Control
It was hard getting up this morning. I still don't sleep all that well. After moving so many times, 10x now in the last 3yrs–it's hard to feel comfortable. It's hard to accept that I'm technically homeless. The correct term is "Hidden Homeless." Those of us not completely on the street, we can possibly couch-surf or stay with family, but it's not a permanent residence. After acquiring numerous properties over the course of my 20yr marriage, including a vacation home–I was purposefully made homeless after a brutal divorce. I was working at home at the time, before my business was also destroyed on purpose, but told I had "dropped out of the workforce." Next to impossible to find a place to live without a job. My business like so many other accomplishments in my life ignored and denied. Part of the web of lies and control that have become deadly–destroying just about everything in my life.
For so long, there have been so many lies. So many times I had asked questions and was given that incredulous look and told "that sounds crazy," whenever I attempted to make sense of what was going on. Even if I just wanted to clarify something someone had said. I stayed in bed a little longer this morning, thinking about my writing and what I wanted to write today. I like when I'm up early and can enjoy the sunrise. I always liked to write first thing in the morning, but lately, it's been hard. It's hard waking up and being where I am. It's hard without my things. Simple things like coffee cups, linens–using your own bathroom. It's hard waking up knowing I'm still technically homeless even though I'm staying in my mother's garage. It's extremely difficult staying with my mother again.
The control continues. It is threaded around the room I'm forced to stay in now. From the two black, plastic garbage bags of what's left of my things to a couple of broken furnishings I have that don't belong to me. It is in the way I feel. That sinking feeling in my chest, the knot in my stomach, the constriction of my movements. Thinking about the day that is before me pushes me into a sadness that if I'm not careful will overwhelm me. I have no real future now. I was told this would be the case because I had always "found a way." I was violently threatened that this time I would not find a way. All the doors locked, all the windows closed, all the escape exits closed. At the time, I didn't think much of the threat, I was still reeling from the argument that was ensuing between me and my ex-husband about how he was going to "put me on the street with nothing." That "nothing belonged to me" and this time I would not find a way! I whimpered something about how was I then suppose to get on the feet, but that was ignored. I was still trying to explain and reason with him–things I had done for years. Finding "a way" usually just meant dealing with his abuse, but this time it sounded far more sinister.
A short while later, 5-7 police officers stormed the door and slammed me down on the floor and pepper sprayed me. I had been sitting in a chair trying to take in what my ex was saying and having trouble. How could nothing be mine? He had gone into the next room and I know now was on the phone to the police. It happened so fast, he was still on the phone when they brought me through the living room. I looked at him on the phone and said something about how could he do this, as the shock continued to overtake me. I felt as if my body was jumping out of my skin and not in a way where I could control. I felt another panic attack coming on and had no idea why the police would be called, but it was to be part of so many things I didn't understand and would take years before I could put it all together–it was a lot! It was going to destroy my life and take everything I had thought about my marriage and turn it upside down.
I leave my little room and go to the bathroom in the main house. I feel shame as I pass the neighbors house next door. I wonder if they see me. I'm sure they have heard the rumors. The lies about how I had a "psychotic break" at 50 and decided to get arrested 14x. The lies about how I'm unable to live on my own, which was why I have been evicted from every apartment I have tried to get after being put on the street from the home I lived in for 20yrs–it makes the total evictions around 10 now. Then there is the most recent lie about how I'm so incompetent that I need to be "committed." After accusing me of resisting arrest, it seemed the perfect lie to add along to the other lie that I was crazy and to declare me incompetent and commit me to a psych ward for the last 4 months. Finally having all the proof they needed to show how crazy I have been for 20yrs and to align themselves with the divorce papers that read my marriage basically never existed because I had a psychic break at the beginning and was mentally ill the entire time. That basically my marriage never existed because I was crazy. That after 20yrs it becomes null and void, like a car you drive for close to 2 decades and then want to return it. It seems absurd, but that's what his "grounds" were and the Judge went along with that horrible lie, most of the time laughing and joking about how much "control" my ex had!
The shame and questions subside about the neighbors. I learned as a little girl to not let what others say bother me. We were one of the few families on welfare and had different fathers. This was unheard of way back then and certainly, in the small town, I lived in. Questions about why my 1/2 siblings had different names and how our family was setup were constant. I was often the new kid because we moved a lot, so I was used to being different and having to let it all go. I became so good at it that I was often chosen for school plays, which I enjoyed. People laughing at me and playing different "characters," didn't bother me. I usually had to improvise on my costumes also. Except for a little babysitting money I made and some Summers working for impoverished youth programs–I never had much money. I was grateful at a young age my talent for art was noticed and it was encouraged. I took ballet and when that ended, I focused on drawing and painting. I didn't think about my father too often, although I was very sad when he left when I was 5 after an awful divorce. He was a successful musician as a young man and I'm sure some of my talent came from him. My parents didn't get along. This was before parental alienation made it easier to have a relationship with both parents. I wasn't allowed to have one with my father, but I made the most of it. I had an adoring grandmother and in many ways, she made up for the loss of not having two parents.
I head back to my room and don't think too much about the tight-fisted control exerting itself again in my life. I thought once we separated it would end. I could finally be free of it. I had no idea the horror of what was to come. I had lived with it for so long and still didn't know what had kept it all together and how it so insidiously had just about choked everything out of my life. How it had moved silently and deadly for years before erupting in such violence I almost died. Each time I tried to talk about it, the concerns went nowhere. The invisible strains of something that stalked me continuously, but for most of my marriage, I had no words for it. In the beginning, I use to try to talk to others about what I was experiencing, but it went nowhere. I would get odd looks and be told that I was making a big deal out of nothing. My ex-husband was such a "great guy," everyone loved him. He had so many friends and of course a "good family." He was so charming! We went to church and no one said a bad word about him. I was making too much of things and really who was I to complain. I was a poor working girl who had met Prince Charming and should consider herself lucky–what with that poor family I came from!
The control was there from the beginning, but it was always couched in the way of being the "good wife." I had so many women to look up too. Women friends of my new husband that were the "model wives." Women who had the ultimate feminine ideals. Women who were "The good wives." All of them mothers. All of them older. All of them having already been married for a decade or more before I came along. It was always to insinuate that of course your far more the "good wife" if you have children. I was already at extreme disadvantages by first being poor, even though I had already started a successful career, and then by not having children right away. My career, of course, was never acknowledged. I was to learn as the years went by that having a "career" was different than being a mother and "working," which basically meant here in my small town being a nurse, teacher or other type of acceptable, traditional, feminine "job." Men had "careers"–women had children! Had I really understood this I would have never allowed myself to be lured home after living a decade away after college. After working, being on my own and starting a life for myself with my career, I would have understood the control that would manifest with those types of attitudes. I would have taken the women's studies classes I took in college far more seriously. I would have understood the danger, violence and control I would face. My writing to my younger self would not have to include so much violence. My life away at college was not looked at as real life. Real-life was being with family, having children and getting married. Even though my family was not traditional in that sense it didn't matter because we were poor and therefore that didn't count. Of course we were screwed-up–we were poor. I was often met with suspicion because I did well in school. Poor kids do not do well in school. We get into trouble, look for trouble and are basically looked at as trouble.
Memories from childhood circle around again like old ghosts. It's the start of November and I'm still staying in a room in my mother's garage–it's been 2 months. Having a home was one of the most important things to me when I married. I talked about it all the time. After a childhood of poverty and being on my own since I was 17, it was always a part of my goals. I had met those goals not with one home, but several, we had bought and acquired numerous properties, but in the end, none of them would be mine. Each one came with the control I had come to expect in my marriage. The control that was so deadly, but the kind of control there was no name for. The kind that if left unchecked will leave you dead. It is a control that grows worse over time. The same with other addictions. I'm learning a name for it. I'm learning words like coercive control and economic abuse. Words that I didn't have 20yrs ago. Words that can now name this ugly, horrible abuse. The danger and destruction it can cause and even death. I can talk about it now in a way that makes sense. For years I could only mumble apologies and stare at the ground after trying to "explain" it and being told it sounded "crazy." In fact, it is crazy, especially if it is all set up before you're even married.
It's crazy someone would set up a marriage to entwine you in a labyrinthine type of web where it seems like you have so much and yet it is all a house of cards right from the beginning. A sadistic sort of gamesmanship, threaded in an out of the structures that go together and make up a marriage. Things like property, money, and assets. Once a certain string is pulled the entire tapestry comes apart. The string that is held, like cards that are held, that does not belong to you even though you have equally contributed to all that went into the tapestry. Hounded for every dollar–I never did not, not contribute! In the beginning, cute phrases like I was a "working girl," I was a "career girl," and I wanted to "own a home" didn't I? were used to let me think that my work and contributions were respected, all the while continuously taking my money. I was to slowly understand my work, money and time never was respected. Those others were entitled to my contributions, but I was not going to benefit or profit from them. I was also to learn horribly my body was one of those things also. A commodity that was exploited and no allowances were going to be made. No sympathy or empathy allowed me to be exploited in such a horrible way. After 20yrs of marriage I was told "nothing was mine" and I "did nothing!" The control won again. It always won. So deadly it had a surreal reality of its own. I was not a victim of theft. Not only of my labor, time and work but of my body! This was all under the domain of "domestic." Because being a "wife" supposedly precluded me from being a human-being victimized by fraud and theft. A human-being first, a citizen and then a wife, but I wasn't even seen as a wife really, but an object, less than human. I was treated as if I had no humanity. I was told continually I was "incompetent" and had "nothing," which according to their reasoning meant I wasn't even human. A forced settlement that was decided upon, enacted by and signed by an "Adlitem," while I wasn't even present. Long-range decisions I was never even allowed to make, which included the entire fraudulent divorce.
I sat shocked in court numerous times. I liken it now to being assaulted at work and told you can't call the police because it's at work. The process is controlled by the business hierarchy at work. In a similar way because it was a marriage you can't steal from a spouse. I remember shocked when I tried to yet again "explain" to one of the forced assigned lawyers that did basically nothing for me except continually tell me to go to a "homeless shelter," that this was stealing. That I had worked my entire marriage and had contributed. I asked for a Forensic Accountant and wanted it all laid out, but I was continually ignored and called crazy, accused of being in "default" when I tried to appeal and protest and basically not even treated like a human being. Certainly not a professional woman who contributed throughout my entire marriage and had in fact just started a successful business and could, in fact, semi-retire at 50, but this was not the case. The control was threaded throughout the court process as Judge after Judge told me that my ex-husband "controlled everything." I was basically a "crazy prostitute," which the police who arrested me 14x continuously called me. The jokes were constant and nasty. The contempt palpitated each interaction. The accusations were also that basically, I was a "mentally ill tenant" whenever I tried to live in any of the properties I had worked on for 20yrs. I was violently put out of each one and evicted. I was also evicted from every apartment I tried to rent. The violence stalking me around our small town to make it look like I was crazy and incompetent. The control and violence that continues to this day post-divorce.
Landlords who fully cooperated with the abuse and control by providing no heat, constant noise harassment and ongoing false accusations about how I lived and what I was doing. It became a nightmare of continuous control that extended to a group of people my ex-husband knew that had been stalking me since the start of our marriage, some of which included family. I was slowly coming to understand this form of control–how deadly it was. I would come to know another word and that was gaslighting. I cried the first time I read the definition, finally, there was a word to describe this horrible kind of abuse. It can range from people telling you you're crazy when you try in earnest to tell them how you feel, to simple things as having someone hide your socks or cut up craft items you have stored away and wonder how they got damaged. It can be so simple that it often seems benign, but only when you have the words or are out of it can you know–can you see a pattern. Things like constant sleep deprivation. The noises at night that seem harmless, but wake you up. For years I thought I just was a light sleeper after I married. I had never had a problem before. I wouldn't really know why I woke up. I know some of the ways now. Turning the volume up on the TV, then turn it down. Once awake the house seems quiet, so why did you wake up? You spend years not knowing until you stay awake and listen. You come to know it's done on purpose. Then you struggle with the idea of why. Why would a person do this? Why would a person who supposedly loved you do this? It didn't make sense–it still doesn't, but I know how it was done on purpose. I have spent the last 3yrs understanding that as a brutal divorce was forced through and it was all covered up. The economic abuse, coercive control ignored. Once again the control allowed to continue and covered-up.
I put on my dirty clothes from the day before. I have so little money now that going to the laundry mat isn't an option on a regular basis now. I don't wish to burden my mother. She is still working at 75 and having to ask for too much makes me feel even worse. There were numerous sets of washers and dryers in our rentals and the marital home, plus I had a new set once my ex had me arrested, but like everything else, they were taken. The scheme to leave me with nothing went along like clockwork. Each step of the way plotted and schemed to leave me "homeless and destitute," which has become my reality. I have two pairs of dirty sneakers. So much was stolen as I moved 10x trying to find a stable home. Because of the constant abuse by all these landlords, I was never able to move my personal belongings into an apartment. My personal things were dumped into a storage unit when I was violently arrested out of my home initially. I was threatened numerous times my personal things in the storage unit would be auctioned off and they were. I was jailed and sent to a psych ward, which made it easy to do by denying me communication, stealing my debit card and license and basically making it so I could not post bail or get help to secure my things in storage. This was shortly after I was violently put out of our Lake home at 8pm at night. I had been trying unsuccessfully once again to get a divorce attorney to appeal, but like the other attorneys who stole money and did nothing. This one took $5,000 and when I complained, I got $2,000 from the debit company and basically the other $3,000 I paid for the lawyer to make a couple of phone calls before I was made homeless again. This time 8pm at night in a soaking wet bathing suit as I tried to wash up a bit after not having water and heat at the Lakehouse for a couple of months. Another small control to keep me having "problems" no water, no heat, and no means. I used rainwater and made do with numerous campfires. My dog and I happy to at least be at a "home" we had for over 20yrs!
I make some coffee in my little coffee pot. I have to laugh about this being the 5th one I have had to buy in the last 3yrs. All the others were stolen. It is their running joke to steal things from each apartment I live in. My things were also continually stolen out of the storage unit before it was all supposedly auctioned off, but I know it probably wasn't. I know what was so valuable now. It was 20yrs of journals chronicling the abuse. 20yrs of the coercive control and economic schemes I didn't understand. 20yrs of evidence. My writing which started out as a way to understand what was happening to me had become a source of continual derision. I did not see my writing as a form of rebellion then, but I do now. A testament to my freedom. Proof of the deception that surrounded my life, that other people knew about and had kept hidden from me. All the times, conversations and fights that never made sense. All my feelings and thoughts put on the page. All the people who knew and made up fights in the beginning and then refuse to visit. All the times I was blamed for "keeping his friends away." All the times it was done so horribly on purpose.
I start to write about it. The first time that everything has been put down on paper. The first time I thought about the abuse in my life altogether and had the answers I so desperately looked for all these years. I had been journal writing for the past 20yrs, only now writing in a more formalized way rather than just "spilling my emotions on the page," which was how I learned to write. I learned to journal writing from Julia Cameron author of the Artist's Way. She and her writing style helped me survive and has now once again helped me make sense of my life. I'm so grateful I found her all those years ago. Not only helping me to artistically recover but writing as a way to survive. "Artist Pages," becoming a way to make sense of the control. To record my feelings. To understand and respect my feelings when no one else would. My journals became friends who sheltered me from insanity. I had a place to be me and be real apart from all the lies. A way to honor the truth when everyone in my life did not. A way to describe how I felt before I knew and had a name for the abuse I was experiencing. A way before words like gaslighting was known. My hope will be for other words, more serious words that describe this horrible type of abuse.
I have written for a few hours now. I try to edit as best I can. I'm never sure how long I will be somewhere so the anxiety has to be managed. I edit as time allows. A mentor told me to just write. Julia Cameron told me the same in her wonderful books. I can or someone else can edit for me later. The thing is to get it on the page. To keep going, to keep the flow going–to connect. It's what I must do now every day. I thought I would be free of this horrible kind of abuse. Locked into a horrible maze, unable to live your life. I'm still spilling it on the page. Only now it's online. They stole the spiral notebooks I had, but for now, my words are safe online. My story continues. My fight to live my life continues. My struggle to expose this deadly form of abuse that can be so hidden. It's okay, it was her own fault, "she just fell apart at 50." I read this by my ex-husband at the psych ward. I have read similar words at our local hospital as they continue the violence. Threats of forcing me into some kind of "supervised housing" or committed. The surreal, sick games of being told a "group of people can get together and declare someone incompetent." The horror flick that has become my small town. The witch hunt that demonizes poor people, Artists, women and those who are different. Rural abuse can be deadly.
I continue to write. I continue to try and stay alive and withstand the assaults on my life, dignity and being. This is a filthy, dirty, horrible form of abuse and we need harsher penalties and punishments. Money is not just "domestic" because you are married. It is a fundamental way to provide for yourself and ensure you can access things like a safe place to live, food, clothes, and necessities. As more women pursue careers these fundamentals will move from the sphere of domestic and it is my hope move to the more serious business of finances apart from the advice I got about Marriage and Money 20yrs ago. Things like one can be a saver and one a spender and those fights are common or having "career skills" is all a woman needs later in life. Silly euphemisms that are horribly simplistic when you look back on 20yrs and count the number of hard dollars you have made and no one informed you that this money should, in fact, be seriously "Managed!" That you're not some silly housewife, but a woman who works hard and deserves to have her money given the seriousness it demands. A seriousness that after a career spanning 20yrs and making decent money she should not be living in her mother's garage. That finances should be given the seriousness they deserve. Professionals involved including tax, insurance, and lawyers should have informed me then rather than what they actually did at this point, which was to call me crazy and threaten to have me arrested. 20yrs of pay stubs should have netted me a place to call home! A place that I own!
It was hard getting up this morning. I still don't sleep all that well. After moving so many times, 10x now in the last 3yrs–it's hard to feel comfortable. It's hard to accept that I'm technically homeless. The correct term is "Hidden Homeless." Those of us not completely on the street, we can possibly couch-surf or stay with family, but it's not a permanent residence. After acquiring numerous properties over the course of my 20yr marriage, including a vacation home–I was purposefully made homeless after a brutal divorce. I was working at home at the time, before my business was also destroyed on purpose, but told I had "dropped out of the workforce." Next to impossible to find a place to live without a job. My business like so many other accomplishments in my life ignored and denied. Part of the web of lies and control that have become deadly–destroying just about everything in my life.
For so long, there have been so many lies. So many times I had asked questions and was given that incredulous look and told "that sounds crazy," whenever I attempted to make sense of what was going on. Even if I just wanted to clarify something someone had said. I stayed in bed a little longer this morning, thinking about my writing and what I wanted to write today. I like when I'm up early and can enjoy the sunrise. I always liked to write first thing in the morning, but lately, it's been hard. It's hard waking up and being where I am. It's hard without my things. Simple things like coffee cups, linens–using your own bathroom. It's hard waking up knowing I'm still technically homeless even though I'm staying in my mother's garage. It's extremely difficult staying with my mother again.
The control continues. It is threaded around the room I'm forced to stay in now. From the two black, plastic garbage bags of what's left of my things to a couple of broken furnishings I have that don't belong to me. It is in the way I feel. That sinking feeling in my chest, the knot in my stomach, the constriction of my movements. Thinking about the day that is before me pushes me into a sadness that if I'm not careful will overwhelm me. I have no real future now. I was told this would be the case because I had always "found a way." I was violently threatened that this time I would not find a way. All the doors locked, all the windows closed, all the escape exits closed. At the time, I didn't think much of the threat, I was still reeling from the argument that was ensuing between me and my ex-husband about how he was going to "put me on the street with nothing." That "nothing belonged to me" and this time I would not find a way! I whimpered something about how was I then suppose to get on the feet, but that was ignored. I was still trying to explain and reason with him–things I had done for years. Finding "a way" usually just meant dealing with his abuse, but this time it sounded far more sinister.
A short while later, 5-7 police officers stormed the door and slammed me down on the floor and pepper sprayed me. I had been sitting in a chair trying to take in what my ex was saying and having trouble. How could nothing be mine? He had gone into the next room and I know now was on the phone to the police. It happened so fast, he was still on the phone when they brought me through the living room. I looked at him on the phone and said something about how could he do this, as the shock continued to overtake me. I felt as if my body was jumping out of my skin and not in a way where I could control. I felt another panic attack coming on and had no idea why the police would be called, but it was to be part of so many things I didn't understand and would take years before I could put it all together–it was a lot! It was going to destroy my life and take everything I had thought about my marriage and turn it upside down.
I leave my little room and go to the bathroom in the main house. I feel shame as I pass the neighbors house next door. I wonder if they see me. I'm sure they have heard the rumors. The lies about how I had a "psychotic break" at 50 and decided to get arrested 14x. The lies about how I'm unable to live on my own, which was why I have been evicted from every apartment I have tried to get after being put on the street from the home I lived in for 20yrs–it makes the total evictions around 10 now. Then there is the most recent lie about how I'm so incompetent that I need to be "committed." After accusing me of resisting arrest, it seemed the perfect lie to add along to the other lie that I was crazy and to declare me incompetent and commit me to a psych ward for the last 4 months. Finally having all the proof they needed to show how crazy I have been for 20yrs and to align themselves with the divorce papers that read my marriage basically never existed because I had a psychic break at the beginning and was mentally ill the entire time. That basically my marriage never existed because I was crazy. That after 20yrs it becomes null and void, like a car you drive for close to 2 decades and then want to return it. It seems absurd, but that's what his "grounds" were and the Judge went along with that horrible lie, most of the time laughing and joking about how much "control" my ex had!
The shame and questions subside about the neighbors. I learned as a little girl to not let what others say bother me. We were one of the few families on welfare and had different fathers. This was unheard of way back then and certainly, in the small town, I lived in. Questions about why my 1/2 siblings had different names and how our family was setup were constant. I was often the new kid because we moved a lot, so I was used to being different and having to let it all go. I became so good at it that I was often chosen for school plays, which I enjoyed. People laughing at me and playing different "characters," didn't bother me. I usually had to improvise on my costumes also. Except for a little babysitting money I made and some Summers working for impoverished youth programs–I never had much money. I was grateful at a young age my talent for art was noticed and it was encouraged. I took ballet and when that ended, I focused on drawing and painting. I didn't think about my father too often, although I was very sad when he left when I was 5 after an awful divorce. He was a successful musician as a young man and I'm sure some of my talent came from him. My parents didn't get along. This was before parental alienation made it easier to have a relationship with both parents. I wasn't allowed to have one with my father, but I made the most of it. I had an adoring grandmother and in many ways, she made up for the loss of not having two parents.
I head back to my room and don't think too much about the tight-fisted control exerting itself again in my life. I thought once we separated it would end. I could finally be free of it. I had no idea the horror of what was to come. I had lived with it for so long and still didn't know what had kept it all together and how it so insidiously had just about choked everything out of my life. How it had moved silently and deadly for years before erupting in such violence I almost died. Each time I tried to talk about it, the concerns went nowhere. The invisible strains of something that stalked me continuously, but for most of my marriage, I had no words for it. In the beginning, I use to try to talk to others about what I was experiencing, but it went nowhere. I would get odd looks and be told that I was making a big deal out of nothing. My ex-husband was such a "great guy," everyone loved him. He had so many friends and of course a "good family." He was so charming! We went to church and no one said a bad word about him. I was making too much of things and really who was I to complain. I was a poor working girl who had met Prince Charming and should consider herself lucky–what with that poor family I came from!
The control was there from the beginning, but it was always couched in the way of being the "good wife." I had so many women to look up too. Women friends of my new husband that were the "model wives." Women who had the ultimate feminine ideals. Women who were "The good wives." All of them mothers. All of them older. All of them having already been married for a decade or more before I came along. It was always to insinuate that of course your far more the "good wife" if you have children. I was already at extreme disadvantages by first being poor, even though I had already started a successful career, and then by not having children right away. My career, of course, was never acknowledged. I was to learn as the years went by that having a "career" was different than being a mother and "working," which basically meant here in my small town being a nurse, teacher or other type of acceptable, traditional, feminine "job." Men had "careers"–women had children! Had I really understood this I would have never allowed myself to be lured home after living a decade away after college. After working, being on my own and starting a life for myself with my career, I would have understood the control that would manifest with those types of attitudes. I would have taken the women's studies classes I took in college far more seriously. I would have understood the danger, violence and control I would face. My writing to my younger self would not have to include so much violence. My life away at college was not looked at as real life. Real-life was being with family, having children and getting married. Even though my family was not traditional in that sense it didn't matter because we were poor and therefore that didn't count. Of course we were screwed-up–we were poor. I was often met with suspicion because I did well in school. Poor kids do not do well in school. We get into trouble, look for trouble and are basically looked at as trouble.
Memories from childhood circle around again like old ghosts. It's the start of November and I'm still staying in a room in my mother's garage–it's been 2 months. Having a home was one of the most important things to me when I married. I talked about it all the time. After a childhood of poverty and being on my own since I was 17, it was always a part of my goals. I had met those goals not with one home, but several, we had bought and acquired numerous properties, but in the end, none of them would be mine. Each one came with the control I had come to expect in my marriage. The control that was so deadly, but the kind of control there was no name for. The kind that if left unchecked will leave you dead. It is a control that grows worse over time. The same with other addictions. I'm learning a name for it. I'm learning words like coercive control and economic abuse. Words that I didn't have 20yrs ago. Words that can now name this ugly, horrible abuse. The danger and destruction it can cause and even death. I can talk about it now in a way that makes sense. For years I could only mumble apologies and stare at the ground after trying to "explain" it and being told it sounded "crazy." In fact, it is crazy, especially if it is all set up before you're even married.
It's crazy someone would set up a marriage to entwine you in a labyrinthine type of web where it seems like you have so much and yet it is all a house of cards right from the beginning. A sadistic sort of gamesmanship, threaded in an out of the structures that go together and make up a marriage. Things like property, money, and assets. Once a certain string is pulled the entire tapestry comes apart. The string that is held, like cards that are held, that does not belong to you even though you have equally contributed to all that went into the tapestry. Hounded for every dollar–I never did not, not contribute! In the beginning, cute phrases like I was a "working girl," I was a "career girl," and I wanted to "own a home" didn't I? were used to let me think that my work and contributions were respected, all the while continuously taking my money. I was to slowly understand my work, money and time never was respected. Those others were entitled to my contributions, but I was not going to benefit or profit from them. I was also to learn horribly my body was one of those things also. A commodity that was exploited and no allowances were going to be made. No sympathy or empathy allowed me to be exploited in such a horrible way. After 20yrs of marriage I was told "nothing was mine" and I "did nothing!" The control won again. It always won. So deadly it had a surreal reality of its own. I was not a victim of theft. Not only of my labor, time and work but of my body! This was all under the domain of "domestic." Because being a "wife" supposedly precluded me from being a human-being victimized by fraud and theft. A human-being first, a citizen and then a wife, but I wasn't even seen as a wife really, but an object, less than human. I was treated as if I had no humanity. I was told continually I was "incompetent" and had "nothing," which according to their reasoning meant I wasn't even human. A forced settlement that was decided upon, enacted by and signed by an "Adlitem," while I wasn't even present. Long-range decisions I was never even allowed to make, which included the entire fraudulent divorce.
I sat shocked in court numerous times. I liken it now to being assaulted at work and told you can't call the police because it's at work. The process is controlled by the business hierarchy at work. In a similar way because it was a marriage you can't steal from a spouse. I remember shocked when I tried to yet again "explain" to one of the forced assigned lawyers that did basically nothing for me except continually tell me to go to a "homeless shelter," that this was stealing. That I had worked my entire marriage and had contributed. I asked for a Forensic Accountant and wanted it all laid out, but I was continually ignored and called crazy, accused of being in "default" when I tried to appeal and protest and basically not even treated like a human being. Certainly not a professional woman who contributed throughout my entire marriage and had in fact just started a successful business and could, in fact, semi-retire at 50, but this was not the case. The control was threaded throughout the court process as Judge after Judge told me that my ex-husband "controlled everything." I was basically a "crazy prostitute," which the police who arrested me 14x continuously called me. The jokes were constant and nasty. The contempt palpitated each interaction. The accusations were also that basically, I was a "mentally ill tenant" whenever I tried to live in any of the properties I had worked on for 20yrs. I was violently put out of each one and evicted. I was also evicted from every apartment I tried to rent. The violence stalking me around our small town to make it look like I was crazy and incompetent. The control and violence that continues to this day post-divorce.
Landlords who fully cooperated with the abuse and control by providing no heat, constant noise harassment and ongoing false accusations about how I lived and what I was doing. It became a nightmare of continuous control that extended to a group of people my ex-husband knew that had been stalking me since the start of our marriage, some of which included family. I was slowly coming to understand this form of control–how deadly it was. I would come to know another word and that was gaslighting. I cried the first time I read the definition, finally, there was a word to describe this horrible kind of abuse. It can range from people telling you you're crazy when you try in earnest to tell them how you feel, to simple things as having someone hide your socks or cut up craft items you have stored away and wonder how they got damaged. It can be so simple that it often seems benign, but only when you have the words or are out of it can you know–can you see a pattern. Things like constant sleep deprivation. The noises at night that seem harmless, but wake you up. For years I thought I just was a light sleeper after I married. I had never had a problem before. I wouldn't really know why I woke up. I know some of the ways now. Turning the volume up on the TV, then turn it down. Once awake the house seems quiet, so why did you wake up? You spend years not knowing until you stay awake and listen. You come to know it's done on purpose. Then you struggle with the idea of why. Why would a person do this? Why would a person who supposedly loved you do this? It didn't make sense–it still doesn't, but I know how it was done on purpose. I have spent the last 3yrs understanding that as a brutal divorce was forced through and it was all covered up. The economic abuse, coercive control ignored. Once again the control allowed to continue and covered-up.
I put on my dirty clothes from the day before. I have so little money now that going to the laundry mat isn't an option on a regular basis now. I don't wish to burden my mother. She is still working at 75 and having to ask for too much makes me feel even worse. There were numerous sets of washers and dryers in our rentals and the marital home, plus I had a new set once my ex had me arrested, but like everything else, they were taken. The scheme to leave me with nothing went along like clockwork. Each step of the way plotted and schemed to leave me "homeless and destitute," which has become my reality. I have two pairs of dirty sneakers. So much was stolen as I moved 10x trying to find a stable home. Because of the constant abuse by all these landlords, I was never able to move my personal belongings into an apartment. My personal things were dumped into a storage unit when I was violently arrested out of my home initially. I was threatened numerous times my personal things in the storage unit would be auctioned off and they were. I was jailed and sent to a psych ward, which made it easy to do by denying me communication, stealing my debit card and license and basically making it so I could not post bail or get help to secure my things in storage. This was shortly after I was violently put out of our Lake home at 8pm at night. I had been trying unsuccessfully once again to get a divorce attorney to appeal, but like the other attorneys who stole money and did nothing. This one took $5,000 and when I complained, I got $2,000 from the debit company and basically the other $3,000 I paid for the lawyer to make a couple of phone calls before I was made homeless again. This time 8pm at night in a soaking wet bathing suit as I tried to wash up a bit after not having water and heat at the Lakehouse for a couple of months. Another small control to keep me having "problems" no water, no heat, and no means. I used rainwater and made do with numerous campfires. My dog and I happy to at least be at a "home" we had for over 20yrs!
I make some coffee in my little coffee pot. I have to laugh about this being the 5th one I have had to buy in the last 3yrs. All the others were stolen. It is their running joke to steal things from each apartment I live in. My things were also continually stolen out of the storage unit before it was all supposedly auctioned off, but I know it probably wasn't. I know what was so valuable now. It was 20yrs of journals chronicling the abuse. 20yrs of the coercive control and economic schemes I didn't understand. 20yrs of evidence. My writing which started out as a way to understand what was happening to me had become a source of continual derision. I did not see my writing as a form of rebellion then, but I do now. A testament to my freedom. Proof of the deception that surrounded my life, that other people knew about and had kept hidden from me. All the times, conversations and fights that never made sense. All my feelings and thoughts put on the page. All the people who knew and made up fights in the beginning and then refuse to visit. All the times I was blamed for "keeping his friends away." All the times it was done so horribly on purpose.
I start to write about it. The first time that everything has been put down on paper. The first time I thought about the abuse in my life altogether and had the answers I so desperately looked for all these years. I had been journal writing for the past 20yrs, only now writing in a more formalized way rather than just "spilling my emotions on the page," which was how I learned to write. I learned to journal writing from Julia Cameron author of the Artist's Way. She and her writing style helped me survive and has now once again helped me make sense of my life. I'm so grateful I found her all those years ago. Not only helping me to artistically recover but writing as a way to survive. "Artist Pages," becoming a way to make sense of the control. To record my feelings. To understand and respect my feelings when no one else would. My journals became friends who sheltered me from insanity. I had a place to be me and be real apart from all the lies. A way to honor the truth when everyone in my life did not. A way to describe how I felt before I knew and had a name for the abuse I was experiencing. A way before words like gaslighting was known. My hope will be for other words, more serious words that describe this horrible type of abuse.
I have written for a few hours now. I try to edit as best I can. I'm never sure how long I will be somewhere so the anxiety has to be managed. I edit as time allows. A mentor told me to just write. Julia Cameron told me the same in her wonderful books. I can or someone else can edit for me later. The thing is to get it on the page. To keep going, to keep the flow going–to connect. It's what I must do now every day. I thought I would be free of this horrible kind of abuse. Locked into a horrible maze, unable to live your life. I'm still spilling it on the page. Only now it's online. They stole the spiral notebooks I had, but for now, my words are safe online. My story continues. My fight to live my life continues. My struggle to expose this deadly form of abuse that can be so hidden. It's okay, it was her own fault, "she just fell apart at 50." I read this by my ex-husband at the psych ward. I have read similar words at our local hospital as they continue the violence. Threats of forcing me into some kind of "supervised housing" or committed. The surreal, sick games of being told a "group of people can get together and declare someone incompetent." The horror flick that has become my small town. The witch hunt that demonizes poor people, Artists, women and those who are different. Rural abuse can be deadly.
I continue to write. I continue to try and stay alive and withstand the assaults on my life, dignity and being. This is a filthy, dirty, horrible form of abuse and we need harsher penalties and punishments. Money is not just "domestic" because you are married. It is a fundamental way to provide for yourself and ensure you can access things like a safe place to live, food, clothes, and necessities. As more women pursue careers these fundamentals will move from the sphere of domestic and it is my hope move to the more serious business of finances apart from the advice I got about Marriage and Money 20yrs ago. Things like one can be a saver and one a spender and those fights are common or having "career skills" is all a woman needs later in life. Silly euphemisms that are horribly simplistic when you look back on 20yrs and count the number of hard dollars you have made and no one informed you that this money should, in fact, be seriously "Managed!" That you're not some silly housewife, but a woman who works hard and deserves to have her money given the seriousness it demands. A seriousness that after a career spanning 20yrs and making decent money she should not be living in her mother's garage. That finances should be given the seriousness they deserve. Professionals involved including tax, insurance, and lawyers should have informed me then rather than what they actually did at this point, which was to call me crazy and threaten to have me arrested. 20yrs of pay stubs should have netted me a place to call home! A place that I own!
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