Please Don’t Use That Word

Abuse.

To be absolutely honest with you, I have been staring at that word for a couple of days.

I guess we should go backwards.

There are, in my anecdotal experience, two definitions of abuse. The first is very simple, but frankly alarming in its depth, breadth, and all encompassing nature. If it is not nurturing, it is abusive. Under that umbrella, we have all been abused, and all been abusers.

I can already hear you go “wait, no, that’s not…” and I’m not going to defend it. I will let ages of peer reviewed literature, trauma researchers, spiritual leaders, and survivors do that. If you want, I’ll point you in the right directions, but I’m tired and I’m not going to engage in the standard “victim has to justify their victimization” nonsense.

I hate that word, too. Victim.

But the other, and more accepted, definition is the kind of abuse that’s entered the collective consciousness. It’s drunk men beating their wives, it’s mothers prostituting their daughters, it’s the kind of thing where the police have to get involved. Please don’t hear me diminishing these abuses, because they are real and they are heinous, and fortunately something I’ve never experienced. Any bruises I’ve gotten from loved ones have been wholly accidental but also consensual (self defense classes, before your mind runs away with you — there’s something kinda great about grappling a 6'3", 250lb man to the ground, but it’s gonna leave a mark).

So Monday night, when I mentioned to someone I was leery of getting too involved in a new hobby because my abusive ex has apparently picked it up, too, I was using the word in the first sense, and I was suddenly surrounded by people who interpreted it in the second sense, and I had to defend my abuser because he never laid a hand on me. No, he wasn’t violent, no, to have him in a public space isn’t unsafe, no, I do not need protection, no, you don’t need to slash his tires, no, there’s no legal ramifications that need to be rained down on this guy’s head. No, he wasn’t that bad.

No, he was just only attracted to me when I was sick — and made sure I knew it. No, he was just mercurial and his moods were somehow always my fault, especially when I happy and he wasn’t. No, he was just vain and shallow and I was never as beautiful or sexy or feminine as someone else. No, he just kept me a secret from everyone in his life like he was embarrassed of me, and so he could do as he pleased with me and to me with no outside observers who could hear my version of events. No, he’d just hold my health and the care he gave me over my head like I owed him something. No, he just wouldn’t touch me when I wanted to be touched, or speak to me when I wanted to be spoken to, or loved when I wanted to be loved. No, he just never treated me like a priority, but was happy to use my body like a plaything, an object to be used and discarded. No, he wasn’t that bad.

No, he was awful.

And I went home and shotgunned a beer because I had to defend my abuser because he wasn’t that bad.

I wanted to run back and explain the dents and the damage to these strangers, wanted to show them the receipts for thousands and thousands of dollars of therapy and antidepressants and show them the size jeans I used to wear and explain how my doctors figured out real quick that he was the trigger for the severe health issues that had “randomly”appeared about a year into our relationship, but it took me another 18 months to admit it. I wanted to tell them about how I can’t remember the last time I made love to anyone instead of just fucking them, and I certainly can’t remember the last time I was intimate with another human and sober at the same time. I wanted to scream that the bruises he’d left were on my soul, and you can’t legislate a way to protect something that precious and that nebulous. I wanted to explain that I was so twisted up inside and out that I had nightmares about him leaving me while we were in the same bed.

But instead I filled the tub with scented bath salts and water hot enough to sting, and laid on my back on the hard porcelain, and breathed in the smell of lavender, and texted a friend, and went to bed. And I laughed at some stand up, and I didn’t cry. Partly because I’m tired of answering the follow up question, “Why did you stay?” Because he had beautiful eyes and I loved his laugh and there was a moment in time when it was actually a happy relationship. Because he’d been abused, too, and I thought he was working to transform it, not transmit it. Because I thought I could fix him. Because I didn’t think I deserved better. But the other reason I didn’t run back to the gym and scream my truth at strangers who wouldn’t know what to do with it? It’s done, it’s gone, it’s over. I don’t want to live in that place anymore.

This is what it looks like to be abused for the vast and awful and silent majority of us. It is insidiously easy to call it “a bad fit” and to explain away what we did to deserve it and to chalk it up to another person’s bad mood. This is what it’s like to be a victim, to walk through things as small as joining a new gym with the fear and the pain and the bruises left in places that aren’t immediately noticeable. And I am praying to God that this is what it looks like to heal, to move on, to let the light back in. It’s hard, it’s scary, and I’m spending a good amount of time on my back staring at the ceiling, but I have to believe I can mend this. I have to. I won’t let him win.