The A-Word

My librarian posted on FB last night about Rihanna being a great singer but unhealthy in her personal life.  It lead to a conversation between us about how we could teach our girls that getting hit by someone who claims to love you is not ok.  It is an issue we see and deal with in high school nearly every day.  I have felt an internal indictment ever since.

I have written this post in my mind a thousand times.  I have shared this story with people in person.  At first, for the purpose of healing.  Later, when prompted, for the purpose of ministry.  To share it here is far scarier to me.  But it feels like the right time.



It was a moment I will never forget.  A realization that changed my life forever.  A  paradigm shift.  The beginning.

It was about a month after I left.  I had assumed my Saturday post walk position in my recliner, watching mindless television that I could tune out and think to while keeping my hands busy on my first crochet therapy project.

This day, instead of watching “Criminal Minds” and “Law and Order” reruns, I landed on a movie, Sleeping With The Enemy.  It was something familiar; I’d seen it before.  Something  that I didn’t have to watch closely; I could escape into my head.  That was the point.

I was paying only passing attention, focused on the pattern of my blanket:  eight double crochet, skip two, eight double crochet, three double crochet in the same stitch, repeat.  Mindlessly counting stitches. Until the music indicated a change in scene. 

I looked up and watched as Julia Roberts straightened towels so their patterns matched up.  Then a frantic pass through the kitchen cabinets, desperately checking the cans to make sure the labels were all facing forward.

I watched her panicked frenzy and sat paralyzed, unable to take my eyes off the screen.  She ran around trying to make everything perfect.  Her fear palpable.  And a fog began to clear in my mind.  My heart.

I knew her fear.  Silent tears streamed down my face.  I felt her fear.  Her hopeless resignation.  The short lived joy of her courageous escape.    The heart pounding anxiety of living a life looking over your shoulder.

That was me.  When the movie ended, I muted the sound and sat stunned. 

It is so easy, for me anyway, to look at other people, other relationships, and see what is broken.  Or missing.  But in my own, I had spent so many years trying to make it look good on the outside to everyone else, that I had convinced my own self of its wonderfulness.  That was the biggest deception. 

But sitting there watching Julia Roberts.  Feeling the fear.  The desperation.  The fog of deception was burned away.  For the first time, I allowed myself to see the truth of my own brokenness.

Abuse.

I didn’t say it out loud.  Not for months.  I couldn’t.  It was far too scary a word.  But to myself, I began to admit that I had been in an abusive relationship.

To be clear, I have never been physically beaten.  No one has ever hit me or burned me or locked me up.  I think that is why the A-word had never occurred to me before.  But there are all kinds of abuse.  Physical.  Verbal.  Sexual.  Emotional.

About thirty minutes after the movie ended, I began researching abuse online.  I didn’t really understand how I could feel all those same things the character in the movie did when no one had ever physically harmed me.

I ended up ordering five or six books from Amazon.  Books about battered women, abuse, bullying between friends.  The next couple of months I read through all of them.  It was painful.  I would read a chapter, highlighting things that connected with me, and then cry.  I also did a lot of writing and reflecting and crocheting.  Eventually, I began talking about it with my mom and my closest two friends. 

Healing is a beautiful and terrible thing.  It sort of reminds me of severe burn victims.  Those wounds have to be scraped and cleaned and treated.  And it is excruciating.  But it is the only way to healing.

Admitting I had the A-word in my life was just the tip of the iceberg.  After that, the wounds had to be scraped and cleaned and treated.  Repeatedly.  But eventually, healing began.  It continues still.



I am not done with this topic or this story.  But I find that I will have to share it in installments.  One can only scrape so much at one time.  There is one thing about which I wish to be very clear though.  I am writing this as a continued part of my own healing.  But I’m also writing because I see far too many girls and women in similar situations.  And I think there is too much silence on the topic.  Especially among church folks.  It is about owning my piece of the story.  I played a role in it.  And I am the key to making sure it never happens again.  But those are stories for another day.