Learning to Believe it Wasn’t my Fault
- Angela Parker
- Feb 10, 2014
- 4 min read
I always knew what I would do if a man ever hit me, I had a thousand different scenarios planned out as to what would happen to said man. What I wasn't prepared for was being abused psychologically. I never thought for a second that someone could ever take hold of my mind. I am a strong woman with a strong mind and because I was not prepared to protect it, it was hijacked. I think of it as an act of terrorism on my brain. It happened slowly, subtle changes here and there.
First things like criticizing my clothes or the things I read, and slowly driving a wedge between me and my friends and family.
Then getting angry when I visited friends, and checking up on me constantly (and getting angry when he couldn’t reach me) or not letting me go alone to begin with.
Next there was screaming in my face, at which point I can't even tell you what I did "wrong" because I shut down, my brain went into safe mode and shut off all attention to the abuse.
Before I realized it I was a shell of my former self, I was weak and scared, and I never felt good enough. This didn't happen overnight, it took years, and it just kept getting worse as time went on.
If you ever feel like you are being oppressed stop immediately and talk about it, if you can't talk about it, then consider cutting that person out of your life because if how you feel isn't important to them, then they shouldn't be important to you.
I was very lucky. I have a best friend that has always known what is best for me even if I didn't know myself. She saved my life, and gave me back my quality of life, and she did so selflessly. Even now I have not been able to open my mouth and thank her and tell her that I understand and appreciate the sheer enormity of what she did for me because even to write about it tears a canyon through my soul, and gives me nightmares, and to talk about it causes a regression into a dark and frightening place that I must stay out of in order to survive.
She helped me to realize that my life didn't revolve around him, and he made a mistake in thinking that once he was gone I would jump through hoops to get him back. Well I didn’t. He left my house to teach me a lesson, and I guess I learned one… If you want to get rid of it, don’t feed it, don’t pet it, and certainly don’t let it in the house. When he came back and perched on my doorstep in the middle of the night my bulldog woke me up growling. I got up, opened the door, saw him, shut the door, locked it, and went back to bed.
Do not let someone rule your mind, if you are seeing signs of mental abuse pay attention, and stop it before it gets out of control!
If someone is making you feel like you aren't good enough and you don't do anything right, that is abuse. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a mark on you. I would have rather been beaten to death than to have endured the kind of treatment I went through. I missed years of my life and the after effects are deep and long lasting. I am STILL getting my life back together, and I’m afraid I will be trying to get myself right for a long time to come. It is hard for me to admit how wrong I was and how easily I lost control of my own life. I still get angry about all of the things that I missed and lost because of that situation.
This is something that happened years ago, and I am just now able to come to terms with what has happened and speak out against it. I don’t want other people to go through that. It can happen to anyone and the more you know the more you can protect yourself.
If you have endured this kind of abuse and you need to talk, talk to someone who isn’t going to make light of the circumstances, because they are not light at all. This kind of damage runs core deep and it takes time to heal it and build up what has been torn down. There are too many women out there that are putting up with this because they think it is normal. IT IS NOT. Real men do not treat the women that they love like they don’t matter.
Please girls, if your man screams at his mother, DUMP him on the spot. That was the very first warning sign I ignored.
For more information, see this website, it is a really good one, and this link takes you directly to the page about warning signs.
Dr. Phil has a good article too, you can read it here:
Comments