this is pathetic to admit and I am so ashamed but I've been unable to get out of bed today. I get up for a little while and then boom I just get sleepy and lie down again. I have no energy and I know I am supposed to force myself to exercise but I am just crying so much and my head hurts and that makes me cry more.

I don't want to do anything and I just keep thinking why was this allowed to happen to me? everyone could hear him screaming at me. his therapist knew things were very bad. his mother witnessed him screaming at me. the kids too and they just went right on playing. does everyone think this is normal? what about when we were driving to ikea and he pulled over and threw me out of the car in the middle of long island? what about when he shoved me out the front door and began slamming it on me with the outer door closed so I kept getting jammed in the middle? What about when he took the hammer and smashed my face into the steps and poked the hammer into me? What was he telling himself to make this ok? That I was a bitch for yelling at him and deserved it? But why did nobody else tell him this was unacceptable? Does this go on every day in every street?

And I know it's really my fault for allowing it to go on for so long but where was everyone else? I mean in that broken down broken up state was I really supposed to know how to fight back? Am I really to be condemned because I yelled back, and since all yelling is bad, I was just as bad as he was? Is this really how it works, one person can abuse another and that person has to behave like a saint or be abandoned because she's an abuser too?

I feel all this -- I feel so angry -- I feel so sick. I'm lost. I don't care about anything. I don't want to get better, what for? So I can go into a new relationship and get treated like sh!t again? Oh sure they all start out great, but down the road somewhere, I'm going to get crapped on adn I'm going to have to put up with it because all relationships have something wrong with them and I'm just going to end up feeling just as alone as I did with him so what's the point? What is the point??

Why did this happen to me? Why do I have to fix everything now? Nobody stuck up for me? Nobody he knows? Nobody said "This doesn't sound right?" His friends saw, not all of it, but they saw really bad times, did they just think "well she must like it like that?"

I have nobody to call because nobody is left, nobody who knows me still loves me. That's not true I guess but I can't stand to call anyone because what will I do, just cry while they sit at the other end of the phone doing dishes, waving their husbands away while miming "it's [myname]," wishing they didn't have this screeching noise in their ear, telling me to get up and go for a walk? What for? Where am I walking to? My life's a treadmill, I'm walking nowhere.

I can't take any more of this, I don't want to make every decision myself, that must be why I let him control everything, because I can't do it on my own. There is something wrong wtih me, that's why I stayed in it, that's why i got in it in the first place. Normal people don't get into these things. A normal woman would have walked away the first time he screamed about the ethernet cable. Before. Way before. I was in this because it fed me, isn't that what the codependent literature says? so what's the point? if that's what i am what's the point? his therapist said I was codependent for staying, why didn't she tell him he was codependent for trying to force me to stay, for threatening what would happen to me if I left? I feel like I've been emotionally gangraped and I honestly see no way out.

So sorry this is so long. I would delete it but I'm afraid not to because if the words aren't here, they'll stay inside me. God my head hurts.

Fury hurts

More dreams last night: we were at a resort and I came back to our room and he had packed all his things and left. Rather than being glad I was desperate to join him as I so often was, because that would mitigate my punishment for whatever infraction had made him angry in the first place. I called him and ran for the airport.

I am desperately furious. This is so much harder than I thought it would be. I am furious to have lost as much as I have lost and I am furious to be poking around in dusty rooms with bad light, wondering if I can afford a nicer place to live. I am furious to be depending on my parents for so much, as if I were a child who just had to climb on the monkeybars the wrong way and now I'm paying the price. They are not acting that way, but -- well, that's complicated.

When I had my broken shoulder, the X-ray technician looked at the break and asked if I played football. It had been broken with such brutal strength and violence. My shoulder hurts every day. I put my purse on my shoulder and I feel it slip into the hollow created where the bones fused together sloppily. I sleep on my right side and wake up in pain, slowly rolling over so I can ease it straight; somehow it gets very achey if it's squished into the mattress in the wrong way. It's a constant reminder of what I did to myself. Oops. I mean, what he did to me, right?

No... I'm not sure I mean that at all.

Birthday ramblings

Sister3 and I were sort of making fun of Sister2 a few nights ago -- Sister2 sorta spoils her kids and is wrapped around their little fingers, and the younger of our neices told her she was "weely fweaked out" because Sister1's husband said he was going to give her a yellow card (during the world cup) -- this niece is charming and lovely but ONLY talks this way ("wheely" instead of "really," which she is perfectly capable of saying) when her mom and dad come into the room -- it's all in gentle fun, mostly because the neice in question is the least freaked out child in the world...

Cut to ... my memories of when he would have me put the kids to bed, and he'd either fall asleep or have a panic attack and be unavailable, and I would sit with the kids and put them to bed. The older one (9) would drop right off, but the younger guy (7) never fell asleep easily. Chez his mom, he won't go to sleep until his mother kisses him, and if she is out for the evening he sits up and cries. At our house, I fit the bill -- high praise for a stepmom. I would sit with him and joke and suggest things he could think about ("Wait, [myname]! What do I think about??" he'd ask if I left without doing this).

Usually he'd go so sleep but a lot of times he'd cry, big tears that seemed outsized, like from grownup eyes, just feeling lost. "My parents got divorced so I'm nobody's kid," he'd say at 4 and 5 years old, and at 7, he said he didn't feel that way, but just felt afraid, "not comfortable," alone. He'd call me at 2am, 3am, he'd wake and call my name and I'd be out the door before I even opened my eyes and he'd just be crying, crying so silently, and I'd sit with him till he dropped off again.

The night before his communion he was so nervous, and asked me to at least stay there till they both went to sleep, I remember it so clearly, because I said "But I don't fit in your bed and I don't ahve one of my own in here." Suddenly a comforter rained down from the top bunk (his brother's) and a pillow hit the floor (his) and what choice did I have but to snuggle up in my little boys'-made nest? They were both asleep within 20 minutes.

The communion itself was a nightmare. His mother and sister had made a horrible fuss that I should not be allowed to sit up front "with the family." Knowing this it was so hard to be cordial to the mother. His sister did not even show up, because she took the wrong route, so after all her hate-filled spewing and demands that she be given my ticket, she wasn't even there. By the end of the day he was so drunk I had to ask people to leave, then spend the evening cleaning up the alcohol he'd spilled all over the bedroom, and then hating him as he did drugs long into the night.

I know I had to leave but I will never be okay with it. I don't see how any relationship will ever be as good as the ones I had with the kids. And he destroyed that. I want to kill him for it. I will never be OK with this. A heart that breaks for a guy? Pish-posh. A heart that breaks for a child? So much worse.

I am crippled with this pain today. I miss the kids so much. In a way I've never missed anything. I can't stand to think he'd be crying at his father's house without me there. He yells at the older kid and assumes the younger one is fine and I -- well I suppose he'll let them sleep with him in the big bed now, which is all they want anyway. I hope so. I really hope so.

do I have to dream about him every night?!

As I expected, my physical escape has to be followed by an emotional escape. He can't get to me physically anymore, but he still invades my brain. So far he has pretty much kept to "no contact" except for a few brief comments which he tried to post to my blog, but which I rejected. I did read them, though, and mostly they were laughable -- except when he said I had abandoned the children.

She smiled to leave her husband dear
To go with the Gypsy Davey
But the tears come a-trickling down her cheeks
To think about her blue eyed baby
To think about her blue eyed babe

This from the guy who told me "You should not concern yourself with children that are not yours" when I called him on his behavior -- sitting upstairs indulging in untreated panic attacks while the kids asked me why he wouldn't come down to be with them.

The dreams:

I sneak back into his house to find he has made it a paradise. My bird is missing but there are dozens more in huge, beautiful cages, some not even kept in cages but given perches to climb around on. Several large lizards in handsome tanks. I'm overwhelmed trying to find my bird among these and get out of there. I see him coming in the door holding the hands of both children and he sees me and I am trapped. I close my eyes and think, "This is not going to happen," and the dream switches. I'm just wandering around the house trying to find my way out. I wake up.

I dream I am far away from him, in the hills of California, in a house with a large kitchen with huge windows. My housemates are college acquaintances. I look out the window and see several small planes; one is on fire. It is heading my way. It is going to crash. I dive to the floor to wait for the impact, and something shatters the window, but it seems smaller than I thought. I look up and it's just a remote-control plane. I pick up the plane and see a note inside; it's several pages from him. I can't read most of it but the end, where it says, in huge letters, "I STILL WANT IN." I realize he will not let me go. I realize that this remote-control plane means he is nearby, waiting, physically close enough to get me. I run upstairs in the house but all I'm wearing is a towel, which I clutch to myself while hanging on to the note; I'm hysterical. On the top floor there are three therapists; one is my friend Stacey. I beg to speak to her. She comes out of her office and sees the note. "Oh, honey," she says. I wake up.

I am in the car with him and the kids, just like always. We are chatting and happy. The kids fall asleep and he turns to me with this look on his face of anger and fury and hate. I realize that I am trapped and he has got me now. I wake in terror.

My compulsion to contact him is so strong. I know that he is in pain and I have to force myself to remember him slamming me to the floor, smashing my face against the wood so hard that I could not close my mouth, feeling the drool slick against my cheek, I have to remember him slamming his boot onto the floor next to me as I curled up to avoid him, missing me my millimeters, smashing whatever I'd been holding. Then I manage to not send him the angry email or post a response on my (other) blog. Knowing that once I respond, the floodgates open. They will open sometime in the next 6 months and I want to stave it off as long as I can because I don't know what happens next. He has always gotten me back that way and I don't know what happens when I don't.

he kept my bird

and sold it to someone else rather than letting me have him back. and all I can do is sit here feeling grateful he didn't kill the bird.