April Fool 

01/04/24

I fooled pretty much everyone, but I fooled myself more. 

I’ve been thinking about what the world sees. How I present vs. the internal truth. 

I think most people I know would find it incredibly hard to believe that I could be bullied and abused.  If they read this, I think they’d struggle to recognise the self I’m describing.

Certain people would doubtless proclaim I’m making it all up (why the fuck would I?!).  

Mostly, people see me as strong and determined, a take no shit and no prisoners, sexually confident, and socially gregarious kinda person.

I am those things. Sometimes.

I’ve survived childhood abuse.

I’ve experienced homelessness.  

I’ve fought four legal cases, unaided, against parties with solicitors, and won all of them.

One was a family case, one employment tribunal, two were civil cases. I have no legal qualifications, (unless you count a GCSE gained at adult college). Yeah, I’m still proud.

I’ve walked away from physically violent relationships, and started all over again with nothing.  

I’ve grieved the death of my younger child and not buckled.  

I’ve had the strength to instigate two previous divorces.

^{(I know, I know – entering into this third marriage went way past ‘triumph of hope over experience’ territory, and marched right into that definition of stupidity/insanity thing that Einstein did not actually say.)} 

I’ve come through both of those divorces intact.

I’ve won a national award for cupcake baking, and aced a degree as a mature student.  

I’ve repeatedly tapped into my stores of gumption, pushing forward against adversity, and accomplishing real world achievements.

This is not the traditional, cliched picture of a hand wringing, head down, fearful, abused woman, and yet, I was being abused.

Given the wide lack of understanding (including my own, until horrifically recently), of the different forms of domestic abuse, it’s not altogether surprising that people might not recognise the self I describe in these pages.

All of that strong, boss lady stuff is a part of me. It must be, otherwise how could I be doing it/showing it?  

But after 20 years of being belittled and having my feelings negated, this is how the inner dialogue runs: 

“Yeah, ok, so there have been some tough times in your past, but hell, everyone has tough shit they came through, some way worse than yours, it doesn’t make you special.  And anyway, now you’re just fucked up. Your achievements are fluked. And the ones that you didn’t fluke you got by somehow conning people into thinking you deserved the accolade. I don’t know how you pulled it off but you cheated the system. You’re a fake. And by the way, ending relationships doesn’t demonstrate strength, it demonstrates your idiocy in getting into them in the first place….” 

I didn’t spend my days and nights, cowering, fearful of what EH may or may not do. I certainly didn’t fear physical violence from him, once the drinking had stopped.  

I could wrap my arms around him in public and pretend his grumpy ways were a kind of cute thing that he could be teased and joked out of (which mostly other people could seem to do in a way I couldn’t). 

I did spend years giving away bits of myself in a vain effort to please him. Trying, but failing, to keep him from filling my world with his silent, dark bad moods, cold shouldering, and clear displeasure.

I was slowly losing all my confidence, and being filled with anxiety and stress, without really realising that’s what was happening.

Just a couple of days ago, when walking home from work, I realised I wasn’t getting stress-belly as I approached the house.  I hadn’t noticed it while it was happening daily. That tension became obvious in its absence.  

It’s not that I didn’t speak up, never voicing my thoughts and feelings and opinions.

It’s more that it all became ever more carefully curated in an effort to avoid being the cause of yet another horrible, tense episode.

Unless I was in overwhelmed, outburst mode, and then it was an outpouring of pent up pain and vitriol.

Neither of those approaches has served me well.

It’s bloody painful facing up to so much truth about what my marriage was, my part in that, my past’s part in that, the repeated patterns that cause me pain, the truths, the lies…on and on…

I’m feeling a bit disassembled.  

I’ve found what’s been causing the system malfunctions, and stripped it all down to a skeletal frame,

Now I’ve got dozens of parts scattered around my feet.

Some of those parts need to be decommissioned.

Others need to be put back together in new, prettier, better functioning designs.

How?, is the bazillion dollar question.

It’s one thing to see and acknowledge these issues, it’s a totally different prospect to change them, resolve them, and create new patterns.

I’m still working on building the necessary tool kit as it’s very apparent that the hammer I’ve been using for everything is no longer appropriate.

My starting point has to be to learn a new language for when I’m talking to myself.

Actually, that’s not strictly true. My starting point has been to actually catch the negative mind talk, preferably before I’m too deep in. But actually noticing at all it is an improvement.

My next step has been to challenge it.

That can be a weird exercise if you think about it too much. I mean, having two sides of a debate within your own head – like really arguing shit out – it’s a bit odd, isn’t it?

But fuck it, no-one else knows what’s happening in there, so I continue to argue with myself even when it does strike me as potentially certifiable behaviour.

My thoughts about my degree is a good example of shifting through internal debate. The argument goes something along the lines of:

Stuck Jess (SJ): You know you’ve fluked all the things people think you’re good at, don’t you? You fluked your degree.

Growing Jess (GJ): I spent so many hours researching, reading, writing, editing, checking references etc. for assignments and final project – the results I got were from hard work, not bloody fluke.

SJ: Yeah, but a ton of that stuff was rewording of other people’s work. Sorta like plagiarism really. Nothing was particularly original. You just fooled the tutors somehow. You’re a con.

GJ: Really? I’m so clever I can trick the plagiarism detector programmes into not noticing the plagiarism? And I can con professors and tutors who’ve been at this shit for decades? Does that mean they’re dumb, or that I’m genius clever? But I’m not clever enough to have genuinely earned my degree? That makes no sense.

SJ: Umm…. Reasons?

Don’t get me wrong, this argument is not yet concluded nor settled. But Stuck Jess get’s weaker every time I realise she’s yapping, and challenge her, from logic not emotion, about what she’s saying.

There’s so much mental remodelling required for the ‘fake it’ to become ‘make it’. 

I really could use a manual.  

Or therapy. 

JP