Better

 

There is a song for everything. 

My kids hear me say this often.  Sometimes one of them will say something and it'll trigger a song in my head and I'll sing their phrase back to them.  It's a kind of game, I suppose.

On my device I have many, many songs.  Music thrums at the core of my psyche.  I have a few different playlists for different moods.  One of them is titled "People", and on it are songs that remind me of folks I know.  When one of these songs plays, I say hello to the person.  They're not all among the living, but the music doesn't care.

Some songs are less about people than about moments, or choices, or life in general.  Or all of those.

I was in an abusive relationship.  It didn't start out that way.  It started hopeful, and giddy, and powerful.  It started with sweet words and compliments.  It was the very definition of love bombing, something I had no notion of at the time.  Love bombing is something best know to those who study or experience narcissisms/narcissistic relationships.  He was, still is, a narcissist, textbook.  He may or may not read this blog, and he probably won't like this entry, but it has been building up inside my head for a few week and it wants OUT!  So, out it comes.

The abuse began before he ever came here to Casa de Crazy.  It began when we talked on the phone, when his anger and frustration at his own life echoed in his words to me.  At the time, I knew he had...anger issues...and tried to help him get a grip on it, to have hope.  After all, we had plans, happy ones (I thought).  It seemed effective, to talk through what was upsetting him.

One incident sticks out - he wanted to go camping.  The campground he had in mind was in use by a Boy Scout event, and he was turned away.  He called me, agitated.  Angry.  I can't help it, I am a helper.  I want to help people.  While on the phone with him, from four states away, I found a campground near him and sent him directions.  He had his camping weekend.  That was the first of many times he would call me, even after he moved here, to find him and get him directions to where he wanted to be.  More often than not, he was still driving and I had to search on the fly, and he would yell at me, denigrate me, for not being fast enough, good enough, for not being more remarkable than I already was.  How many people can ask where you are, and while you're still driving, find you, find where you want to be, and get you there with clear direction, even sending you information via text and also through a mapping app?  But it wasn't good enough.

It wasn't good enough.

I wasn't good enough.

Never good enough.

And when I was better at something than him, he would rage.  He raged for days because we'd laughed at a bit of whimsy and both wanted to share it on our blogs.  We each raced to snag the link and post it.  I got there first.  No big deal, I thought.  I was wrong.  That night, I contemplated suicide for the first but not the only time in our relationship.  I was so awful, I thought.  How could I dare?  And he refused to share the video on his blog because I posted it first and...I was a terrible person for mocking him with my success like that.

It was the first time I saw his anger, but not the last.  

He swore he loved me even as he swore at me.

I got so that I didn't want to write, or sing, or take photographs, or cook, or do anything better than he did.  I failed on purpose, did poorly on purpose, so he would get angry.  Or, if I couldn't fail, I wouldn't let him see I'd done well.

We were supposed to be polyamorous.  Heck, he met his first "other" girlfriend through me!  He was poly, but I couldn't be.  I couldn't feel happy or good about myself if another man so much as complimented me - I couldn't so much as hug a friend I'd known for twenty years or more - or he'd accuse me of lying, cheating, scheming to get rid of him.  He cheated on me, lied about it, stole from me and the kids, lied to us, broke his word over and again, and I was steadfast...but he accused me nonetheless.  

I held on.  I struggled, strove to keep together.  I just knew that we could make it work if we did the work.  Through his addiction, anger, alcoholism, abuse, and narcissism, I kept on.  I made excuses for his words and behavior.  I was quiet, and hard, and loud, and soft, and yielding and unyielding, and consistent, and eventually I was done.

That kind of anger, that rage, that spite, that hatefulness, that blame, all of it was toxic.  My children cowered in their rooms, fled from him.  Time after time I put myself between them and him, put myself between him and the world, inviting his wrath to target me.  He knew how to hurt with words, but so did I.  I finally stopped trying to be nice and spit my own venom at him.  Time after time, I used my voice, my experience, my knowledge of him and the human psyche, and I lashed out.  I didn't like who I was becoming.

I had to end it.  For the sake of my children, for the sake of myself, I had to cut the final strand that tied us together.  So.  I did.

During that time of ending, the song above came into my life.  Dear Goddess, it was a blow.  At first I wondered how I could have been better, what I did wrong, why I wasn't good enough.  Then I wondered why I blamed myself.

I wasn't, I'm not, perfect.  Mistakes?  Oh, yeah, you betcha.

But.  I gave it my poor best, held on long after every other person in my life who loved me begged me to let it go, gave and gave and gave while he took and took and took until I was empty and then I dug deeper and found more.  I borrowed against my future self, took years from tomorrow and shoved them into the cracks, trying to keep the whole thing from falling apart, until nothing was enough and it crumbled.

I look back and think of the pain and sorrow that I carried with me as if I deserved them, and I I wonder what could have happened if we had been better.  And then I think...how could I have been better?  How could I have been more?  Again, I'm so, so far from perfect I can't even see it from here...but...I was always striving to be my better self.

If you were a better man...if he were a better man...

But he didn't want to be.  He wanted the world, wanted me, to bend to him, to bend to his unforgiving, unreasonable will.  Still does, although he says he trying to be better.  I hope he figures it out before he destroys someone else.  Before he destroys himself.  

As it turns out, I cannot, will not, bend that far; I will not break for anybody else.  I'm the only one who breaks me.  I the best there is at it.  

I wake up lonely at night.  I walk through my days lonely, wondering if that loneliness will haunt me until the end of my time.  I feel the immense burden of being a single mother and of the many ways I fail my kids on a daily basis.  I hear echoes of his terrible, horrible, awful, ugly words.  I know I had to do it.  Should have done it sooner, but I'm stubborn and don't easily give up, give in.

I had to be better than that.

I had to be better than both of us. 

I have to be better.

I will be better.