Redemption

As you may have or have not read in the inspiration section of the site, December 4, 2017, was a life changing day. It was the day that my engagement ring came off and was handed back to my fiancée. At the time I thought this moment would devastate my life. And it certainly did to an extent. I thought I could not live without this man; and would be forever emotionally crippled having to live the rest of my life without him.

I have written my story about 8 different times. Each with more detail than the last, because I wanted to express the pain, sadness and anger I was experiencing daily. I want to share what I consider abusive, manipulative, and controlling behavior, which I allowed this man to use against me.

I can go on for hours in detail of my life daily, but after much consideration, writing and many therapy sessions, I want to share the bigger picture of my story. The following story outlines the many ways I was manipulated and controlled by someone I loved. At the time it was subtle but in retrospect it seems obvious now.

I met my fiancé in 2003 as a junior in college. I was a free spirited, strong, determined, gangster girl at the time. Even so, I was easily swayed by his mental manipulation and emotional control. I lived this way for the next 15 years or so until that fateful day of December 4.

Shortly after we met, I caught him locked in a dorm room with another girl. Instead of admitting fault or even trying to excuse his actions, he spun the narrative and began to blame me. He created an elaborate story claiming I slept with an ex from high school. According to my fiancé, he happened to run into my ex from my hometown. The irony is my hometown is nowhere near my fiancé’s hometown; he would have had a higher chance of hitting the lottery. It was during this improbable encounter that my ex told my fiancé we slept together. My fiancé would use this story countless times over the next three years or so. As luck would have it, I ran into this ex at an event and asked if he had ever “ran into” my fiancé. I even went as far as to ask him if he told my fiancé that we had slept together. He looked at me as if I was insane. I was extremely embarrassed. After a lot of pressing, it turns out my fiancé looked through an old phone, saw a flirty text and created this story based off what he read. This elaborate story was brought up each time I caught or suspected he was intimate another girl.

About 5-6 years after college we decided to go our separate ways. I could not take the constant idea that he still was not ready to be in a committed relationship with me. I spent the following years battling sadness, isolation and depression while waiting for him to come back around. I wanted to hear him tell me that I was the one he wanted to be with, and we would start our lives anew. That time came somewhere around 2012-2013, but it came at a price. Before he would officially commit to me, he made me tell him all the people I dated and slept with during our ‘off’ time. He framed it exactly like this, “if you can’t be honest with me about the things you’ve done when we weren’t together, how could you be honest with me about the things you would do while we are together.” It was completely humiliating, and instead of telling him it was none of his business and to fuck off, I told him, everything, and answered every embarrassing question he asked.

All those years later when he decided he was ready to commit, we began seeing each other again. I thought I was living that fairytale, where if you love something, you let it go and if it comes back to you, love it forever. I felt like that one in a million girl that it came back to. From that point (roughly 2013) on I was determined to make it work, in retrospect at any cost and we began a terrible relationship, with all the unresolved issues from years ago and continued building on that crumbling foundation.

The next seven years were filled with endless unresolved fights, concealed control and mind manipulation. But I stayed, I fought on, I was willing to sell my soul to make this love story have the happily ever-after ending. We moved in, had a baby, and got engaged. In retrospect, what the fuck was I thinking pressing on? My baby was born in April of 2016, from that point on my mind shifted, my little baby girl was watching me; she was watching me pretend to be loved, she was watching me cry and be weak. The woman I was, the woman I became, was not a good example of a strong virtuous woman for my daughter. Through the tears and anger, little by little, I started realizing that I could not do it anymore.

The engagement was broken off on December 4, 2017; when I asked him if we were not going to try to rectify the quality of our relationship, then why was I still wearing the engagement ring. His response was, “okay give it back.” From that point on, he wanted to continue living together as roommates and sleeping in the same bed, indefinitely. I was an emotional mess which led to me crying all the time. I could not do it; I could not stand to live one more second with him. Things were getting volatile. I was constantly enraged and tried to put my hands on him a few times, each time was retaliated with swifter more forceful reactions. So, after persistent pressing he moved out around March 4, 2018 and back in with his mom. It was bittersweet, for sure, but the time directly following that was even more gruesome, including physical altercations, verbal abuse and control and manipulation around my daughter and money. It was a  was an awful time, that got made worse when I was forced to make some painful and difficult decisions; decisions that under any other circumstances I would have never made.  

The breakup was a very emotional time for me. I was plagued by grief, woke up every day crying, and cried myself to sleep every night. Unfortunately, this was no different than the way I had been living for years. I can remember one morning, while showering before work. I was crying hysterically, sobbing, sitting on the shower floor, I received a text from him asking me to please cry quieter because I was disrupting his sleep and might wake up the baby. This was a poignant moment. I could tell he did not have even slightest bit of respect for me. It is as if I was subhuman to him. As shitty as he was, I know he has some sense of humanity. I experienced this man’s humanity firsthand. On one instance we were walking up from the subway, we saw a group of kids squirting packets of ketchup on a homeless man. I was horrified and near tears. He turned back and told the kids he had just overheard someone else calling the cops on them and the kids ran off. So, when he asked me quiet my crying, I took this kind of unsympathetic and inhumane treatment very personal.  I realized he did not see me as human and truly had no respect or love for me.

It has been about two and half years now since the breakup. I have done so much thinking, so much therapy, reflection, and have come to the realization that the true turning point was the day my daughter was born. All the things I wanted to teach her about becoming a strong woman, I was not. I didn’t want my daughter to think that what her father and I had was love. I was not showing her how to navigate through the many obstacles of life successfully.  Although I was constantly crying, I could feel I was regaining my strength, power, and dignity. I was realizing that I would do whatever it took to ensure that my daughter knew her self-worth and would never, ever end up in a relationship like mine.

Two and half years later, I am living in my parent’s basement, working a leave replacement teaching job. This is a far from the stability and life I dreamed of at 38 years old. Yet, I am stronger, wiser, and more powerful then I have felt in over 15 years. As it turns out, that extremely painful moment was the best thing that ever happened to me. Never in a million years would I think I would say that. If it were not for that fateful moment, this story may have had a much different ending, one that does not include the creation of this village that we all so desperately need during times like these.

The recovery was not easy; it was extremely painful to get to this place. I grieved the loss of this man and this life for a long time, and had people very close to me say, at the time, some very hurtful things, that in turn wound up forcing me into healing. Things like: “you’re not the only one whose is going through this;” “ you need to get over it;” “ you are not being the mother your daughter deserves,” and this tough love made me realize that no one, NO ONE, was going to be able to help, me get through this except me.

I spent many nights in a field in a park near my house, screaming off the side of a cliff. Screaming, literally, at the top of my lungs, beating the ground underneath me, until I had no voice or strength left in me!  I knew for years that, I was not happy; I felt like a victim of the world. I knew that the end of this relationship was going to be positive and necessary. Over the course of a few months, this pain and sadness turned into resolve, power, and resilience. Truly, all in all, it was my daughter who motivated me through all of this and one of the ultimate reasons for creating this site. There will inevitably be moments in her life that I will not be equipped to help her through albeit love and support, so I want to leave her this legacy of stories. So, she and others will always be able to navigate through her difficulties and find her village.

Although I have made it to this point, I still struggle a lot with many things; mostly acceptance and having to do 95% of the parenting, not only alone, but with an adversary. All the decision making, all the doctors’ appointments, all the baths, all the feedings, all the bedtimes, all the negotiating, all the figuring out how to give her medicine, how to discipline and LOTS more. While I wouldn’t give any of it up, I still struggle to accept that this is not what I signed up for. I didn’t want to have to do any of this alone. There are millions of women who do this every day, literally alone. So I know how lucky I am that I have my parents and that my ex takes my daughter a total of 65 hours a month. It is still a hard pill to swallow. Perhaps hearing from this village of women will provide me insight and support, as well as the realization that I do not have it that bad after all.

Lastly, I realize that the young vibrant, carefree, outgoing girl I was once was has been living inside me all along. She has emerged even more strong, powerful, resilient, gangster and peaceful than I ever imagined! But the questions still remain… how could I have let someone control and manipulate my life, feelings, thoughts and actions in such a way? Why was my self-worth, dignity and power so easily given up? How was I so easily brainwashed into thinking this was a life I so desperately wanted to live?

Enter villagers? Where are you? Those that have walked this road before me help me jump these last few hurdles of acceptance. How did you do it? How are you doing it? And for those of your waking this path right now, hear me, use my story as a guide, seek me out and let me become a part or your village.

Originally, I thought this would be a tragic ending to a tragic story, but this is a comeback story; one of unyielding perseverance, immense strength and a girl given a second chance at finding herself and going after the life she wants to live.   I hope that by my bearing my story I will inspire all of you to do the same. Find some healing, be a guiding light for those who need some healing and find or create your village.

Forever your villager,

Vanessa