or staying in an abusive relationship. Please say this Pledge with me:

I pledge to love myself first.
I realize that I am a beautiful human being,
that deserves to be loved, cherished, and respected.
I realize that the issues and insecurities of others
are not my burdens to bear.
I will not allow or accept to be abused
physically, emotionally, financially, mentally, or sexually,
for I deserve much better than that.
Today, I pledge to love myself first,
For no one can love me better than me.

The First part is the hardest...

Like many women in abusive relationships, I did not realize that I was being abused. I've never experience abuse before and I did not recognize the signs. I wasn't physically abused, that would of been obvious abuse. I was emotionally abused by a ex boyfriend.

I thought at first, the way he talked to me or should I say, the way he criticized me, that it was his personality. His criticism was only constructive and that he was trying to make me into a better person...so he would say. He would find something I did wrong for example, pronunciation of a word, criticize my cooking, how I didn't wash his fruits and vegetables right, how I didn't turn out the lights when I left the room, how I did not care about the environment, how I would care about the dog more than him, how I dressed etc. He would pick fights with me because he was bored. He would also take credit for things that I've accomplished like I did not have the ability to do it without him e.g taking certain classes or improving my health by workout. He would say in every argument "If it wasn't for me you would have been or your wouldn't done (fill in the blank). Every time I'm happy about something, he would shoot it down by pointing out something else I did wrong. He always felt that I was being the man because I was too independent and he felt I did not need him, or he felt that I was disrespecting him because I would not agree with everything him did or say. He would do things that I didn't like like pinch me hard and then says that he was only playing stop being a "fuddy duddy". He would not offer to help me when I needed it UNLESS I specifically asked for his help. I was fearful to speak my mind in the event that he may lash out some hateful words to me. He would call me an idiot, stupid, selfish etc. I had to be careful what I said and how I said it to avoid another fight. He was very manipulative in a way that if he did something to hurt your feelings, he had a way to blame you like you cause him to say hurtful things to you....to criticize you. You start to believe "Maybe it is my fault" and you apologize for having expressed your feelings because you were overly sensitive. This is when I started second guessing myself. My confidence level that was once high was dropping and I began to agree just to stop agruing.

My personality was changing...changing into someone he wanted me to be, someone he could control. I was losing myself trying to please him but he could never be pleased. Walking on eggshell trying not to step too hard to keep the peace in the relationship. Every time I come home, my stomach would tie into knots wondering what person would show up. When we argued, which was almost every week, I would curse at him and he at me and I am not the type of person that likes to curse. Sometimes he would get me so frustrated that I would walk out of MY own house just to cool down. He brought out the worst in me. He tried to contribute his personality switches on the physical and emotional abuse he suffered as a child. At that time, I thought that it's not his fault that he acted that way. But as the relationship when on, I realize that it was an excuse, a crutch that he used to get away the way he was treating me...controlling me. People that I worked with was noticing that I was losing weight and that I was unhappy. Even my father asked was everything OK. When I had tried to convince my father that I was happy, I realize that I wasn't happy and I had to get out. I should not have to convince people that I was happy.

By the grace of God, he decide to leave and we broke up two weeks prior of him moving out but he still wanted a relationship. I express that we could not happen and it is over...but he did not want to hear it. Realizing that I was in an abusive relationship (which admitting it is the hardest part), I allowed him to think what he wanted just for him to get out. I had to play it smart. I had change my locks when he left (because he never gave me back my keys) and prayed that he would leave me alone...that didn't happen. He even told me that he would not have moved out if we could not be together (keep in mind we broke up two weeks prior to him moving) I had to realize in an abusers mind, it's never over. It took him two weeks of me not returning his calls (at that time, I felt like a prison in my own home) and a couple of time that he stopped by unexpectedly (I did not open the door) for him to leave me alone. No the police could not do anything, I've tried. As long as he did not threaten harm to me, they could not do anything. I kept looking around my shoulder to making sure that he was not around following me. I've never been so scared in my life. I let him harass me by saying what he wanted to say on my voice mails and text messaging, "How he made me who I am. How I was nothing before he came into my life. How could anyone want me now. How ugly I was." So many hurtful things he said but I never responded. This was almost two and a half years ago in 2006. Some times the thought of him still scares me. The scars that he put on me emotionally are healed but I still second guess myself sometimes.

I realize that it was the lack of love for myself that allowed me to endure this relationship. Anyone who loves themselves would of realized that an abusive relationship in any form is not right and they deserve much better. I knew that within 3 months of the relationship that something wasn't right but choose to ignore the signs. It took me a year to realized that I was abused and 6 months to plan an out. Like I say, I was lucky that he left on his own accord...my angels were looking out for me and I took that opportunity (I had 1 chance before 3 months into the relationship) to get out and I wasn't going to wait another year and 3months. Maybe I thought at the time that he was the best that I could do but after all the arguments, the losing of weight, and walking on eggshells, I realize that I could and deserve so much better. Even if it took me years to find someone else that would treat me better I would wait. Fortunately, I have someone that treats me like a queen with respect and dignity. Any one in an abusive relationship deserves better. There is a saying that "It could be worse" but "It always could be better" as well. Don't think negative, be positive. Don't let your abuser give you any excuse as to why they treat you the way they do. They have the power to control their behavior but chose not to. Don't think that you can change them either...they have to change themselves.

I will dedicate my blogs in finding ways to love yourself first and signs to avoid a partner that is abusive. You have to love yourself first because if you do not love yourself then how else anyone going to love you? You have to realize you do not deserved to be abused in anyway. On my next blog, will you take this pledge with me to "Love yourself first?"