By Deborah H. Anderson
Warning: sensitive material, descriptions of violent abuse and suicide.
The first year of our marriage he strangled me. His hands around my neck, his face filled with rage, I steeled myself against his attack and declared, “Take your hands off me, and if you ever touch me again (in a violent way) I will leave you.”
He dropped his hands, and for the next 18 years mastered the art of manipulative abuse and exploitation that doesn’t leave marks.
That question, “Why don’t women just leave?” I had little sense of agency and less voice. I have no idea how I came to speak that declaration to him, except to say it was the place I grew into over time.
And how can there be abuse that doesn’t leave marks? I’ll give you this example. Every single time we got in the car, he would ask me, “How do you think we should go?” I would share my idea, and every single time he would say “Nah, I think we should go (thus and so) way.”
My consciousness and sense of self was very low. In my childhood, I had been taught that evil was good and if I thought any other thing, I was crazy.
But the day came when a professional certification process required I have a complete psychological workup that included taking the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. In the trade, the psych world, it is known as an infallible instrument. That means you can’t fake it. If you have issues, that test will find them.
My results came back, and incredulously I heard the psychiatrist say, “This is one of the most balanced results I have ever seen. Do you know you have the ability to be high functioning in complete chaos?”
The mirror into which I stared in my mind’s eye every day, my understanding and vision of myself shattered into a million pieces. “If I’m not crazy (as I had been told by my husband, my mother, my brothers), then who is? Because I am in the middle of a whole lot of crazy; that I know for sure!”
When I walked in the front door that night, I found that same voice I had the first year when he strangled me and announced, “It isn’t me!”
That was the day our marriage ended, at least as far as he was concerned.
Eighteen months later, I found myself plunked on Vashon. His solution was to find another woman, another family east of the mountains. Two years later, when I found out about his double life, I began divorce proceedings.
Let’s skip to the happy ending, 30 years in the making. I was completely vindicated and restored professionally. I have steady housing and a book published. That voice once singularly strong during moments of insight, is now a constant, and I regularly get to share how I healed.
As for Vashon? I enjoyed a couple of decades getting to support and love on families with special needs or circumstances.
How? First of all, my years of living with disabilities acquainted me with the process and possibility of healing. I believe it can happen.
Second, I admitted I didn’t know what the heck was going on or what had happened. I came to love the word “Why,” and read and watched everything I could on trauma and heartbreak and loss.
Third, I kept doing what good I could. Did being demonized wear me down? Absolutely. I had that moment for about five seconds when I considered suicide. Then I found that voice again and said, “I will not let this Island kill me.”
I learned to ask for help and to receive it. I tried to keep my children free from the constraints of poverty as best I could. I also came to understand the worst in people. I refused to argue with evil. I also came to understand the breadth and depth of addiction and childhood trauma on a community.
Lastly, I asked myself the question I asked classes I had taught on healing: “Who would you be if you hadn’t been abused? Be that person.”
Healing is complicated and hard work. Three years ago, when my ex unexpectedly died after a first round of chemo, I was instantly free. These last years, I have completed the healing process and am now enjoying the fruits of all the labor, all the introspection, all the changes required to be strong in who I am and what I can do.
Yes, you can heal. You can. You can. You can.
