That I blog. Today I learned that no matter how long its been since a person's been subjected to trauma, those scars can innocently get bumped, and re-open at the random-est of moments. 10 years ago this March 31st, 2012, which happened to fall on an Easter Sunday, my then husband, Yancey of 18 years ended his life by putting a bullet in his brain.
The coroner called it 'self-murder' because when she got him, she repeatedly referred to how violent he was and she never knew him. She called me that first week, almost every day checking in on me and our children, imploring me not to accept the shame or guilt for this. When I finally viewed my husband's body, specifically his face, I could see right away the disgust within plastered in death on his face, so when she got him, I know she saw the violence there. I just could not understand until I pieced phone calls together why she called it self murder and why she kept calling me. Coroner's are busy people and they don't often call a widower repeatedly to offer solace. She did.
It took me years, until two years ago, to discover I suffered from what the doctors call "delayed onset PTSD" and once this was mapped out and explained to me, I understood my triggers and how to navigate them.
You see, Yancey didn't just kill himself, he terrorized us and held us hostage in our own home for at least an hour, then proceeded to attack and beat up his then 16 year old daughter, while my son played innocently outside at a neighbor's and my middle daughter lay in terror in her room wondering why Daddy was going off the deep end.
I've learned the hard way, abuse never, ever ought to be a considered a "private" family matter. And the anger I have towards a neighbor that day who if he had done what I asked, my husband might have still be alive.
Allowing oneself to stay with someone who is abusive, verbal or physical, is the wrong path to stay on. But stayed I did. I stayed because of the church I was in, and what people would 'think' if I left the marriage. I stayed because every time I tried to leave, he would turn on the charm full force but no one back then told me about the cycle of abuse.
The only counselors worth their salt for me were the ones who labeled it for what it was. I had to switch counselors because he kept on taking me to ones whose sole purpose was to treat me in how to stay in an abusive relationship. I could not breathe. I could not live. I was not free.
God, how he had everyone but me convinced he was Mr. Innocent. He wormed and bull shitted and charmed his way into the outside's public view. He lied, he cheated, he did whatever HE wanted to do, but was the task master at home. If I went grocery shopping, I always bought too much and the wrong items. If I knew the kids needed clothing, he wanted to go through every piece of clothing and try it on the kids before admitting they had grown out. If I wanted a piece of furniture a certain way he would battle for control over its final resting place.
It has taken me years to heal and process this violence. The sadness was overwhelming and I learned that grief is so physical at times it takes your breath away. I think the first year I cried every day for the entire year.
I found hidden emails and letters referencing a very inappropriate relationship with his mother, and even had a nurse who used to live across from us in our early years take me aside and ask me why I wasn't seeing how sick it was the way his mother was looking at him, not like she loved her son, but as if she were IN love with her son. I didn't get it back then. I do today. I do now. I was told by a friend of mine, a PhD, that whatever she did to her son, damaged him so badly that he could not live with himself and viewed himself as a 'monster' so of course he eventually killed himself. His mother? Told everyone in her town her son died of heart attack. That speaks volumes.
During all this in the early years, I acted out and fell off the planet, okay not literally but abandoned many friends who cared because I was running from the pain of it all. I was trying to fill the void left on the heel of the devil's wing when he left this world..but then the metaphysical and God intervened.
I have to go back in time, to the beginning to give you the idea of how abuse takes shape and form, and what I dealt with up to the day of carnage, we like to call it.
Its important because you see, how abuse grows and snowballs and hurts others when you enable it. Or when his JOB enables it, more on that later. I was expecting a stand off with the police but in the end that did not occur and myself and the children were safe.
As soon as his sick mother found out about it, the first thing she said to me?
"Soo....if you had not called the police my SON would stilllll be alive...."
Yeah. right. Okay then, moving on you sick twisted..... No wonder why he was a mess. Apparently killing me and his three children were preferable to me calling the police for protection on this rampage to death.
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