PonderEthereal

I am looking through old posts for a particular subject entirely unrelated to my relationship with Ryan and I keep running across these posts where I’m crying about something he did or said.

It’s easy, in retrospect, to look back and say ‘if he was so abusive, why did I stay’. It was NOT easy, in the moment to separate my feelings of love for him from the way I should react to how he was behaving towards me. That is the nature of an abusive relationship. If the abused always ran away, ‘it would be no fun’, as Ryan told me. In plain english. In black and white. And I STILL didn’t listen.

There is nothing unpredictable about Ryan. How he acted 2, 4, 6 years ago is the same way he was acting the day we split (excepting a particular domestic violence incident). The sad, angry, frustrated entries from 2…

My husband, someone I loved and trusted, intentionally harmed me. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have trusted him. Intentionally causing emotional and mental harm for however many years is definitely a precursor to physical harm and maybe I should have seen that. But I didnt. He was a fixture in my life for 14 years. My life was built around our relationship. And then suddenly, he was the thing that was putting me in danger. Suddenly, my the structure of my life was in peril… my home and my ability to take care of me and my son. And worst of all, suddenly, the thing that felt safest in my life meant danger.

For the first week or so, I was just in shock. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t remember, I couldn’t function. There was one day, Sexxyred1 took me to the doctor - maybe the day after it happened? And I…

Tomorrow is my 3rd wedding anniversary. My phone just reminded me.

I spent today packing a bunch of Ryan’s crap into boxes.

I haven’t thought about him in days.

Here’s to freedom from fourteen years of wondering, six years of abuse and three years of holding together a broken family.

I’m planning a Starting Over Party starting today. The whole intrawebs are invited. Just kidding. Really. Don’t show up at my house.

Early September 17th, my husband became physically abusive to me. When I got out of the hospital, I filed a restraining order. That means that he’s not to talk to or come near me or my son. He is specifically not allowed to talk to my friends or family regarding my whereabouts. Please handle any communication with him regarding me and my son accordingly.

I’m physically damaged and mentally and emotionally damaged. My son is going through his own pain and fear. But over all, I am still here and kicking and the man-child is ok and I will fight for him to be ok. I have friends around me helping to make us feel safe and helping me through this process so I think, overall, everything will turn out ok. That is my weak attempt at making this as positive as possible. It really sucks.

I was gathering quite the Pile o’ Crap on my desk. The filing tray… it was overflowing. There was stuff in my ‘to file’ pile that had been there easily a year and a half.

As I dug through it, I found lots of stuff left over from the partnership dissolution with Gertrude. I kept everything that ever happened so that I had proof and she was kind enough to indulge me by putting every vile thought she ever had into writing. She even left a nice handwritten ‘note’ when she stole something of mine. Genius, I tell ya. I digress. As I unearthed this stuff, it was really eye opening to see how absolutely nasty she was. When going through it, in the thick of it, I knew is was vile. But the only thing I COULRyan do was to continue to breathe and to continue to move on…