“Not Allowed”
How many things was I '“not allowed” to do?
For starters, visit my mother, work outside of the house, go back to school, lose myself in my art, travel, talk on the phone with friends, have friends to the house, wear bright colors, say hello to friends and neighbors when I passed them by on the street. (Some of these things I could do to an extent).
Of course he never said “you can’t” do these things. For a boyfriend or husband to say this to a grown woman would be absurd, nuts. Obviously abusive.
Instead he made it so difficult to do these things that I would curtail them on my own, self-policing to keep the peace which made no sense because there never was any peace — for me, anyhow—no matter what I did or didn’t do.
The list of things I couldn’t do kept getting longer.
One more thing I yearned to do, back-shelved or given up on; one more thing I wanted to say stifled in my throat; one more thing I wanted to wear, nope. Me and my world getting smaller and smaller.
That is what is meant to become a shell of yourself.
For instance, my calligraphy. He didn’t say I couldn’t do it. But when I was nearly at the end of a painstaking piece, my nib with gold ink gliding carefully on the page, he would come up from behind me and massage my shoulders, nudging my arm so I messed up the piece. To express my annoyance at this would lead to a huge fight, and to express that he did this on purpose would lead to me being called crazy (which I now know as gaslighting.) And of course, always on alert for him doing that again, I could never concentrate or blissfully get in the zone with my calligraphy again.
Alexandra just got her smile restored by the Finding Our Smiles program of Finding Our Voices which is gold standard, dignified pro bono dental procedures for Maine survivors.
Her teeth were rotten because her ex “didn’t let” her brush her teeth. He never said “You can’t brush your teeth.” Oh no it is more insidious, and sadistic, than that.
Every time she started to brush her teeth he would taunt, “Oh, so you are making yourself look good for your boyfriend.” And then it would escalate, no matter what she did or didn’t say. In the end, it was easier and safer to not brush them.
At the Freeport Library on May 10, nine Finding Our Voices survivors led a community conversation about domestic abuse. We shared how a daughter killed herself, a son is mired in drugs and alcohol, two adult children have estranged themselves and the grandchildren from the loving and protective parent. And all due to trauma in the ho all around us that Dr. Judith Herman in her just-reissued book Trauma and Recovery calls “hidden concentration camps created by tyrants.”.
The discussion at the Freeport Library brightened at the end when I asked my sister survivors “What can you do now that you were not allowed to do in the relationship”?
“Go to Italy,” said Mary Lou. Nicole said, “Hang pictures on the wall.” Others chimed in with, “Go back to school.” “Paint my toenails blue.” “Go out with friends.”
“Breathe.”