When Love Turns To Hate by Lori j Loesch
When love turns to hate, and like to despise
I look into your eyes,
I see that you despise me, with that glare in your eyes
They used to be blue, but now they are grey
your love went away
So, here’s the skinny: I left the life of abuse and all that happens, to an innocent, baby girl, when she is severely abused by her step-adopted dad, and the entire family and community, and school district sweeps it under the rug, behind me. I wasn’t abused once, I was abused every day, all the time. I listened to a TED Talks from Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. She talked about children that have had a trauma in their life, and what happens to their bodies and their minds. She talked about how, when you’re in the woods and you are face to face with a bear, your heart starts to pound, your breathing becomes heavier, there are many physiological changes, taking place in your brain and body. Your body produces hormones and other chemicals, to help you with your flight or fight. But, what if the bear comes home EVERY NIGHT? The child has physiological changes in her body and mind, everyday. This changes her. She doesn’t think or act like a normal child.
What happens when that bear comes home every night? My heart starts pounding, my breathing gets deeper, slower, I’m listening for the sound of his footsteps, for the sound the door knob makes when he turns it slowly, for the sound of his stinky breath. I shut down. I awake with the buttons on my nightshirt undone…? How? I rationalize that I must have been moving around a lot, and my buttons, that I don’t undo because they are tiny and difficult, came undone, while I was asleep. I was probably seven or eight, elementary school. I got dressed and off to school, somehow. There were a lot of mornings that I awoke to find some part of my clothing undone. I told myself it happened through moving around. I shut off the part where I thought It was him, he undid my top. No, stop. I can’t go there. I held onto this idea long into my twenties, as when I moved out, at the age of twenty-four. I’m twenty four, I should be out the door. I remember waking up morning after morning with all the buttons on my night shirt still buttoned! I decided then at twenty-four, that I could stop saying the prayer, asking God to not let my dad come into my room. It took a while longer before I stopped saying that prayer completely, old habits die hard. It was ingrained in my nightly routine.
My efficiency apartment had a lock, and also a chain lock that allowed me to open the door just a bit to see who knocked. I remember sitting on my single, sized bed, it was evening, and I looked out into the kitchen area, where the heavy, wood door, with the double lock stood, painted white, and I thought, ” he can’t come into my room.” He can’t. Even if he had the key, the chain lock would keep him out. I was twenty-four, and to think that I still thought of that horrible man coming into my room at night. Do you see what he did to me? I also realize that I sound a bit delusional.
I became promiscuous. Did I have another choice? After all, that’s what I was shown to do. A boyfriend, that I actually stayed with for five years, once said that he felt that I was searching for someone to love me. He was so right on.
I was twenty-eight when I met my husband. He asked me how many boyfriends I had, had. I was leaving my abused, promiscuous, life behind. When he answered for me, about four or five? I quickly said yes. I was contemplating telling him the horrible truth, if I could bear it, but he gave me a way out. I worried that someday, he might find out the truth about me. I worried that someday, someone would tell my first born son, what kind of a woman I was, before I got help and left. I worried. My husband is a man of many resources. He said that he went to my town, and had asked about what kind of woman I was. I was hoping that he knew the truth and I would never have to say it out loud. Fortunately, or unfortunately for me, he spoke to a dear friend of my family that said I was a good girl. I assumed that David, with all his resources and private investigators, would have found my horrible truth.
He didn’t. Fourteen years later, after two children, David was going off on a girl, that was on a TV show, she said she was raped. He had the opinion that she deserved it. I had been listening to his hatred of whores for sixteen years and I just couldn’t take it any more. I exploded! I told him the truth, that I had been raped, and I had many men in my life. It makes me sick to say it out loud. I don’t believe I wanted to be this girl. This is not the person I wanted to be, but this was the person I became because of the abuse, and being groomed for such a life.
His love for me turned to hate. He said… no, he screamed, to my son, who was eleven and my daughter was three and was within ear shot, ” Your mom is a whore!”, and he continued hour after hour, day after day, to shout these horrible words. It nearly killed me. I would drive to the grocery store with thoughts of driving my car into the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler, or better still, taking a really, hot sports car out for a test drive, and driving it off a cliff. I tried to think of the perfect cliff. I couldn’t do it because I had a young son and even younger daughter.
It’s been seven more years of hell, that we’ve endured. He says he still loves me, but I know better. The way he treats me and the things he says to me are deplorable. I don’t want my daughter to be around this lifestyle, but then again, divorce has it’s fall backs to consider. I personally think that he would be happier without me, but he won’t let himself admit that. Divorce is a failure. Not really. It could be a wonderful new beginning, for all of us. I’m not innocent in the way I speak to David. I try to be thoughtful and positive. I have a very difficult time biting my tongue. I think of Jesus on the cross, with people saying terrible, untrue things about Him. He didn’t yell back. I’m not Jesus and I am working on not yelling back. It does work. How much must we endure?
I never wanted to hurt my husband. I do know how he feels. I put myself in his shoes, really put myself there, and it is not the place I wanted him to be in. He used to be proud of his wife, now he’s ashamed. It gets worse. The tangled webs we weave. It’s a small world and even though I left the area where I grew up, I didn’t go far enough away. With the failing economy, more people from the area I grew up in, came to the new town I ran to. Of course they worked in construction, and of course David asked them if they knew me, not saying that I was his wife, their loose lips sank this ship. Is it worth saving? Should I let this ship sink to the bottom of the ocean? After seven years of hell, I’m not sure our relationship can be saved. I thought God brought me to David, and He probably did, but what does God want for me now? For my kids? I just don’t know what to do. I want both of us to be happier than we are.
David often talks about a girl he has business with. He thinks she’s just perfect, and doesn’t hide the fact that he is smitten with her. I thought about what it would be like if they were sitting at the dinner table together. The conversation would be light, she’s not invested in our children so there would be no arguments there. He would be smiling and so would she, they would laugh and enjoy their conversation. Me, I want to be alone with my kids. I have been having sex and men ogling at me since I was two years old. I’ve had my share of men and I want nothing to do with a relationship. It’s time for me to be me. I’m afraid. Afraid of the unknown. Am I afraid to be happy?
I met my biological dad when I was twenty-eight. David hired a private investigator to find him. I remember sitting in the living room listening to my dad tell me about how he and my mom got together and then later divorced. He said, I loved your mother, but my love turned to hate when he found out the lie that she and her mother, and his mother cooked up, so that he would marry her. My love for your mother turned to hate. The same thing that has happened in my life with my husband.
I hope and pray I find the strength to do the right thing. Whatever that is. Do I stay or do I go, now? That is the question. What is the answer?
This is not the way life was supposed to turn out. It is for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do we part. I don’t want a divorce, but I don’t want to live the way we are living, either. It takes two to make a marriage work and I don’t think my husband’s upbringing was happy. His mom and dad were together, but not happy or in love with each other. Is this why he stays? It is comfortable, his parents lived it, he lived it and his brother lived it. None of us have a good marriage or relationship. We never learned how. Was it a good idea for me to get married and have children, probably not. Did I do any good in raising my children better than I was raised? Did David? Is his brother living a better life? No, none of us have a loving life. My answer is: Unless you have gone through the right kind of therapy to help you with the abusive trauma, you’re not ready to get married let alone raise children. I should not have gotten married. I thought that was what I should do. It would have been better to have gone to college, become a teacher and lived a single life, helping the innocent little dysfunctional children, that I would teach in my classroom. If I could tell young people one thing, it would be: Don’t worry about being single. Be comfortable with yourself. Be a good friend to yourself. Don’t hurry to be married. It is not worth it. It really isn’t. I tell young people, children are great, it’s the marriage that isn’t. Yes, David got me away from my family, yet as the psychologist told me, I jumped from the fire into the frying pan.
Shalom
Tags: abuse, divorce, Hate, love, promiscuous, sexual abuse, Truth
