Become - verb - to begin to be
I've decided to start this thread as a way of externally processing. I welcome anyone's input, observations, questions, commentary, suggestions, or support. As long as it's well-meant everyone is welcome. I would love to connect with you all. Ultimately I'd like to make friends and more and that always starts with being honest about your thoughts and feelings if it's going to be healthy and sustainable. Be aware that I have long aspired to be a writer and I choose my words as such. Please also be aware that any post may initially be difficult to comprehend due to the fact that I'm often tired when I feel inspired to write. If a post needs clean-up it will be done the following morning.
I've already introduced myself but for the sake of encapsulation, my name is Paul. I'm a 40yo (41 on April 30) sapio/panromantic demi/heterosexual(heteroflexible?*) newly-poly bio-male-nonbinary person. I primarily refer to myself as male because I'm used to it. It's how I was raised and it doesn't bother me for people to think or believe it but, truthfully, I often don't identify as gendered at all. I don't have preferred pronouns but if I had to pick some I feel like they would be he/they/them. It is worth noting that this entire paragraph save my name and age are things that I have realized or admitted to myself for the first time within the last 18 months.
Some of what I say here will deal with deeply traumatic experiences that I've lived through. I've done the work to eliminate trigger responses to most circumstances but some readers may be triggered. I will to my best to tag these sections so that you can prepare yourselves if you wish to continue reading. You should be aware, however, that this first post contains my deepest and most recent trauma. The situations surrounding that trauma encompass the entirety of the last decade of my life. This post, and the one to follow, will therefore be almost entirely trauma-centric. Some of these experiences still have a lingering ability to make me dissolve into tears. I am unafraid of this. It happened last night while watching a strange and incredibly good film which I had to pause for 10 minutes so that i could ground myself.
I meditate frequently and intentionally practice self-love, speaking positive words to counter negative thought loops. It's powerful and effective.
Onward.
7 years ago I met the woman I thought to be the love of my life. Prior to meeting her I had been single for most of a year, having left a relationship in which I had been the victim of domestic violence numerous times. I had a daughter with my abuser, and tried to remain cordial with her for the sake of my child.
On my birthday, the year I met my wife, my abuser had made an appearance at the small celebration my friends and I had decided to have. We were drinking and having a good time when she arrived. It quickly became awkward and she was asked to leave.
When she couldn't find her keys she blamed me. She ranted and raged and screamed abuse at me until I fled to the basement to escape her. She followed, cornered me in the laundry room, and beat the living hell out of me until I shoved her off of me.
I then woke up in the hospital with the police stationed outside my door. She had called them and told them that I assaulted her once i lost consciousness, which I had been unable to refute due to incapacitation. Charges had been filed.
While in the hospital, injured and barely holding my shit together, I sneezed on a nurse. The officer stationed to hold me characterized this as an assault as well. She wouldn't speak or listen to me. I was a man in a domestic violence situation and even though she had personally been forced to drag my unconscious ass out of my house to the hospital, that made me the villain.
After several months we had a deposition and while she wouldn't own lying outright, my abuser admitted to having "trouble sequencing events in memory" and that she "couldn't be sure her testimony was accurate" due to a tbi. The domestic violence charge was dropped and I decided that I couldn't afford to take any more time off work to deal with hearings and depositions as i was near losing my job already. No longer facing jail time, I ate the other charge and the fine and moved on with my life.
The following month, the department of human services took my daughter from my abuser for drug usage and neglect and gave her to me permanently, granting her mother state supervised visitation once per week. The abuser tried to look good for a few months to get our daughter back and then vanished.
I took months to process everything and heal, and in December I met my wife on a dating app. We had long deep conversations every night for weeks, sometimes while playing 7 Days to Die together, and quickly became close friends. On new year's eve I drove to Chicago to meet her and spent the weekend at her house. I would repeat the 700 mile round trip every weekend for the following 4 months even if it was only to visit for a few hours before driving back.
By April we had decided we would marry and have another child, and she was pregnant. I couldn't move out of the state because my abuser and daughter were in the child protective services system in Iowa (part of the Iowa dhs)
We bought a house in the town I'd been living in and a month later she moved down from Chicago.
For the first 6 months to a year, things were mostly fine other than our sex life which ended entirely in August of 2018. My abuser's rights to my eldest daughter were terminated because she had come back, demanded visitation, been granted it, and then allowed a registered sex offender known to have molested an underage girl unrestricted access to my daughter in the form of allowing him to share a bed with her unsupervised. I had an attorney before the end of the day in which I discovered this. My second daughter was born in November and my wife and I were married on December 4th.
During this period my wife went through some difficult times. Her brother and grandmother passed away. She disengaged from the emotional aspect of our relationship several times leaving me in a tailspin. I didn't understand what was going on and all I wanted was to feel close to her. Her response to that desire was to become enraged. She would argue with me and then lock herself in the bathroom for hours. When she came out she would have her makeup done. She would put on nice clothes, and she would leave for hours.
I sometimes wonder if she was cheating on me during these periods. Truthfully, though, I wouldn't have cared. If she had talked to me about what she was feeling and what she needed I would have been happy to give her anything. As fucked up at the situation was, in looking back I can see that this was one of the first moments in which I began to realize that I wasn't actually monogamous. I've never cheated but in thinking about the ideas surrounding her loving and sleeping with someone else, I had no negative feelings. I loved her and I wanted her to be happy. This, of course, forced me to consider how I felt about the situation if it had been reversed. A friend of mine had been poly for a long time. We spoke off and on and I truly loved her, not that I could admit it to myself at the time. It wouldn't dawn on me for years yet that it was okay to feel that.
Every so often after that, though, my wife would get intensely angry and verbally abusive about some minor thing such as a few small coffee spots I had missed while cleaning the kitchen counter. This escalated dramatically over the course of the following year. She would say abusive things and I would get defensive. She'd accuse me of playing the victim and gaslight me. When I tried to explain my perspective she would lock herself in the bathroom and accuse me of "forcing myself on her" if i tried to talk to her through the door.
As a rape victim (twice in the week prior to my 18th birthday) this was an effective way to make me abandon any attempt at defending myself because it would trigger me. I would crawl into bed, hide under my blanket, and silently cry myself to sleep.
I've decided to start this thread as a way of externally processing. I welcome anyone's input, observations, questions, commentary, suggestions, or support. As long as it's well-meant everyone is welcome. I would love to connect with you all. Ultimately I'd like to make friends and more and that always starts with being honest about your thoughts and feelings if it's going to be healthy and sustainable. Be aware that I have long aspired to be a writer and I choose my words as such. Please also be aware that any post may initially be difficult to comprehend due to the fact that I'm often tired when I feel inspired to write. If a post needs clean-up it will be done the following morning.
I've already introduced myself but for the sake of encapsulation, my name is Paul. I'm a 40yo (41 on April 30) sapio/panromantic demi/heterosexual(heteroflexible?*) newly-poly bio-male-nonbinary person. I primarily refer to myself as male because I'm used to it. It's how I was raised and it doesn't bother me for people to think or believe it but, truthfully, I often don't identify as gendered at all. I don't have preferred pronouns but if I had to pick some I feel like they would be he/they/them. It is worth noting that this entire paragraph save my name and age are things that I have realized or admitted to myself for the first time within the last 18 months.
Some of what I say here will deal with deeply traumatic experiences that I've lived through. I've done the work to eliminate trigger responses to most circumstances but some readers may be triggered. I will to my best to tag these sections so that you can prepare yourselves if you wish to continue reading. You should be aware, however, that this first post contains my deepest and most recent trauma. The situations surrounding that trauma encompass the entirety of the last decade of my life. This post, and the one to follow, will therefore be almost entirely trauma-centric. Some of these experiences still have a lingering ability to make me dissolve into tears. I am unafraid of this. It happened last night while watching a strange and incredibly good film which I had to pause for 10 minutes so that i could ground myself.
I meditate frequently and intentionally practice self-love, speaking positive words to counter negative thought loops. It's powerful and effective.
Onward.
7 years ago I met the woman I thought to be the love of my life. Prior to meeting her I had been single for most of a year, having left a relationship in which I had been the victim of domestic violence numerous times. I had a daughter with my abuser, and tried to remain cordial with her for the sake of my child.
On my birthday, the year I met my wife, my abuser had made an appearance at the small celebration my friends and I had decided to have. We were drinking and having a good time when she arrived. It quickly became awkward and she was asked to leave.
When she couldn't find her keys she blamed me. She ranted and raged and screamed abuse at me until I fled to the basement to escape her. She followed, cornered me in the laundry room, and beat the living hell out of me until I shoved her off of me.
I then woke up in the hospital with the police stationed outside my door. She had called them and told them that I assaulted her once i lost consciousness, which I had been unable to refute due to incapacitation. Charges had been filed.
While in the hospital, injured and barely holding my shit together, I sneezed on a nurse. The officer stationed to hold me characterized this as an assault as well. She wouldn't speak or listen to me. I was a man in a domestic violence situation and even though she had personally been forced to drag my unconscious ass out of my house to the hospital, that made me the villain.
After several months we had a deposition and while she wouldn't own lying outright, my abuser admitted to having "trouble sequencing events in memory" and that she "couldn't be sure her testimony was accurate" due to a tbi. The domestic violence charge was dropped and I decided that I couldn't afford to take any more time off work to deal with hearings and depositions as i was near losing my job already. No longer facing jail time, I ate the other charge and the fine and moved on with my life.
The following month, the department of human services took my daughter from my abuser for drug usage and neglect and gave her to me permanently, granting her mother state supervised visitation once per week. The abuser tried to look good for a few months to get our daughter back and then vanished.
I took months to process everything and heal, and in December I met my wife on a dating app. We had long deep conversations every night for weeks, sometimes while playing 7 Days to Die together, and quickly became close friends. On new year's eve I drove to Chicago to meet her and spent the weekend at her house. I would repeat the 700 mile round trip every weekend for the following 4 months even if it was only to visit for a few hours before driving back.
By April we had decided we would marry and have another child, and she was pregnant. I couldn't move out of the state because my abuser and daughter were in the child protective services system in Iowa (part of the Iowa dhs)
We bought a house in the town I'd been living in and a month later she moved down from Chicago.
For the first 6 months to a year, things were mostly fine other than our sex life which ended entirely in August of 2018. My abuser's rights to my eldest daughter were terminated because she had come back, demanded visitation, been granted it, and then allowed a registered sex offender known to have molested an underage girl unrestricted access to my daughter in the form of allowing him to share a bed with her unsupervised. I had an attorney before the end of the day in which I discovered this. My second daughter was born in November and my wife and I were married on December 4th.
During this period my wife went through some difficult times. Her brother and grandmother passed away. She disengaged from the emotional aspect of our relationship several times leaving me in a tailspin. I didn't understand what was going on and all I wanted was to feel close to her. Her response to that desire was to become enraged. She would argue with me and then lock herself in the bathroom for hours. When she came out she would have her makeup done. She would put on nice clothes, and she would leave for hours.
I sometimes wonder if she was cheating on me during these periods. Truthfully, though, I wouldn't have cared. If she had talked to me about what she was feeling and what she needed I would have been happy to give her anything. As fucked up at the situation was, in looking back I can see that this was one of the first moments in which I began to realize that I wasn't actually monogamous. I've never cheated but in thinking about the ideas surrounding her loving and sleeping with someone else, I had no negative feelings. I loved her and I wanted her to be happy. This, of course, forced me to consider how I felt about the situation if it had been reversed. A friend of mine had been poly for a long time. We spoke off and on and I truly loved her, not that I could admit it to myself at the time. It wouldn't dawn on me for years yet that it was okay to feel that.
Every so often after that, though, my wife would get intensely angry and verbally abusive about some minor thing such as a few small coffee spots I had missed while cleaning the kitchen counter. This escalated dramatically over the course of the following year. She would say abusive things and I would get defensive. She'd accuse me of playing the victim and gaslight me. When I tried to explain my perspective she would lock herself in the bathroom and accuse me of "forcing myself on her" if i tried to talk to her through the door.
As a rape victim (twice in the week prior to my 18th birthday) this was an effective way to make me abandon any attempt at defending myself because it would trigger me. I would crawl into bed, hide under my blanket, and silently cry myself to sleep.
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