I was talking to a friend tonight who is involved with an abuser, physically, mentally, emotionally and who she is trying to endure. Right now he is turning up the heat by alienating her 18 year old daughter from her or providing her with stuff (alcohol) that my friend does not agree with. This same friend has tried suicide and is not considered an alcoholic when in fact she may be and she may not be - perhaps the two decades of abuse have turned her into someone who self medicates. I have told her about this site and asked her to start talking about her story because the talking heals. But at the same time after 18 months of separation from an abuser myself, I have learnt that if I do not take responsibility for ALLOWING myself to be abused, for staying, for allowing his treatment of me, I remain a victim and stand the risk of always being one, always being identified as Pendra who got damaged by Simon, with my life not healing and little chance of finding a relationship that is loving and healing and warm and compassionate and stable and NORMAL When I first joined this site I recall posting so many posts on what he was doing to me and how he was damaging me and getting responses from others as to what horrendous men (in my case) these were. 18 months later I am taking my own inventory and looking at why I stayed and why I put up with it for 13 years and how on earth I had so little self esteem that I put up with it. Now I think this is essential, owning my own part and taking responsibility for allowing this all, letting him do it to me, the affairs, the lies, the physical and verbal abuse, the kicking me out the day I got clearance on my cancer when I had no where to go and no family, how he took my dogs away, dogs I officially own. I think healing is not just time, its ownership of our own part in the story and how we allowed it to go on. Only then are we not the victim and only then can we empower ourselves to either leave, accept being left or dismissed or discarded or start to understand abuse is not love or any resemblance of it, or that we do deserve and can have a healthier, more stable, loving, compassionate, empathetic relationship with a normal man in the future. I think asking oneself why one was drawn to this kind of sociopathic or narcissistic man in the first place is equally important, what aspect of ones past or family of origin led us to be able to tolerate this kind of person in the first place. The very first time a woman with good self esteem got beaten she would leave, its those of us who have past pathologies that stay and for years and years of our lives, even expose our children to these dysfunctional relationships, lose our self worth, and break down, are self sabotaging and allow self defeating behavior to be the order of the day. I stayed after being beaten up black and blue in the first three months. Why? I will never be able to answer that question, and then stayed and stayed and stayed. I stayed long after I had any safety net to draw on, after my entire family died so I could not move in with them during a transition stage from that toxic relationship into a healthier lifestyle. Eventually there was nothing left of me. Some say my cancer was a result of the damaging and toxic environment I endured for 13 years, who knows. What I do know now is that I am OUT, and out not because I left, because HE LEFT, and it was devastating, dismissive, discarding, but a gift because if he had not left me I might still be there allowing the last later years of my life to be broken down more and more. It took me forever to get over it, forever, but now I have found some detachment and thank god I have, never again could I imagine enduring such a horrific environment and the pain that came with it, the drinking I did to self medicate, the many masks he wore, from charm, to humour, to horror, out of the blue. I am intensely lonely now, intensely - because I am a woman who is better in relationship than out of it and I am now single for the first time in 27 years, and the fear of that, the challenge of that, the loneliness attached to it, is just horrible. But even if I sit alone night after night at least I am not being broken down by some fucked up sociopathic narcissist who has no empathy and who damaged my life, as much as YES YES YES I take responsibility for staying and allowing it to happen. What I do know for sure is I refuse, absolutely refuse to be defined as the woman Simon fucked up for the rest of my life, or the survivor of abuse for the rest of my life. Instead I am going to let time heal me and find my way foward and learn there can be a different kind of companionship or love, no matter how long I take to meet it in my future, or if I even do. All I can do is let go and let god.