Stop asking me to forgive him. Stop asking me to talk to him. It’s not going to happen. He’s my abuser, and my forgiveness will never diminish that. Whether I forgive him or not is between me and my higher power, so leave that out of all future attempts to sway me. Sometimes I think it would have been better if he’d molested me, or at least left some bruises. Then no one would be asking me to talk to my abuser. No one would be telling me I should forgive and forget. But instead he was only verbally abusive. He only psychologically and emotionally tortured me for years. He only forced me to grow up faster than any child should. He’s only the author of some of the worst memories of my life. I only hear his voice in my head a thousand times a day repeating the same terrible words, reverberating off the walls of my brain. It only cripples my psyche to the point that I actually feel like getting out of bed is the hardest thing there is. How awful must it really have been for me to wish that in order for other people to accept my feelings as valid there should have been physical damage?
Is that all? Suck it up. Get over it. Move on. That was years ago. He’s different now. He’s sorry. He really misses you. Just give him a chance.
Here’s the thing. I did. He had twenty-two years of chances before I finally gave up and decided that my mental and emotional health were more important than his constant recitation of Ephesians 6:1-3, while conveniently omitting verse 4. After all that time, all those fights, he never learned. Sure, he changed tactics, but his goals were the same. Subjugation with a delusional veneer of adulation. He could never stand it if he thought I didn’t like him, but he only noticed when it was convenient for him.
First–it lessens in duration as the years pass, but it’s always first–comes the shock, or denial, if you like. How could he? How could I have let him do it again? I can’t believe it happened again.
Second–for me, each time it happened, this stage got shorter and shorter, but it always hit with the same force–comes the hurt. He got me. He got me again. I’m such an idiot for thinking it was over, that we’d gotten past this. I keep letting it happen, so on some level I must deserve it. I’m so stupid.
Third comes the rage. Goddamn him for that! He’s such an asshole! How could he? I wish I could run him down with my car! (This devolves into a lot of murder planning, but since he’s still alive and breathing, this is clearly just a coping mechanism.) One of these days he’s gonna get what’s coming to him and I just hope I’m there to see him knocked down. Sometimes, and only sometimes, I was brave enough to fight back to his face and risk escalating things into an all-out melée. More often than not, that was the outcome, and his favorite final move before I was defeated was to spout off Ephesians again and threaten me with eternal damnation for being so disrespectful. Back when I was too scared to risk eternal damnation for the sake of my sanity, that was an effective strategy. I lost, sure, but I considered it a tactical retreat. Live to fight another day, and all that.
Next came the regroup. Back away, retreat to my room, cry and rage and scream into my pillow ineffectually, and wait for the flames of rage to settle into a nice, warm hatred. Hate felt good for a while. It helped me to feel strong, righteous. But without adrenaline to keep it breathing, the hatred becomes bitterness, and my friends at school noticed that. I started to explain to them what I was really mad about, but it was easier to pretend like nothing was wrong. Put on a happy face and forget about what they don’t see. As I got into my teens, I started planning for extra time with my friends outside of school so that I wouldn’t have to be with my divorcing parents as much. But even that made him mad if it cut into his time. Not his court-allotted time with us, just the time he wanted to spend with us. The more time I spent with my friends, the easier it was to let go of the hate and anger and betrayal. It was more bearable to spend days and whole weekends with my friends than it was to think about how he’d rather spend the lion’s share of his custody time praying in tongues with people we didn’t know and leave us with a babysitter all night, then come back and complain that he didn’t get enough time with us.
Also by the time I reached my teens, I was over trying to shield my younger siblings from his dark side, the way I had when he was at his most volatile when we were little. When I was little I thought that if I was careful enough, I could save them from his dark side, and they would never have to know what he was really like. As I got older and he’d stopped with the horrible name-calling and berating, I relaxed a little. Sometimes I think I shouldn’t have, because he didn’t really stop, he just got better at it. More skillful. Instead of the large gash from an obvious cut that left your heart bleeding all over your life, he’d modified his style to a far more subtle death-from-a-thousand-cuts approach, and he expected congratulations and gratitude for it. Now that he was “saved,” and receiving “visions” from God on the reg, he didn’t need to slash me to ribbons. He just needed to use the religious beliefs I’d been raised with my whole life to scare me into submission. He was right because God told him so and you needed to get on board or go to Hell. Except he meant it literally.
Maybe it was my grandfather’s quiet good influence that helped me see men could be better than what I’d gotten stuck with, but I always felt deep down that no matter how much scripture he could quote, he wasn’t doing it right. Listening to him made me want to be as far away from God as I could get. If that’s what God looked like, I would rather go kiss the devil on the mouth.
Eventually, when I got to college, far away from home, I learned about yoga and meditation, and I had my first taste of true peace. Elizabeth Gilbert was right, though. Looking into yourself to find healing can show you some things you do not feel ready to face. Those first months I really started spending alone time meditating allowed me to relive all the things I’d suppressed from my childhood. I cried a lot. The worst things about him that I’d buried deep started revealing themselves to me, and it was like watching a horror movie of my own life. All those old pains resurfaced, and I was angry all over again. I tried to use what I’d learned about meditation to simply watch the emotions and not become wrapped up in them, and it worked for a little while. But guys, I am just not that enlightened when it comes to my own abuse. Maybe I never will be. And I’m kind of okay with that.
It took me a couple more years before I finally realized that forgiveness would only carry me so far in my relationship with him. I realized that he was never going to change. We kept having the same fights over and over, and I began to see that while I could meditate until my butt went numb from sitting so long, he would always present the same obstacles to my freedom from victimhood. After long months of deliberation, I finally wrote him a letter cutting ties with him, asking him to leave me alone for good. My palm sweat all over the pen as I wrote the first draft because I was so amped on adrenaline. I was really going to do it. I was finally standing up and fighting for myself in the only way I hadn’t tried before. I was walking away for good.
If you really want to drive a narcissist past the point of reason, don’t give him any attention. Take a firm grip on the inner peace you’ve worked so hard to cultivate, and turn your back on him. Keeping your back turned, keeping that firm grip on your inner peace, that’s the fight worth fighting. He didn’t give up just because I wrote him one letter. He harassed me to the point that I had to block his number. He threatened to trespass on my grandparent’s property (where I was living at the time) if I didn’t agree to talk to him. I literally had to tell my sister that if she didn’t want to see him thrown in jail, she should convince him he needed to back off. He found some old savings bonds in his safe with my name on them and thought he could hold them for ransom in exchange for a continued relationship with him. Never mind that they were in my name and I was over eighteen. I had to threaten him with a lawyer before he released them and said, “J/K!” I didn’t go see him in the hospital when he had his heart attack because nothing about the situation or our relationship had changed just because genetic heart disease had taken a swing at him. He’s tried giving me things; he’s also written me a letter, but I don’t respond. Nor will I.
Everyone has what my mom calls a breaking point. When we love someone, we will take the bumps and bruises that come with fights for the sake of the relationship. In a healthy relationship, when there are fights, the fights are fair. We fight to stay together because we love each other. In a toxic relationship, the fights are never fair. But every person has a point at which they decide they’ve taken enough shit off the other, and they’re done. It’s like when you’re really hungry and you eat food that’s in front of you because it’s there and you’re hungry, but it’s not very good food. It’s not good for you, you don’t like the taste, and it’s gone a little cold. But your stomach is growling and your hands are shaking a little, so you eat it. But as soon as you’re not hungry anymore, you stop eating it. You get up and walk away, and hopefully get a better meal down the line. When it’s a romantic partner, people say things like, “I can’t leave. She needs me. I’ll die without him. What if I never find anyone else to love me?” (Given how many people there are on the planet, that last is statistically very unlikely.) When it’s a job, most people put up with the bullshit until they can find a better one, or at least a different one. But when it’s a parent? It’s so much harder to imagine never talking to a parent again because we’ve been talking to them our entire lives. Literally. They are the first people to define the world around us. We depend on them for life for years.
I was an adult before I learned this little nugget of wisdom: a toxic relationship is toxic regardless of what the relationship actually is. If you’re the kind of person who’s going to commit to taking care of yourself because you’re the only one who’ll do it right, getting rid of toxic relationships is step one.
In the handful of years since my sweet nephew was born, I have accepted that there will be events in the lives of my beloved siblings where seeing him is unavoidable, but there is no contact beyond those times. I have matured enough to manage civility and manners during these events so that nothing “impolite” gets discussed. I talk to him if he’s part of the conversation, but I don’t go out of my way to start conversation. I smile in pictures, and when it’s time to go home, I breathe a sigh of relief that I don’t have to see him again for a while. Make no mistake. Just because I behave politely does not mean that I don’t see his face layered with his face of the past, turning eggplant with anger as he says the worst things that have ever been said to or about me. It doesn’t mean that I don’t secretly want to throw something heavy at his head from the moment I see him to the moment I get to go back home. It doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about him, or that I ever will. It means that without him causing me stress and hurt and all those other negative emotions all the time, I’m stronger. Strong enough to put on a smile and focus on enjoying time with the rest of my family. He’s no less who he is because of my strength, and I’m not naive enough to sacrifice my strength on the altar of other people’s definition of forgiveness. I have learned that forgiveness is mine, and I can forgive without granting an opportunity to keep getting hurt.
I hope this clears things up.
Thalia Huntley 