Week 2

Journey's End ©2000 Lindsay Archer

This morning I awoke to shining pavement and signs of a good rain in the night. It was a very sleepless one.  Around 3am I keep waking up and wanting to go for a run, just to get out this nervous energy, so I settled for the exercise bike instead.

The worst part of this is that his release comes at this time of year, a time full of memory stimulators, changing leaves, holiday decor, and a change in the weather.  All which take this new worry, a feeling I haven't truly experienced since his incarceration, and it's a recipe for unbidden memories.

I still can't drink those tiny cans of coke.  When I was tied up between rapes, I remember him pacing, drinking one, and plotting things to do to me, new ways to violate my body and my privacy.

The rain brings a small bit of comfort, because if anything, the monster was keen on covering his tracks in a form of evil OCD. Wet ground means footprints, and I feel somewhat comforted that he wouldn't risk leaving a trail.

The rain does however bring to mind a rainy night that I lived, seeming right out of a novel.  I had recently showered and was in my blue nightgown, wrapped in my komono robe.  Both items I long since divested myself and the memories attached to them.

Once again, Liam had been laying into the emotional abuse, and I'd had enough, so I went to find my keys and leave in my car, but they weren't where I had left them.  Knowing him, I accused him of hiding my keys, to which he reacted as he always did when he got caught.  He laughed and then tried to make me feel bad for thinking that, but his tactics had long since worn thin on me, and I had figured him out.  One of the things I had figured out was that he had a tell when lying, not during the actual lie, because he did that flawlessly, but seemingly while waiting to see if it had worked, he would raise one eyebrow in a spock-like fashion.  As his brow raised, I knew he was lying.  There was a pile of laundry nearby, so I looked threw it and found the keys he had hidden there.

All the way to the laundry basket, he followed me with more lies until I found the keys and called him out on it.  Instantly he shifted tactics, in trying to keep me in the house. All of them were failing, shot down by my logical retorts.  When I turned to leave, I saw him starting to come at me.

Emotional abuse, is harder to combat than physical.  In this, I'd been trained.  In this I knew how to react.  The world slowed down as he swung at me.  I ducked to the outside of his swing, caught his arm with my right hand, and pulled him forward, using his momentum to pull him off balance.  Then I put him a choke hold.

Even then I couldn't hurt him.  I was just trying to lock him down where he couldn't hurt me.  I held on, trying to squeeze the air out of him so he would pass out, as he backed me into a wall at full force.  White hot pain shot threw me as the air went out of me and my head slammed into the wall.  He did it again, but I held tight.  In frustration, the threw himself onto the floor, on top of me.

In this conflict, I had won, as he switched tactics again to crocodile tears and started crying.  I held him, knowing the next move, knowing how to break his neck, but I couldn't hurt him, even after all he had done.  That basic human respect and value for life that he never had was still in me, and instead of breaking his neck or knocking him out, I got free and ran.

We lived in the boonies at the time, and he was angry we had neighbors at all.  I should have ran next door to the Sheriff's daughter, but I just ran and ran until I could run no more.  The rain was pouring down, drenching me with each chilly fall drop.  It was dark out and I was next to a field of cows when that damned fuchsia Sunfire pulled up along side me.  Liam had the window rolled down and told me to get in, but I refused.  He mocked me with that chilly laugh at my willingness to just keep walking.  The rain fell harder and harder.  Eventually I got into the car, not seeing many options ahead of me. One of the many things I wish I could go back and change that night.

When we got back to the house, of course he was feigning contriteness again and finding excuses and reasons not to be held accountable, but I kicked him out that night and told him he was crazy and that normal people don't do those things.  He drove off, and that night he admitted himself to the Coliseum Mental hospital in Macon, Ga where he deftly manipulated the well-meaning people trying to help him. I had once been one of those well-meaning people.  It's that quality that attracts people like him.  A sense of virtue brings vultures, and they circle thinking of an easy meal.

I've started blogging about these experiences when they start flooding my mind, and it's seemed to help. I share them, because I know I'm not alone.  I refuse to remain silent, because silence is the weapon of the abuser.  Secrets are their currency.  They do not deserve my consideration, and will not have my silence. Those who think that doing so is bad... I can't help but think they protest too much, and that perhaps they might be guilty of the same.  I'm an open book, and I won't change that to make other people feel comfortable.  Perhaps they are the very people who need to be made a little uncomfortable and reconsider their own actions.  The only people who are upset by the truth, are those who are living a lie (I don't recall who coined that quote, but will add when I see it again).

Even though I doubt that he'll show today, I remain armed and try to be ready.  Yesterday while putting Morgan down for a nap, Evee dog woke us with her barking, which about gave me a heart attack since I'd thought I'd seen someone near the front door earlier.  That was the extent of the excitement, so nothing more happened.

It's been a really hard week, and I find that it's much like with funerals.  People are always there right when it happens.  You get tons of people wanting to help, and then by the 3rd day, when the reality is starting to set in and you start to really fall apart, the numbers dwindle significantly.  It's those who remain supportive that are the true friends, and it becomes obvious who really cares and who doesn't. It's a rather short list.

All in all though, I think I'm feeling better about things. I hope it's not some false sense of security. In a way I've been through a whole new trauma, or at least a revisitation of the old.  Fears I haven't had in over a decade found new life.  Fears with a basis in harsh reality and experiences that changed me forever.

I can't go back to who I was before, and that's okay. I've learned so much about what to look for, how they work, and I got a degree from the University of Hard Knocks. It's made me more in tune to things that I only knew instinctually before, and given name to those things.  Ultimately it's made psychos predictable when I've met others in similar circumstances.  It's made for healthier friendships and deeper understanding.

Here's a little psychopath 101. Everybody loves a psychopath at first, but most quickly grow tired of their crap.  They are often marked by hopping from one short relationship to the next.  The ones they have are shallow and short lived.  Psychopaths are impulsive but tremendously calculating and manipulative.  They rarely have long standing friends, and the ones they do have are generally separated by distance and not close enough to see their true face.  They cycle through people, exploiting them, and are hard to distinguish at times from narcissists.  Psychopaths are born.  Sociopaths are made.  There is no cure for psychopathy.

It's hard won knowledge, and it's something that many people don't want to believe, but it's there. It's not just something on TV. Hopefully I'll put this information to good use, and maybe, just maybe someone else will learn from my experience and escape similar circumstances.