Maybe I Imagined It.....

One thing I constantly did throughout my abuse and even for a while after is convince myself it wasn't as bad as it was, or certain things didn't happen. It was easy to do so honestly, especially with my abuser twisting the scenarios and what actually happened. He would tell me a punch was actually a smack, a slam on the floor was us tripping, etc. He repeated things like this constantly to the point I began to question whether or not certain things happened. I also suffer from mental illness and hallucinated so this made it easy to toy with my reality. I began to feel crazy as if the little sanity I had left, while dealing with post partum, was slipping through my fingers. I believed the lies so much that my friend who physically saved me from my situation had to harness his emotions as he told me that I was beat, that everything was not made up in my head. I could hear the pain in his voice as if he thought "how could she even begin to think she imagined this"?

I am not someone who is usually unsure of themselves or constantly questions their reality. So to have my mind crumbling in such a way was pushing me further into delusion that this wasn't really as dangerous as it was. This man could have killed me on a number of occasions and somehow someway I would talk myself out of what I knew to be true. One day the choke and slam might be just a little too long and a little to hard. One day that punch may land wrong and I may not wake up. One day that gun may go off and you'll be the recipient of the bullet it releases. Yet I told myself for almost three years that I could hold on just a little longer. That if I gave my abuser the space and grace that he would do what was needed to be the father and partner I needed. That thought kept me in a cycle of abuse that I was addicted to in a way. Stockholm Syndrome had me completely at its mercy. Then one day I saw a tik tok and the woman basically said "yea you're being treated horribly but you're still there. So clearly you need to get disrespected a little more, cheated on a little more, beat a little more. You haven't reached your limit yet but you will". Seeing that stuck like glue to my brain for the next week.

The things that I was experiencing were as bad as I believed them to be. If I don't leave I will die or I will lose my freedom trying to protect myself. If you are in this space with your abuser and you are constantly downplaying the horrors you are experiencing I want you to know that I did it too, but I need you to desperately start being honest with yourself. You are not imagining the beatings, the constant belittling, the manipulation, the danger, IT IS REAL. And the sooner you accept that your safety and sanity are at risk the sooner you can start to fight for yourself and your kid(s) if you have any.

Lying to yourself about the abuse and the severity will also hinder you from healing. How can you heal from something you cannot fully admit? You can't. This process is grueling and it shows us victims no mercy but I smile knowing that I am picking myself up. Should there be support and resources? Of course, but in the meantime I hope this helps as a means of validation to those of you who need it. Your reality may not be pretty right now but beauty is possible. And if you are someone like me who has escaped that situation, continue to sit in the reality of what happened and know you made it.