Normalcy

There was not a single moment of happiness that I can recall. Instead, there were many events in which I had to talk myself into loving the man and giving up all sense of normalcy. That’s quite a word, normalcy - the condition of being normal; the state of being usual, typical, or expected. I certainly expected love, although I am not sure why. I do not think I knew what “normal” was. When you don’t know what normal is, those who walk around with cracks in their souls will use you as their punching bag to ease their own pain - and you will find yourself scrambling to keep your universe together, in the name of normalcy. That was my life with the father of my daughter - a life I escaped with my then 3 year old child after 4 years of emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse - who has never ceased to torment me to date.

I was blamed for everything. I am still blamed for everything. He isolated me from his friends and family by fabricating stories and hardly ever taking me to visit with them. He lied more often than I ever realized then, and he often threatened me with some sort of punishment for not doing exactly what he wanted me to do. He once told me he was going to call the police and make up a story about me so that they would hopefully arrest me, and I would "at least" - he hoped - lose my job with the federal agency I contracted with and my security clearance necessary for that job, while they investigated me. An abuser will always throw threats your way, even if they are ridiculous. Because the more you hear them, the more likely you are to start believing them. He had done some research on how to get someone deported a couple of years prior to this particular threat, and had kept a file named “Reasons for deportation” on his Mac Book Pro. I was a legal resident. He had found out that if any legal resident was to commit a crime, their green card could be revoked and they could be deported. The crime, of course, had to be major, involving perhaps drugs or even murder. He figured - and told me - that if he made up a story about drugs he could rid of me and steal my child from me. On the same breath he clearly stated that he would get the help of his two police officer nephews in California, and I would go “down” like the “b*tch and ho*” he thought I was. Yes, he believed I was that, and when I was maybe four months pregnant he told me “women are b*tches and ho*s”. A couple of years later he said to have been quoting a rap song, as if that changed the meaning and the intention behind the words he said to me as the future mother of his daughter. Words that insulted not just me, but his unborn child - since she is also a girl.

He also forced me to be intimate with him by telling me that if I didn't give him "what he needed" I would be kicked out and separated from my child. When I cried, he said I was crying because I had a lover somewhere even though he had beaten my soul to death - as if I didn't have any reason to cry after he was done using my body. There were regular insults flying at me, and different gas lighting games where he pretended he hadn't set an argument in motion, always placing blame on me. And there were the mental health diagnosis he would try to embed on me - he said I was a bipolar, sociopath, psychopath, schizophrenic, and narcissist, all while claiming to have done his research and finding out that I completely fit the profile. He also said I was evil, and that nobody knew me, which meant that those who loved me would not love me if they actually "knew" me - even my own mother, he said. This went on for most of the relationship, and I finally sought advise from a therapist because I had started to believe I was insane, mortified by his words. The therapist assured me I was not to worry, and that I needed to exit that situation along with my child, which was the same thing the police said to me after I reported that he had placed motion activated cameras in the home to record me while he was at work, had showed me a video of me speaking on the phone, and asked me who I was talking to.

Never allow anybody to insult you in any capacity. People will often tell you who they are early in the game. Fear had already settled in my heart by then and I didn’t run with my pregnant belly in tow like I should have. Almost four years later that man has not stopped diminishing me one bit. They never do.

This man used each and every single one of my weaknesses against me. He carefully collected the information I so willingly shared with him in my own fantasy world - the world where I convinced myself that I needed him because he said he loved me, and I was still in search of that someone who loved me - and then proceeded to take all the pieces apart. I don’t know when he did it, when he started. All I know is that he remains the one most awful thing I ever allowed to happen to me.

The very first time I ever realized that life doesn’t always - if ever - pan out the way one may expect it to was when my father died of cancer at age 53. I was 27 and I might as well have been 10, because I could not understand how it was possible to lose your father before I ever even had a chance to really mess up my life.

I didn’t get to run to him with my grown up questions. I didn’t get to have him witness my fight against all odds. I didn’t get to seek shelter in his wisdom and his voice, when other men turned out to be less that what I had anticipated they would be. He never visited my home in the States, or saw me get married, or held his granddaughter after I gave birth. All my life I had a Dad I could rely on, even when we argued and he didn’t speak to me, and all of a sudden he was not there anymore. I honestly didn’t think that was possible. It is quite ridiculous, actually. People lose people all the time, at all ages. But when it happens to you? That’s when you truly know what you are made of, and what grief really is all about. I was apparently made of sky and anticipation, of loss and butterflies in the belly. A unicorn that never felt magical, diminished by a world and a need she felt she could never attain. Love, if sought in all the wrong places, can leave you with all the wrong answers. But there truly is a God, and eventually I made my way back to Him. It changed me completely. I learned that being loved is not nearly as important as being known. And He knows me, which makes Him love me too. A man that loves you will also know you first.

The difference between my father and my daughter's father, however, was and is clear to me. My father wanted to love me and protect me - like the God that made me and gives me the living breath in my lungs. And he wanted me to thrive, just like God does. The wounded man that hurt me wanted only to do just the opposite. A loveless soul can't produce love, because it can never take the time to get to know you well enough to understand and cherish you. In a time such as today’s, when women are finally raising hell and their voices to denounce the evil inflicted upon us as a group and as individuals, I am here to tell you to stand up, and to never sit down for as long as there is a man that feels entitled and empowered to diminish any of us. Our normalcy can’t possibly be defined by the abuse of some men over us.

Gather your strengths and know that the God of the mountains will walk with you through the valley that is your life, until all injustice and all trauma is left buried in a past that no longer will need to be revisited - and until you are at the top of His mountain, shouting with unstopable joy to all who listen.

Your normalcy is His love. The love of a Father who saw you being formed and knew exactly what you would get into in your life, and YET chose YOU. Take that love - and watch your self worth grow like the flowers in Spring.

May God bless your hearts.

PSALM 139:1-24

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!

2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from afar.

3 You search out my path and my lying down

and are acquainted with all my ways.

4 Even before a word is on my tongue,

behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.

5 You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is high; I cannot attain it.

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?

Or where shall I flee from your presence?

8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!

If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

9 If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

10 even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light about me be night,”

12 even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is bright as the day,

for darkness is as light with you.

13 For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

15 My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.

I awake, and I am still with you.

19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!

O men of blood, depart from me!

20 They speak against you with malicious intent;

your enemies take your name in vain.

21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?

And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

22 I hate them with complete hatred;

I count them my enemies.

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!

Try me and know my thoughts!

24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting!