Coincidence Or Calling?

"This is the rest of your life!" he taunts mockingly.

The smell of beer and whiskey on his breath makes me cringe, and I do my best to stay calm. It's mid-afternoon on a Thursday, and I am sitting on the couch, staring down at the interlocked fingers of my hands in my lap, waiting for the patrol car to arrive.

The wind up to the end

One sunny August afternoon, I heard my son crying, and I went to see what was happening. I found my then-husband emotional and yelling, gripping a bottle of pills in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other, and my son was the first to see the commotion. In a panic, I sent my son to the safety of a neighbor's house, barefoot, and called the crisis hotline. He refused to talk to the counselor who answered, so I called 911.

He didn't think I would have the courage to make the call. He had so much control over me for so long, and he was right; I changed my mind the first time. I decided not to request a patrol car because the dispatcher told me they needed to send an ambulance, and I didn't want the attention of the whole neighborhood. When I hung up, I saw him standing in the next room, empty-handed, casually eavesdropping on the conversation and waiting for my next move. He knew his manipulation was working, so he decided to take it a step further.

"I'm gonna do it!" he yelled, white-knuckling the handle on the door of the gun cabinet.

This was the moment it became clear that something was off. This was the moment it became painfully obvious I was not in a healthy relationship. This was the moment I knew I would not be able to walk away from this situation without help from law enforcement.

I called again after it occurred to me I was doing it for my safety, and not his drunken and dramatic self-harming threats. I began pacing as I relayed the situation to the dispatcher. Again, he was casually listening in the next room and forgot all about the unopened gun cabinet.

I hung up and turned around to see him smirking at me. He knew the police were on their way. Unsure of what he was going to do next, I sat down on the couch, preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

"This is the rest of your life!" I hear the crackle of an aluminum can and look up briefly to see him wielding an almost-finished beer as he begins pacing. I watch him slug back the rest of his beer in one gulp just as my phone rings. It's the officer handling the call who asks to speak with my then-husband. Moments later, I watch as he walks out the front door with his hands raised.

So, what was this all about?

He was threatening self-harm because he was trying to scare me into telling him something. I had told him earlier that day that I had realized something about him, and I wasn't yet ready to discuss it. My request was simple: I wanted to discuss it with my therapist first, and my next appointment was later that day. After spending the majority of the morning making guesses, followed by several reminders that I wanted to tell my therapist first, he reached panic mode.

He thought I figured out his darkest secret.

He was panicking because my appointment was soon, and he knew that if I told my therapist, she must contact the authorities as a mandated reporter. He was manipulating me to tell him my secret because he wanted to ensure he wouldn't get arrested for his. Much to his chagrin, my revelation had no connection to what he is hiding.

It took me some time to figure out what his behavior was about that afternoon, but when I did, I was shocked to understand how abusive my marriage was.

Gen(uine) X

Let's go back to a summer in the 90s when life seemed simpler and my largest concern was snack food.

"Do you know if those chips are ready?" I ask my sister.

"I haven't checked. I'm doing Reese's Pieces today," she responds.

I remember eating chips warmed in the sun by the bagful as a kid, and it was time to test this afternoon's first batch. I paddle over to the bowl on the side of the pool and take a small handful to gauge their readiness. I gently push off the wall of the pool with my foot and lie back on my blow-up raft. "Mm," crunch, crunch, "perfection," I mumble to myself. I can only assume that some of my best days involved Cool Ranch chips.

I honestly thought my childhood was carefree, uneventful, perhaps boring. You know, 'normal,' or 'good.' A shrug and a smile, followed by a wink. I remember watching The Wonder Years and growing an enormous crush on Fred Savage, dancing to Madonna on vinyl, and taping, then re-taping, songs off the radio. Summer days were spent in a rotation of riding my pink 12-speed bike, swimming, rollerblading, and heavily employing the up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-Start Nintendo cheat code. Throw in a trip to Disney World, and a wood-paneled station wagon (which I took my driver's test in), and you have a stamped and certified GenX childhood.

Any onlooker would likely determine my childhood was relatively average, maybe even a bit spoiled. It wasn't until my thirties that I realized I was a black sheep and often served as a scapegoat for everyone's problems.

Survival begins in our youth

Being in an abusive marriage is not a coincidence because the crack in the foundation begins in our early years. Right in the middle of suburbia, some of our 'healthy behavior' included sexual repression, a materialistically driven lifestyle, toxic communication tactics, emotional abandonment, and secrets we're told to take to the grave.

So what does that mean for me? As a highly sensitive, misunderstood empath, I manifested into a misguided, highly defensive, sad, desperate, and love-sick teenage girl. I entered my twenties and began my quest for companionship as a codependent, people-pleasing, self-conscious, and insecure woman, and had no way of knowing how much turbulence this would bring into my adult life.

I began attracting toxic partners, and I married a covert abuser, thinking he was different from all the rest. Well, he was, but not in the way I was hoping. After ending the relationship and divorcing him, I decided that I didn't want anyone else to have to go through what I did because it's far too painful, and we can do something about this as a community. I changed my career, engaged in intense trauma therapy, and got licensed to be a therapist. Traveling this road has introduced a completely different concept of love, which now plays a significantly different role in my life.

I made a change to help set the stage for teaching our youth that love is actually important. I'm doing this by breaking the abuse cycle and raising my son using mutual respect, integrity, communication, and kindness. The value of real love can often be overlooked, and in many ways, that is all each of us is honestly hoping for. It's just difficult to be vulnerable enough to admit it.

Adulthood can offer us the freedom to reflect on our lives and the space to decide what we want to hold on to and what to discard; however, the healing journey is ultimately up to us. Gaining a new perspective on our trauma helps us understand that what we went through is not our fault. My journey, healing from a past I had no idea was highly abusive, has been a bumpy one.

It's worth every ounce of time and energy, although I might change a few things if I were given the opportunity, mostly in the "if I knew then what I know now" spirit. One thing is for certain... I will never change the flavoring powder on the Cool Ranch chips, which clearly has the staying power of a best seller.