Beverly Love

Discounted Feelings

Once you step back and see the illusion for the illusion it is, you don’t see that illusion again. Next! Come on, Bebe, stop crying. That’s not helping anything,” he said with a disgusted expression that hurt more than the stinging tears. “Will you try to stop crying!” I knew it wasn’t a question; it was a command, like all of his commands. He never blatantly said things to make you think he was a control freak and I never blatantly said out loud that that’s what was going on. True to form, he had left after yet another failed attempt to talk me out of divorcing him. The divorce I didn’t want either, but knew I had to process to get my life back. I had to move beyond the life he dominated for over eighteen years, the life where he promised to protect us. It had all come crashing down. I had to get Ryan and myself to safety. It wasn’t that he ever physically hit us. What he had managed to do for the past eighteen years was far more devastating than any physical blows. Even Ryan was completely surprised when he finally put the pieces together. “I thought we had the perfect family. You and dad never yelled at each other, you never cursed at each other and I never saw you fighting.”