Emotional flashbacks
The emotional flashbacks have returned. I'm sure there is a clinical term for them, maybe I'll come across it sometime.
Two years ago, this should have been a time to share the rejoicing that my mobility was returning. A time of making uncertain forays around the neighborhood to see how far my new hip would allow me to walk. A time to share the relief and joy of walking again, even if it was still painful.
Instead, it was a time of family crisis. Her older son developed a brain tumor. He needed emergency surgery. When I tried to help, I was pushed aside.
I had been trained as a counselor and mentor and was active in a community group formed to support people who had suffered a life-changing injury; and she knew I cared a great deal about her son, but she sealed me away from him. There is a good chance the time would have been good for both of us, but she decided otherwise.
She and the boy's partner locked everyone out, even his father.
So I rose and walked, testing the new leg each day a little more, and instead of sharing these small victories with my partner, I shared them with friends and neighbors.
My back was still bent and skewed. Both back and knee still had bone on bone areas. I was learning to walk again, now with both feet forward. Retraining the muscles from head to toe, literally, in a new posture.
I wanted, even needed, to share my efforts, but the door was closed.
I still find myself questioning her, voicing the questions to the trees and the birds over and over. Questions that will never be answered, at least by her. Questions whose answers will never be wise or satisfactory, because they will have to come from me.
In some now strange-sounding way, I felt is was manly of me to take it all up alone, leaving her to tend to her son. Even now, I don't know what else I could have done.
After two long years of illness, I was still physically weak. My body had atrophied from inaction. Additionally, I had endured increasing insults and abuse from her and her daughter. Again, I drew my self up in some manly fashion, telling myself that she was doing the best she could do in the face of so many trials; not letting myself see -- at least not often -- that she was just enjoying bullying me in front of her daughter.
I told myself that how she dealt with her daughter and son were her business. After all, I had come into her life after the family that had created them; that I had to respect her feelings, even if they had proven cruelly irrational many times.
And so now, two years later, I learn just how much of a strain I was under then because the mornings leave a painful hole in my heart.
How many other men live their lives in this kind of pain? Putting aside the feelings that bear on them like a great weight each morning to face the world?
How many were not as lucky as I was, to quickly find people -- strangers -- who cared for them, respected them, and even believed in them, because the one person they needed to feel these things for them betrayed them? What do those men do? One answer, of course, is in the rising suicide rate amongst men. I know too well how attractive that option can be, - even with the support I found.
How many years will these flashbacks come? This is two years now.
Will the flashbacks always be there? Will every morning from September to June be so painful? Somewhere in my mind I realize the pain will subside in time; that I'll find more and more to fill my life; that someday the lessons I've learned will make me a better person. I cling to those fragile rationalizations at times, desperately.
This is the real price of the furor to prevent "domestic violence." In reality, all the efforts only create a new, more horrible form of it. The saddest fact is there was no "domestic violence" in my relationship; until she "found a way" in the brutal prejudice of the courts.
Two years ago, this should have been a time to share the rejoicing that my mobility was returning. A time of making uncertain forays around the neighborhood to see how far my new hip would allow me to walk. A time to share the relief and joy of walking again, even if it was still painful.
Instead, it was a time of family crisis. Her older son developed a brain tumor. He needed emergency surgery. When I tried to help, I was pushed aside.
I had been trained as a counselor and mentor and was active in a community group formed to support people who had suffered a life-changing injury; and she knew I cared a great deal about her son, but she sealed me away from him. There is a good chance the time would have been good for both of us, but she decided otherwise.
She and the boy's partner locked everyone out, even his father.
So I rose and walked, testing the new leg each day a little more, and instead of sharing these small victories with my partner, I shared them with friends and neighbors.
My back was still bent and skewed. Both back and knee still had bone on bone areas. I was learning to walk again, now with both feet forward. Retraining the muscles from head to toe, literally, in a new posture.
I wanted, even needed, to share my efforts, but the door was closed.
I still find myself questioning her, voicing the questions to the trees and the birds over and over. Questions that will never be answered, at least by her. Questions whose answers will never be wise or satisfactory, because they will have to come from me.
In some now strange-sounding way, I felt is was manly of me to take it all up alone, leaving her to tend to her son. Even now, I don't know what else I could have done.
After two long years of illness, I was still physically weak. My body had atrophied from inaction. Additionally, I had endured increasing insults and abuse from her and her daughter. Again, I drew my self up in some manly fashion, telling myself that she was doing the best she could do in the face of so many trials; not letting myself see -- at least not often -- that she was just enjoying bullying me in front of her daughter.
I told myself that how she dealt with her daughter and son were her business. After all, I had come into her life after the family that had created them; that I had to respect her feelings, even if they had proven cruelly irrational many times.
And so now, two years later, I learn just how much of a strain I was under then because the mornings leave a painful hole in my heart.
How many other men live their lives in this kind of pain? Putting aside the feelings that bear on them like a great weight each morning to face the world?
How many were not as lucky as I was, to quickly find people -- strangers -- who cared for them, respected them, and even believed in them, because the one person they needed to feel these things for them betrayed them? What do those men do? One answer, of course, is in the rising suicide rate amongst men. I know too well how attractive that option can be, - even with the support I found.
How many years will these flashbacks come? This is two years now.
Will the flashbacks always be there? Will every morning from September to June be so painful? Somewhere in my mind I realize the pain will subside in time; that I'll find more and more to fill my life; that someday the lessons I've learned will make me a better person. I cling to those fragile rationalizations at times, desperately.
This is the real price of the furor to prevent "domestic violence." In reality, all the efforts only create a new, more horrible form of it. The saddest fact is there was no "domestic violence" in my relationship; until she "found a way" in the brutal prejudice of the courts.
posted by Unknown at
5:52 AM
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3 Comments:
Funny the things you find important.
While reloading a computer yesterday, a litte girl named Emily walked up to me and presented a little Christmas tree with my name on it.
An addition to my usual fee these days of lunch, I suppose.
I'll probably keep it as one of my favorite momentoes of Australia.
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Unknown, at 9:18 AM
In the manic furor over "domestic viollence" neither the courts nor the police ever fully investigated the circumstances of the two year period.
A couple of times, I was tempted to roll up my pants' leg and show the magistrate the swollen, discolored ankle; to tell him that this was only part of the permanent damage.
At no time did the police or magistrate ask about the medical condition that made the idea that I was "increasingly abusive over two years" ridiculous. Even when I had to sit in the court, the magistrate only chided me with, "It's customary to stand." -- And I did, after working my hip back into place.
I wanted to tell them about that huge blood clot.
It meant that this was not just discoloration and swelling. It meant that at any time, something could come loose and work its way up into my body.
The doctors tell me it takes about 20 minutes.
The result could be death; or worse that I become a vegetable. I could lose a lung if I made it to the hospital quickly enough.
The best part about that 20 minutes is I will have no idea when it starts.
But none of the police or courts wanted to hear the whole truth. They had their prejudices, and they were determined to prove those prejudices.
In time, I'll lose this foot or maybe the whole leg. It is only a matter of time, unless the clotting simply kills me.
I appeared in court with a marked limp, with medical records and letters to show the reasons, but the magistrate refused to even look at them. I had prescriptions with me.
He saw me go into a severe anxiety attack, standing against a wall fighting off a gran mal seizure, hyperventilating deeply (as I have to to avoid a seizure) -- and only allowed the trial to go forward.
I was heaving and panting, telling myself to calm down and not go into a seizure while the magistrate watched.
You have to wonder what he thought he was seeing.
In her brutal greed, my ex stood there in the courtroom knowing full well what was happening. She knew of my conditions and had seen me do the same thing many times.
In fact, she harangued me often to drive me into that situation, somehow proving to herself that she was "right" and had won the argument.
By then, of course, it wasn't much of an argument. I could only go lie down and pray I didn't have another seizure.
To her and her conspirators, I was just "trying to control her".
My crime in Australia was being injured and disabled, then trying to overcome those difficulties. For this crime, I was punished by being thrown onto the street while barely walking, and fined -- all totalled -- more than $200,000.
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Unknown, at 10:07 AM
How do you tell a magistrate or the police that your spouse' complaints are just a game she's playing to punish you?
These people want to think that their jobs are an important service to the community and the country. Yet in their zeal they have reduced the process to such a rubber-stamped sequence it is just a game.
The magistrate, of course, can always claim that he or she must rule on the evidence before them -- even if he or she has excluded much of the relevant evidence on personal whim.
The police are not under any constraints to investigate the circumstances any further than to confirm their prejudices, so the magistrate can always blame any mistakes on the police.
But where does that leave the concept of the pursuit of justice? It leaves it in the ever-efficient Too-Hard Bin.
One thing the police and magistracy can annoint themselves with, however, is that their work does make-work for many others.
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Unknown, at 10:26 AM
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