PTSD doesn’t care if you’re sleeping

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Dream journal, September 2nd. 2am.

trigger warning: domestic abuse

He brings a gun to bed… but this time I have one too.

He’s being careless with how he’s holding his – finger near the trigger, touching the gun to me casually in conversation, talking about the day’s happenings. He’s drunk, like he was when this happened in real life, and he’s calm. Also typical.

I’m terrified, but prepared this time. He knows I am also holding a gun now, but I have it tucked away, my finger securely resting on the side. I don’t want to use it. I want him to put his down so I can get it.

He does.

I do.

He sets it down and allows me to pick up his gun. For a split second I allow myself to breathe… until I realize he’s putting on a bullet proof vest and pulling out a second gun. At this point I can feel the weight of both weapons in my hands – mine is heavy and solid, and his feels light in my non dominant hand. I no longer feel like I stand a chance at this game. Even with 2 guns, he still seems more prepared, more skilled, more protected in the event I feel I would need to take action.

And then he starts asking about our son. He goes to leave to get him, to bring him back to bed. This is also a triggered memories from many real life moments. I now feel even less confident in my ability to protect myself if my child is in the bed with us.

All my senses are engaged in this dream. I feel the guns in my hands. My chest is tight and I can feel my heart racing. I see him vividly sitting on the bed with me, I can see that IDGAF look in his eyes. I can hear the Velcro straps of his vest and I can feel the weight of him next to me in the bed.

I wake up.

Here in real life my daughter is in bed with me, her body heavy against mine, I know that’s where that feeling of HIM next to me came from.

I’ve been holding my breath.

The tears start to fall over a memory that hasn’t caused me anxiety in I can’t remember how long. He may have not pointed the gun at me when this happened in real life, but I so vividly remember how my body felt. I haven’t felt that way in a long time.

Having to stay calm, to make sure he didn’t do anything we both would regret, trying to calmly talk to a drunk man the same way you try to calmly rationalize with a child that’s feeling a little out of control and you have to keep the situation de-escalated. There’s a disconnect between what your brain and body are thinking and feeling and what you’re having to act out. Everything in you wants to scream, or run, or do SOMETHING other than be calm. But you recognize you aren’t dealing with someone who will respond to anything but calm, and anything else might cause him to… well…

Heck, you aren’t dealing with someone who will even remember this happened in the morning.

But I remember.

My body remembers.

Even my subconscious dreams remember, apparently.

So I write it down. I am triggered. The tears havent stopped since I woke up from this dream. But this is fuel now. This is my Why. This is why we are building our Dream, so that we can offer hope to women living this nightmare. So when someone calls us to tell us that their husband brought a loaded gun to their marriage bed, we have a place to offer her so she can be safe. So when women share other stories like this, we have resources for her that go beyond “you need to love him more and respect him more, and here’s a book on how to have a healthy marriage.”

This was my story… but I’ll be damned if my story was in vain. I may still cry hot tears over my own memories, but watch me use them to put out the flames of someone else’s fire.

Watch me.

Watch God.

He’s in the business of Big Dreams and Big Rescues.

DomesticAbuseAwareness

PTSD

PTSDdoesntcareifyouaresleeping

ThreeFeathersAndCo

MyWhy

Learn from me

Collateral Damage, domestic abuse, Fear

It’s been 2 years since I officially told him I wanted a divorce.

When I asked him to leave after he destroyed my house, the initial arrangement was just that he would be staying at a buddy’s house. It took me 4 days to work up the nerve to give him the message (through the buddy, as I didn’t want contact with him at the time) that the separation needed to be made permanent.  The result of that Thursday night conversation left me, yet again, wondering if this would be the time he would finally kill us all.

I texted the buddy in the morning, after barely sleeping that night. I look back on all of this and just shake my head at my foolishness. I knew exactly what he was planning, and I allowed myself to be talked off a ledge and “let this play out”.

He asked to come over to get some things in order, and with his buddy close enough to step in if needed, I allowed it. While he was at my house, he asked if I wanted to be the one to disappear forever, or if I wanted him to. If I wanted to be the one to raise the kids, or if I would let him. I kept telling him it didn’t have to be this way. We could divorce like normal people divorce. It doesn’t have to be this dramatic. Nobody had to die. I wasn’t asking him to die, and I certainly didn’t want to die.

This wasn’t the first time he’d suggested ending a life at the suggestion of separating (and not the first time he talked suicide, but would always end it with “but I could never do that to my kids”). I found a text from a couple years before this incident two years ago where I was relaying a conversation to a friend:

“oh, also, he kept saying something about there are two easy ways out. Divorce, or suicide by either one of us. The first time he said it I was really confused that suicide would even be any sort of option. But then he said it a couple more times and I had to make him clarify as to whether or not he thought that I would actually commit suicide? Or if he was thinking about it? Especially because he keeps insisting that I am clinically depressed. He says he is not going to, but that it was just one of two ways out.  I assured him that it was not an option for me.”

The rest of the conversation in my dining room that day two years ago was him telling me that he had changed the life insurance policy. He told me that there would be people from the ATF that would come and “take care” of everything he left behind with his gun business. He asked me to give him three hours and he would disappear forever.

I left that day.  Spent the afternoon crying till the tears ran out.

But I didn’t call the police.

He got as far as putting his loaded ARs, magazines, and handguns in the trunk of his car, but thankfully his buddy convinced him to bring them back inside and lock them back up in his gun room before going back to the friend’s house, taking a bunch of meds, and passing out.

I have said it before, listed at the top of my regrets is the MANY times I should have called the police, but I didn’t. Sometimes I didn’t tell anyone.  Sometimes I called his friends. Sometimes I called our pastor.  But I didn’t call the police.

My fear when speaking out about my experience is that people will read it and think I am trying to drag his name through the mud, or air my dirty laundry.  PLEASE hear my heart when I say that this is not my intention. With every fiber of my being, my goal in speaking up and speaking out is so that other people will learn from me.  What not to do.  What to do.  I did a lot of things wrong in my marriage, and not reaching out for the appropriate kind of professional help could have cost me my (or his) life on more than one occasion.

If you are EVER afraid for your life or safety, or if someone you know is threatening to harm themselves, PLEASE call someone.  Call the police, call the domestic abuse hotline 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), call the suicide hotline 1-800-273-8255.  Call a trained professional.

There are so many things I hope people can learn from me, but this might be the one about which I speak the loudest: CALL FOR HELP.

Badmouthing vs Prevention

domestic abuse, Spiritual Abuse

I spent most of my marriage dealing with abuse – mainly mental/emotional, but also financial, sexual, and occasionally physical. Being that I was also a Christian and we kept ourselves planted in the church, we frequently needed to reach out to our spiritual leaders to help us with our struggling marriage. Through all those years, the only time anyone specifically acknowledged abuse in my marriage was after the “big” moments (ie: the gun incident). For all the other times we would hit rock bottom, the advice was usually for me to respect him more so that in turn, he would respond by loving me more (and abusing me less). The advice placed the responsibility of his abuse on my shoulders. If I did XYZ, he would respond positively by doing ABC.  We called it the spiral.  It could go up, or it could go down.  All advice pointed back to that spiral – stop the downward spiral by focusing on what I could do to improve ME and MY behaviors, and the result would make him more willing and likely to improve HIS behaviors, thus reversing the spiral.

In a healthy marriage, this isn’t actually bad advice – if BOTH partners are honestly and genuinely striving for self-improvements.  Obviously we should all be purposeful in being the best human we can be, and driven to treat our partner well.  The problem lies when one party is unwilling to change, but we say that if the other party just tries harder, respects more, loves better…  THEN the unwilling party might have a change of heart.

Do you see how damaging this could be?  This is victim blaming. How about I reword it like this: “If you DIDN’T do XYZ, then he wouldn’t have ABC.” “If you didn’t yell at him, he wouldn’t have hit you.” “If you didn’t dress that way, he wouldn’t have raped you.” It makes the non-abuser at fault for the abuse. There’s a line where healthy consequences end (One partner overspends and leaves no money to pay bills, so the mutually agreed upon boundary is to give the overspender a set allowance) and abuse begins (one partner has no issues with finances but the other partner has complete control, doesn’t allow access to bank accounts, imposes an allowance, puts the family in financial distress, etc).

If we can get better at identifying abuse and calling it what it is and getting to the root of that problem, I truly feel things can improve. There’s one area where I believe needs to change, and that’s how we speak of this abuse. One thing that I frequently see from those getting out of a relationship is people saying they “don’t want to badmouth their ex”.  While I can see this as a positive practice in “normal” relationships that end for “normal” reasons (and absolutely necessary to an extent when it comes to how we speak to our children), I can’t help but think that this practice of keeping silent does more harm than good in situations where abuse has been present.

Had more people in the position of power (in my case, spiritual power) stepped up and spoke up in my life to tell me that what I was experiencing was ABUSE rather than the normal difficulties that arise in marriage, maybe things could have turned around sooner – whether it be healing and true change, or me not going back into that abusive relationship only to have the abuse change and increase over the years following.

I think sometimes we aren’t willing to speak up against abuse because we are so afraid of it looking like we are badmouthing someone.  But what if speaking out about our experiences could literally save a life?  What if someone heard our story and could identify a pattern of ABUSE in their life.  What if bystanders heard our story and THEY were the ones able to help a friend identify abuse.  What if we had the power to stop the cycle because we were brave enough to share our story? This isn’t about promoting divorce.  There is help out there for abusive people.  People CAN change (though there’s no guarantee they will).  But in order to change, we have to diagnose and treat the correct problem.  I feel like what we do in the Church, by treating abusive marriages just like any other struggling marriage, is like giving an anti-depressant to someone needing an antibiotic.  Identify the problem and then you can find the tools to heal it at the root OR do the necessary surgery to remove the problem.

One common recommendation for survivors with PTSD is to talk about the trauma they endured.  This can be in a mental health setting (counseling/therapy), or in a group setting (support group), or simply sharing our story with friends or even strangers that might benefit from hearing of our experiences. Not only is this healing to the survivor, but it can be life saving and life giving to someone has been in or is currently experiencing a similar situation.

If someone had their home broken into, we wouldn’t tell that person to not share their experience.  In fact, their story might make its way to the news, as a way to warn others in the neighborhood about this dangerous person, and to give people ways to protect themselves.

If a woman was raped, we wouldn’t tell her to keep quiet about her abuse.  We would want to plaster a picture of her abuser everywhere so that others could be on the lookout for this harmful person, and be prepared in the event they crossed paths with this individual.

Why is it that speaking up about abusive marriages (especially in the Christian/religious world) is taboo? I want others to know what various types of abuse can look like, and how they can protect themselves from getting into an abusive relationship. I want others to know that there are ways they can help identify and stop abuse and heal and save a relationship. I want people to know that there are ways they can protect themselves and remove themselves from the abuse in a healthy and safe way.

Speaking up about abuse, whether it be physical, mental, financial, or sexual (to include adultery) doesn’t have to be bad mouthing.  It can be – and SHOULD BE – prevention.

Lord, let me be the lighthouse that saves others from crashing into the same rocks I hit along the way, but let me do it with grace-filled lips, without bitterness, and full of Truth.

“the gun incident”

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I didn’t leave after this incident. It had been 2 years since the last time we separated and he had moved me further away from my support system and had been isolating me from my family and friends in the name of “protecting our marriage from people that didn’t support us”. My own parents didn’t learn about this incident until months later because I knew how it would make them feel about my husband. I desperately needed my family to like him or I didn’t know how our marriage could survive. I needed my people if I was going to stay in my marriage. So I needed my people to not know how bad it had gotten. His parents knew, and his dad was just wanting to get us through school before we divorced (his recommendation to divorce).

I remember laying there, still, praying he would go to sleep (or pass out) so I could call someone – someone “safe”, someone who wouldn’t tell me to leave him. I tried calling two of his buddies, but no answer at that time of night. So I just laid there. Prayed I would make it through the night. Prayed my boys wouldn’t come into our room in the night and find the gun in the nightstand.

I didn’t call the police. Not the first time I made that decision… certainly not the last.

Instead, we went to counseling. We would spend months going round in circles with him fighting our counselor’s assessment of him being abusive, manipulative, controlling, and narcissistic. After all, it wasn’t abuse because he never pointed the gun at me.

She later told my mom that she has never feared for a client’s life the way she feared for mine – that she lay awake at night, worried. Because I stayed.

Eventually we stopped going to her. Add her to the list of people unqualified in his eyes to help us with our marriage because they dared suggest he was abusive.

Abuse doesn’t always look like hitting or fearing for your life. But the things surrounding the abuse tend to be the same – isolating you from your support system, convincing you “they” are harmful to your relationship, unable to take criticism or advice and work on making necessary changes for healing, unable to admit they did anything wrong, convincing you it was your fault, making you question your reality (gaslighting)… the list goes on and on.

My friend, you don’t have to go through it alone. I believe you. You are not crazy or imagining things. You are worthy of being loved.

At the same time, marriages CAN be healed. People CAN change. I believe it with all my heart. I just now believe there need to be certain safety measures in place before getting to the place of determining whether a relationship *should* be reconciled or saved. And the most important part in all of it is that you don’t do it alone. Find people who are trained and experienced in domestic abuse. Have your spiritual mentors/church leaders/etc in place but PLEASE do not rely on them to be responsible for what needs to happen in your relationship. Chances are, they aren’t equipped to handle domestic abuse, and it’s not fair to put such a heavy responsibility on them. You will need professional help. Please get it. Find your local women’s shelter. Find a counselor – ideally one with domestic abuse experience.

Don’t suffer alone.

Marriages ARE worth fighting for.

But they aren’t worth dying over. We were not called to be martyrs for our marriage. Please get help before it’s too late. Your life AND your soul are too precious to lose at the hands (words) of someone that doesn’t value your very being.

#talkaboutit #enddomesticabuse

Good riddance to the baggage of this day

Letting Go, Steps Toward Healing

I mentioned that this month is a month of “one year anniversaries”. Last week at this time I was at my lowest and darkest. I had friends coming from all angles just to be there and sit with me in my pit. People showed up at my door, texted me, emailed me, called me, showered love on me, and most importantly, they covered me – no, they OVERWHELMED me – with their prayers. I have never felt so low, life had never felt so heavy and impossible – and at the same time I have never felt so **held** and cradled.

Today I am grateful to announce that I am back. I am Mandi again.

One year ago today at this time, he asked me if I wanted to disappear forever. The rest of the day was even more traumatic (and quite frankly, triggering.) One day I will share my private blog where I’ve journaled about that day (and that time in my life – and my marriage in general), but today is not that day.

This has been a year of survival and learning. Learning how to be a single mama. Learning how to “make it” financially without child or spousal support. Learning how to accept help. Learning how to fix things on my own. Learning how to support my babies when they are hurting.

When I look back at this year, I am brought to tears as I see the CROWDS of people that walked with me day by day, week by week, month by month. I have never been alone. Even as I hesitantly look at my time hop/memories, I am seeing that from the very first day, I had my tribe by my side.

Today I make note of this anniversary simply because it’s a page in the chapter of my book – a very important day that helped shaped who I am today.

Moving forward? I’m done being a victim. I am walking forward in confidence. I am seeking out opportunities to pay forward what’s been poured into me. I am stepping out in gratitude, grace, love, and PURPOSE.

I couldn’t begin to list the people I want to thank for surrounding me and helping carry me over the last year. You know who you are, and I want you to know that I am getting myself to a place where I am healthy enough to help you back, and to help others the way you’ve helped me.

My friends, I love you. I love you more than I can find words to express. ❤ ❤ ❤
————
Good riddance to the baggage that this day holds, today I choose to set down that weight.

One.

domestic abuse, Letting Go

It’s 3am and I can’t get back to sleep.

3am on April 24th.  We’ve made it.  We’ve gotten to this day and we are still here. To be honest, there have been days where I wasn’t sure we would make it – metaphorically or physically.  That’s the hard part about dealing with an abuser, the fear of the unknown when the known is already so scary.

No.  I’m here.  I’m bruised and tender, I’m tired and shattered, but I’m here.  In some ways (and on some days more than others) I’m SO. MUCH. STRONGER. than I ever was before.  I’m lighter.  I’m free.  I’m brave.  But some days the brokenness of it all cuts too deep.  It hurts.  When it heals, it’s stronger, but then my heart finds new ways to break, new places to bleed, and it hurts in places I hadn’t felt before.  And I have to learn all over again how to heal. One day this will all be a distant memory, the pain won’t feel so fresh as we pass over days that have such significance.

One year ago today I exercised my right to enforce a boundary in order to keep my kids and myself safe.  I stopped trying to minimize his behavior by calling his rages “episodes”.  I reached out for help because I was afraid to go home alone (for good reason, as I later would learn).

One year ago today, I said enough.  Again, and for good.

Over the next month there will be other tough one year “anniversaries” that will lead us to the day I finally filed for an Order for Protection and subsequently, divorce. Our divorce will not be finalized for quite a few more months (at minimum) – the joys of divorcing a narcissist – but these one year marks are significant and important and deserve to be recognized.  In addition to the brokenness they represent, they also represent survival, peace, freedom.

So here’s to one year, self.  We made it.  Some days with more grace and peace in our heart than others, but we made it.  And we will keep pressing forward. We will thrive.  We will advocate.  We will not tolerate abuse in our home.  We will enforce healthy boundaries in our relationships. The heart will heal, and it will learn to trust again. Hold tight.  It’s not going to get easier any time soon, but we’ve got this, and we are not doing this alone.

Here’s to one year.

Take it off

When Jesus Speaks

There are days I wear my Grief like pajamas. Bitterness fits like a well worn bathrobe. Sadness warms my feet like familiar slippers, and Anger weighs me down like the wet towel wrapped around my hair.

Today I’ve worn —>All. The. Feelings.<— Taking one article off just to put another on.

And then I remembered my Truth. And my Choice. And the fact that my Creator – the very One that knit me together in my mother’s womb and knew me before I was even born, CALLED ME to cast off my dirty rags and put on Righteous clothing. I remembered that there is a shiny Suit of Armor (Ephesians 6:10-18) that fits me like a glove, and THAT, my friends, is what I should be wearing today.

My Everlasting Father, my King of Kings, my Almighty God – He has given me His FULL POWER to tackle this day (filled with *All*The*Brokenness*) with my head held high, knowing that WHATEVER the outcome, HE IS STILL GOD. And He is still GOOD. He will never EVER change, and that, my friends, is a Truth I can wear like a tattoo for the rest of my life.

In the name of Jesus

Spiritual Abuse

I’ve had a lot of people cock their head and squint their eyes at the mention of “spiritual abuse”. What does that look like? How does one play out spiritual abuse?

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This was a letter written to me in the months leading up to our separation. I have more letters like this, and countless text messages and emails with similar verbiage. At the beginning of our separation, he would say quite often that he questioned my salvation. That he believed anyone who is a true believer wouldn’t pursue divorce. Of course, he was concerned for my soul, and wept for my eternity…
Anyone that truly knows me (and even those who don’t, because let’s face it, I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve. There aren’t many secrets with me) knows that my faith is the most important thing in my life. It always has been. So it also shouldn’t be surprising to someone with a healthy mind, that my faith would be an easy target if one would want to try and manipulate and control me.
And they would be right.
The previous two times we separated, I pursued a legal separation rather than divorce because I knew that “God hates divorce”. In fact, what brought me back to him after our second separation was him counter filing with divorce papers. That scared me. And it worked. I went back to him with absolutely no change on his part, and no promise to change. It didn’t matter that he held me hostage in my own bed with a loaded gun. It didn’t matter that our marriage counselor said that he was the most resistant person she had ever worked with (other than one other man, who she fired). It didn’t matter that our marriage counselor said that I was the only one she had ever laid awake at night worried about, worried for both me and my boys. It didn’t matter that he was still an alcoholic with no promise to change.
All I heard was “God hates divorce”.
Both times that I went back in the past were because he was able to twist and misuse the Bible, cherry pick verses to make me feel like what I was doing was so sinful and wrong.
Throughout our marriage he has been able to approach me in such a way that I felt like he really was my spiritual leader. But in looking back at his actual words, I shutter. The accusations he made of me made me doubt myself so much. They crushed me. They confused me. Because I didn’t think I was that person he was accusing me of being. I never thought that I was mentally unstable or chronically depressed or spiritually dead, like he accused me of. So to hear those things coming from him was very hard. He always had a way with words, and he was always able to sound confident and intelligent and of course, 100% right. And his ability to sound smart AND spiritual makes for a very convincing argument, and makes it difficult to see the abuse at face value.  For example, I probably would have been able to recognize verbal abuse if he had called me stupid. But he didn’t. Instead, he called me foolish, and he quoted Bible verses about wisdom or verses about being a godly wife. I lost count of the times I would go to my closest friends and ask them “you interact with me daily – do YOU think I am XYZ, like he says?” (Looking back, I am so grateful for those solid friendships in my life that spoke truth when all I heard were lies.)

It’s hard to see the truth through the foggy lens of spiritual abuse. Especially when you are so in love with Jesus and all you want to do is trust and obey.  When someone is feeding you a false narrative of something that means so much to you, it feels so wrong to reject what that person is saying when it’s “in the name of Jesus”.

Thank the good LORD that the fog continues to lift and I can see clearly the Words of my precious Savior.  I can see His truth.  I can see MY worth and MY value in Him.  I can know that I am cherished and adored and precious to Him.

And so are you, my friend.  So are you.