Saving Myself

Hello my blessed darlings!  I am sending you love and light from here.  I’ve spent the morning reading threw my articles trying to figure out, where I left off with you.  I forget sometimes you are not here with me.  So the small stuff first and then we will have time to talk about my big developments.

Team Ilsa

In May it seems I pulled a muscle in my hip and knee.  We believe that because I pushed myself so hard in the beginning, ignoring the pain, believing it was part of the process from years of not using my muscles, that I did in fact injure myself.  At the urging of Coach Jay, who used to work training football players, I took almost two weeks off and did no floor exercises and walked no farther than the barn.  I was extremely upset at the whole process.  My muscles that had lengthened and relaxed with exercise, contracted again, and caused me pain again when I worked them. 

I have had to start everything back over.  I had to start my floor exercises back at 5, down from 30.  I had days where if I made it to the gravel road, I was doing good.  We have learned that I just cannot push myself that hard.  I cannot walk and do floor exercises on the same day.  So now I am doing my floor exercises 3 days a week and walking the other four.  No matter how upset I am at myself for being fat, I have to let my body rest. All of this is still an adjustment. Just in the last few days I have made it to the first driveway, on the road across from my house. a victory, for me for sure, but a bittersweet one.  My back spasms had started to get bad again, but in the last week or two they have gotten better.  Slowly and surely it is all coming back. 

I am happy to say the new medicine the dr. put me on seems to have stopped most of my swelling, but I still continue with my exercises for fear it will return. 

I finished reading my book on nutrition.  I took many notes and it has helped, so has listening to my own body, and honoring my wants and desires.  The world of fruits and vegetables continues to be exciting one for me.  I am learning to keep certain vegetables on hand.  I have learned what is in season, is usually what is on sale.  I am learning how to freeze what I buy, but also how to incorporate more vegetables in what I cook.  My tastes seem to rotate on what vegetables I want to eat like, for instance, the last two pay checks we have bought cabbage and squash.  I probable will not buy them again this pay check.  I am kind of tired of them. 

We have also learned that a half a cabbage is plenty for us for dinner.  Three squash, sweated down with half and onion is also enough for a side dish.  I usually only want 1 or 2 bok choy and Jay does not like them.  We buy meat in bulk, divide it and freeze it ourselves.  Before we would put 4 pork chops in a container, now 2 is plenty, same with chicken.  So there has been a substantial reduction in the quantity of food we eat, verses what it was a year or even 6 months ago. 

As I have reduced my usage of salt in my diet, I have picked up my love for hot stuff again.  I just can’t get enough heat in my diet.  In the fajitas the other night I sautéed 3 jalapenos and a half a green Serrano in with my onions, garlic, and mushrooms.  Oh it was so good!  I finally got enough heat!  My craving for sugar has been going for some months now, but the other day I went to make myself a bowl of Lucky Charms, and it was just way too sweet for me.  I cannot explain it.  Maybe it is tied to us reducing our salt, maybe it is tied to my emotions.  I am still not sure.

Mom

Those of you who are following along know that I posted my article, All her sins laid bare, in May.  What most of you don’t know is that it had been on my blog almost a month before that.  I waited, kept trying, and finally gave up.  On May 27^th, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, I sent my mom an intensely private and condemning email.  I have shared it with a few of you privately, but will not print it here.  It was 7 pages and 3,700 or so words.  It was a goodbye letter.  I have finally given up that our relationship will ever get any better.  She will continue to emotionally, mentally, and verbally abuse me, whenever she thinks she can get away with it.  As I did four years ago when she robbed me (My mother - part 2), I am trying to pick up the pieces of my broken heart and go on.

I pray that this time will be different and that I will not go back, no matter how much it pains other family members, or how I feel I am causing them pain, or hurting them.  I for the first time in many years, perhaps my life, am putting my own health and feelings ahead of everybody else.  Something, perhaps some of you will condemn me for.  That is something I will have to learn to live with. 

I have received no contact from her, since I sent the email and posted the link to my article on my Facebook.  The fact that I have blocked her from my Facebook also helps I think.  She has blessedly not responded by letter, phone, carrier pigeon, text, or email to any of this.  And for that I am grateful.  My father, Jef, has at this time remained silent on this subject as well.  I miss him dearly.  I also sent him an email, at the same time I sent mom’s, telling him how sorry I was that I had caused him any pain, and how much I loved him.  Telling him that the last year and a half that I had contact with her was because I loved him so much. 

I have picked up a good book called, “Healing the daughters of narcissistic mothers:  Will I ever be good enough?” by Dr. Karyl McBride.  It is a tremendous book.  It is causing me to look at all that was skewed in our relationship.  Why she did the things she did?  How we functioned as a family?  And I think a major cause as to why I have so many mental problems.  I know I am not alone in all this work.  It is my hope by going public with my mother’s abuse and working diligently threw all of this crap, threw all of this dirty laundry, I will in the end save myself.  And by posting this, perhaps it will help you too.

Ilsa

 

 

Rescuing Mike D.

You may feel that I have covered much of what follows in my Being Pagan series.  I am sorry if I repeat myself and bore you in the process.  I like to think of this blog as the stories I would tell you, if you and I were sitting at my big, old, wooden kitchen table.  On our first meeting I would not have started with my birth and worked up to today.  I would have told you stories, that are cyclical in nature, covering different periods of time, and you would make your own timeline, in your head after some time of us talking.  Well that is if you are paying attention, and I think you are.  I am glad we are having this talk.  I am glad to be heard. 

I have been rescuing dogs for a long time.  That need to rescue over the years turned into rescuing people.  Sometimes it works and sometimes they end up biting you.  Mike was most definitely the later.  Years later, I have come to believe, that if you find someone whom you believe you can help, leave them there.  The Goddess is trying to teach them a lesson.  You are impeding upon that lesson.  Almost no good deed goes unpunished.  Even with the relationships I have now, I keep a wary eye out to see if and when they might bite me.  Kind of nervous, kind of cynical, but sorry that has been my life. 

For a long time I felt my life ended when Momma Muriel died.  I was lonely, alone, and depressed.  I turned to my new found pagan community to fill in where I felt my family was lacking.  I have spoken to you of Mike D.  We had met at a PNO and soon I was going to his rituals.  Momma Muriel knew all of this.  We attended his annual Halloween (Samhain) party at his house in 2008.  Maddie gave us a tarot card reading telling Jay he would soon lose his job.  Maddie is seldom wrong with her cards.  Jay lost his job the next day. 

A few weeks later Jay started at Dollar General doing the same thing.  Jay always worked hard for whoever he is employed for.  He still does.  For years and years he had worked during Thanksgiving.  He hired on to Dollar General with the understanding he would get Thanksgiving off.  As usually they betrayed him and made him work.  He was so mad he cried.  He just wanted to be with me for Thanksgiving.  I told him to quit his job and he did.  We had already received part of Momma Muriel’s estate and we were as they say, “not hurting for money,” at that time. 

My parents decided not to cook that Thanksgiving. Since we were alone that year, we decided to spent it with Mike D. and his group at an interfaith dinner at a local church.  Since Samhain we had been talking about Mike D., his family and his animals coming to live in Momma Muriel’s house.   At Winter Solstice (Yule) he asked me to watch over his house and his animals while he and his family traveled to New Orleans to see his superior, Velvet.  I remember telling Jay that his house was just too small for his growing family, that we should ask them to come and live with us in Momma Muriel’s house.  Jay thought that was a fine idea. 

Although it had no utilities on, I had for the past few months been trying to clear out Momma Muriel’s stuff, with little success.  We lived to far out for any local charities to come and get her things, and I did not know about estate sales then.  I called Mike D. on his way back from New Orleans.  I told him that we wanted him, his family and his animals to come and live on our place with us.  He pulled over the car and cried.  I told him that he would have to help us clear out her things, but he and his family could move in whenever they pleased. 

We all spent Christmas of 2008 together at his mother’s place.  I was in the kitchen, washing dishes when Mike D.’s wife walked in.  She was all red and crying.  She said, “Mike just choked me.”  I was shocked.  I didn’t understand what was going on.  He was an acting High Priest.  How could he do this?  I spoke with his wife.  I asked her if she wanted me to call the cops.   I asked if she wanted to leave him.  She said, “No.”  I told her just she and her children could move in, that she did not have to bring him.  Again she said, “No.” 

Because she wanted me to do nothing for her, I did nothing.  What I should have done was confront his sorry ass, call the cops and tell him the deal was off, but I didn’t.  I felt I had already given my word and I could not go back on it.  I worry sometimes that my fear of being alone, made me also continue with my plan. 

When I had watched over their house that Yule, Mike D. said, “We made a mess in the bedroom.  Would you mind cleaning it up for us?”  He was my high priest.  I said, “of course not,” and did as I was told.  What I cleaned up I now understand was from violent fight, where Mike D. had thrown a hairbrush at his wife so hard he had put a whole in the wall.  He had knocked stuff off the night stand and there was broken glass everywhere.  But I did my duty and covered his tracks.  I continued this for many years and did not tell the High Priestess in his coven about the abuse until recently.  I always guessed she knew.  She did not.

I did not know that Mike D. had hit his wife on more than one occasion.  I also did not know, until later that there had been a domestic abuse charge against him, in his home state of New Jersey.  He had broken his wife’s arm.  The charge had been dropped and so may never have appeared on his record.   I was told, when I began to hang out with his coven, that all official members of the group had back ground checks done on them, prior to being admitted.  This is why you had to pay so much money to join them.  If they did do this, I do not understand why he was not immediately flagged.  My guess is Velvet took the money and never had the check done.  I feel, because he had a prior charge like this on him, he should never have been allowed to become clergy. 

In this coven they liked to have a High Priest and a High Priestess.  That’s the way they had done it for many years.  Just prior to Mike D. and I both coming into the community, the High Priest of Mike D.’s coven had died.  A man neither one of us had ever met, but a good man by all accounts.  When Mike D. entered the coven, a power struggle in sued, by the men of the coven to fill the old High Priest’s place.  I’m still not sure how it happened, but Mike D., a man with no prior pagan experience, was able to become the acting High Priest.  I don’t know how he was able to ascend to this position.  Mike D. became a 3^rd degree in three years.  To obtain this rank, usually takes many, many years of practice, study and elevating others.  He did none of that.  Many of us in the community feel he was simply given this title, for one reason or another. 

In January of 2009, Mike and his family began to help us move out Momma Muriel’s things and bring in theirs.  In March of that year we threw the first, of what would become, our annual crawfish boils.  In April we threw a birthday party for the High Priestess of Mike D.’s coven.  Most of the pagan community was here.  It was one of the first times I had gotten to really talk with Boogie and Rovena.  That night we held both a Croning and a Maidening ritual.  It was at this ritual the honorary title of Maiden was bestowed on me.  I never officially joined his coven.  I do not believe religious orders should charge to train their members, other than for just the bear cost of materials.  Mike D.’s coven charged excessive rates to learn to become a witch, and where there money went I was never sure.

I was not even sure that the ritual was going to take place.  I had been in a horrible fight with Velvet, just a few hours before.  We were discussing the war in Iraq.  I stated that the Iraq people were in a better place now, then when the war had started.  They had more schools, better utilities and no longer lived under an oppressive government.  At this she blew up at me.  It would not be the first time.  She asked where I was getting my information.  I said, “From the soldier across the street, who has served two tours in Iraq.”  She then proceeded to scream at me and tell me that he was a liar.  You can do a lot of things to me, but you never, ever disrespect a warrior in front of me! 

I left Mike D.’s house in a panic and went to Marie’s house across the street.  She gave me a valium to calm down.  It was her husband I had been speaking about.  It took several hours to get me to calm down.  I did not want to ruin the High Priestess’ birthday party by telling Velvet to, “Carry her crazy ass off my property.”  I knew to kick her out was to ask Mike D. to leave.   I did not want that.  I did not want to be alone again.  I also did not want to upset the party goers.  So I swallowed my pride and went back across the street and rejoined the party.  If it had happened today I would have told her to carry her ass.

In May of 2009 I attended my first Pagan Unity Festival (PUF) in Tennessee.  I went with Mike D. and Velvet.  It was at this festival that I met my very first heathens.  I had spent two years on-line talking to other Heathens around the country, but had never met one in person.  I met Father Dave first and then he introduced me to his student Mother Mari and her student Mother Gloria.  They were a group out of South Texas.  They defined themselves as Wayists.  They were essentially Druidic Heathens.  They were also, unbelievable, devotees of Holda’s as well.  I was so overwhelmed I cried.  I thought at first they were apparitions, or spirits made flesh, a gift to me, from Holda for having been faithful.  They have indeed become gifts to me.   I remain in regular contact with them today.  I consider them part of my “elders”. 

That had been a miserable trip for me.  Meeting Father Dave and his group was the only bright spot in that trip. Velvet had a friend get murdered during that weekend.  The last night we were there she lit a white candle and placed it on the stove.  All night long I heard Holda in my head saying to go outside, and gather some of the rose petals, growing in the front yard, and to put them around the candle.  After a few hours of this I finally gave in. 

In the morning when the Velvet came in, she was furious.  She started screaming who had put the rose petals around the candle.  I told her I did it to honor her friend.  She yelled at me, for what seemed a half an hour, until I began to cry.  She kept screaming at me, “Who taught you to do magic?  Who?”  I finally told her Holda had told me to do this.  I still don’t understand why she became so upset.  As I have told this over the years, theories have varied.  One elder said, “You should never have messed with other witches spell.”  I agree.  I would want no one messing with my spell.  But then if it was a candle to honor her friend, and then the rose petals would have meant love, whatever I did would have been benign. Right? However if it was a bad spell, which I don’t know why she would have used a white candle, unless it was the only thing she could find, perhaps the roses negated what she had done, and that is why she became so irate.  She was like a powder keg.  You never knew when she was going to go off, or what would trigger her. 

Mike D.’s wife gave birth to a baby boy soon after Summer Solstice (Litha) 2009.  Six weeks later by Lughnasa ( August 1^st), I have been asked to stop working on forming my own Heathen group by Velvet or resign my title of Maiden.  I refused to stop the work I was doing and I resigned.  I begin my own group and we held our first ritual.  I continued to help coordinate Pagan Pride Day (PPD), with Mike, for that year.  I invited Father Dave and Mother Mari, my friends from south Texas, to speak at the event.  They came and had a lovely time.  Well until Velvet decided to insult and attack Father Dave.  I thought for a moment it was going to come to blows.  Mike D.’s son’s Wiccaning was held at PPD, and Father Dave played his flute.  Mike D. later makes disparaging remarks about Father Dave.  Living around Mike D. was getting harder and harder.  I was starting to see a man, whom I once considered a friend, turn into a rude and arrogant asshole. 

Ilsa

 

Reader Responce

I want to talk to you a little bit this morning about the response I have had from a few of my readers.  As of this writing we have had over 150 views this week and over 340 since I started this blog.  While that may be a small number to some, to me it is incredible. 

I received an odd message the other day from an old friend.  It said, “We have lead parallel lives.”  I was a bit confused and I tried to contract her for a few days.  I was finally able to get a hold of her and talk to her about her comment.  We spent over an hour chatting online as she poured out her story.  How she has many of the same health concerns that I have, and that her husband had been just like Mike.  We had both lived thru the abuse and humiliation of a husband addicted to porn.  She then told me that she watched her husband turn into a predator, and begin to prey on her family members.  I wept behind my keyboard as I read what she wrote.  In all most 15 years of telling the story of my survival, I had never met another woman whose husband had been a porn addict. 

I was so angry over what I was reading.  Angry that he had done this to my friend, that he had hurt other members of her family, but I think I was most angry over the fact that I was not alone.  See when you’ve never meet anyone who has been through what you have.  You feel perhaps you are a fluke.  That somehow you are at fault. That somehow you caused this to happen, because surely no one else could have been through what you’ve been through.  You are bad and evil, and mistaken.  That somehow, perhaps you made it all up and it didn’t really happen at all.  And then you see it in someone else’s hand and you are like, “OMG! Maybe I didn’t make it up!?  Maybe I’m not alone.” 

It made me very sad to think of what my friend had gone through.  It made me even sadder and angrier to think that she and I must not be the only ones out there.  I am beginning to think I might put a Facebook group together for us survivors of this type of abuse, but as of yet I have no title for said group or how to even define its parameters.  What would we call ourselves?  Porn Widows?  Survivors of porn addicted partners?  I will keep you a breast of this situation.

These conversations also made me very, very angry.  We can have a national conversation about Viagra and erectile dysfunction.  We can talk about people surviving physical abuse, but when it comes to the sexual stuff, Oh NO! We shut down.  On TV, other than Law and Order: SVU I know of no other program that is currently discussing this subject.   Sex abuse gets so little national coverage.  We are such prudes when it comes to sex that people like me end up being embarrassed and humiliated over what happened to them.  We feel it is our fault.  There is also this prevailing standard that if your partner is using porn it must be because you are too ugly to fuck or you are frigid.  That needs to change.  Those of us who have been abused have got to come out of our hiding places and talk about this, if to no one else but each other. 

We teach kids about Stranger Danger, but what we should be teaching them is that danger may be closer to home.  A child is more likely to be abused by a family member then by someone they don’t know.  We need to teach kids, in schools, that their bodies are their own.  What is acceptable touching and what is not.  But if we can’t even teach sex education in school.  If we can’t even teach girls about their own periods and how their bodies work, because the Christian Right won’t let us, they will never let us teach this.  People will continue to suffer because somebody wants to take the moral high ground and say lets handle a subject at home, which has no morals at all. 

 I have talked to many women over the years.  The national average is that 1 in 4 women is sexual assaulted or molested at some point in her life.  Men are closer to 1 in 10.  Now those are based on reported numbers.  In my conversations with women the number is closer to 1 in 2.  I am to the point now that I assume the women I meet have been abused, unless I am told otherwise.  I can still count on one hand how many women I know that have never been sexual abused in any way shape or form. 

I want to say a little bit about porn here.  I am not anti-porn.  If couples want to get together and watch it, to learn new techniques, or to express a fetish together I think it can be just fine.  Many people use it recreationally. I think this may be fine too.  But when you get to the level of what we have been through. When you are denying your partner sex to gratify yourself with porn all the time, if your partner has to beg for sex or any kind of intimacy, you have a problem.  It’s kind of like alcohol.  You can use it responsibility to flavor cakes or enjoy a good time with friends, but when you are using it to cope you have a problem and need help. 

I have often told people that Mike was a sex addict.  They usually laugh and smile and say well that must have been wonderful for you.  I have to then stop and explain to them what that really means.  That porn addiction is classified under sex addiction.  I then explain that Mike was addicted to porn and did not want to have sex with me.  They then look embarrassed and say how horrible that must have been.  I think we either need a better word or a better understanding of the word.  Many people also believe that you can only be sexual abused as a child, and not as an adult, much less a sexually active adult.  That is just not true.

I have tried to be brave in all I have told you.  Apparently my attempt at bravery has inspired others.  My beloved friend Juno, has been so inspired by what I am writing, that she has begun her own blog to tell the truth of her abuse.  I think that is just wonderful.  Writing can be very cathartic.  Writing your own truth,  I think can be helpful to others.  I am writing mine, you should consider writing yours.

I have been telling Jay, that if I can help just one person, by telling my story than I will have done my job.  You know I have my bad days and I don’t understand what my mission on this earth is.  That I don’t understand why I have been through all that I have been through, and then these ladies talk to me.  And I think maybe I am alive, and been given the ability to write, so that I can help others who have been thru what I have through.  I am honored these ladies have come forward to tell me their stories.  I look forward to hearing more from y’all.

Ilsa

 

                                                                                                                                        

Surviving Mike

I am sorry to say that things continued to get worse in my life.  Our sex life had been bad for many years.  Mike like to role play Star Trek characters.  But in the last few months I was desperate.  I did what he asked.  I tried to invent new things.  I remember one night dressing as best as I could like a Geisha.  Oh went for that one.  His requests became strange.  He asked me to laugh like my mother and pretend to be her in bed.  He wanted us to be teenagers, like 14 and 15 year olds.  One night he decided to try to bite me all over my back.  Hey if it was good enough for Marv Albert, why not him. 

Mike began to express to me that he wanted to become swingers.  He told me, “I want to have sex with a blond, and a red head, and a black woman and an Asian woman.”  I told him that was fine but he could not have me and do those things.  I said, “If you can’t keep me satisfied, how do you expect to keep them satisfied.”  I’d really fuck with him and say, “I know you can’t wait to see me with another woman.”  Oh that got him hot.  “And I can’t wait to see you with another man,” I said.  Oh that shut him up.  “What its okay for you to want me to bisexual, but not you.” 

I have learned much about swinging and bisexuality since those days.  A lot of what I said to him was from misconceptions that I had about both communities.  Neither one goes hand in hand.  Just because you have sex with someone of the same sex does not make you bisexual.  I have been told by swingers in this community that Mike would not have been let into their groups without a partner.  When I asked my swinging friends if they knew Mike they said they did not.  I guess Mike never got his wish, poor boy.

The worst night came sometime in late June of 2001.  Mike was angry I was asking him for sex again.  I was lying in bed necked as usual.  All of a sudden he was on top of me.  I thought, oh this is different.  Then he pinned my arms above my head. He said, “You always want sex so much.  How about this!” and he entered me dry.  I screamed.  I began to try to fight, but he had my legs spread out so I could not kick him.  I screamed, “No!” at the top of my lungs, over and over again. I fought as long and as hard as I could. But I remember thinking I am being raped and there is nothing I can do about it.  I turned my head to the side and prayed for it to be over quickly.  When it was over I got up and showered.  I felt like I would never get clean.  I was terrified of him after that.  I could not even look him in the eye.  I was like a whipped dog.  I was broken.

The details around that time are a bit muddled in my brain, so forgive me if we go back and forth in a dance for a minute.  I don’t remember when I became suicidal again, if it was before or after the rape.  My plan was to jump from a local bridge.  I felt from the water I came, and to the water I would return.  I woke in the night to see my plan out and I felt something heavy push me back down on the bed.  I fell instantly back to sleep.

There was a computer at work that I had begun journaling on.  I did not know that it was company policy for the office managers to go around and check what was being done on all of them.  I had written a piece where I talked about wanting to kill Mike.  That even if I cut his head off, with his blood running down my arm, it would still not give me satisfaction enough for all he had done to me.  I was caught.  I was hauled into the office and given an ultimatum.  Either I begin counseling immediately, threw their Employee Assistance Program, or I would be fired.  I consented.  Although angry at first at what I saw was an invasion of my privacy, it was ultimately what saved my life.

Mike and I walked in to the councilor’s office a few days later.  My opening line, which I thought was funny was, “One of us is about to die and his odds are not looking to good.”  Very coolly the councilor, Liz, suggested we might try a trial separation.  We resisted the idea.  I began to see Liz every week.  Mike was to see a male councilor.  I believe he went once or perhaps twice.

Mike still would not work at this point.  He would not even look for work.  We were behind on my Methodist loan payments, of which my father was a co-signer.  My Dad called me one day at work and said, “I just called and paid $535 on your Methodist loan.  I told that husband of yours if he didn’t get a job I was going to come and get $535 out of his ass, move you home and pay for the divorce.”  I laughed and hung up with my dad.  I called him back an half an hour later and asked, “What time can you be here?”

My parents picked me up.  I went home and packed a bag.  I told Michael I would be back when he got a job.  I took the car, which was in my name, with me.  I think that was on a Thursday.  I went home to stay with my parents and I noticed how much better I felt.  Mike continued to call me and tell me to bring back the car.  How could he look for work, with no car?  I told him figure something out.  I was feeling stronger every day, just being away from him.  This is all I heard that weekend, bring my car back, bring my car back.  He called me on a Tuesday. 

“I’ve got a job.  Bring my car back,” he said.

I’ll never forget I was making copies, talking to him on a handset with a 25ft. cord.  “Wonderful!”  I said.  “I want a divorce.”  He heard me this time, after 6 months he finally heard me.

The other end of the phone was dead silent, “But I love you,” he said.

“Funny, that’s the first time you’ve said it since I left.  From now on if you want to talk to me, you will have to do it threw my attorney.” and I hung up on him.

I saw Mike a few more times after that.  We met at counseling so I could return my gold wedding band to him.  He had long ago made me pawn the little diamond that he had brought for me.  We got $100 for it.  I told him I released him from his vows.  I made him take off his ring and say the same thing to me.  I considered our marriage dissolved at that point. Somewhere in there we went to dinner so I could explain to him why I was leaving him.  He just didn’t get it.

When I left Mike I only took what was mine: my bookcase, my books, my clothes and accessories, my toiletries, my gumbo pot, my muffin pan, my big bottle of tobacco sauce and my car. I had wanted to make Mike hurt for a long time for what he had done to me.  My best revenge came the morning after I left.  He now had to figure out, for the first time in years, who was going to pay the rent, who was going to pay the bills, who would wash his clothes and clean up after him, how would he go anywhere, and who would pay to feed him.  For the first time in years, he had to be totally dependent on himself.  I hope it scared him to death!

One day after work, I went to get in my car.  Inside, I’ll never forget, was a potted African Violet.  He had been there.  I freaked.  I realized at that point, that Mike still had keys to my car.  I called him and told him to come to the dealership immediately and return my key.  When he showed up I was just coming down from inside the tower, where all the deals happen and the sales managers sit.  He walked up to my desk and said, “Hello Sultan Vial Betrayer.”  It was a line from Aladdin, one of his favorites.  I lost it.  He just had to have one more jab at me. I ran crying back into the tower.  I begged the new car sales manager to get the key from him and throw him off the lot. 

“Your husband?” he asked confused.

“My ex husband,” I informed him. 

He was great.  He took Mike by the shoulder and walked him outside.  I have no idea what he said to him.  He returned with my key and Mike has never tried to contact me since then.  And for that I am grateful.  We did try later on to establish nice relations, via chat, but that quickly disintegrated.  Liz told me, “You stay away from that psychopath,” and I have. 

I continued to see Liz every week for about a year.  Early on I told her, “I cannot get out of my head what he would say to me.  It keeps playing over and over again in my head.”  She told me to write some of it down and bring it in next time.  I did.  About half way through the first page she stopped me.  She said, “You do understand you have been abused?” 

“What?” I said.

“The things he said to you is verbal abuse.”  I was shocked.  I was too smart to be abused.  It just could not be.  Over the years I had counseled other women to leave abusive relationships. But it was true.  Mike’s abuse left me PTSD.  I had flashbacks for the first few years.  Although I have not seen him since that last day in the dealership, I remained terrified of him.  Afraid that he would somehow find me and convince me to go back with him.  The first few weeks I jumped at every sound.  I was so unsure of myself, that I was not even sure the ground would hold under my feet.  I slept with a loaded shot gun in my room for two years.  After that I kept a knife under my pillow or had to go to sleep with my hand on it.  I still keep a loaded gun in the head board, but that is more for scarring coyotes off than anything else.  For many years I refused to go on the side of town he had once lived on.  Terrified I would run into him.  I changed the spelling of my name and took back my maiden name.  I kept my profile on Facebook hidden, until just a few years ago. We have mutual friends on Facebook.  We have even commented on the same things, but he has never tried to contact me.  He is either to stupid or is being respectful.  I am grateful for whatever one it is.  For the last 14 years I have considered myself to be in hiding.  But with these articles and blog I feel I have finally come out of hiding and reclaimed part of my life.

And then there are my dreams.  In the 14 years since I left him, I continue to dream of him on a frequent, sometimes nightly basis.  For the first year after I left I blew him up, cut him up, hit him and killed him in every way possible each night in my dreams.  But every night he just came back.  I had not been dating Jay long when I woke up one night in his arms.  My face wet and Jay gently soothing me.  “It’s okay.  You’re safe.  You’re going to be okay.”

“What’s going on?” I said confused.

“You’ve been screaming in your sleep again.”  Jay answered. 

I have no idea how long I had been doing that.  It was a year and a half between leaving Mike and meeting Jay.  I am thankful to say that does not happen anymore.  Now most nights Mike is just a figure in the background and rarely tries to hurt me.  One of the affects of the Buspar is I have hardly dreamed of him, even in the background, since I began taking it.  Oh he’s reared his ugly head while I’ve been writing about him, but now that I am finishing telling you this story, I believe he will go away again.

I never talked about my abuse or my rape to the police.  I do not even know if marital rape is prosecutable in the state of Louisiana.  I washed away all evidence with my shower.  I knew who my assailant was.  Of course his DNA was going to be on me, he was my husband.  So it would have been a story of he said she said.  As for the abuse unless it is recorded in some way it is damn hard to prove in court.  By the time I understood I had been abused, it was already too late.  I escaped with my life and that was good enough for me. 

I fear now for Mike’s other victims.  I know there have been several women since me.  I know that he has since remarried and is living in the Houston area.  I also believe that she has children.  Now when I left Mike the pictures were getting younger and younger.  I saw young girls just starting to bud.  I don’t know what dark corners Mike’s predilections have taken him into. 

My thought in all of this is, if I can survive, you can too.  With good meds, good councilors and doctors you can get better!  Whatever you’re going through there is help out there.  Tell the people around you want is happening.  No matter how embarrassed you are.  Tell everyone until someone helps you.  Tell them even if you think they won’t care.  Watch how they treat animals. They will treat you the same way.  They keep them on a chain; they will keep you on an emotional one too.  If the animals don’t want your person around, RUN!  The animals know, they can sense these things.  No sex and no amount of money are worth your life.  If you want to leave, have a plan, keep a bag packed in the car.  Remember don’t go back for something you forgot.  Don’t take the animals with you, almost no abuse shelter allows you to have animals.  Abuse is wrong no matter what your religion or morals may teach you.  No one deserves to live in fear.  You did not cause this problem, no matter what they might tell you and I promise you, that no matter your intentions, you cannot change the abuser.  Only they can do that.  I tried.  You’ll get thru this.  What I learned from Mike was that I wanted to be loved at any cost, and it cost me my soul, my mental health, and almost my life.  Don’t be like me!

Mike taught me an important lesson.  If I had not had such a terrible husband I would not know what a good one looks like.  I was into bad boys.  I had it messed up in my mind that abuse, control and manipulations equaled love.  They do not.  I have often said if Mike had hit me I would have stayed forever, because in my brain that would have meant he loved me.  Leaving Mike made me get help for my depression and continue to seek counseling for the other issues in my life.  I do not regret being married to Mike.  I honestly believe if I have not survived what I did, did my work to get over it, that I would never have married Jay and have the successful marriage I have today.  People often tell me as a pagan that I am going to hell.  I respond with, “No Mam’ I’ve already been.  I spent 6 ½ years there.”  And any person who’s been in an abusive relationship knows that it is the truth. 

Ilsa

After College

In May of 2000 we moved into an apartment at the Foxborough Cove in his hometown of Shreveport.  I had sat reading him the names of the apartment complexes available, he had insisted on this one, as it had the same name as the stadium that his beloved Patriots played in.  Mike ate, slept and breathed sports, football in particular.  He often called it his religion.  He collected trading cards, of all things that he considered sports.  Some things he referred to as just games.  Mike was also obsessed with video games and toys.  He was obsessed with Pokémon.  He was very childlike. 

I have often wondered what his major malfunction was.  We went through several ideas during our marriage, from hypoglycemia, to him being possessed by a demon, whom we tried to expel.   My first councilor after I left him, Liz, believed him to be a psychopath.  I agree.  I wonder now if Mike was also bipolar like his mother was.  I have always wondered if he was abused by his parents.  He refused to discuss or even tell me one story of himself as a child.  Why I don’t know.  Whatever made him the way he was I will never know. 

At some point I lost the belief that I could change Mike, that I and love alone could make him get better.  That I could make him treat me better.  I wanted out.  I had known for about a year and half before I left him that I wanted to leave, I just had no idea how. Now I had threatened many times, that if he did not clean up his act and get help I was going to leave.   Mike had me believing my parents would never take me back.  About six months before I left I began telling him I wanted a divorce.  He would not listen.  He could not hear me.

When we arrived at the Cove we began to look for work.  We were surviving off a loan that he forced me to sign. In Northwest Louisiana no one wants to hire someone with a college degree and little work experience.  I got some temp work and eventually I began to sell cars at a local dealership.  I was terrible at it.  I can’t lie with a straight face, but I tried.  I think I sold a total of 3 by myself, and one was to my mom.  I quit selling cars in January of 2001.  I told them if they ever need a receptionist to call me.  A few weeks later they did.  I started working as a relief receptionist and later as file clerk at their Shreveport branch.  Mike eventually got a job working in the new sports radio station in town. 

I was now very Buddhist and defined myself as such.  My Christian husband could have cared less.  I remember being at times suicidal, even writing a note that Mike made me burn later.  He made me promise to never write one again.  I remember being very angry.  My Buddhist books helped me to realize that and to realize that I was very angry at Mike for the first time.  I became violent.  When we fought I threw dishes.  I remember one day asking him to come get his dishes out of the sink.  I began to count to ten.  When I got to ten I broke a dish.  I went through three dishes and throwing a canister at him before he finally got up from his video game to do what I had asked.  I just loved to hear them crash!  When I married Jay, I made sure my dishes were heavy enough that if I threw them at the wall they would not break.  I am thankful to say that I am no longer a dish thrower.  I haven’t needed to be.

Mike was fired from his position at the radio station in the Spring of 2001.  I still do not know why.  We had one car so Mike would take me to work.  He would be unshaven and unshowered at that point.  I would ask him if he was going to look for work that day.  He would say, “uhum,” while he continued to play Pokémon on his Gameboy.  When he would come back, he would look just the same.  I would ask if he had looked for work that day.  He would say, “ Yes.”  I began to believe he was lying to me.  So one day I preformed what I called the kiss test.  I had to wear makeup for my job.  One day as he pulled up to drop me off at work.  I put on a very bright red lipstick and as I prepared to leave I covered his whole face in kisses.  I asked him if he was going to look for work that day.  He responded in the affirmative.  He returned 8 hours later unshaven, unshowered and covered in my kisses.  Michael was lying to me. 

I confronted him and he blew up as usual.  I wondered where he was going while I was at work.  Now Michael was a book smart man, but he was stupid about covering up his tracks.  One day not long after, I was putting away his socks and discovered a receipt for Capri video.  He was in the shower.  I stole a look in the checkbook.  Remember I was allowed to deposit money in but I was never allowed to look in it or know how much money was in the check book.  Inside were more receipts for Capri video.  Now Capri video was a little hell hole where men could go and rent a little room for $25, watch pornos and jack off.  Mike got out of the shower.  I was furious.  We were living hand to mouth at that time, I was being lied to and I snapped.  I grabbed him and threw him down on the bed.  I choked him until he turned blue.  That was not the only time I was violent with him.  A few weeks before I picked up a large serrated bread knife and held it against his throat.  I told him, “I ought to kill you, but you’re not worth the prison time,” and I let him go.  I am still ashamed at what I did.  I hesitate to tell you these things, but I want you to understand that this man pushed me to places I never dreamed I could go.  I was becoming like him.

I made the decision to try to reestablish relations with my parents.  I remember sitting down with them in my living room.  I told them, we are broke, it looks like we are going to have to file bankruptcy, and I told them finally about his porn addiction.  It was the first time I had told the truth I a long time.  It felt good and I kept doing it.  It was the first time I had been open with them about my relationship with him.  They were shocked.

I wanted to leave and I just did not know how to do it.  In April of 2001 my mom did something very smart.  She began to take me to the movies once a week.  It was a glorious break of normalcy.  I remember getting in the car one Sunday afternoon after our movie and saying, “I just don’t want to go home.”  She chimed in with, “You don’t have too.”  I convinced myself that I did and I went home, but that…that was the seed that started it all. 

Ilsa

 

 

 

The Goings on of Apartment C

In August of 1997 as we prepared to spend another semester in different dorms.  When we received the good news that we had gotten into married student housing and that apartment C would soon be ours. Mike’s manipulation and control also began in earnest about this time.  I was told what I could watch on TV.  Anything that was empowering or liberal he told me I was not allowed to watch.  He really hated Oprah.   He began to turn me against my parents so that I felt I was backed into a corner, and had no one but him.  The porn got worse.  My attempts to stop it became more frequent.  When I tried to confront him about it he flew off the handle and blamed me that I was no open enough. 

I began to try to remove the temptation from him.  I remember one time filling up half of a large black garbage bag with magazines, video tapes, and cd’s that I had cooked in the microwave.  They sparkle and pop when you cook them.  I went through his disks and his browser history.  I remember one time going thru a stack of floppy disks to see how many had porn on them.  My stack was about a foot tall when I stopped.  I destroyed them all.  It got to the point that I could not even keep a clothing catalogue or magazine with a picture of a woman in it, because he would steal them, hide them and use them.  What’s worse is I had to pick up his crunchy socks in the morning, because he would never put them in the hamper. 

I still have no idea how much money he spent on porn.  He hid so much of it from me.  I made the money and was in charge of the bills when we first got married.  Until I bounced a few checks and he took the check book away from me.  I turned the bills over to him, like a good little Christian.  He was the man.  He was supposed to run the house.  I remember one day getting a $500 phone bill.  Turns out he had been calling 800 numbers, that would then route him to a 900 number, where he could have phone sex.  He was furious when I found out.  I had to put a 900 number block on our phone.

We were piss ass poor.  I was working as a lab monitor and it paid very little.  Mike, when he did work, was delivering pizzas.  I remember even scrubbing his shirts on a washboard at night so that he would have clean clothes.  I did all of the house work.  If I did ask him to help, he would just ignore me.

I tried to throw him out one night.  I packed his bag, his teddy bear included, and threw it out on the lawn along with all his porn. I locked the doors and would not let him back in the house.  He banged and screamed on the door and windows.  I made it 30 min. before I finally gave in.

I would often begged him to stop, to get help, but in the late ‘90s there was no help for sex addicts in our area.  And that’s what he had become, by the definition.  He would just become more enraged, and fly into a tantrum, hit the wall and terrify me.  Always blaming it on someone else, USL, Liberals, me.  It didn’t matter.  He never took responsibility for what he was doing. I always expected his next punch would be my face, but he never hit me.  He just verbally, emotional, mentally and financially abused me. 

As for me, he would not touch me.  It took weeks, often of begging on my hands and knees for him to touch me or have sex with me.  This man I loved, no longer wanted me and I became a prisoner in my own home.  I would go to bed, and he would masturbate by the computer in the other room until the wee hours of the morning.  I would try to go to the bathroom to pee and he would scream at me to get back to bed.  I developed bladder problems for holding it for so long.  I still think this is part of why I developed IC.

I was depressed and under so much stress I developed Shingles.  I reached 300lb. I was suicidal, and wrote several suicide notes.  I reached out for help several times, but to no avail.  How could I ever tell them what was going on?  How could I tell them I was not enough for my husband?  Joe and one other friend were the only ones who knew what I was going through.  I had to have someone to talk too, and it took years for me to get to that point with them.  But neither them nor the councilors had any real answers for me, or could help me understand what was going on.  I was too embarrassed to tell them what was really going on. I did not understand I had been abused until after I left him.  I remember one night even calling a local rehab center and telling them what was going on.  They told me they had no programs for porn addicts at the time.  All they wanted to know was whether he hit me or not.  Mike was furious when he found out I called them.

Oh and this was also one of his things.  I have told you I would often get Bronchitis.  When I would get sick he would tell me, “You just think you’re sick.  You’re not really sick.”  Mike played head games with me.  Every time I caught him in a lie he would say, “It’s not a lie.  It’s omission.”  Or my personal favorite, “I told you.  You just forgot.”  Now I have a memory like an elephant, I didn’t forget, his lying ass just didn’t tell me. 

We continued to play nice in public.  Few knew what was going on with us at home. In the darkness I reached out for anything.  I happened to find a book by his Holiness the Dali Lama, called The art of happiness.  I began to get very into Buddhism.  The first rule of Buddhism is that all life is suffering, and I was most definitely suffering.  The second rule is there is a cause for suffering.  The third is there is a way out of suffering.  I began to look for a way out of that suffering.   I started to study with a small Buddhist group in town, which kind of hid as a book club.  Buddhism helped give me a little light in an other wise dark life.

Then there was Joe.  He had stayed for a few semesters and then he left to join the Army.  He could not keep up with the break neck pace that his scholarships demanded.  He had also been in ROTC for a long time.  It was in Joe that I had hope that I had not lost all my sexiness, despite my weight and my current predicament so I tempted him.  I let him talk to me while I was in the tub.  I could see I was still attractive to someone.  Obviously the problem was not me.  Mike knew about this and was angry, but never tried to stop me.  He never tried to fight for me. 

Mike and I had changed his major, not long after we moved into apartment C.  As a Sociology major I had to chose a minor.  I started taking classes in Anthropology.  I fell even more in love with it then I had with Sociology.  In my senior year I changed my major to my minor.  By the time I graduated my GPA was 2.9, while still a C average, I had pulled it up a full point from the time I left USL.  Mike changed to journalism, just like his father before him.  In the Summer of 1999 Mike left me to do his internship at a news station in Shreveport.  We were elated he had got what we felt was a prestigious internship.  Mike received a D in the class.  Later I found out it was because he spent all his time downloading porn while he was at work. 

That summer I had to master 9 hours of French, or I would not graduate.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.  I was in class from 8 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon.  Then I went home to study until midnight or so.  Get up again about 5 a.m. to study and then do it all again, five days a week.  I passed by the skin of my teeth.  I don’t think I even remember how to say, “What is your name?” in French anymore.

It was during that summer that Joe and I became even closer.  I had not been away from Mike for many years.  Joe, Gods’ bless him, would drive up from Fort Polk every other Friday to take care of me.  We would go to put my check in the bank and buy groceries.  I didn’t see Mike for three months.  He could have cared less what happened to me.  While he was gone, Jim would sleep in the bed with me, while we both had our clothes on.  Hey it was better than him sleeping on the love seat.  I was scared to go to sleep on my own back then.  I remember the first few weeks that summer going to sleep with one of Mike’s lightsabers in my hands.  I didn’t have any other weapons.

I was still not sure what I was going to do with my life after I graduated college.  I began looking at attending graduate school.  I had thought about becoming a professor.  You really cannot work in the field of Anthology without a Doctorate.  We made a trip to the University of Alabama at Birmingham for me to look at the college.  I liked it and hoped to enroll.  My GRE, the test to get into a master’s program, was to be paid for by NSU.  Mike comes to me one night and says that we can’t go to graduate school just yet.  He says we need to take a year off and pay some of our bills.  I am devastated.  But he is my husband and he knows best.  We graduate in May of 2000, literally one behind the other.  The next day we pack up and move back to Shreveport. 

Ilsa