Denial...

Is it just me or is this a common thing to do with abuses? Trying to pretend it's not happening or that it is but it was an isolated incident. Well when it happens for the hundredth time at what point do I stop facing this? So many times I've begun a blog piece on my other blog and then found it either unbelievable to me or just sounding whiny. I'm not sure why because I am far from being a whiner nor do I lie. Let me rephrase...I cover up which could be construed as lying so that part's wrong already.

I think my biggest problem lies with talking about my husband. To begin with he is so well liked by everyone. He is funny and gets along well with workmates and bosses at work. No one would believe what I put here if they read it and I'm certainly aware of that. It is why I've gone this long - I believe is is the reason I'm reticent to write. Just knowing this is inhibiting to me.
 
Last night I took a big step. It could be the end of my marriage…probably is. Or if he's angry enough, it might be the end of my life. At one time I would have said that was completely impossible. Now, I'm not at all sure. He becomes more & more like OJ Simpson every day.
People love him! Like OJ, he comes off as a funny, friendly guy who would do anything for anyone, including me. 

And having said that, I cannot deny that he's been a very good provider. It may not be for the right reasons (more on that later) but so far, and for a lot of years I have had a beautiful home and most of my material creature comforts taken care of. I think he likes to do this because he likes the feedback he gets from others when he does it. People remarking 'what a lucky, lucky woman she is to have such a stellar guy as he is!' And how caring and loving he is to shower me with beautiful things - his image with friends and workmates would be terribly tarnished if he didn't. I have no way of knowing if this is true or not because I cannot get into his head, but I know he's constantly telling me how people feel about him and how admired and well liked he is. He knows by the impassive expression that I am afraid to say a word at these times. But let me move on…or move back a little to fill in the gaps on how I got to last night. I finally risked confronting him about being an abuser and told him I would not avoid telling people any longer. He looked at me like I was insane. He despises me and has said that more times than I care to even think about yet I know if I were to tell anyone...even hint that things weren't perfect, he'd go into his 'I love this woman more than life itself' speil.

Long before the physical abuse started there was other abuses - ones I myself didn't understand were abuses. I was just accustomed to him wanting to be totally in control of everything and that included me. I didn't understand that withholding money and controlling my life is a form of abuse. It is emotional abuse and in many ways more damaging than physical wounds which can be healed by a physician. I have tried to explain this to him for so long…I have asked him to see a therapist. I have sent him therapist and psychologists write-ups on the subject.

I have sent him articles written by psychiatrists, explaining what exactly constitutes abuse. Some have had questionnaires to do (if honest) to find out if you are in any way abusive. Not only does he fail on a lot of the questions - he almost fails them all. Yet when I asked him what that might say about him, he at first said the questionnaire was bogus, then admitted he was in fact abusive and knew it but had lots of reasons to be and didn't intend to do anything about it.

And now, whereas before it was just verbal and emotional abuse, in the last year or two, the physical abuse has started, compounding my problems. 

He doesn't see himself in any of this! It is all my doing! I cause him to be the way he is.

Interestingly enough, one of the questions in the questionnaire touched on that, saying the abuser will always blame his victim for the way he is. How many times have I heard the angry words "Don't get me started, you antagonistic bitch?" Simply by asking a question like which channel a game is on or had he thought about what he'd like for dinner. 

Or I don't know how many times I've been accused of getting him wired when I mention a piece of news I think he'd be interested in. It doesn't take much. In fact sometimes saying nothing will get him going because then I'm accused of not talking to him.

For the most part I am alone in this. I have one brother who when I approached him on this, said he didn't want to be involved. He reminded me that I was made of tough stuff and I could handle whatever anyone threw at me. Nice compliment but untrue. And my friends are scattered about the country because as I've moved around I make friends but then have to leave them behind. The internet is a wonderful thing and I can talk with them everyday. They are very loving in providing support but it's damn hard to provoke a loving hug and just being able to touch one another. Our closer friends are his friends too, and they would never believe any of this about him. Even our GP is one of his biggest fans, feeling I'm in very good hands - little does he know those hands have broken fingers, sprained elbows and an assortment of other small injuries. Not mentioning the constant, and when I say constant I mean daily, sometimes hourly verbal abuse I get.

Acknowledgements...

It seems sad that the more he inches to what things really are like, how his actions can completely impact both of us, the worse he actually gets. I was mistaken in thinking that to let go of the denial would be like a cleansing of sorts for him - a move in the right direction that would perhaps have him as anxious to get help as I am for him to get it. We both need him to get help, not just him. However, he has once again moved into that zone of silent treatment followed by nastiness. Which is almost all the time now with no good behavior breaks.
I know I have a lot to worry about personally, but I worry about my cats too. They are really the only 'children' I have now and I love them as such. They don't understand what happens most times and have gone from loving, calm pets to at times, cowering fearful ones when he is like this. They run to me in another room, and paw and meow at me to make it stop...if only I could!

I went looking for the Flip video recordings that I have of his 'outbreaks' only to find many of them have been deleted. There are only three now and all from the same month so this might explain how they got missed in a delete. I'm not sure if this was done by accident or whether he found them and deleted them, but they are gone. The recordings have no video really...I ran the Flip only from a safe place in the house and caught just the audio of his tirades. It is hard for someone else to imagine I suppose, but these three short audios are Greg hanging a curtain, dropping soap and not able to find a receipt. But in truth, it wouldn't matter what he was doing when he feels he needs to do this - washing his hands, getting a drink of milk, or just sitting watching TV. Many times when he's watching TV I have to get up and leave the room because I can't take the hatred and screaming. Sometimes about politics, or just as often during a hockey game but as I've already said, it could be a cartoon or a commercial - when he needs to, he just goes off for any reason. Somehow, something pushes his ON button and away he goes!

I've never inserted a video/audio from my own personal library before so I hope I get this right.
The first is when I was in the den and he was hanging a curtain in the morning room. That is two plus rooms away but I still got this where I was sitting. He had placed the rod on the sofa behind him but then couldn't find it behind him.

The next one is done with me sitting downstairs and him upstairs in the bedroom.

To preface this, he is terrible for emptying his pockets into drawers and he panics and gets extremely angry then when he can't find a needed receipt for a return or to check a date of purchase. It's made harder by the fact that he keeps every cash tape and bill of purchase from as long as 10 years back and has to go through it all. I'm no doctor but I think this is obsessive/compulsive behavior which both he and his mother exhibited. At any rate it's another quirk I have had to live with and at times even found amusing...until it impacts me. I have had to move things in order to get his clothing into drawers and he will go ballistic about that - about me touching "his things" at which time I get verbally and emotionally abused about that as well. Trying to clean and keep closets tidy and not looking like a reality show on TV are a real trick!

So at Xmas time and birthdays, I give him nice storage boxes or decorative tins etc for him to keep his hoardings in. But they sit empty, shoved on a shelf somewhere while he continues to dump in drawers and the closet floor.

This next video/audio is done when he couldn't find something. This isn't rare - in fact very common. As I listen now, I realize I hear this at least once a day and sometimes a dozen times on days when he's at home all day.
This time it was a receipt he needed to return a cd. I made a few attempts to upload it and for some reason even though it's identical to the one above, I continued to get error messages while uploading. So I uploaded to my You Tube account and listed it as private but you may use this link to access the video. I'm sorry for any inconvenience here. Just click on The Receipt.

 This last is a short little blurb which got cut short because he was coming downstairs and it was worth my life to be caught doing what I was doing. The dropped soap...

Erosion of a mind...

Sunday April 15, 2012

My husband confronted me again tonight. Being confronted by him isn't new and isn't the issue but the subject matter was. And this was one of the most frightening things to date. 

Though he was there when my stroke occurred and though he'd been through the weeks that followed in hospital and the months that stretched into years of rehabilitation for me, he informs me tonight that he had read my entry in my blog Back To The Egg and that everything I said when writing about my brain event were lies. That I wasn't hospitalized for 7 weeks, that I wasn't paralyzed. And his argument was "You fucking lied about everything! You weren't paralyzed at all. You just had paralysis." This sent a giant chill down my spine as I realized the ramifications of what he was saying. Or better, how much of a grasp he'd really lost on reality.

When I had my stroke, May 29, 2001, (which by the way he didn't recall either) I was so extremely lucky to have all the planets lining up for me - doctors not just living next door but both of them outside in their front yards at the same time as I was outside and they saw me fall. Lucky that I wasn't home alone or wasn't just with Greg who would have thought I'd only fainted and likely carried me inside and laid me on the couch and left again. 

I was lucky to have a hospital just a mile away and some of the best health care insurance in the country. I was lucky to be made a patient of one of the best neurosurgeons in the nation too, Dr. Howard Yonas, who just happened to be on duty when  I arrived downtown at UPMC.

This man, this wonderful doctor was intrigued with my case from the very beginning. I had experienced a major Hemorrhagic stroke - a bleed which was covering the back third of my brain. I have brain scans on cd of the aftermath of this bleed as it shrank, but even after a year the hole was still the size of a quarter.

And...Greg knows all this. Or at least knew it. Not now apparently. Whether by selective memory or real deterioration of his faculties, all this has gone from his head. And truthfully, the obvious erosion of this man's mind is now beginning to really frighten me.  He knew the bleed was major because the doctor told him this with me sitting right there in the office. Dr. Yonas told Greg (with me sitting there) that he was amazed and thrilled at the recovery I was making and that he was discussing my progress with colleagues at seminars etc. He was even reticent to sign me off to another doctors care because to do so meant he wouldn't have me as a 'case' to discuss any longer. 

I guess what I'm saying here is that Greg was through all of this…the immediate crisis, the trauma of paralysis, the rehab and therapy and the discussions with Dr. Yonas, Drs Wright the second neurologist, Dr. Henderson my lead physiotherapist, the clinic rehab therapists, the nearly a year of first round therapies and homework...yet he "remembers" none of this. The world according to Greg is that I wasn't paralyzed, I didn't lose large chunks of consciousness or memory. I didn't have to relearn to walk or sit without falling over…he was there for the celebration the first time I was able to go longer than 30 seconds on a tread mill at a half mile an hour. He was there when I was able to walk from the front of a Target store to the back without seeking a place to sit.

He sat with my therapist and discussed botox injections in my foot and ankle to unlock tone because without any feeling or ability to move my ankle, I needed to unlock it. He went through the electroconvulsive therapy to my left arm, shoulder and leg, trying to 'wake them up'. He knew of the biofeedback sessions and sat in and helped with my first baby steps on the tread mill and bike as I began my journey back to walking. And he sat in with a few speech therapies and cognizance sessions as I learned to use my battered brain again.

But now all this is lying! I wasn't affected by any of this. I didn't go through any of this. It's as if a giant eraser went whipping through his head erasing all the stuff he doesn't want to remember. The only things he wants to remember are things that happened to him. He lost a job! People he trusted crossed him. His life is a miserable piece of shit because he gets fired. Or gets cured of cancer. Can't count that though…that's a good thing and good things never happen to Greg!

No, he gets a splinter and the whole evening's ruined. He spills a few drips of milk on his knee and there goes the whole fucking weekend. He spends the next hour screaming about what a pile of shit his life is and how everything happens to him all the time. His life is so hard…he wants to die. He prays to die. 

And he's loving every minute of this apparently because he makes no effort to change a thing! NOT A THING! All he wants to do is punish everything around him. And then he's angry because I am warning my friend Debra about how bad things are here at times. That a baby kitten would perhaps have some amount of stress being brought into our home, much as I want this kitten I am trying to stay focused on his little life and not my own selfish wishes.

I will continue this in the following days when I have some idea of what is going to happen. Something will happen though because it cannot continue the way it is.