my bday just passed and i’m reminded of the me from last year, with a newborn, dealing with a narcissistic alcoholic for a finance. as I look back on the timeframe of this screenshot, I realize that at this current time he had been forming or beginning to form the relationship with the 19 year old coworker that he would go on to cheat on me with. to this day he swears up and down he didn’t cheat on me and that he wasn’t grooming her, i’m imagining things, textbook stuff. But that’s the crazy thing about abusive men; they’re poisonous and they warp and twist your reality into something that doesn’t make an ounce of sense. I mean, he had this GIRL so mind warped she was telling him to block me and go into a custody battle. Meanwhile, I’m waking up at five in the morning hallucinating washing bottles myself because he never assisted- and catching him penis fully out, PISSING on MY couch. it’s a crazy situation to be in now where we’re completely separated and living completely separate lives with our child, and he is fully capable of acting like somewhat of a normal person now. and who knows how he is behind closed doors or if he’s under the same amount of influence from alcohol as he used to be.
This may be the wrong place for this im not sure, but every single day of my life since becoming the mother to his first born child, I am constantly reminded of this teenage girls face, their text messages, the things they did, the things the alcohol made him say to me, the young boy I met at 18 years old that had so much potential to be such an good man had he only wanted enough, all of it. It’s also really twisted when i didn’t even want to live to begin with before pregnancy, he had me in the pits of hell as far as mental health goes. And now I battle not only financial struggles, but single mom struggles, self-confidence and worth, thinking about another woman receiving all the things that I begged for almost a decade for, trying to repair my mind so it’s clear for my child, all of it.
i’ve heard it time and time again: It’s my fault for choosing him. And for a long time after he shipped out for military, I didn’t. i tried for three years alone to find some sense of self, i shaved my head, got roommates. But sometimes when you’re desperate and hit really low points, you make really stupid decisions. And what was originally my last attempt at not being homeless, turned into something much more harmful. but had at least one beneficial result because I can’t imagine my life without my baby, I just wish he could’ve had a different father. I’m literally reliving my mother‘s life all over again and I’m also experiencing what my father was like for my mother at my age. while I’m 5 years old begging her just to let me seEeeE dadAAA!!! because it’s been years and I haven’t heard from him, she’s wishing she never had to be in contact with her narcissistic, alcoholic baby daddy ever again.
I’ve been gaslit by him and his whole family that I had my own part to play in him acting like this and treating me like this, and while that may be true to an extent, the one thing I’ve always consistently said to him is- there is nothing I could possibly do that could ever equate to the level of pain you have caused me with your own actions- Every single time he tried to flip the script on me and acted like I deserved to be treated like scum of the Earth. It really twists my mind to this day, and I really struggle trying to heal from it all, especially while trying to coparent with the direct cause of my detrimental depression.
I never wanna be that person that sounds like I’m placing blame elsewhere to take it off myself. But out of these scattered fragments of memories that I have of our entire relationship, only thing I could possibly think of was him finding porn on my phone earlier on in the relationship and laughing too many times at a very close male friends’ jokes. again, earlier on and both when I was around the ages of 18 and 19. as grown adults, he’ll tell you that I don’t let him live his life, and I’m always nagging him. (mind you the nagging is the mother of his firstborn child texting and calling him at two in the morning asking and begging for when he’s gonna come home and beat the dooneys down and eat some cookies with her. He was pissed that I was bothering him while he was out getting drunk and cheating on me, obviously.) As I grew so did my maturity, and once I realized that he had vices and addictions as well as very severe anger issues, the fawn response kicked in. I would cower at every argument, isolated myself from all of my friends, and I was fearful to speak to anyone of the opposite gender. I had my own feelings about porn anyways, but at the time I wasn’t in tune with myself enough to find other avenues, and I was just too scared to watch it even by myself because I felt his eyes on me at all times so i didn’t ever again past that point. (it’s also worth mentioning some actors in the specific porn video he found happen to be black men, he then went on to scream at me for not being attracted to him at all, and that I was cheating on him with black men, and that when he looks up porn, he doesn’t even look up white women that’s the last thing he would EVER look up. Just a little jab at me, duh.)
I might be rambling at this point just to get it out, but if anybody takes the time to read this, I appreciate any of that time that’s wasted looking at all this bullshit. It feels like a movie whenever I repeat any of it back to friends or family that ever asked about it, and it felt almost comical to think about it in hindsight. But that’s why I haven’t and will never be a person that blames a victim for not leaving immediately. Sometimes you’re too blinded, sometimes you have nowhere to go, and sometimes you’re absolutely terrified. I guess I might’ve been all three I don’t know. I’m lucky to have gotten out before he did anything completely physical, and i worry deeply for the next to come. i wish i could tell her