Appointment this morning

Why am I so nervous about this appointment? This is crazy, I've been here before, I know the drill, but I find my stomach in knots waiting to go. Part of me hope she has all the answers I need, and part of me wonders if I'm going to want to hear them if she does! Life is so much more bearable when I am able to bury my head in the sand and pretend that this is normal.
This time, though, I can no longer ignore the effect this life is having on my children. The kids are better able to verbalize what they are experiencing and seeing and how they feel, so to ignore it now would be akin to telling them they really don't matter. That so isn't true, but I honestly think they would believe that if I didn't make some serious changes now.
This situation has had me in a fog. When I am honest with myself I can see where he began to wrap me up--from day one. He was a nice guy, worked for my son's grandparents--so I had known him for years, not too personally, but enough (I thought). He was helping me out with my car when we started "dating", but in reality dating was not what we were doing. He was parading me around in clubs (where we would soon get kicked out of due to his fighting), and pretty much making it known to everyone that I was "his property". At this point, he was still living with his daughter and her mother--I didn't even know this. I never believed that, in a place as small as our county, a person could be so blatant about cheating and not get caught. Now I wonder if she was in the same boat I have been, and unable to fight him on it.
Then, I had to stop going places. It became not worth him showing up and embarrassing me by making a scene. He never told me I couldn't go out, it just became too uncomfortable and I stopped. I stopped seeing my friends because they didn't like him and he couldn't stand them. He continuously told me about how they were talking about me behind my back, how they were trying to drag me down, etc. I stopped talking to my friends because that became too uncomfortable. He never told me I couldn't talk to them, it just became easier not to. Then, I quit my job--which I loved--because I worked too late and he refused to get a house with me until I had a "real" job. So I took a daytime job making half what I had made waiting tables, had to pay for daycare now (which he refused to help with because they were my responsibility--even though two of them were his). I also stopped talking to my son's family because he told me all the horrible things they had been saying about me (had they?), so I felt uncomfortable around these people who were like my own family.
Then we moved in together. Now I couldn't see my own family because they were trash and users and they were dragging me down. I tried to fight him on this, but the constant fighting wasn't worth it, so I stopped seeing my family--who I was very close to--very often. I would see them in secret and then be trembling when I got home, afraid he would find out. I couldn't share with my family the violence and the ugliness that was going on because I was so in shock and ashamed.
Slowly, he destroyed my finances and my credit. He had me convinced that it was my irresponsibility with money, after all look at my family, that had done this. I believed him--for awhile. He took my cars because they were dangerous p.o.s and replaced them with vehicles he bought (with my money) that he now considered his so I could only take them to go to work, the grocery store, and the laundromat. My time limit became ridiculous, so I was always rushing through everything to avoid a fight.
Slowly, he has broken down every one of my natural reactions to this crap, and turned me into his puppet. Sometimes this gets so painful that the "old me" tries to come back out in a major way. That person quickly learns that it isn't safe to have her own opinions or ideas any longer, and she curls back up inside.
He likes to switch tactics in midstream often. Is this because he is imbalanced, or because he is just that good at what he does? It works. The raging and irrational yelling I can defend against, maybe not on the outside, but on the inside I am just in disbelief that he actually thinks I am buying any of this. It is when he starts acting rational that I start to question my own perceptions and sanity even. I feel like I am living with two personalities of my own. The scared, meek person I have become and the strong, intelligent, fierce person I once was--who tries to escape from time to time.
My kids don't know the real me, they have only ever seen this shell of a person I am here. When my sister told my son some stories about me standing up to people three times my size for picking on my brother, or something else about his mom, he reacted with shock and disbelief. He doesn't believe that his mother could actually be a strong person. My youngest walks all over me and bullies her siblings, which "he" claims is my fault because I haven't been a strong enough disciplinarian, I look at her and think "oh my god, she has learned by watching the best." Can I fix this now, when she is almost 13? Or is it too late to rectify the mistakes and deprogram her? Of course, when I try to point out (in a moment of obvious insanity) to him that she is learning how to treat me by watching him, I am crazy and I read too much bullshit. I can't blame him for my lack of parenting skills, obviously I learned how to discipline from my mother who sucked at it too, according to him.
Abusive relationships are so insidious. You wake up one day completely stuck and trying to figure out how the hell it happened. Who is this person you see in the mirror, because you certainly don't recognize that broken individual. The fear, guilt, shame, and horror are so wrapped around you--like chains that can't be broken--and you can't see any way out of this hell. So, in self preservation, you begin to minimize. It is easier to ignore what you see with your own eyes than to admit that you are accepting this treatment. It is so much easier to pretend I am being a prima donna or something than to admit that I have messed up so badly. And it is so much easier to pretend that my kids don't "get it", they aren't being affected because he doesn't hit them or yell at them--much--than to really think about how these little people you had sworn to defend with your life are being destroyed from the inside out--and you are allowing it to happen. Kids have no control over their circumstances, where they live or what they live like. They are defenseless. Adults are not.