Bad Anniversaries

This is a week of bad anniversaries, highlighting the upcoming 23rd, when my exhusband, the violent sex offender I put in prison, will be released. It's been 12 years since that fateful day, when he grabbed me from behind while I was painting.  After fighting for hours, he tied me up, cut off my clothes with scissors and raped me repeatedly.  Between rapes he paced looking for new ways to violate me.  He would read my diary, go through my emails, and in the process get angry again, which would turn him on enough to rape me again.  By the fourth time, I stopped responding.  I had been fighting him with my will, my mind, telling him that he was raping me, so that there was no way he could conceive of consent.  I fought him with logic as he oscillated between I love yous and I hate yous.  When he asked me why I couldn't just love him, I told him that it was because he was capable of this.  Nothing stopped it. I tried praying and was punished for that as well.  And in all this, I was painting when he grabbed me which tends to write things indelibly in my mind. By the next morning, he covered me in a blanket and put me naked in the back seat of his car.  I could see as I tried to work my hands free. Faces in trucks of people looking on, none looked my way. One woman rubbed her eye, as I desperately tried to will them to look, to call it in... for someone... anyone to help my naked bound form with duct tape over my mouth.  I had determined that if I could get the handcuffs unhooked from my legs that I would loop them around Liam's throat while he was driving, and crash the car.  By this point I didn't want to survive. I just wanted it to stop, and I wanted him to answer for his crimes.  He took me to a swamp, and my heart literally skipped a beat. I thought I would die from fear.  He had told me once that if he were ever going to kill someone, that he would torture them, then set them on fire, float them into a swamp for gators to eat them.  My saving grace was that he had tried to call into work as me, like I had a sore throat, but his obsessive calling prior allowed them to recognize his voice, put him at the scene of the crime.  I pointed this out to him, and he drummed up some crocodile tears, not for what he'd done, but the prospect of being caught.  He untied me, and my whole body ached from fighting my bonds all night, but we were moving again, and he guarded every move I made.  Then he tried to convince me not to press charges and to forgive him, before he ran.  He was caught on the road, driving too slow in Kansas.

That was rough, and it changed me forever.  The year with him, was one of constant stress, turmoil, and suffering.  I thought one year versus these 12 years, I would be have been healed by now, but I have yet to have a truly good environment to really heal completely before the monster is set loose on the world on the 23rd, and becomes a possible threat again. Instead I ended up with people who made it worse (not everybody of course, but you would be amazed at the wolves in sheep's clothing).

I wish I could say my life is so much better now, but it's not just the event, it's the stupid people and their reactions to it.  Either they don't take it seriously, or they find a way to blame you for it, or any number of reactions which are salt in wounds that are torn open every day. People get mad at you for having PTSD, or they won't let you talk about it, so you can cope, which makes you feel that much more broken and unconsciously breaks you further. It gets to the point where you don't want much to do with people, because they just make it worse, and then when you do decide to venture forth again, they cut you down or claim you're lying because things like that only happen on TV. They call you a snob for being reserved and not reciprocating their yapper-dog-like approaches to things. Or they expect you to be a robot and not feel the natural responses to a horrific event. Meanwhile you bury the feelings and they only fester the wounds, without getting the proper air to dry them out. There's a reason why there's such a high suicide rate for people who've been through what I've been through, and it's a lot to do with the people around them as much as the original event, and sadly it's not the only event I've had. It was the worst by far, but not the only.

When a clay pot first comes out of the fire, it's at its most fragile.  It doesn't take much to shatter it.  When it cools, it's harder and tougher than it's ever been.  But if people can't handle it properly, there's nothing but hard shards for the trash, and not everyone wants to glue a broken pot back together.

Not sure which I am some days... probably a crack pot. I've been open about my experiences, mostly because I've had abusers try to silence me so much that I refused to play their games ... and I've reaped the consequences of their ire for speaking up and speaking out, which is much harder than remaining quiet about them.  I don't know if that makes me tougher, more stubborn, or just stupid.

Silence is the power of the abuser.  In fact that was the first book that the ex gave me was the power of silence... because he didn't want me to talk... but then again he didn't care one bit for who I was.  To him I was just flesh to be abused and suffer silently.  If he had cared to know me, he would have known that wouldn't be the case.

By now, I was hoping to have healed completely. I thought 12 years should be enough, but I did not anticipate the situations that I would be put into afterwards. By now I thought that I'd be able to afford more, but I was making more money at the time, and certainly wasn't as hampered as I am now. I thought that it would get easier.  In some ways it has, but in so many ways ... it's harder through the years of accumulated grief, additional emotional abusers, and wounds that can't heal in the present environment.

If 12 years is a life sentence, then where is the new life I should have? The consequences of his actions are still weighing heavy on me.  The threat of him seeking revenge for holding him accountable is as real as it was before, because he is the same person who thinks laws are for other people. Meanwhile the choices I have are limited.  The options are limited.  And I have no choice but to move forward and hope that he chooses a new mark, which is a retarded hope.

These are the restraints for a violent sex offender when released... http://pap.georgia.gov/sex-offender-supervision

All of this makes me laugh. It continually says they must abide by laws... but these are criminals... if laws mattered, they wouldn't be sex offenders.  If they are such a known threat to society that they need this much supervision... Why the hell are they being released from prison in the first place?

I've heard people say that they know many soldiers with PTSD and that they just want to enjoy life, etc. but the difference is, they probably wouldn't be quite as calm if they had to go right back into the thick of it.  They don't have to worry about their bigger stronger wives being a covert terrorist.  People don't blame you for war wounds that you must have been asking for it, unless they are antiwar jerks... and rarely does the person that shot you get some sort of sympathy that they were just not loved enough as children and you aren't forced to have sex with them because your parents don't believe in divorce.

Meanwhile if you figured out how to identify a terrorist, you don't have people telling you what nice people they are and that you must be lying.  Being called a liar for telling the truth enough, makes you start doubting reality, and makes you hate lies.  However the rest of the world seems to love them and the liars that produce them.  Charm, charisma, my ex had them both, so much that he almost talked himself into being released for a day from prison for a picnic with his family, because I was just "crazy"(because being unhappy with being mistreated is crazy, apparently).  When his charm failed, which it rarely did, that's when he turned violent.  I know that hasn't changed, because he apparently pulled it on a guard in prison.

So I can't help but feel that with his freedom comes my own kind of incarceration.  I won't be able to help looking over my shoulder to see if I'm being stalked again, worrying for my daughter now that I'm too fat to catch his eye, and wondering if he's trying to get to me through my friends again.  Perhaps he'll be caught breaking parole.  Perhaps he'll find someone new to make his 5th wife, and he'll change on their wedding day like he did the previous ones.  Regardless, I will always be left with the consequences of his cruelty, trying to heal, trying to stay safe, and deal with the damage that I have to clean up on my own, wishing for an environment where I can heal, and coping with what I've got.  Hoping that maybe people won't mind so much if I'm a little off at first, nervous how they might react to the knowledge of what I've been through, and hoping that they won't be one more person to make it that much worse.