Jack showed up in my chat room #Leather_and_Roses two nights ago. As soon as I saw his nick I was shocked and scared. He said he only came in to see if all of us were okay "what with all the storms and such". But my initial response to that statement from him was complete disbelief. I actually asked him more than once why he was there, though his answer did not change. I just couldn't shake the feeling that he must have some ulterior motive for showing up. I really do not like feeling that way. It bothers me to feel wary of someone, always waiting for the other shoe to fall and exerting extreme amounts of energy to be damn sure that every thing I say or do is non-offensive or gives him (hopefully) no excuse to get angry with me. It angered me to feel myself slipping right back into that same mental state that I lived in for so long. It scared me at how easy it was to do it too.
I have worked so hard in the past 4 years to undo all the damage that was done, to replace all the negatives with, at the very least, a more balanced viewpoint or, better yet, a positive. And when he shows up without warning, for the first 15 minutes or so it felt as if much of that work was erased.
Part of me really would like to believe that he has changed. That he has no ulterior motives in coming to LnR. But that self-protective part of me just can't believe that completely. Which is probably a good thing because it may prevent me from doing something stupid like actually trusting him again in any way beyond casual acquaintance.
I decided that maybe the best way to deal with my fear was to face him and deal with him rather than just kick him out of channel and hide from him. We now live thousands of miles apart, so the possibility of him being able to harm me easily is a very slim one. And despite everything that happened between us, I just can't envision him taking such a long drive just to come yell at me or try to hurt me.
I had bad dreams that night and last night as well. Dreams where I was still living in his house, as his slave (victim). I was totally devoid of emotion other than fear. In one of the dreams I actually sat there while he screamed insults and obscenities in my face for a mistake I did not make. In another I re-lived that day where he literally punished me so frequently that by 4 or 5 in the afternoon I was afraid to breathe. I woke up shaking and scared. I actually had to go walk through the house to reassure myself that he was not there. I felt so stupid for doing that. I do not understand why his showing up like that managed to unsettle me so badly. I got mad at myself and kept telling myself its been four years, this shouldn't be bothering me this badly anymore.
Until he showed up, it hadn't been bothering me much at all anymore. I have finally begun to write again. I still have to struggle against the belief that I'll be punished for wasting my time writing, but it isn't so strong that I get writer's block anymore. I managed to write an entire article entitled "The Value Of A Slave". Its a good article too.
I have made a great deal of progress in the past 4 years. What helped the most was the patience, understanding and constant support of my husband. I know I would not have made this much progress if I did not have him in my life. But with Jack in channel it felt like all that progress was nothing but a mirage, a joke..Totally unreal.
Maybe this was God's way of reminding me how easily a survivor of abuse can become a victim all over again. How easy it is to fall back into those same behavior patterns that a victim uses to survive the abuse in the first place. Those same behaviors that the victim uses to try and be invisible to their abuser so they won't be screamed at, physically assaulted or whatever form the abuse takes in that relationship. In my relationship with Jack it never reached a point of physical abuse and I still believe that if I had engaged in an s/m scene with him during my last two weeks there, that he would have used the cover of a "scene" to physically beat me into staying with him. Everything else had already been tried and failed; all those things that had worked at least once (and more than once in many cases) did not work in those last few weeks. After each method failed, he started really pushing for a scene and I kept coming up with excuse after excuse for not having one.
I kept reminding myself that the dreams were just that, dreams. And that the fears were nothing but ghosts that can't really harm me. I kept mentally listing all the ways that I know I have gotten better in an attempt to convince myself that I was no longer the trainwreck that I had become by June of 2000.
When the intensity of the shock and fear wore off a bit, I talked to Jack. In open channel I told him that I was still afraid of him, that I did not trust him at all, and that I was not comfortable with him being in LnR. I also told him flat out that the only reason I will allow him to continue to come in is that I think it might help me to finally get over my fear of him completely. I did engage in a polite, almost friendly, conversation with him. He updated me on customers that I had known who had passed on. He was telling me about how many bee jobs he has been doing. Once the shock wore off and the fear calmed down a little, I was even able to almost enjoy the conversation. One of my worst faults is that I am too willing to give people second chances even when I probably shouldn't.
After many set backs, mistakes, emotional fall outs and psychological explosions I have finally managed to submit again. Not to Jack, of course, but to my husband/master. He is the most patient, considerate and loving man I have ever known. He chose to move very slowly with me, taking it one step at a time and not increasing the intensity of the power exchange until he felt completely sure that I was ready for it. A few times I did push him into moving forward before he felt completely sure that I was ready, and it blew up in our faces. Because of those times he very quickly learned to trust only his own instincts in this area, rather than let himself be swayed by my impassioned pleas that we move forward. It took me a while to realize that he was right and that going very slowly really was the best way to do it. Part of me wanted to push it too far too fast out of anger and denial. I was, and still am to a certain degree, so pissed that I had been stupid enough to be in an abusive relationship again in the first place that I wanted to just erase it from my mind and act like it never happened. Needless to say that failed, and worse than it just failing it caused me to lose some of the ground I had gained until that point. I was also against going slowly because I just did not want to accept that I had been abused again. Denial is still a very powerful force, even for someone who knows it exists, knows the signs of it, it can still play a major role in how they deal with their issues.
I still find fault with myself much faster than I used to, but not as fast as I did even 6 months ago. I still go through periods of time where I expect my husband to respond the way Jack did in similar situations. Like if one of the kids does something wrong, I still occasionally fear that he will blame me or punish me for it. I know this is because Jack often punished me for mistakes that other people made.
It has taken four years but I have finally managed to be able to submit naturally, without having to force myself to do it. Of course I still fear how vulnerable this makes me and sometimes this fear causes me to respond in a self-protective manner without provocation from my husband. But I am grateful that those instances are becoming less frequent as time goes on.
I have finally reached the point where I can honestly say I trust my husband to not only know the right way of dealing with me and my baggage, but to also be able to trust that he will act appropriately and follow through on his instincts.
I read somewhere once, or maybe it was something someone said to me (I'm not certain which it is) that for every year a person lives in an abusive situation it can take at least 2 years (if not more) to heal from that single year of abuse. When I first heard that I scoffed at it, mostly because I did not want to believe that I had stupidly allowed someone to screw me up that severely again. But I've reached a point now where I not only believe that to be a fairly accurate statement, but have also accepted it and am willing to let the healing process take however long it needs in order to heal properly.
Too many times in the past four years I fooled myself into thinking I was better than I really was, only to have it come crashing down around me and hurting not only myself but those who love me most in the process. For that I feel guilty. But I finally learned that I can't force myself to be "all better" by pretending or ignoring the effects that are still there. So now I work through them as they come up no matter how long that takes.
Well it is late, so I'm going to stop for now.
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