Abuse

Abuse is a funny thing. It isn't something you go around asking for. It also isn't something you go around inspecting on every person you meet either. The abuse I was facing was so different than the abuse I HHAADD been experiencing at home that it was so hard to kick. It wasn't going to be the last time I faced abuse but it was part of the journey to identifying what I had to do when it came into my life. I had first experienced a cold shouldered, "we're too busy" kind of love at home growing up. The kind of mundane "take what's left over from me" kind of things. My mother was surviving the day barely getting ready by the time my dad was coming home, to my father so worn out and beaten up at work that it was too hard to invest what little of himself he had left considering my mother's lackadaisical "who knows what she's pissed at today" mentality would chip away at what he had left. No biggie we all adjusted to that kind of lifestyle we didn't show at church on Sunday morning's. Oh no... we left that madness in the car with unpaid bills and a granola bar. Ha! (child obesity humor) I had honestly shown that abuse who's boss by getting the heck out of dodge and moving into another town with my own apartment and a car that would drive my chubby butt whenever I needed to get away from them. So why all the trouble now. It was different. I was being held and coddled and wanted all the while controlled and told what to do...........and last but not least beaten. I have to say it brought out a fury in me that had never hit my veins before. It made me firecrackin mad. I wanted to lash out but when the beatings began you do nothing but stare into the room as if "is this nightmare really happening"? Yes. I admit I gave in a little. It was such an intense rush to be in a fight where you could lash back at the person. If I had to do it all over again I would just call the police and be done with it. That is now, not then when I was learning for the first time NO ONE IS PREPARED FOR BATTLE IN A RELATIONSHIP. There is no default code in your brain to just "go with it" when all Hell is breaking loose around you. You have to be taught in ALL situations what to do or you're breaking that ground for yourself. I was there. I was in the mess and needed to figure out what does a person do when the person you love snaps and begins to be the abuser. Think about the fact that you love that person. The moment when all things are happening and you can't control them you NEVER could control them. It becomes the sick twisted game of "do not make them mad". UM impossible. You are never in control of another person as long as you live so never forget that. It isn't easy to understand when the guy you were dating and making plans of a life decides to start strangling you and beating you until you black out. It all stemmed from knowing too much. I knew that he did the drugs now and he couldn't hide it. My intense nature and spirit has been brewing into an all out "MODERN DAY DEMON SLAYER" for quite some time. I needed to go through the process in my own brain to collect the data I needed to understand what I was really dealing with. It isn't as simple as calling them up (texting nowadays)."Hey this new thing we got going on isn't really working for me, so I was thinking if we just call it quits here on a Monday maybe by the weekend you could line up a new broad for your punching bag.....(enter the corresponding emoji)" You don't need to be alarmed. It isn't the end of the world that we come upon people who steal your lunch money, your sanity, and the hairs upon your sweet head. No. We need to be understanding what we are dealing with. The wretched spirits that run amuck in this world get in and destroy thought. They take away and devour everything worth nurturing in a person. I wasn't going through anything for the first time ever in the world. Just the first time in MY world. I needed to gain ground with my own decisions. I needed more help and that's what I got. I needed to go back to the counseling. I couldn't tell my parents. They already fought over what we were going to keep a secret this week in the family tree. Honestly I wasn't getting anything but solid dysfunction no matter what direction I looked. I kept it a secret at work because let's face it what American do you know that lives in real time working on real issues with real accountability and a real plan of action. I can name none. I needed to sit in an office and talk it out with one other person so I could see my words come to life. I didn't know how to shake this guy and the feelings I seemingly still had for him. I look back now and shake my head when I think of how powerful lust is and how it can keep young people's head underwater. You will drown yourself in your own choices if you continue on the path I was on. I was waking up every day thinking to myself how did I get here. I let it in. I just didn't ask for the abuse by name like steak sauce at a restaurant (they only ever have ketchup handy). I didn't know that when we started dating that the abuse he had had as a child was going to come in like a wrecking ball and destroy every little bit of Hannah Montana I had left.

Awareness.

It's so lacking in our culture as a whole, how one person can change an entire town and it's way of thinking and doing. One of the most important attributes a person can have is "awareness" of their total body, mind, and soul. Where do you get it? Where do you take it? How do you cultivate it to become a tool in every day's journey? I was becoming aware of who I was even though things were subpar in my family and my boyfriend was clearly a crackhead (oh yeah, and abusive). Small hurdles you might say in a young girl's life! I didn't have a clue about my body from my parents because they avoided the mirror at all costs. I didn't know how to feed my body well, get enough nutrients in AND sustain energy. I was learning though there was something to this body thing. I mean going to the gym put a new stamp on awareness for me. I was standing in front of mirrors all day long but at the gym I got a glimpse of what EVERY part looked like whether I liked it or not. WAIT! Why didn't I like it? I had had no control over my body for so many years by the age of 12 I was a hopeless chubby cause. No one took any pity on me because let's face it, my outspoken parents (really just my father, my mother was more of the silent treatment) were self righteous chubbies themselves. No one was going to rescue the first born. Ugh. I was in the fast lane to change. I wasn't going to have my coffin door shut by a crane. I refused to give up on myself even if the rest of the crew had taken bets on how long I would last refusing the counsel of the God-Given-Parents. I know it was hard, but it wasn't impossible to fight for myself. I didn't like being alone but it didn't stop me from loving myself enough to glimpse into the mirror all the way to the floor so I could not just be "aware", but "accountable". I was going to be accountable to all the choices I had made up until that point no matter what. Even if it killed me. How much of our lives are run by the lack of awareness? I was gobbled up by all the insanity that was around me yet everyone continued on the path as if it's outcome was going to be different for them than anyone else who had gone ahead of them. I wasn't going to be broken over Luis and how he was treating me. I was allowing it. I wasn't sure just yet Why? I was having a hard time understanding my whole body. The more I became aware of the physical feeling I was getting by being around him, there was the unspoken mental feeling I was getting. I was becoming aware of what was going through my mind. I was locating the feelings that I didn't like how he was treating me or what he was putting our relationship through by the way he conducted himself in his own time. I wasn't ok with everything that was going on but couldn't find myself totally removing myself from it. WELL OF COURSE NOT. I hadn't seen anyone take control of out of control situations ever. I never fully witnessed an adult making the awareness move into accountability. Which in turn requires a person to take more action and take the steps to resolve the matter. It almost always involves more conversation. That's the hardest part of it all. Getting the right words into the air (minus swear words) to do what is right by both people. I didn't know how to address the guy who was beating me while I seemed to still find redeeming qualities about him??? It was all very confusing to me to be aware and yet not be able to choose the wisest outcome. BREAK UP. Permanently I wasn't there yet. I was just coming into my own brain capabilities when I knew I was going to run out of ideas on my own. I tried talking to my mother and father about it here and there but this was way over their head. They seemed to be oblivious to their own children's issues. Unless you were someone else's kid they didn't have the slightest idea on how to treat the issue. If it was on their own soil, you were doomed. It's always easier to help someone else's kid. You get to be the hero in their eyes. I was learning to think through how it was possible to help someone else's kid without sharing with them how you overcame it in your own life. How can you help a situation you have brewing right here in your own backyard? I was in the same situation all over town. I needed help in many ways to uncover truths about my body image, career, family issues.....the list goes on and on. I was becoming aware (there's that word again). I didn't have all the files in my brain ready to work in a way that I could pull any tool (lesson learned) out of my head and apply it when I needed it. I was only able at this point to think through what I should do versus what I actually ended up doing. I was so frustrated some days. Thank goodness for my work. I loved cutting hair and making people look and feel their best. I still do. I always loved being able to go to work and just put time and effort into someone else. It helped me so much to ask questions to other people to see how they were coping with life's ups and downs. THEY WEREN'T. Laugh all you want. I realized quickly when we talk about nothing it's because they really didn't know how to connect to the issues in the brain they just shut them out. They were living on coffee and caffeine for most of the day to end it with carbs and tv. I am not making light of what awareness can do to a person or what kind of emotions it can bring up because you feel overwhelmed. It's only a start. It's where you wake up and you know how to allow yourself to be better. It's all because we were designed to be different than just a drone walking through life blindly doing what our parents did, or our neighbors did. It's all about how each and every one of us is so special and unique and in God's big picture. I was becoming aware and I had to do something about it.

Searching for Light in the darkness......

I thought the next day when I woke up I wasn't going to be able to deal with the fact that Luis had opened up the spiritual realm in our relationship. There was no denying he had demons and he wanted them gone. I thought to myself who better than me to help shake them off? I mean I believed in what he was speaking of only on the other end of it. I wanted him to find Jesus. Whether or not we were together was irrelevant to me. I've GOT IT! I'll missionary date him and see how this pans out. He will either lose the demons and change or he'll leave because he's not going to be listening to some self righteous christian girl who was living her life any way she pleased. I just needed to see which came up first. Breakup or Makeup. I knew deep down in my heart things weren't going to pan out for me in this relationship. I was young and knew I needed more time to have boyfriends to develop an understanding of who I was and what I required to thrive in a relationship. More importantly I needed time to mature and grow up. I look back now and know the things I liked most were the troubled times because they force me to find a solution. I like finding solutions. I thrive on it. I am way past the point of denying what I am and how I act. Back then, my mind was still developing an understanding of what my strengths and weaknesses were. It's kind of like when you watch a movie about the X-men. You see them in their youth knowing they are different from others but not exactly sure how to use their skills. Transitioning. It's everything in life to realize what you can be when you put your mind to it. I was in a "manipulation" phase at this point in my life. I was going to get results. I just knew it. Oh, I got results alright. I can say without any hesitation I was NOT getting the results that I wanted. I was continually trying to find loopholes in dumping this guy clean off my plate. Things just kept getting worse and worse. My parents hated him. It was no wonder considering they hated themselves so they had nothing to give this guy. They were more afraid of having to deal with his issues and our own issues that they didn't want to have to give anything spiritually (let alone physically) to him. Emotions are such a funny thing. One minute you think you're in control of your life and the next minute you're allowing your emotions to outweigh the logistics of the situation. Here's what I mean by that. Take my situation for an example. I was a young Christian woman dating a non Christian guy who was clearly on drugs and didn't want to treat me the way I needed to be treated to grow into a woman of vigor and faith. I come from a family that also claims Christ and says that we are all about treating others differently because we know how to treat ourselves. BUNK. We didn't know a thing about treating ourselves well. We could have all come out of this very differently if we had all been involved differently. I could have learned a lot about growing up while my parents showed me how to be forgiving of other people to cultivate a healthier perspective in Luis's mind. This doesn't mean we would have stayed together but it does mean while we were in the relationship we would have been able to grow from the experience in a positive way instead of the life or death way that I was currently on. Now I look back on the situation and know that we had no clue what we were doing as a family, let alone when bringing new members to the pack. We had a rogue leader (my father) who answered to a crazy co-captain (my mother) and that was never going to produce a team mentality. In our house we knew the leadership was bad but we never talked about it. Luis was the first outsider that came in (not including my brother dating girls in the youth group which consisted of him holding their hands or writing in a notebook they passed back and forth weekly). We were never going to be able to help another person understand what we needed as people from him. We didn't have enough accountability as a group to develop into people who could help others become who God wanted them to be. Needless to say I wasn't working on this much rational thought back then. Oh no I was running on Emotions and what I could get out of helping this guy be better than he was. Oh and liking me because.....well...it felt good, and I liked that part.

This is no walk in the park.....

Well maybe in New York City at midnight in central park!!! I was living in the twilight zone. I had sloughed off the control that was my family circus only to walk into a relationship that was going to actually kill me. I am truly surprised at how many people are unaware of the many young men and women who become abusive in their adult life due to how their childhood impacted them in a negative way. Yeah yeah yeah it sounds so easy that we all know very well there are abusive people out there but you don't hear people talking about it much. I believe that is because it has a direct correlation to their parents and what didn't go into their brains and lives- the inability to understand how to act when in a stressful situation and how to genuinely value another person. With that being said just how did I think I was going to get out of this situation that I had gotten myself into. It wasn't so long ago I was drawing the ever so vivid picture of how we met and it seemed ever so clear to me that there was a reason for us to meet in the first place. Consider the information on how each one of us wanted the other person so badly in our lives. Yes, but for totally different reasons that I can rationalize now but back then it was so he could meet my physical needs rather than spiritual needs, and well let's face it I am capable of reaching both needs by noon and get a mani pedi in before dinner. ha! I had to seriously distance myself from this psycho that I had just gotten done convincing he couldn't live without me. SERIOUSLY THIS COULD END BADLY. Did I have what it takes to take on a job where I had been the control factor while being the one controlled in the relationship???? It sounds tricky, I know, which is why I had to sleep on it. I had to make sure what I was about to go under was the "Laura Factor" of my total existence. I was about to do a magic trick never done before successfully by live women. If you have to try to trick the man you're sleeping with not to want you, good luck. You're having a tough year and I've been there. I didn't think he would catch on if I just tried to be extra busy. Right? I think that is a viable reason considering I was working on my career and I needed money to live on my own and to be earning credits towards owning my own salon one day. I just started to add time into my schedule in a way no one caught on. I just went in earlier and stayed later. I got very good at making it impossible for him to actually see me other than to face my boss who really didn't want him around and made it clear without saying a word. It helped me a great deal, so I continued to use her own insecurities for my own good. Who was she fooling, she didn't know what to do with him so she put up a huge wall and I used it. It seemed like the thing to do when you're trying to survive another day. Oh...Look a wall.(as I walk behind it) Laugh, poke fun, giggle if you need but it was ingenious in my book. I was using 2 druggies against each other because one wrote my checks and the other tried to check me into a wall. What's a young girl to do when that kinda crap shows up in her life at the ripe age of 21? Well it didn't keep me from dancing that's for sure. You might say that he caught onto me not having any time for him. He caught onto me not having any time to be left alone with him. I didn't know how long I could play the game with him before he would just come out and ask me what I was up to. He worked 3rd shift so he had to be an hour away from where I worked at 7pm every night, so I got extremely good at not being home around 5pm ever so he didn't have enough time to drive back wherever hell's portal had opened up and spit him out. He was so cunning and extremely smart when it came to his looks. I mean the boy just knew that the day God created him he gave him a body that just didn't quit. The minute he had my head in his hands and his lips pressed up against mine I was gone. I am not ashamed that my body requires a hot juicy piece of man on the other side to be making out with. I was angry that he would use my own flesh desire to get what he wanted out of me. A safe clean beautiful air conditioned or heated place to lay his nekkid ass down to have hot passionate sex. He didn't seem to mind not spending a ton of time with me as long as he could check into the sleeze motel every once in awhile. AHHHH haaa! I've got it. I'll just use him for sex which was ok with me (he was hot). I will bore him in no time and he'll leave and never come around anymore. Yes, my 21 year old self sounds shallow but take everything in stride. She was growing and learning. No one before me had anything to relate at the table so while I was living on my own, paying bills and school loans, going to the gym which no branch on my family tree had managed to master. I was buying groceries and putting myself to bed in time to wake up and do it all over again the next day. All the while living in one of the swankiest places in town right on the main drag. I was living the high life. So ok ok ok , my current snag was trying to kill me because I found out he did drugs, but I had that handled I was going to bore him, he would fall out of love and he was going to move on all the while I was working on my career and whala......New life. I could taste it. Or was that the blood from my lip he split when he caught up with me one night while I was sleeping? I hadn't factored in the highs and lows of drugs and how he still had a key to get in whenever he wanted to. He had obviously had too much to drink and came to see me even though he should have been at work. I woke up and he was angry. He had been all over the apartment and was just pacing the floor. I didn't know where this was going to lead honestly. Why the heck was he here??? It was 1am? I asked him what he was doing not at work and he began to cry and thrash and pin me up against furniture. I looked at him intensely. I knew back then I had an ability most people do not have. I can decipher what is real and what is not real. Let me put that in other words for you. I can tell what is demonic and what is lead by the spirit of the Lord the Holy Spirit. It doesn't seem to come up much out in modern day culture but it's making a comeback. I knew something was off and it wasn't adding up. I began to get very disturbed because I just really wanted to go to bed. I tried to calm him by laying beside him in the bed but he just kept getting up and walking around. So I met him halfway. I told him to just do whatever he wanted I was just going to lay down and try to get some sleep. I have always since I was young prayed continuosly when I am afraid or in a situation that I can not handle in my physical body. I do it often throughout the day as well. It must have worked because I dozed off and I remember vividly when I woke up again. I hit the cold metal of an object lying on the sheets. I reached out and grabbed it. It was a butcher knife from the kitchen. I didn't panic I'm too smart for that. I slowly let my eyes come to the moon light and street lights that were coming in from my bedroom window. There he was. Standing in the window looking out. I asked him"Luis.....what are you looking at"? I could see now and the bed was covered in knives of all sizes from my kitchen. I was trying to process did he get them for my protection or his? Either way I still would have liked to have been in on the decision to sleep beside my bagel cutter. I asked him again. It was as if he was frozen. I walked over to him and touched his shoulder ever so slightly. I said What are you looking at??? He said "Do you see him"? I looked out into the darkness different this time. I knew he was looking into the spiritual realm. I wasn't able to see. I didn't need to see, I knew. I said "NO, but I believe you". I knew in that moment the reason he couldn't shake me was because I was his only safety from being devoured by the demons. It was as if they didn't pass the windows and they waited for him on the other side. I will never forget that night as long as I live and breath air. I know my saviour reigns. Meanwhile, Luis didn't have a pot to piss in or it would have been in the bed that night.