The only thing that keeps me going is knowing that I can't let him win any longer. The continued support I get from my readers reinforces the little strength I have to keep my voice loud and clear. I am not going to lie, the fourth day into this journey, I was already starting to lose it. Taken from my journal on 4/4/14:
"I can feel myself start to unravel. This courage I have bestowed upon myself is being washed away by vivid replays that make my heart race, palms sweat, chest tighten, and throat close up. It's as if he is still shaming me into silence, controlling me. "Don't make a scene" he whispers as he tightly grabs my thigh...Oblivious to any consequences he shoves his hand between my legs, slips his fingers underneath my waistband and into my vagina. I kept quiet, like the good little girl that I was. The good little girl he demanded me to be."Once again, as mentioned in yesterday's post, one can see how certain images can be constantly replayed in a victim's mind. It is no wonder I felt the need to drink every night. I wanted to mute those thoughts, to avoid another bout of nightmares accompanied with panic attacks.
I have had a nightmare every single night for the past four months. I have woken up sweating and saying incoherent things due to their vividness. There was a week in February where each time I slept, the nightmares got progressively worse. The most horrifying part of it was that the next day, I recalled every detail. I journaled about them because frankly, I knew eventually they would come of use. Taken from my journal on 2/10/14. FYI: these are lengthy and violent entries (some stuff has been substituted or left blank to protect identity):
"The next night in my dream, I was to meet Greg for a romantic dinner at a favorite restaurant, although in the dream it hardly seemed familiar. When I stepped out of my car and walked towards the door, HE appeared from behind me and twisted my arm around my back. He told me that I had to pay for turning _____ against him. He brought me into the restaurant, which was empty except for the mutilated corpse of my husband on the floor. He said, "You have always been and always will be mine." He proceeded to beat me and force himself inside me before slicing my throat. At this point in the dream, I had become a ghost and was watching sadly with my husband's ghost as this tyrant continued to defame me after I was long gone. When I woke up from this dream I had to run upstairs and pull out an ice cube from the freezer while sitting with my back to the fridge and my feet on the ground. I kept saying, "He's not here. He's far away. He can't hurt me."As if that nightmare wasn't warped enough:
"Last night, the worst nightmare occurred. I had somehow ended up in a dungeon with a 10-story tower. At the top of the tower was a torture chamber with HIM in it wearing nothing but a loincloth waiting to humiliate his next victim. There were other girls with me, none of them recognizable in real life. Leading up the tower was a system of pulleys that heaved a cage up the 10 stories by chain. There was a guard down below that threw two girls in at once into the cage. In order to suppress our desires to rock the cage and fight, a heavy waterfall would tumble down every half a minute water-logging the victims to the point of frailty. When it was my turn, along with another short brunette's, she told me between gasps for air, "Whatever you do, don't let him get to you. He is going to kill you, but it won't be quick. So if you don't want to suffer, just jump." She was right. The only way I was going to get out of this was dead so why be tortured in the process. When the cage opened at the top, I jumped as HE snatched the other girl. Half way down I heard her screams, then the force of water came crashing down on me and I saw darkness. At this point, I woke up sweating."Because these dreams were incredibly terrifying and persistent, I had given up that week. After writing that last description in my journal, I also wrote, "Why even bother fighting him anymore?"
When reading these entries back, I am reminded of how quickly I let him taint my will to survive. Every time I dared to let myself heal, to cry about it, I drank till I fell asleep or even worse, cut myself to forget. I was self-blaming for his abuse because at one point, I did try and fight back in a sense, and it failed miserably. The night that happened, I gave up. I told him "I don't care. Just do whatever you want."
I now know that by resorting to my unhealthy habits to cope, I am letting him win back his control over me. By writing about it each day this month, I am loosening the noose he has around my neck by a small fraction more.
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