fragile ego: Unease, unqualified shame

13 March 2013

Unease, unqualified shame

I need to talk.
I’m ashamed to talk.

This is…embarrassing. My feminism tells me it’s not my fault. Hell, I know it's not my fault. I did nothing to deserve this…

But my feelings in the heat of the moment say otherwise.

I’ve concluded A is emotionally abusive.
Here’s a short list of the how:

· I pointed out that he never says anything about my being a good parent. His response: “I’ve seen better.” (Oh, how tempting it was to call him a half-absentee father!)

· My activism means nothing to him. It’s a waste of time. I should be earning money. I am reminded of this often.

· I am criticized for almost everything.

· If I’m proud of a job well done at work and share this with him, I am accused of being “full of myself” or “attention seeking.” No, I just thought you cared.

· I supposedly lie all the time to him, the self-appointed food police. And other things.

My red flags really go up because he always prefaces this with “I love you.”

Words are empty. Actions are louder.

He’s packing up the house already, even though we don’t close until the 3 of April (oh yeah, we’re buying a house) and we won’t move in until the 16^th.

With two children and knowing he’s beyond OCD with packing, I took E and tried to get him to sleep while A packed.

This brought the accusation that I’m lazy and won’t help.

Oh, and he fucking packed almost the entire kitchen, pots and pans. I love cooking, and he packs this first.

Make your own dinner. Starve. I don't care. I want to starve. It seems like the only way you'll take me seriously. (But no, I won't and no, you won't take me seriously.)

When I calmly bring up my own thoughts, ideas, feelings, I am told (or at least yesterday) in an angry voice that I am mentally ill. So I threw it back at him and said, “Then shame on you. Do you really think yelling at someone you believe to suffer from a mental illness is going to help?”

Nothing I do is ever “enough” for him. And…it wears me out. Fuck him.

I’m seriously contemplating not going home tonight. I know I will for the sake of routine for the kids.

But I can’t live like this. I don’t deserve this. Even if I’m a shitty person, there are better ways to address it.

Oh, and my feminism and upcoming conference—that’s all fluff and me feeling like a victim—at least, according to him.

I want to cry, I don’t have any time to. I want to scream, I don’t have that luxury. And yeah….I’ve thought about leaving. A lot.

“I love you.”

No, you don’t. You don’t treat someone you love like shit.

7 comments:

lynn said...: You and your kids deserve better. ((hugs)); March 13, 2013 at 10:59 PM
Dysmonia said...: Whit, you are a good person, and you know it. You are flawed, as are we all, and you know that too. You love your children. Your passion regarding activism is true.

I see you as a self-appointed martyr. In your inability to allow yourself to exist, you put yourself in situations where you stand up for others and not yourself. It is in the work you do, the activism you do, the way you help your friends. Your voice is loud and clear when defending others. It is not so much when it comes to yourself.

I think this breeds contempt. Taking care of others and not yourself is exhausting and thankless. The caveat to this, in your case, is that the recipients of your kindness may not have ever asked for your help in the first place.

I am not judging and I am not offering advice. Just observations.

Love,
Dys; March 14, 2013 at 10:13 PM
Anonymous said...: Sending much love from the Pacific Northwest. -Ellene; March 15, 2013 at 11:38 AM
Anonymous said...: Whit,

You know I love you. But life is too short to be with a person who at the very least does not support and believe in your passion. Is there anything you really want to do here? Do you want to stay with him? Do you want to leave? Its wonderful you are so responsible. But what do you want for your life? Despite anything in the past, there is always a time to change and do what you want. You are worth your goals, dreams, and aspirations regardless of any weakness you may have. Everyone is a combination of different assets and flaws which creates the beautiful diversity we see around us. But at some point, its not your battle to fight. Its about what you want your life to be and be about. I'm not trying to give you advice but you deserve better and your dreams are worth more than this.
Love
Aly; March 15, 2013 at 8:49 PM
lcc said...: Darling- I'm keeping it really real here (and also constantly in fucked up relationships) and I'll just say to the bit about emotional abuse: NO SHIT.

Take your law school opportunity. Take your kids that he doesn't do shit to take care of and take your heart, soul and who you are while you have it still. Love, you're in the cave. He's got you in the cave and you're just getting a glimpse of the tree and a shadow.

You've made all of these sacrifices and he's made a ton of drinks. I like A and have always enjoyed hanging out with him. But he's not being a husband or a partner. He's being a dude doing his own thing.

He's acting like The Dude and like you've pissed on his rug that pulled the room together. It's time for him to realize that he's not 25 years old. He's pushing 40. We just need him to act like a 33 year old. Jesus.; March 22, 2013 at 10:30 PM
Anonymous said...: I have seen this pattern before . . . and I hear the pain it brings for you to be in it . . .

In my own space and place, I would share that looking into CODA would be helpful for you . . . it's not just about him . . . it's about a pattern that we all live and breathe . . .

I love you. (((Squiiiiish))); April 4, 2013 at 12:41 PM
Anonymous said...: You don't deserve this. You don't deserve to feel ashamed. There is no shame in acknowledging it and talking about it.

You deserve love, respect, patience, trust and understanding.

You are worth so much more than this.

Love,
Mandy; April 29, 2013 at 12:46 AM

. . . thinking . . .

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? ... Oddly, things have now reached such a state that even among men of intelligence philosophy means something fantastical and vain, without value or usefulness, both in opinion and practice. (Michel de Montaigne, 1592)

"All things come out of the one and the one out of all things. ... I see nothing but Becoming. Be not deceived! The very river in which you bathe a second time is no longer the same one you entered before.'"(Heraclitus)

"Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, ...and care so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul ...?" (Socrates via Plato)

"Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist." (Epicurus)

"All things are parts of one single system, which is called Nature; the individual life is good when it is in harmony with Nature." (Zeno of Citium)

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." (Albert Camus)

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." (Bertrand Russell)

"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." (Bertrand Russell)

"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it." (Leo Tolstoy)

"If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system." (William James)

"Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!" (Nietzsche)

"Beauty is no quality in things themselves. It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them." (David Hume)

"As long as justice and injustice exist, human beings must be willing to do battle for the one against the other." (John Stuart Mill)

"Meditate often upon the bond of all in the Universe and their mutual relationship. For all things are in a way woven together." (Marcus Aurelius)

"Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises."

"A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything. "

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. "

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. "

"One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive. "

"A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness. "

"Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it. "

"All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth."

"Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good. "

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

"Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?"

"I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his "divine service." "

"All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie? "

"This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves. "

"We have art in order not to die of the truth."

"What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!"

"It is not things, but opinions about things that have absolutely no existence, which have so deranged mankind!" -from Nietzsche's Daybreak, s. 563, R.J. Hollingdale transl

"People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see." - from Nietzsche's Human, all too Human, s.489, R.J. Hollingdale transl.

"New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner--to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm.... Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self...."

"I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it."

(both from Nietzsche's Antichrist)