Shake it off

My partner was gone a couple of weeks. When he got back, lots of things were discussed. But the thing I want to talk about first is my hand waving.

A few hours after getting back, he says ‘come here’. He’s standing about 5 inches in front of me. I figure I’m going to get a hug. I brace myself. I can do it. I can take a hug. His hands reach up – but it’s not a hug. He’s going for my face. He’s going to touch my face. Not hit, just touch. I can’t stand having my face touched. I don’t know if he saw something in my expression or if my face wasn’t his target. His hands sweep up, past my face, and bury themselves in my hair. He says: you washed your hair.

I don’t know why he feels compelled to make these kinds of comments. Every time he touches me, he mentions my skin is dry, like I didn’t know that. I won’t let him put lotion on my back (the only place I can’t reach) because every single time he does, he hurts me. He puts so much pressure on, it’s like he’s trying to oil bovine leather. I can feel every ridge of his fingerprints, as he scrapes up and down my back. How does he even do that? Is my skin so sensitive I can feel them, or is he doing some kind of angle and pressure that turns them into sandpaper?

So, he says ‘you washed your hair’. I back up, smack up against the refrigerator. I slide to the right, away from him. I walk into the living room (only a few steps) and I see I’m making ‘go away’ motions with my hands. At least, in my head, they are ‘go away’ motions. Also seeing it as someone standing, looking at myself, they look remarkably like ‘flapping.’ I was so distressed, I was literally beside myself.

I think the main problem was I got surprised. I was braced for a hug and that didn’t happen. But for pete’s sake, all he did was touch my hair. How that triggered hand flapping, I don’t know.

Munchausen by proxy?

A while back, forget which day, I mentioned on this blog that I’d really wished I could talk to a psychologist over the phone. It was the Ellen Show post if you want to glance at it. As far as I remember, it is the only time I’ve mentioned it.

Last week, partner came home from a meeting with his psychologist. (I was unaware he’d even gone, I thought he was giving a blood sample.) He hands me a note, which was the telephone number he’d gotten from his psyc, a number for phone consultations for a psychologist. I thanked him. And a few minutes later, my heart broke.

I do not recall saying anything to him on the subject. I’d only mentioned it here.

Now, I know at one point he was monitoring my online activity. Things he’d say on subjects I’d googled a few days previously. I found the dongle on the back of my computer. If he is – well, basically stalking me – I don’t know how he’s doing it. He’s the tech-savvy one, not me.

So him coming home with this number shattered me. I felt very violated.

But I checked the stats on that page, and it only looks like it was me that reviewed the page. So let’s say I did say something to him about it and have forgotten I did.

This is the person who says he’ll get me water/tea and ‘forgets’ by the time he’s out the bedroom door. If he forgets so easily, or quickly, how did he remember I wanted that phone number? Because if I had said something, it would have been months ago. Long enough that I’ve forgotten I said it.

I can only imagine what he’s telling his shrink about me. I know how he lies, with silence and a downward look. Maybe a little handwringing and a sniff. A monotone ‘she does the best she can.’ which is true – but the monotone voice says ‘not a damn thing’.

Sometimes, yes, he does need to look after me. When he remembers. What is he telling his shrink? I’ll be damned if I know. But… here’s the rub. I’m starting to feel crazy.

He has never had to look after any person other than himself. Ever. He’ll help his mom or dad, sure, but there’s always someone else there, as ‘back up’. It is not his job! He’s the ‘sicko’. HE IS THE SICKO. It’s everyone else’s job to take care of him. That is the way things are. It’s how it’s ever been. And he seriously resents having to look after me.

Unless I am in the hospital. Then he’s there every day. Moisturizing my feet. Combing my hair. Reading to me or watching a TV show on a laptop. People tell him how amazing he is. How dedicated and loving. They admire him.

Munchausen by proxy? Well, no. Not unless he’s triggering my illness. And I can’t say he isn’t. Maybe he just likes the admiration people give him. Doctors and nurses. It makes him feel important.

It makes me feel sick.

Terrorizing

My partner drives like a maniac. And I’m not talking like the joke cliché of a woman screaming ‘slow down, you’re going to kill us’, to the man driving 10 miles an hour. No, I truly mean he drives like a mad man. He knows how to drive, but the second he gets behind the wheel, his dick grows 10 sizes and he becomes aggressive. We sold ‘our’ car two years ago. He didn’t tell me how much he sold it for, and I never got any of the money. Since he sold it to a friend, I suspect he basically gave it away. I was just glad it was gone and I didn’t have to make up excuses not to go anywhere with him.

This story wasn’t the first time I was in a car with him. But it was in the first week.

We’re going up a long road. Far ahead, I can see cars sitting, waiting for the light to turn green. There were four lanes, and they all had four or five cars in line. We’re maybe a quarter of a mile away. He’s going the speed limit. Once we’re on the straight, he speeds up. And keeps speeding up. My foot involuntarily makes breaking motions. I tell him to slow down and he ignores me. The point where I would have started breaking, if I were driving, comes and goes. The point where at our speed, I don’t think we’ll be able to stop without hitting the stationary cars, comes and goes. I said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I brace myself. He says, ‘They’ll move out of the way.’ (remember, four cars deep, sitting at a red light. They are going nowhere.) When he finally hits the brakes, the nose of the car goes down, I’m thrown forward and we come to a screeching halt. Inches from the car in front of us. I must have looked pretty pale. He just laughed and laughed.

He did it once when his brother was in the car. His brother pitched a mild-mannered fit and told him to stop. He did stop driving like that when his brother was in the car. But he still did when it was only me.

Before him, I was a good, solid driver. But I was in a different country then. The roads were smaller, very winding, and I became very afraid of being on the road, in a car with him. I became so afraid, I didn’t update my license and have never driven again.

The years passed, I became more afraid. First, I always hung onto the door handle. Then I hung on to the seat belt. It just got worse and worse. He’d aggressively move into the flow of traffic. Cut people off. Stopped hard. Rode on peoples bumpers. My heart would pound, I’d hold my breath. And after a few years, I just closed my eyes, held onto the seat belt, and waited to die. If I told him to slow down, he’d go so slow, barely over idle speed. I was afraid someone would ram us, expecting us to be going the speed limit. He’d sneer and say, see, I’m slowing down.

I slowly stopped going out with him. I stopped socializing because I couldn’t take being in a car with him, and my disability made using public transport impossible. If I had to go, I’d spend the entire trip with my eyes closed. One day he noticed my eyes closed and just laughed. He practically pissed himself, he laughed so hard.

I thought he was just being a dick.

But looking back now, I think it was torture. Not a joky kind of torture, but real, dangling off a face cliff torture. Every single time I got in a car with him driving, I expected to die. He put me in physical danger day after day. He liked the control, I guess. My face full of fear. Pale and trembling. It was fun for him. A good laugh.

edit:

I guess I should say how this has impacted my life. I can’t drive. I’m afraid of narrow roads. I will not get in a car with my partner driving. My socializing has tanked, I just don’t now. (I can sit in a taxi, though, without fear. I expect them to be respectful drivers and so far, they have been.) The sound of a car’s breaks squeaking, even if I’m not in a car, makes my heart pound in fear. I am terrorized of cars, driving, travel, and roads. I think I might be for the rest of my life.

Prejudice

I really try not to be prejudice. If I see myself doing it, I focus on it and scrub it away. It started when I was little and saw my father making nasty comments about people who didn’t have the same skin color as us. Basically, I was rebelling against my dad. As I got older, I felt it wasn’t just a rebellion – it was the right thing to do. I still feel like that but it’s grown to include more than just race or nationality. Everyone on this planet is human. We are the human race and to hate or prejudge someone on the color of their hair or skin or eyes is ignorant. To hate a group of people on their religion is ignorant. To hate a group of people because of their culture, or job or ability or sex, or damn it, for flipping anything, is our dark side whispering to us.

When I was growing up the only time I saw black people in the movies, was the Angry Black Man. During these formative years, I was taught to fear the Angry Black Man. The Angry Black Man will hurt me. Kill me. Rape me. Probably in that order. The first time I saw a black man who wasn’t portrayed like that in the movies and television was Bill Cosby in I Spy. Even my father liked Bill Cosby! It wasn’t until I saw Will Smith, who I quite liked, that I realized I’d been brainwashed from all those movies. Mr. Smith didn’t scare me. He looked like a nice person. I had been brainwashed, and it made me angry. I didn’t hate black people, I was afraid of them. And from then on, I did my best to be ‘color blind’. Nowadays, being color blind is bad, or that’s the impression I’ve gotten. Then, being color blind meant I didn’t ‘see’ the color of their skin, I saw the person as just a person. (I actually got good at it. I remember being told: ‘You remember Debbie? The black girl.’ And it took me a while to remember Debbie was black. She was just Debbie.) Today, you should see their color, acknowledge their color, then… what? Ignore it? High five them for being black? They had no more control over them getting born black as I did being born white. If they’re a good person, they’re a good person.

I fully support the BlackLivesMatter movement. Damn, they have every right to be mad, fizzling pissed off. It’s just as dangerous today to be black in America as ever throughout history. The problem is cops are scared. Just like I was. They’re reacting in fear. It’s just got to stop. (I know, easily said, hard to do.)

But I do still have fears. These fears have built up over a lifetime. As such, I do understand where their hate is coming from. My fear hasn’t developed into hate. But my fear has developed into terror.

I grew up in a state of the US with a lot of serial killers. Men, almost always men, who abducted, raped, mutilated and dumped the bodies of women. I grew up in an environment of fear of the stranger. We were given a lot of advice on how to protect ourselves. From not leaving your window open during the night, to letting the guy rape you so he might not kill you. Don’t put your first name in the telephone book, never your address. (Even now I’m gobsmacked at the amount of transparency women give of themselves on social media. Are you fucking nuts? Why don’t you just scream ‘victim here, victim here.’ like Whoopi Goldberg in Jumping Jack Flash?)

Women were – are – targets. Soft targets. Easy to physically subdue, rape, abuse. Except for Polyana Viana who is my hero! All women should be like her. If all women could defend themselves like she did, there would be a lot less abuse.

MeToo. Oh, yes, me too. After the MeToo movement started, I made a list of all the times I’ve been catcalled, wolf whistles, molested, touched, grabbed, assaulted, propositioned, (almost) abducted, … well. I couldn’t remember every single time, as catcalls and wolf whistles were basically a daily occurrence, but the others… there were about 20 things on that list, and for weeks afterward, I remembered more and more. I’m nothing special – average pretty much. And all this stuff that happened to me, to thousands of women, it doesn’t matter if your pretty or not. Rape and molestation have nothing to do with how you look or how you’re dressed. It’s the fear of women and misogyny. It’s control. It’s assault. The weapon isn’t a gun or knife, its a penis and a fist.

So, yes, I do have fear. And a bit of prejudice, because every time I talk to a man, every time I get in a cab, or wait for a bus…if I go out at all, I have to prejudge the men around me as a threat assessment. I use prejudging as a shorthand. Not the color of their skin, not their religion, disability, scares or tattoos. Their strength…their height…their ability and opportunity to restrain me. I try to always be aware of what’s going on around me. I try to wear things that I can move in, no high heels, no tight skirts. Nothing that restrains my hands or legs. My partner goes through life like walls will move out of his way. I explained to him how I always scan my environment and he just doesn’t get it. On the one hand, he doesn’t want me going out at night, because I’m a bitty woman and some man will rape me. But on the other, I don’t need to be aware of what’s going on around me, cause I’m a sainted woman, protected by God.

So this is a prejudice I’ve noticed and I need to work on it. I know there are good men, men who would come to my assistance if I needed it. Not all men are evil, nasty, malicious persons who need to hurt you to make themselves feel better. Like my partner.