I haven’t been separated from my spouse long, but I am quickly seeing how impossible it is to truly leave a marriage behind. To immediately and seamlessly cut the ties that made the two of you one.
My life, my being, my very soul, it seems, was intertwined with his, and it’s breaking leads only to entanglement.
I think of the way he did things, his opinions, see the places we visited together, or think of the future I once dreamed of. I realize that he is branded into my life, into my story, in a way that will never come undone.
All of this would be less painful if the entanglement did not also include violence.
I’m left with pieces, sorting through what was love, what was abuse. Pulling lies out of my soul like one pulls bracken off their socks after a hike.
I thought once I left the conflicting feelings would have gone away.
There was comfort in making a decision, and confirmation in every subsequent meeting with him, but also more lies.
Accusations of abandonment, empty platitudes and shapeless apologies, and his assertation that he did not abuse me.
That being body slammed to the floor and thrown into wrist locks, pinned to a bed and threatened, drug through doors, screamed at, insulted, controlled, coerced, disrespected, and called every name in the book was a phantom of my imagination.
Whenever I am away from him, I’m happy. I begin to disentangle the lies, but I can’t disentangle my soul from his.
It is far from over.
Divorce and separation require contact and negotiation. Emotional and verbal abuse don’t exist according to the courts, and physical abuse must leave marks and be meticulously proven and immediately reported.
So I walk into coffeehouses with him to meet. To negotiate the dividing of our intermingled lives.
I am struck by the fear and nervousness that grip me as I walk in. My chest tightening, my breathing shallow, muscles tensed, contrasting with the butterflies in my stomach when I see him, thinking that I’d forgotten how handsome he was as hope and love briefly flutter in my heart, followed quickly by rage as we begin to talk.
I’m left reeling again.
He’s forced me onto the roller coaster of emotions — again.
And again, my body reacts to the trauma as I get sick for a whole day, and realize it will be another year of this before I can begin to be free.
