Wall meet back
Ironically, this particular incident occurred 4 months before I actually left for the first time. We moved in together in March, by May I would be in the hospital with a collapsed lung....that's how quickly things changed. Once again he was out drinking with his friends, or a girlfriend, or by himself I really don't know. When he came home he woke me up by trying to have sex with me and then started taunting me about how many girls, including friends of mine had been hanging all over him and how he might just have to trade up....what's amazing is that he expected me to want to have sex with him at this point. I honestly cannot remember anymore what I said to him, but I can say it was designed to get him to realize I had men hitting on me all the time. In retrospect it wasn't the smartest thing to do, but my mouth took over my brain. He began to punch me and tried to restrain me when I tried to get away.I managed to get out and into the living room, at this point trying to convince him I was just joking but he was having none of it. He picked me up by my throat and slung me across the room into a wall. Two days later I was in the hospital with a collapsed lung and a chest tube, trying to convince the doctors, my family, and friends that it had just happened. He laughed when they inserted the tube because I cried, it was honestly the most painful thing I've ever had happen to me. He did visit for brief periods while I was there, but he didn't see the kids as my family kept them...Thank god. When I got out I was terrified to smoke again. He taunted me and blew smoke in my face and did everything short of hooking me up to a nicotine drip until a week later I finally did smoke a cigarette.
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Ok, I\'ve read them all. Pure evil. Mine was bad, but nothing compared to this monster. I\'m so sorry.
Thanks. The therapist suggested during our first visit that I try to get some of what has happened down in myjournal, so here iI am. The most disturbing thing to me is that, I can\'t honestly understand how in the world this stuff got lost in the first place. While I was writing it it was almost like a dream I had, it was only as I reread it that I started to get upset. Faced with it in black and white, and oh god there is so much more that is comingback all of a sudden, iI can\'t for the life of me figure out how I ever thought I could manage this or that it was ever normal! I\'m feeling pretty low right now and more than a little confused over what happened to my self respect or even self preservation. And I am scared that I might need some serious help to figure out where all these memories went and how the hell they got lost in the first place. Can you have sporadic amnesia!?
How it got lost is called \"survival\". Your brain can and will shut down things it doesn\'t think you can deal with. I think, though, that when you get out and get to a safe place, you are really REALLY going to need those therapy lessons, because it\'s going to come back. And it\'s going to bring with it the pain.
But then, there is the other side. I can look back now at the worst things my ex did to me, and while I feel sad, it\'s almost like I feel it for someone else. That poor woman who endured those things. But she\'s not really me any more.
I honestly don\'t think there\'s anything wrong with you - obviously I\'m not qualified to judge, but I have seen a lot of stories on here. It seems that it\'s just your psyche\'s coping mechanism. You weren\'t ready to face the reality of just how abusive and dysfunctional he was, and your brain couldn\'t connect \"husband\" with all those things he did to you. I had a few similar things - stuff that I can\'t believe I forgot, not necessarily as traumatic, but still odd. A week before my wedding, we had a fight which (as always) resulted in him walking out and turning off his phone. So I sent him an email where I asked him to please name just one thing he liked about me. He couldn\'t come up with a single one, and I married him anyway. And promptly completely forgot about that whole thing, until a couple of years after we divorced, I found the emails.
Thanks for your response. I just posted in the forum pretty much this same question. I have so much more that is coming from somewhere in my mind after starting this exercise, almost like a rock that starts an avalanche that is out of control. I just needed a short break from writing and reliving it. I actually feel sick right now....of course maybe it\'s just the flu :-)