Tales from the Shark Tank

My girlfriend just called me. She came back to Indiana because she needed the support system she has here. She got a restraining order, and at least superficially her husband has been abiding by it. Life’s been mostly quiet for her since he got served. And now she’s started questioning if it was really that bad, if she was really in fear of her life, or if, as her husband kept telling her before the judge put a stop to it, she’s just been crazy and hysterical and blowing it all out of proportion. This, after she’s told me she turned off the landline so that the jerk couldn’t leave vicious, threatening messages on the answering machine where the kids would hear them and be terrified again. This after she hid for 24 hours while he prowled the area trying to find her.

So I told her what she’d told me. I reminded her that she’d been crying and shaking, that she’d been scared by a 2 hour delay to be able to drop the dog off for boarding. I reminded her about the times she called me after he’d shoved her around, using accusations he’d cooked up in his own warped mind to justify it. I reminded her that he’d kept calling all night long while she hid. Essentially I told her that yes, it had been that bad, and pointed out that now if she backed down she’d not only be dealing with his irrational suspicions, but his rage at being “messed with”, escorted out of the house by the local gendarmes. In less than ten minutes she was crying again, but she was agreeing that indeed, she’d been minimizing how scared she and her kids had really been.

I knew this would come, and that I’d have to remind her why she was doing what she’s doing. I know there will come times in the future when it gets rough and she needs to be assured that she is strong enough to see it though. I know she’ll need to be told that what her husband is saying about her isn’t true – that he’s lying to her and to himself about her. She’ll need reassurance that she deserves better than his violence.

We’ll give it. When a person has been told they’re worthless often enough, they usually need an external spine. So as my husband put it, the evening after the sheriff finally got the jackass served, we’ll be her exoskeletons.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 26th, 2010 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Life as I know it. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.