11/11/13
When I was nineteen, and four months
into a relationship with a man ten years older than myself, I found myself
faced with impending motherhood. The moment that second line showed up on the
pregnancy test, I panicked. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. There was
absolutely no way I was prepared for this. I waited for Jerry to come back
upstairs from the laundry room. The minutes ticked by as I attempted to hold
back the torrent of tears and quell the swell of anxiety. The moment Jerry
walked into the room, the sobs erupted from me. I garbled some unintelligible
explanation as I waved the positive pregnancy test in front of his eyes. When I
calmed down enough to have a conversation, we discussed our options. Jerry
already had two kids. It was the money that concerned him the most, though. I
wasn’t sure what to do. Near the end of the discussion, he said the one thing
that truly made up my mind.
“Whatever you decide, I will be
there for you. If we keep the baby, I will help you. You will not have to do this
alone.”
On Valentine’s Day 2012, Xaiden
Vaughn Dudley was born without complications. I cried for thirty minutes
straight. I held Xaiden, a scrunched-up little man, not recognizing him. He did
not feel like my son. I did not feel like a mother. Thus began my descent into
post-partum depression. I knew I needed help. I would wake up to the sobs of my
child and weep for several minutes, lost in anguish, before scraping myself out
of bed. Though the help I truly needed was emotional, I also needed assistance
in the physical world.
Shortly before I gave birth, Jerry
and I moved into a house with two of Jerry’s coworkers. I wasn’t completely
content with the situation, but it was a great way to obtain a place a bit
nicer than we could afford on our own. Xaiden and I had been home from the
hospital for about three days when my family began insisting on coming over. I
had not initiated contact with anyone, and had refused any and all help
offered. They came over in shifts; first my mom, then my sister, then finally
my dad. My father was furious. The trash in the kitchen was overflowing. The
dishes in the sink were beginning to smell rancid. The linoleum was so sticky
it felt as if, practically glued to the sole of your shoe, it would peel off the
floor beneath with each step taken.
“You have to get these boys to clean
the kitchen. I will not have my daughter, and especially not my grandson,
living like this. It is unsanitary and unsafe. If they do not clean it, I’m
going to remove you and Xaiden from this cesspool.” When Brian Sivill says
something, he absolutely means it. So I finally asked for help. I asked Jerry
to get everyone to pitch in to clean the kitchen. I had been running on three
hours of broken sleep a day. There was no way I would have been capable of
tackling a mess that large and still manage to eat, let alone sleep. After an
entire day without progress went by, I mentioned it to Jerry again. I noted
that the muscle in his jaw that twitched when he was angry was wriggling about
as he stared at the television screen.
“You’re here all day while I’m at
work. Why can’t you do it?” Jerry asked. I was instantly furious, but remained
silent for the moment.
The next day, I made a flat out
complaint. “I am tired. No, not tired; I am absolutely exhausted and I haven’t
showered in four days. I literally have four dirty dishes in the sink. I was in
the hospital for three and a half days, and I can promise you that the
multitude of beer cans littering the kitchen floor do not belong to me. Do the
damn dishes or get someone else to do them.” I returned to the couch to tend to
Xaiden, who was fussing in his bouncer. All of a sudden, I heard banging and
crashing from the kitchen. I peered over my shoulder and watched Jerry toss
dirty pots and pans across the small counter space. He was so angry; I wouldn’t
have been surprised if I had seen heat waves wafting from him. Forty-five
minutes of crashing, banging, and muttered curses later, the dishes were clean.
At least the dishes were clean. This was the only time Jerry ever washed
dishes, and it was brought up in nearly every argument we had. He is an angel
because he washed the dishes for me. Even after I spent the next day scrubbing
every last cranny in the kitchen, he remained the angel.
Months later, we were evicted. We moved
into a dilapidated 450 square foot apartment across town. It was only three
blocks from my mom’s house. Even though the building was run down and the
apartment was on the third floor, access to my mom was the most important
thing. She was my emotional support when Jerry and I were constantly arguing.
He would not help me, even after I went back to work. He paid the rent and I
paid for utilities, food, and gas for my two vehicles. I stayed up with my
nocturnal baby until four in the morning, slept for two hours, and then left
Xaiden in Jerry’s care while I worked seven in the morning until two in the
afternoon. While they were usually awake by the time I came home, occasionally
I would arrive home to Xaiden crying while Jerry slept undisturbed. Several
times, Xaiden was on the floor next to the bed. Since we had no bed frame, it
was not a long drop. He was still on the floor, though. My Motherly Instincts
began kicking in with a heated ferociousness. My baby. Crying on the floor.
While you are sleeping?
“Wake the hell up! I don’t really care
how freaking tired you are. You get off work at three in the morning. You don’t
ever get home until I’m getting up
for work at six. Whatever the hell it is you’re doing, it is not my fault. It is your job, for a mere
seven hours a day, to tend to our son. For much of that time, he is sleeping!” I was furious. My entire face
felt as if it were on fire. I could hear my blood thundering through my skull.
With violently shaking hands, I pulled out my dresser drawers and began shoveling
the contents into trash bags. “If you’re not going to give a shit about me, at
least give a shit about our son!”
Somehow, he talked me out of leaving.
Jerry was my soul mate. I couldn’t just give up on him, especially after he
promised to do better. He complained that he worked more than I did and needed
time to himself, that he was just playing video games with his friends. I
figured I should learn to be okay with that because I wanted him to be happy.
He then vented his frustrations about not knowing how to handle my sadness, so
he hid from it. I was the bad guy. I was causing Jerry stress, which was why he
never came home until the last minute. He was tired and my constant nagging about
the trash and laundry made him not want me like he used to. My poor self-esteem
was all in my own head, not derived from his actions or words. I just wanted us
to be happy, so I tried to alter my behavior.
Life went on. Jerry worked nights and I
worked mornings. Xaiden finally began sleeping during the night, so I was
getting more sleep before work. I had stopped asking Jerry to help me. I
stopped telling him about my long, arduous days at work. He began going out
more and more often. It felt as if a rift had opened up between us both
emotionally and physically. My heart felt as if hot nails were being driven
into it. I was trying so hard to be the person, the wife, Jerry wanted me to
be. Why wasn’t I getting a positive response? He wouldn’t even sleep in the same bed with me
anymore, let alone “sleep” with me. I began having anxiety attacks when I woke
up and he wasn’t home. Eventually, he began walking in the door ten minutes
after I should have left for work. This happened nearly every morning that I
worked. When I didn’t work, there was no telling when he would be home. My eyes
were beginning to open and I started to wonder what exactly he was doing. I
wondered what kind of person this man really was.
Not long after I began to realize Jerry
wasn’t the person I thought him to be, I caught him. It wasn’t as if I had been
searching very hard for an indiscretion. Something had just felt off. Every
word that fell from his lips after he quietly slipped through the front door
tingled in my head. Something was off. So,
I followed my intuition. I sent a simple message to the friend he had stayed
out playing video games with until six in the morning. It was the first and
only time I ever checked up on him. Just a short sentence, “Was Jerry with you
last night?”
“No. Did he say he was?”
It was over. No matter what the excuses
were, it was over. I didn’t even care at this point whether or not he had cheated
on me. Jerry had lied to me. From his confessions after the confrontation, he
had been lying to me for months. He was no longer my Jer Bear. He had taken one
step too far, and no amount of words was going to fix it. It was over.
How does one move on from an unhealthy
relationship? Even if you’re ultimately over the loss of the other person,
there are still scars left over. I often wonder, after all the little lies that
were sprinkled upon me, which things were real and which weren’t. Did I really
misinterpret so many jokes? How often did I not understand the true meaning of
a statement, or somehow skew it in my head to mean something completely
different than was intended? My shortfalls as a mother and housekeeper
contributed to arguments. I wasn’t the only one not getting any sleep. My
inability to take criticism or jokes in the right way caused tension. I could
not hold up a cheerful façade in the face of piles of laundry, backed up trash
cans, and twelve bags of groceries to be toted up three flights of stairs. I could not handle working opposite schedules
and anxiously waiting for the door to open at five in the morning. I felt
desperately alone in my depression, and felt that my spouse did not want to
help me deal with it. He could not handle my volatile mood swings. He couldn’t
remember, in his sleep deprived state, to grab the trash before he walked out
the door. I think he wanted the smiling and passionate girl he had gotten to
know when we first met. I wanted the man who would merely hold me when I cried,
rather than sternly spouting a list of ways to improve my situation. We just
seemed to be trapped in an emotional sinkhole. Neither of us could find a
handhold.
Whatever physical insecurities I have
lie in the monstrously large shadow of the emotional and intellectual
insecurities left behind from an emotionally abusive relationship. My scars lie
deep in my conscience, my soul. I feel as if these wounds should be represented
by a large, red, twisting scar across my face. I wonder if I can be happy in a relationship.
Can I accept someone else’s shortfalls and work around them rather than
condemning the person? I feel like I’ve learned skills to cope with such
instances. Could I put these skills to use when such a situation occurs,
though? If anything, I believe I now know when to stop. I know that not
everything is worth fighting for, no matter how emotionally invested you are in
it. If the cost is too high, you must let go. Learning how to coexist with
another person, faults included, can wait. Just knowing when to take a step
back, appraise the situation, and make an intelligent decision is the important
lesson. Do not allow love to blind you.
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