I spent some time the other day rereading some of the journal entries that I wrote during my relationship with Edward. I won’t lie: I felt pretty sick to my stomach afterwards. I feel sorry for that girl that I was. I wish I could go back and give her some sound advice…not that I would expect her to listen to me.

The following is a paraphrased and edited version of one such journal entry:

 

 

Edward and I had been out running errands together all afternoon. It was a warm summer day, so on our way back to my place, we made one last stop to grab smoothies. We left the smoothie place and were pulling into the shopping center in front of my apartment complex when we found that there had been a fender-bender in the lane we needed to take.

Edward was always his worst self when he was driving in traffic. All control of his tongue and temper would go completely by the wayside. And I hated driving with him when he was upset. It was always disconcerting, and sometimes it was just downright scary. My only hope of preventing the anger he was directing at the “stupid” drivers around him from being redirected at me was to keep as quiet as possible and pray that he didn’t find any reason to take notice of me. But the A/C was blowing hard on my bare arms and legs, and with my smoothie cooling down my insides too, I was getting very chilly. So I adopted a nonchalant, soothing tone that didn’t match my actual inner trepidation and spoke up.

“Would you like to roll down the windows and turn off the A/C?” I asked.

He responded with only a scoff.

“It’s just–I’m getting chilly. But you don’t have to roll down the windows if you don’t want to.”

He rolled them down and said with disdain, “You’ll be hot again in two minutes.”

Okay. Whatever. I let it roll off my back. Traffic was pissing him off and making him get short-tempered. I could be understanding.

Several long, traffic-laden minutes later, we were finally approaching our turn. I said, “We should stop by Blockbuster and get those movies we were wanting. I can get them.”

He had the music blaring loudly and was facing forward, so when he said something back, I couldn’t understand him.

Anytime Edward said something that I couldn’t understand, prompting me to ask him to repeat himself, he inevitably would respond harshly. It always made me regret asking him to clarify in the first place. Over time, though, I got pretty good at knowing what to expect.

 

The Three Hazardous Steps of Asking Edward to Repeat Himself:

Step 1: I adopted the practice of first asking myself whether or not it seemed like what he had said was important or might come up later. And if I decided I could probably live without knowing, I just wouldn’t ask. (Truthfully, it was a gamble either way.)

Step 2*: If I did decide to ask him to repeat it, he would always repeat it at exactly the same volume, though with clear frustration running through his voice this time. The background noise would generally still be the same, too, which meant that I was often still unable to understand what he was saying.

Step 3: If I went so far as to ask him to repeat himself a third time, I would already be cringing internally. Because knowing the hurtful thing that’s coming doesn’t make it any less hurtful when it comes. He would then repeat it a third time at a drastically increased volume just a few notches below yelling, using his “how-could-you-not-understand-me-the-first-time-you-moron” tone of voice.

*Alternative Step 2: Sometimes, when he was already irritated, he would completely skip the regular second step of slightly annoyed indifference and jump right to the third step of full on frustration.

 

I sensed that this was an Alternative Step 2 sort of situation, so I decided to not even try to discover what he had said.

We got to where we would have needed to turn to go to Blockbuster, and he went right past it. Confused, I asked, “Are we not going to Blockbuster?”

“NO! You just said!”

There it was. That tone of voice. That tone that so clearly pegged me for an obvious idiot. I was wounded, but I did not respond angrily. I was resigned to be meek and not be an instigator. Oooooh! I thought. That must be what he mumbled—that we could do it later or something.

Out loud I said, “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you. I couldn’t understand.”

“You just said that you would go get it, not two seconds ago.” He retorted.

Oooooh! I thought again. When I said, “I’ll get it” he thought I was saying that I would go get it. I had just meant that I would pick up the tab for it if we went right then. What a misunderstanding! It was important to me that he knew I hadn’t lamely forgotten my own words spoken not a minute earlier and that we’d just had a miscommunication. So I spoke up.

“No no, I meant that I would pay for it, not that I would go get. I mean, I don’t mind doing that. I just thought we could go ahead and do it while we’re out now since it’s not far from here.”

“I have to be to work in an hour and a half! Can’t you just do it while I’m at work? I mean, what else do you have to do?”

I allowed the implication that I had nothing productive to do with my time while he was away to pass without comment. “Well, I have plans to go hang out with your sisters…But I can pick up the movies on my way out.” I said, still trying to appease his already flared temper. “…But I thought that maybe we would want to watch part of one of the movies before you left for work. I mean, we don’t have any other plans for the next hour and a half, so it just seemed like a good option.”

He immediately began to clearly lay out for me why it was such a dumb idea for us to start a movie when we knew we wouldn’t have time to finish it—even though we’d done that very thing a few times before…when it had been his idea. Then, he started detailing all the reasons why it was a much better idea for me to pick up the movies while he was at work than for us to go get them now.

While he was talking, all I could think was, How did we get here? All I had tried to do was explain that we’d had a miscommunication. I wasn’t trying to argue the wisdom of me getting them on my own later. I wasn’t trying to peg him as a loser for misunderstanding me. I didn’t even mind going out to get them myself later. But I did mind when he turned it into a tear down match by saying sarcastic things like, “I’m sorry I didn’t interpret your meaning correctly.”

He kept insisting that I had said I would “go get them.” When I corrected him that I’d only said I would “get them,” he scoffed at how insignificant the lack of the word “go” was. He used this opportunity to point out to me—as he often did—all the ways in which I was a bad communicator. I just wanted us to agree that we’d misunderstood each other and to be given the chance to explain what I had been trying to say. That’s it.

But what actually happened was much more complicated and painful than that.

As he was carefully detailing for me the myriad reasons why it was better for me to go get the movies on my own later, after about Reason #4 I threw my hands up and said, “Fine! It’s fine! I don’t care, let’s drop it.” My patience had finally been exhausted.

“I’m just trying to explain why I think that’s a better idea! Why don’t you just listen to my reasons instead of interrupting me and telling me that you don’t care?!”

I retreated into silence the rest of the way home. Back at the apartment, I grabbed my book and went immediately to the bedroom to read. I was so hurt. How could he have treated me like that and talked to me like that? But I was done fighting. I just wanted to withdraw into peace and quiet where I could lick my wounds and regain some of my equilibrium.

Oh but Eddie had other plans.

As I was in the bedroom stewing over what had just transpired, he came in and demanded, “Why do you always do this?”

Truly bewildered, I said, “Do what? Be hurt?”

Then he started talking about how I treat him so “disrespectfully” and never consider his feelings. I was taken aback. Those were precisely the things I was so hurt about!

As we argued, my voice grew louder and louder in volume and higher and higher in pitch, while his became stiller and quieter. I was officially the hysterical half of our pair. Every point I tried to make and every opinion I attempted to offer got shot down, twisted, thrown back in my face, and invalidated. I finally saw that we were both just determined to “win.” Except that for me, “winning” meant feeling sure that we both felt understood and valued and had agreed upon a fair solution. I don’t know what it meant for Edward, but I would bet money that in the heat of that argument, his idea of winning was vastly different from mine.

At the edge of pure hysteria, I begged him to stop, to please drop it right now, and we would talk about it later when we were both calmer. I could see that every little thing we said only made things worse and escalated the situation.

His response?

Silence.

Then, with ice in his voice, he quietly said, “I’m gonna go to work, and I’m not coming back.”

“Why?!” I wailed. “Why would you do that?!”

“Because that’s exactly what you’re doing. Running away from the situation.”

I insisted through my tears and sobs that I wasn’t running away! I just wanted us to wait to talk about it until we were both calmer so that we might actually have a productive conversation. Finally, seeing that my pleas were getting me nowhere, I retreated out onto the patio to sob to my heart’s content.

Out there, I cried out to God. “I don’t understand! How was I disrespectful? I was trying so hard, and it still turned into this! How, God? How?” I decided that, without being in my head to understand my build up of feelings, Edward could have felt disrespected when I interrupted him in the car and told him to just drop it. But before that? I’d been so careful! I couldn’t think of anything. But that doesn’t mean I hadn’t said something unintentionally that may have hurt him without my even realizing it. So I went back inside. He was lying on his back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Like a child apologizing to a parent with the hope of not receiving further punishment, I recited, “I’m sorry if I treated you disrespectfully at any point. It was not my intention. And I’m sorry for the miscommunication.” I retreated once more to the patio.

It was some time after that when he opened the patio door and stood there for a good 30 seconds without speaking a word. Finally, with no expression on his face and in a flat tone, he said, “I’m sorry for getting upset with you.”

When I finally lifted my eyes to meet his, I just nodded and said, “Okay.”

He leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. “I love you,” he said. I just nodded again in response. Then, he shut the patio door and left for work.

While he was at work that evening, he texted me to say that he wanted to have some friends over to hang out at the apartment that night. I struggled with not wanting to anger him by saying no and with not wanting to have to pretend like things were ok around his friends when they certainly were not. I considered just packing up as many of my belongings as I could and going to my parents’ house five hours away for a while. But I knew that such a sudden, unplanned trip would cause me to lose my job, my only source of income, and then I really would be running away, just as he had already accused me of doing.

 

 

The last thing I wrote in this journal entry was: “I don’t want to choose to keep walking down this path of hate-filled words and hot tempers. But I feel powerless to stop it. I can only control myself, and even then, only for so long.”

 

 

I would like to be able to say that this story took place after Edward and I had already gotten married. I would like to be able to say that I would never have knowingly gone on to marry a man who could have treated me this way. The unfortunate truth, however, is that this happened just one month before we got married. And it is merely one example of many such conflicts that we had both while we dated and after we got married.

It’s true when they say that we accept the love that we think we deserve. When you already feel pretty bad about yourself, as I did in my early twenties, and then you find yourself isolated in a relationship with someone who also tells you why you should feel bad about yourself…well, it’s hard not to buy into a perspective that’s coming at you from within and without.

As painful as they are to read, I’m grateful that I have some of these specific events recorded in my journal entries. As the years have passed since my divorce, I’ve begun to notice some gaps in my memory. There are whole periods of time, and one 3 week period in particular, which I distinctly remember as being horribly painful. Yet I can specifically recall mostly just the things that I recorded in my journal during those periods. Everything else is like a muddled Pain Fog in my brain. I find myself wondering if, in the aftermath of living in what was essentially an emotional war zone, this Pain Fog that developed over some of the worst parts was my psyche’s way of protecting itself from what happened back there when I had no other protection. Perhaps the Pain Fog clouding those periods of time will clear up someday, and I’ll be able to tell those stories with the same clarity of detail that I was able to tell this one. Or perhaps I’ll never fully remember them.

Honestly, I’m not really sure which is better.

I’d like to leave you with a few words on a topic I’ve been mulling over a great deal lately: hope. Hope is an odd thing. It can be like an elusive wisp of smoke, teasing you with its possibilities, or it can be like a brick wall, demanding your full attention. It can seem like a bitter enemy who never gives you what you think you need, or it can seem like a sweet friend sustaining you in the darkest times. Sometimes it feels like hope is for the foolish because who would remain hopeful when life has proven to be so bitter and harsh?

When hope dies in someone, a cynic is born. But I stand before you as one who has experienced much, much worse than the scenario I described to you in this blog and who still finds cause to hope. Somehow, I was able to find a way to take all those bad experiences I had, and instead of curling up into myself and growing meeker, I used them to build the hard-won strength I was painfully lacking back then. And somehow, as the result of much hard work and many beautiful friendships, I didn’t become a person defined by bitterness or cynicism. I might have my moments (Don’t we all?), but on all but my grumpiest of days, I’m still the same hopeful, cheerful romantic, who prefers to see the good in people, that I’ve been since I was a child. Except that now I’m also stronger. And wiser. And braver.

And I honestly believe that if there’s hope enough for me still, there’s hope enough for you, too, whatever your circumstances are or have been. Maybe you think me naïve, but I’d rather be accused of naivety than let any spoiled relationship steal all the hope from me.

Yes. I think I’ll keep my hope. It makes for such nicer company than bitterness.