and the victory of concealment.
There was no need to keep throwing the dice with a memory of another injury, long healed. This time it was innocent, an accident. The medicine cabinet fell. No one was to blame. He did not hit me this time. He was gone.
I cried loud and strong, the tears dropping fast and full on the floor, my voice making a sound of anguish so powerfully hoarse and deep it didn’t feel as if it came from me. I thought that after he left our home and our daily lives, I would never be forced to walk through the checklist again, grabbing for ice, wondering who would see and whether they would know. I hadn’t planned to ever feel this hurt again.
I sat on my bed, the same bed we bought together, but now in a new house and covered in all white: a new white duvet cover, all-white pillows, even a white canopy. I was claiming purity for myself, though I could no longer claim innocence.
So the boys wouldn’t hear or be afraid, I closed my door and I kept crying. I cried for all the nights when I came into a room singing, only to leave hours later performing a triage dance of camouflage, spreading leaves and branches over a dark hole so no one would know it was there. I cried for all the women I met at the battered women’s shelter, Sarah’s Inn, where in our weekly group sessions, we shared the stories of men who seemed to be the same person. I cried that I had needed to take my children to a sanctuary for battered women, for help, for relief, to understand, to heal. I cried for the women on this Saturday night rushing for ice, hurrying themselves through their own checklists.
I was one of them, they were part of me: a sorority of good, kind, smart, trusting women who loved men whobused them. I cried that I knew a quick way to hide a black eye and that I had once thought love meant forgiveness was mandatory and unconditional, as it is with children.
My shoulders pulsed up and down as my insides released a howling, jailed horror. And then I knew that this hurt I was feeling would always be there, making itself known in the cabinets that fall innocently or the balls and toys the children throw that land here and there and hurt nonetheless.
I realized I was still wounded, like a soldier, and that loud noises or the sudden bruises recalled the gunshots and the grenades. They unleashed the wild dogs inside me who guarded my long-strangled secret. When I could breathe smooth and slow again and my chest didn’t feel as if it would collapse from the weight of my memories, my tears stopped. I could be calm.
The honest answer to his plea for forgiveness, right now at least, must be no. But one day I may look inside and find the anger has burned away to ashes. I will live better, love honestly, learn well from the madness.
“I’m sorry, you know,” he said brusquely once as he dropped off Brendan after an afternoon visitation. He had been gone from the house a few months. He was ordered by the court to stay outside; he came in the house anyway.
I was not able to acquiesce on demand. “It’s not okay. It’s not enough. Are you sorry for hitting me? Are you sorry for ruining our lives? Exactly which part are you sorry for?” My hands were shaking.
“I’m sorry for it all,” he said smugly, as if all he had done was spill a cup of coffee on a white carpet or track mud on the kitchen floor. He was smiling.
I didn’t buy it then; I had grown immune to his apologies because they were followed, always, by new aggression, in whatever form it took. He would retreat in his attacks for weeks, sometimes months, then reappear, unprovoked, with new hostility, another fight, another battle, another twist of truth.
I may eventually forgive him. I am not there yet.
But I do forgive myself.
Forgiving myself for staying with a man who abused me has not been an easy act, an automatic assumption. It has taken every moment of the years since July 7, 1995, when the man I married left our home for the last time under an emergency order of protection. I have had to work hard to convince myself it was all right to stay as long as I did, that I did what I needed to do at the time. I had tried to make it better.
I was vulnerable, naive, blinded. I believed in a man I loved, and I did not believe he would keep hurting me. I stayed with him, and I chose not to see the man I married, the father of my three children, as a batterer who would always be a batterer. I saw each instance as an isolated nightmare, all explained away, all forgiven. I didn’t connect them to see the pattern.
I excused his rage because I could not bear seeing him as he really was. That meant I would see myself as I was, and I refused to be a battered wife. But it was not until I could make that admission that the abuse could possibly end. It was not until I could say out loud what he had done that the carousel of pain would stop, and I could get off the painted horse and walk away.
Now I forgive myself for staying. I try to forgive myself for choosing for my sons a father who battered their mother, though that has been the most difficult. I forgive myself for trying so hard, for believing in something impossible, for having hope. I forgive myself for pretending to be happily married and pretending that a man who abused me just didn’t know how to handle the demons inside him. I forgive myself all the excuses.
I can forgive myself because the game is over and he is gone. I saved myself, and I saved my sons. With only his occasional appearance, we are happy and whole, a family. I forgive myself because I can now fill my children’s lives with new memories and laughter that I pray sustains them. These new memories include ones of a mother who is strong, a mother who loves them beyond measure, a mother who taught them that forgiveness is earned. I taught them, by what I have done, that sometimes you have to leave.
I taught them that it is never all right to hurt anyone; it is wrong to impose your strength on anyone else. I taught them and myself that it is foolish to think you can change another person’s behavior, no matter how hard you try. I taught them to love with kindness, not control.
Forgiveness is a choice, always a choice. It is not a forced requirement.
Yes, I forgive myself, and writing this book has initiated the process. In speaking the unspeakable, in writing and witnessing the truth, the power of the secret is diminshed. I no longer carry the ghosts of domestic violence with me in every conversation, every act, every movement. I don’t feel that I wear a scarlet letter V for violence.
I can be someone more than a once-battered wife. I have exorcised the terror of spousal abuse by writing it down. Jarring memories reclaim me at times of their own volition, and I know they are there. I respect them and the lessons they have taught me. I acknowledge their power. I am thankful sometimes for those memories because they keep me humble and remind me to be sensitive. On paper now, it seems so clear. It never did when I was living it. My eyes are open. I will not close them again, look away, or deny what is right in front of me. I am conscious. I will not distill the truth and spin it so it no longer shames me. No longer crippled by my wish for a happily ever after or deluded by my self-deceit, I see what is there.
I have won because I have won myself back.
I claim me.
Acknowledgments
I could not write this book or even breathe freely without the help of my family and my good friends. My mother, who passed away in 2002, helped me in every way imaginable, as a guide, a safety net, a source of inspiration. My sisters, Mary Pat, Maureen, and Madeleine, are consistently centers for hope and laughter, as well as concrete help. They have done everything for me whenever I have needed it— physically, financially, emotionally, spiritually.
My
