What do you do when you love someone toxic?
Every time I speak with him, he poisons a little more of my soul. One step forward, two reeling stumbles back. I shouldn't love him. I shouldn't give him a second of my time or even a second thought. I shouldn't even speak to him.
But he calls and I answer.
Maybe today is the day he will tell me how sorry he is; how wrong he has been.
He tells me how sorry he is, just not in the way I wish. Thirty seconds, that is all I gave him. In thirty seconds he has reduced me to his whore, his obsession, his hole.
My head and my heart scream to hang up. I do and I go about my day pretending that I'm fine. In reality, I reek of shame and self-loathing. I am toxic and I fear the fumes will reveal who he has wished me to be.
I hate him. I hate what he did. I hate what he does. Yet, despite my hatred I am addicted to hope. Just one last time, one last chance. I will answer one last time. But deep inside I know what I have always known: he is never going to change. He is sick and he is toxic.
He does not love me. He loves to control me. He doesn't even love the idea of me. I have never even been "me" with him, only an object. From his mouth he spews words and phrases that should never be uttered aloud. Or to your own daughter.
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Hello darkness my old friend,
4 months ago
4 comments:
I hope for you that, through the love you have for your daughter, you will be able to excise this man from your life. You must find the strength to show her that no woman, girl, mother, human should accept such treatment. Past or present. There is a line which people cross; it makes them bad, unsalvageable, unworthy. We should not forgive and empower. Exile is too good for him. Cut him off.
We all get two chances at family life; the one we are born into and the one we make for ourselves.
My advice is to forgive him, but drop him like a hot potato, you can't move on as long as he keeps pulling you back into the past. I was so lucky, my molester died when I was in my twenties. And I think it helped me in ways I can only imagine.
English Rider: What you said in relation to my love for my daughter really resonated with me. I left her father when I was pregnant with her because of his abuse. I was determined not to raise her thinking that that is how men treat women.
Even though my daughter knows nothing of my father or the phone calls he still makes, I would be mortified if she did know. But now in thinking about it, even if I continue to hide from her what he says and does, it still affects me and in turn, that affects her. That alone gives me the most compelling reason to cut him out for good. And you are right about having two chances at family life and I cannot continue letting him influence my second chance that IS healthy and loving.
Annie Coe: He does pull me back into the past. He lives in the past and I know he wants me to do the same. The past is where he controlled me.
Thankfully he is physically no longer in the picture; the phone calls are all that is left. Well those, and the memories. I am working hard to end the power the memories have over me so it really makes more than enough sense to end all contact.
I am glad for you that your abuser died and that it helped you move on. I suppose the healthy approach I could take is to treat him as dead to me...
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