Fraudster; This is the word that keeps swirling through my mind like debris caught in a churning wave upon the beach. I want to put it down and reject it. I don’t even understand why the thought is there. It keeps bubbling to the surface making me wonder if others see me as a fraud. As a person pretending to be something when they are nothing, an artist when I am a broken person playing in the paint, as a singer when I am singing to give myself a voice, or as a mother when I feel like a failure for choosing an abuser to father my children.
The truth is, deep down I’m terrified of being known, of not being believed, or heard or protected. These feelings come from deep down, a reservoir of past unresolved thoughts that have yet to find a place to rest. One traumatic memory seemed to cement this belief. I can't get it out of my head. I am voicing it to stop the power over me.
It was a cool Friday night, November 9th. I was planning a romantic date night with my then husband. I arranged for all three kids to stay overnight with friends and family members. We had just dropped the youngest off and we were going to make a quick pit stop at the church to pick up my sweater. Bill was in a cheery mood and we both seemed to be looking forward to a romantic evening with no kids. I hopped out of the vehicle and ran inside. Moments later I was leaving the church when a stranger held the door for me. I turned and said, “Thank you”. That was a big mistake that forever changed my life.
I climbed into the passenger side of the vehicle and immediately felt the tension building. The look in Bill’s eye told me I was in trouble. What had I done? I shouldn’t have made eye contact with the stranger, or maybe I shouldn’t have spoken?
He drove away with a rage consuming him. Within seconds he was screaming at me. “How dare I speak to a man, how dare I….” His driving became more and more erratic. I clung to the side of the vehicle, as he repeatedly pretended that he would crash, swerving wildly as we drove.
I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do. If I answered his questions he’d use every word I said against me. If I was silent, he would accuse me of not answering. If I cried he’d get angrier. The moment we reached the house. I jumped out of the van and ran inside locking myself into the laundry room, afraid he'd hurt me like so many times before..
He was banging violently on the door, he wouldn’t stop. He kept crashing and crashing until the wood split and the door broke in. He grabbed me but I fought to get away. I struggled and fought to escape. I ran around the baby grand piano as he grabbed me again. I lay on the floor clinging to the leg of the piano, pleading for him to stop. He had my legs and was dragging me across the carpet. I couldn’t hold on. My fingers slipped and I felt the carpet burning my skin as he dragged me across the floor. He yanked me to my feet and began pulling me up the stairs to our bedroom.
I didn’t know what would happen yet. Would he rape me again like in other moment's of rage? I was trying to do everything "right" to make sure he wouldn't. I didn’t know and it didn’t matter because I couldn’t escape no matter how hard I tried.
As he pulled me up the stairs, His hands dug deep into my arms. His yelling and taunting had not stopped for even a moment since we’d left the church. We reached the top the stairs and I tried to beg him once more to stop. He grabbed me and began smashing the back of my head repeatedly into the door frame of the bathroom. I felt like my head would explode, powerless to make him stop.
“You are doing this to yourself, he told me over and over. This is your fault. You are the one who made me so angry.” he screamed as my head became woozy, and damp with blood.
He swiftly shoved me into the bedroom. I cowered on the head of the bed, trying to make myself as small as possible. I stayed in that spot for the next several hours as he continued to rage and scream. He told me I was a bad wife that I make him angry, that I am a worthless piece of shit. No one else would love me but him. He is the only one who would even consider loving me because I am so worthless. I felt ashamed. I loved him so fiercely and yet he told me this was the only measure of love I would ever deserve.
At that moment, I didn’t understand what I had done. I wanted to be a good wife. I tried so hard to do all the right things, to be supportive and kind, to never show disrespect, to always keep things perfect. It was not enough at that moment because I realized even my best will be a failure in his eyes.
I wondered, is going to be the night I die as his taunts of killing me intensified? The terror coursing through me was more than I could bear. I needed to escape, I needed to find a way to live. He wouldn't stop trying to convince me of how worthless I am.
“You are right", I pleaded with him. " You are completely right. It’s all my fault. I am nothing, I agree.” He heard me, for the first time. His fists were still shaking at me but he took a single step back. This was my chance, I told myself. I thought, Keep agreeing with everything he says and if he takes one more step back I will be able to leap under his arm and run.
“ I’m so sorry,” I pleaded. “I shouldn’t have made you so jealous and angry. You deserve a better wife”. I believed my own words. He kept yelling but took a second step back. That moment plays in slow motion in my head but in reality, I lept off the bed as quick as I could and ducked beneath his arm, racing as a fast as I could. He ran after me screaming as I ran down the stairs towards the front door, telling me I will never get away alive.
I grabbed the van keys off the little table by the door and tried to slam the front door behind me. But his arm was reaching through, trying to grab me. I was hysterical! I jumped into the van and locked the doors. My heart was pounding so hard that I felt like it would come out of my chest. I felt sheer terror inside of me as If the blood in my veins were on fire.
He continued raging, and told me, “You will have to kill me to escape.” He lay down under the back wheels of the van. “Go ahead,” he yelled, “kill me, I dare you!” Laying there, he kept taunting. I lept into the back seat, to see where he was and cried with a cry that sounded more like a strangled animal. He was making me choose between killing him and letting myself be killed.
I begged, “please stop, please let me go.”I felt like an animal trapped in a cage with no escape. It seemed like an eternity passed. Then I saw him get up. He began angrily banging on the driver side window with his fists.
Realizing he was no longer under the back tires, I scrambled through the van racing to get to the driver seat. As I lunged for the seat, I saw him grab a blue metal baseball bat. I was terrified! Fumbling, I started the ignition. In horror, I watched as he drew back the bat and took aim. I imagined the windshield shattering in my face and then the bat smashing through my skull. Somehow, I put the van in reverse, He swung at the windshield just as I hit the gas and lurched out of the carport. He missed, just....!
He chased after me with the bat in his hand as I drove away. I was crying so hard that I couldn’t see the road. I couldn’t see anything except for the cruel look in his eyes as he drew that bat. I believed at that moment that if I hadn't gotten away I would have been killed. I drove a few blocks away and parked.
The rain was coming down hard, and I realized I needed wipers on, it wasn’t just my tears that were blinding me. I couldn’t think. My mind was all a jumble. I looked at the clock. It was half past 11 pm. We’d gotten home at 6:30. Tonight’s rage had lasted five hours. I wept uncontrollably wondering how I had failed so badly. I sat shivering in the van, which had no heater and I realized I couldn’t just stay on the side of the road. Where I could go? I wondered. Just then I remembered my friend, Michelle, writing on Facebook that she was so bored and lonely because her husband and boys were out of town. Not knowing what else to do I drove to her house and collapsed on her doorstep. I had nothing left in me, no fight, and no life. I was numb and cold and scared.
I was horrified at the idea of telling anyone the secret I had kept for so long. If they knew how angry I made him, they would know I was a fraud. Now they would know what a failure I was, that I was nothing but a fraud, a woman who infuriated her husband by constantly breaching one of a million unspoken rules.
I tried to tell Michelle a little bit of why I was there. I had no more tears. I was like a zombie talking, completely detached, completely numb. She asked questions, too many questions. Then, she said the strangest and most horrifying thing to me. She said, “This is abuse!” I felt my pulse quicken as my mind did summersaults.” No, I couldn’t be abused! When I got married I had promised myself that I would never be abused again. I shook my head and argued in a whimper, “No, No no, no it can’t be. I’m not abused, I just make him angry. I’m not a good enough wife.” There, I had admitted it to someone.
“Abuse” was the sexual acts committed against me as a child. This couldn’t be "abuse". I was angry inside and confused but not angry with him. I was angry with me. How could I let this happen? How did it get so bad? Why didn’t I notice before? What’s wrong with me that makes him so angry? Maybe if I could just be better, he wouldn’t get so angry.
Michelle made a bed for me to stay the night. In the morning I felt so foolish. It wasn’t a big deal. My in-laws called me on my cell phone. I answered. It was Bill’s dad. He asked where I was. He said Bill was worried because I’d run off. Then he asked the pivotal question. “Did he hit you?” I was confused for a moment as I replayed the night. “No, I answered, he never hit me.” That was the truth. I wasn’t hit, so I wasn’t abused. Right? Maybe I was just being emotional and over sensitive. “ Go home then,” he said.
Then I heard Michelle in the other room on the phone. She was speaking to the church pastor. She told him what had happened. He told me to go home and "make-up" with my husband. So, believing I was a failure as a wife, I did. I went home and blocked it out as best as possible. I picked up the kids, cleaned the mess and tried to forget what a disaster I’d caused.
A few days later, the pastor met with me. He asked me to stand before the church and apologize. I stood in a blur, not understanding. I didn’t know what I had done. He said I hadn’t been honest with anyone including myself and I was wearing masks. I didn’t understand. I didn’t feel I had a choice but to submit to the pastor after all that is what good Christian girls do right? Bill stood by my side as I said what the pastor had directed me to say. I was told to say how I was hurting my marriage and that I needed to repent.
I was telling everyone what a fraud I was, only it wasn’t me talking. I was an empty shadow on a stage with strange words coming out of my mouth.
Now… Writing these words, shaking, sobbing, and then sinking into numbness…. I know now that this was abuse. I know its not as bad as many women who are victimized. Physically, I only had some rugburn and a small wound in my hair attached to a swollen lump. I'm sure lots of people would think this was no big deal, but it feels like a really big deal in my heart. I know now that I am not responsible for what Bill did to me that night or all the painful nights before that one. (most of which I can't remember) I am also not responsible for the spiritual/ emotional abuse I experienced by that corrupt pastor who I believe God will judge one day.
I look back and hate myself for going home the next day because I was blindly walking into more pain and terror. I want to scream at myself to stop as if I could somehow change the memory but I can’t. I suppose it's true that I made the choices I was trained to make, to submit, to be forgiving, to obey.
Yet despite knowing that I am not to blame for what he did to me that night, I still feel like the fraud. I know that I am truly loved by my husband, my children, and my friends, yet I feel worthless inside, and a part of me feels like they will eventually find out the truth of my worth.
I am trying to convince myself that it is a lie I’ve been told. I tell myself, I have lots of skills, I am smart and creative, and I’m a loving mother and wife, and friend. So why can’t I shake the feeling that I’ll be found out?
A wise woman told me to counsel myself so here goes. If I counseled myself I'd probably say:
“Kirsten. You are not what you feel. It’s time to stop letting Bill and others choose your worth. You are, who you truly are, and only you can decide each day who that is going to be. So who do you choose to be? A fraud. No, you choose to be authentic, honest, loyal, kind…….You.”
hmmm. I guess that was good advice...
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