Tag Archives: truth

the vast expanse of adulthood (of peanut butter cups at midnight and potty training geniuses)

03 Monday Oct 2022

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I don’t fall asleep as easily as I used to. Who does? (Oh to return to February 2020!) Last night I drifted off reading a new mystery novel I’ve only just started. Only to be jolted awake at midnight by my eighteen year old tripping over a box of books and hand weights on the floor of my room.

I groggily shouted “this better be an emergency!” Lest you think me harsh, dear reader, please understand this is approximately the 2000th or so time he’s woken me like this and it was, in fact, an emergency worth waking me up for approximately five or six times.

“Well,” he said, “it’s just that. Just that—“

“Just that what?!” I screamed

“I can’t stop thinking about where did all the dark chocolate peanut butter cups go?” He said this with a bit of a whine.

“Your brother ate them,” I bellowed and then “good night.” He went to talk more when I said “good night” over him several times until he left.

If you’re still thinking I’m harsh, okay, you’re right. He didn’t deserve to be yelled at like that.

What I find myself wrestling with is my special needs son becoming an adult who will likely live with me the rest of my life. The vast expanse of adulthood before us, an endless succession of very similar presents.

As kids grow up, they go through stages where they pull away from us and then come back. Toddlerhood, kindergarten, adolescence, going off to college. It’s bittersweet as a parent. But I’ve always found it much sweeter than bitter. The idea of taking someone from 2 cells to a fully launched adult is the most incredible thing a person could ever do.

Watching your relationship with your child come to an end as it’s replaced with an entirely new one. Less purely dependent, but with new needs that are more complex. And knowing that, with each successive stage, it becomes more and more of a choice for them. Will they let you in now that they have a world you’re not always a part of, an ever increasing level of privacy, a greater internal world and sense of who they are? If they don’t choose you, what will you do? And so, when they do, you’re grateful they’ve chosen you. Because they didn’t have to. And maybe you did something right as a parent after all.

So, what then, do you do with a child who will never launch? Who remains at a particular level of dependency indefinitely. I know I’ll figure this out. But it’s hard. His younger brother is almost 17 now. PSATs and drivers permits and what colleges should he apply to and all of that.

I felt bad for yelling at him. I texted his dad and told him about it and said I don’t know how to stop resenting this situation. And I need to. And as we were typing about it I found myself typing that every time 17 hits a milestone I know 18 never will, it’s hard.

For who, he asked

For me, I replied. Maybe it is for 17 too. I don’t know.

I remember the day 17 passed 18 up developmentally. I remember that it hurt. And I remember that is confused 17. For years.

They were both potty trained on the same day. 17 could have been a year before that but he held off until his older brother was ready. That’s how I remember it anyway. Maybe it’s just a story I tell myself so that this all makes sense.

18 loved cars and trucks when he was little. And it broke my heart to tell him he’d never get to drive. But it didn’t bother him. Now 17 is old enough to drive and doesn’t seem particularly interested. I told him he has to get his permit by October 31st. He’s dragging his feet. It’s important he take that step, become that much more independent. So I push. But the truth is, I am sure I will cry when he starts to drive. Because 18 never will. 18 doesn’t care. He has no desire to drive. So why can’t I let these feelings go?

When our kids pull away at these different stages, it’s scary but exciting for them, and we need to be there, letting them know they’re safe, that we’ll still be there when they come back. It’s scary and exciting for us too, though. Will they come back? Who will they be when they return to us? And isn’t that at the core of all our relationships? With children, with partners, with friends, with God? Life is growth.

And maybe that’s what bothers me, my narrow view of what growth is and how it should look. Feeling our relationship will stagnate. But there is no one right way to grow. 18 won’t grow and change in a lot of the ways his siblings will, that I did, but he will grow and change in his own way. He will still depend on me, he doesn’t really have the choice to leave and come back to me physically. But he will still have the choice, emotionally, spiritually.

And if I keep screaming at him, he very well might not choose to return to me.

And so we’ll have to work it out. Maybe I’ll put a lock on my bedroom door. Maybe he really will eventually learn what an emergency is. Or maybe I’ll learn to get myself to sleep earlier so I’m not so angry when I’m woken up for 30 seconds to answer a simple question from a man who’s grown me more than anyone else. And who keeps on growing me, even at midnight, half-asleep.

The Expulsion

18 Sunday Sep 2022

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Judith Herman

tells us that trauma is abandonment, being abandoned by all the people who were supposed to protect us, even ourselves, even God. to be utterly alone. when we shouldn’t be. when we least expected it. not knowing will we live or will we die, will this black hole we are falling into ever end.

In church

They tell us that Hell is the absence of God. No need for fire and brimstone. There is nothing worse than to be left by God. And so, trauma is Hell

In the Bible

Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge and were banished from the Garden of Eden. Never to return. A life of toil and sickness and pain and death. Final. No way to earn their way back to Eden.

Our parents

Are the source of us. The holy Mother and Father of us. And when they unleash a rage that has no borders, we are Alone. we grow up and roam the earth, trying to find our way back to the Garden. But there is no going back

We cannot go back, only through. Onward into the valley of tears. Where God hears us and loves us but cannot save us. Where he gives us the ability to love one another, hear one another, comfort one another, but not to save one another.

Loving and saving are not the same thing. And that which your parents couldn’t give you will never be found in someone else. There is only one person capable of never leaving you, and that’s you.

And you

are enough

I hope you know I’m sitting with you too

18 Saturday Jun 2022

Posted by in Evil, love, narcissism, parenting, PTSD, Rape, residency, Sin

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I got my living room and dining room ready to paint last night. It was a loooooot of painter’s tape. Like, a lot. I was spent by the time I finished. I headed to bed and decided to read a little of my book about Abraham Lincoln and John Brown and then go to sleep. I was soon interrupted, however, by my son telling me the toilet was flooding the bathroom. And it was.

I stood in 2 inches of water while plunging the toilet with one hand and holding up the ball float with the other. Tried to turn the water off but the valve wouldn’t budge. Once the toilet was unclogged my son helped me construct a duct tape sling to hold the ball float up while I researched how to fix it. I got out my single lady fix it guide

and it was fixed in no time. Well, it was a bit of a struggle but pretty quickly anyway.

I also replaced the P trap on my kitchen sink recently. And laid some flooring. In the past couple of years I have dealt with mice and bats, sewage back ups, the moving of numerous heavy objects and setting up of various electronics. And it makes me realize how much I let myself rely on other people to do so many things, basic things. Not just plumbing and heavy lifting. I spent so many years feeling like there were only a few very specific things I was capable in. There was always a dad or a husband to depend on. And that’s what I chose to do.

I don’t know if I’ll ever find my person and have a long term relationship but if I do, it will be very different than it always has been. Because I’m very different than I always have been. I used to want someone to take care of me and someone I could take care of. In a childlike way.

Dependent on each other, chasing and being chased by one another, idealizing and devaluing one another. Anything to avoid stillness, connection, intimacy, vulnerability. It’s not just romantic relationships. It’s with everyone in my life and even with myself.

So many people went mad with the pandemic because they were left alone with themselves. In silence and stillness. And so many of us fear it. Because we fear knowing ourselves. We fear the shame, the weaknesses, the parts we’ve been taught are unlovable. We fear ourselves. Because we are the ones that have kept us from getting that hole inside of us filled. Surely it must be our fault. And who would want to know someone like that? Spend time with someone like that?

Judith Herman says trauma is being abandoned. By everyone who was supposed to protect us, humans and God himself. But who is the one who ultimately failed us? It was us. It was me. I made my choices. I just didn’t know how bad it would get. Didn’t know it would never end.

I have a ritual I complete each time I move. My therapist taught me that when I was fixating on something I should picture taking that thought and putting it in a box and placing that box on a shelf for later. I was fixating on The Ordeal at the time so I took the court transcript and literally put it on a shelf in the hall closet. It worked. Now each time I move I take that box and put it in the hall closet of my new house. And if there is a day I need to take it down for a while, I do. And when I’m done I put it back.

My ex-husband reads this blog and looks for things to use against me. I wish he wouldn’t but such he life. My therapist asked me recently why I keep writing it if it bothers me. There are a lot of facets to that answer. One being that trauma is lonely. If you were in war or a natural disaster, you have other people who went through it with you. But most of us who were raped went through it alone. And sometimes you need to talk to someone who knows what it was like. And that person doesn’t exist. And for me, this blog, I know it reaches other people who’ve been through the same thing. Not a lot, but a few anyway. I feel like someone might be listening who understands. And sometimes, when the box is off the shelf, I really need that.

I do my best to forgive myself for the choices I’ve made because wallowing in guilt does no good and is insincere. It is an indulgence. I sit with myself, but sometimes it’s okay to need someone sitting there with you in the darkness. Not because you can’t be alone but because it would be nice to not be alone for a while.

I hope you are out there sitting with me. I hope you know I’m sitting with you too. He did unspeakable things to me. Maybe someone did to you too. I tried to not write about trauma today. I tried to write about how proud I am of myself for fixing the toilet. But I would be lying if I said the box isn’t down right now. That I didn’t read through his appeals last night, late into the night, long after the toilet was fixed and the water mopped up.

a room of one’s own

04 Saturday Jun 2022

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I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young—alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross–roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to–night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting–room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky. too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would he impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while. -A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf

I am no longer sleeping on the left side of the bed.

We moved this week to a beautiful house in the country with big, old pine trees. Like the ones I grew up playing in. It’s my forever home. It’s home. Finally home.

There is room to spread out in this house. We still spend a lot of time together but when we want to be alone, there are lots of lovely spots to go to. I sit in the screened in porch and watch the deer and the chipmunks and sometimes a fox. And my bedroom has a sitting room that I have made a little cozy gym. I have my own bathroom. For the first time in my life. I take long relaxing baths now. And I spread out in my bed and take up space. The luxury of space.

My heart has felt the words of Virginia Wolf for so many years. A room of one’s own. When I am overwhelmed by all the needs I am asked to meet everyday I find myself saying, can I just have ten minutes to myself, can I just have one inch that is mine alone. And now, now I have an acre. And a room. A screened in porch. A whole big bed. That is full. Of me alone.

I used to be afraid to be alone. It terrified me. I felt like I was falling into a darkness so deep and wide, with no bottom. That I would just fall forever. Afraid of hitting bottom but more afraid of never doing so. Its the fall that is intolerable. It’s a terrible thing to be afraid to be alone. You keep company with wolves because being eaten seems a better fate than being alone.

I used to be afraid to be selfish. To not be omniavailable (yes I just made up a word) to my kids, my attendings, my patients, my family, my friends. But that’s no good. Ten minutes to myself, sometimes hours or days to myself, is a beautiful thing that makes me a better mother doctor friend. And space. Space that is just my own. Whether it be my tree house in Jamaica or the back room of my office in Grove City or my Mini or my queen size bed.

I wish I could give this to my female patients instead of medication. Space to themselves instead of tiny falling down houses with 6 or 7 people on top of each other. Time. Without kids or work or toxic family. But a lot of them would be terrified by it. We are raised to be this way. To stay small and not take up room. To give ourselves away. Inch by inch, moment by moment. Chipping away the boundaries. To be terrified of our own freedom, afraid to declare our time and space and bodies and thoughts and feelings and wants and needs our own.

And words. To claim our words, our voice, our writing, our ideas, our cadence, our beauty.

There was a time in my life I read Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac and dreamed of all the life that lay outside my little town in the country. All I had ahead of me. The life I would live. Of revolution and gorgeous poetry and art and fascinating people slightly mad but mainly genius burning brightly, so bright.

I have lived intensely and now I am ready to be content, back in the country. Back to my own bed in my own room as it was then. Time to myself, to read and savor and enjoy. My kids are the ones heading out into the world. Beyond the pine trees and the covered porch and sometimes a fox. While I spread out in my bed in the quiet of my room and write you these words of my very own. Send them out into the world and hope they land where they’re meant to. Here in a room of my own.

i would be a terrible dance teacher

21 Saturday May 2022

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I’ve done this dance as long as I can remember

(not the foxtrot. We did that in Gym and I was awful)

This dance of give and give and be who they want and not who they don’t and when they step on your toes don’t say a word because they might leave you and dance without someone else, someone who doesn’t complain when they step on their toes. So even if your toes are raw and bleeding and you can barely stand up, you keep dancing, because the only way to win is for the dance to last Forever

But

Inevitably it gets to be too much and you realize how messed up this dance is and so you leave. It’s always better to be the one who leaves. And if you should find yourself in that old familiar black hole, well, you’ll figure that out when it comes

They used to have these dance marathons for charity on sitcoms where the couple who stops dancing last is the winner and they’d dance all day and all night and wacky funny things would happen. But really what happens when you lose if you quit dancing is that you get so damn tired and bitter and hopeless and then that’s all your children know of life

They need to know it is not healthy at all to dance all night and all day no matter what the cause. They need to know the Baker bunion is not inevitable just because every other female in the family has it. And so, you sit and rest. You know now in your bones that there are a lot of ways to win, not just dancing forever. Know that bone that is your bunion has been trying to tell you this all these years but you wouldn’t listen. Maybe you thought you deserved to live that way. Maybe you taught them they deserve to live that way. But not anymore.

I was so afraid she’d disappear and never come back. And she did. Afraid if I said even the littlest thing out of line and I was right.

I was so close to invisible I thought I’d found heaven when I heard those words that day. To be so watched you must do everything right and yet not seen at all. And so I see them dancing the dance. And I hope I show them that the way to win isn’t to never stop. That it’s just a silly show and at the end of the day the best part is getting to rest with your feet up at home with the people that love you. And to choreograph your own life to your own song with an audience of one.

Cha cha cha

christofascism

04 Wednesday May 2022

Posted by in addiction, Catholicism, christianity, Evil, kids, love, outrage, parenting, Politics, PTSD, Rape, Sin

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Nowhere in the Bible does it say life begins at conception. Nowhere in the Bible does it say 10 year old girls ought to carry and birth their father’s baby if he chooses to rape her which fathers sometimes do. To think this is what God would want says an awful lot about a person. And it isn’t good.

Howard Zinn says you can’t be neutral on a moving train and so I want to hear from my Christian sisters today. I want to hear them screaming for the women who will die, the girls who will die, for the dreams that will die. They asked Jesus the most important commandments and he said love God and love one another. Why is that so fucking hard for so many ChRiStIaNs?

Contraception is next. Do you know I didn’t use contraception for years and I’ve never been a fan and it’s failed me on occasion and I still will give my all to defend our right to it. Do you know the horrors I have seen come of lack of access to effective contraception? Where are you my fellow Christians? With your youth groups and your worship songs and your testimony? Jesus hung with the prostitutes and the lepers. She had two beautiful kids and a hole inside of her so wide and so deep because she’d never been loved and only ever been hurt and that third baby done did her in and now all three of the babies are with someone else and she is in jail detoxing meth psychosis and I miss her so damn much. She chopped wood at 8 months pregnant to try to make enough money to keep the water on. And where were you? At yOuTh GrOuP

I sat in my car and cried for the world we’ve given our kids. I tried. I believed. But here we are. Poor lost children of Eve banished from Eden. But Eden wasn’t enough. Or maybe it was too much. We wanted that apple and who could blame us? How boring a perfect life must be. So huddle together in this Whale with me and let us tell each other tales until the light goes out.

addicted

12 Tuesday Apr 2022

Posted by in addiction, autism, Catholicism, christianity, empathy, kids, residency, Sin

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all of my patients are physically dependent on opioids. ICD 10 F11.20. some of them are addicted to opioids. a lot of them aren’t.

maybe you’re physically dependent on something. for which there is no ICD 10 code. caffeine, zoloft, dopamine, adrenaline. maybe you’re addicted. coffee, zoloft, social media, shopping, toxic relationships, speeding, gossip, little debbie Christmas tree cakes, work, success, sex, HGTV.

maybe you think I’m being cute. or metaphorical. just making a point. no one goes to rehab for gossip addiction (maybe they should). no one goes to jail for possession of little debbie Christmas tree cakes (maybe no one should go to jail for possession of anything. maybe the jails are a crime)

addiction is an escape from the pain of being human. being human is more painful for some than others. but it is painful for all of us. and if someone tells you it isn’t, that is because they are so deep in their addiction, they have lost touch entirely.

eve and adam ate that apple and it all went to shit, you see. our eyes were opened and sickness and pain and toil entered the stage. we all fell down, down, down. and ever since, we have very logically sought to numb the pain of it. because there is no way up, up, up. not in this life anyway.

we are afraid. to hope, to love, to ask for love, to speak our truth, to share our pain, to need or be needed, to want or be wanted. we are afraid to take up space and that we might disappear, to be silenced and to be heard, to be alone and that we might make a genuine connection. we are afraid we are unlovable and that to be loved would be the most unbearable pain imaginable. or perhaps, worse than that, ecstasy.

in addiction we connect with other people. no we don’t. we are with people and we are less lonely and so we think we are connecting. logical. understandable. but let me tell you a story about the time my friends let G die when he overdosed because they were high too and didn’t want to get in trouble and i knew they loved drugs more than they loved me or each other. and the time i went back to my dopamine adrenaline filled emotional intimacy free relationship because right at that moment i loved it more than my kids and i do not want to tell you that but how else can we do better?

and they told me my son played next to other children but not with other children and that he was too old for parallel play. but tell me how much time adults spend engaging with other people and not engaging next to other people? are we connecting spiritually or are we churching next to one another? and those residents we work 90 hours a week with that we save and lose lives with, do we know them at all? and so pass the pipe and hand me that spoon and we will share a hit of Netflix and yoga and pumpkin spice latte next to one another in this Fallen World.

there is no ICD 10 code for the unbearable lightness of being but maybe there should be

Fuck Ted Bundy

31 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by in Catholicism, christianity, empathy, Evil, kids, love, marriage, my awesome husband, narcissism, outrage, parenting, PTSD, romance, Sin

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Flesh of my flesh

Bone of my bone

Leave your parents cleave to me 

I am your new home

Home forever

Til death do us part

And if I make you yearn for that end 

Why that’s hardness in your heart

For if you love God

You love marriage, you love me 

And you know when God joins together

You’ll never be free

Free to be who you really are

To follow the fate signed in your stars

No you are mine and I am yours 

Don’t lock your phone 

Don’t lock your doors

We are one in heart and soul 

We are both driven by the hole 

left behind by the barren wombs that birthed us underneath the moon

Mother moon has cried for us while Brigid’s fire inspired us 

To reach for something better than us 

Wait Did I say us? 

I meant me. 

You conjure planks in all our eyes 

But yours are fine 

(It’s a disguise) 

A pleasant reflection outside of you 

Rot and decay is what is true

What god has joined together I will put asunder 

For how can we be one when your trunk is putrid and diseased at its core?

Swoop up the fruit before it hits the floor 

If you can tell a tree by the fruit it bears you’ve done a damn good job of fooling God 

For our children are precious fruit indeed 

Owing little to your bitter seed 

They grow and bloom in spite of you 

Soaring so far past the height of you 

Knowing there is something not right with you

People look at the women that fell in love with Ted Bundy

Stood by Ted Bundy

Accepted a proposal in a courtroom from Ted Bundy

And they think these women are naive or dumb or victims themselves

But has it ever occurred to you that they were there because being in love with Ted Bundy worked for them?

Instead of looking at him as this charming manipulative sociopath fooling these women

Has it occurred to you that she was manipulating him too?

Judas and Ted Bundy and Jeremy Noyes 

Sinners that God so loved he gave his only son 

God and Abraham would sacrifice their sons for the sins of the world

And so do you think yourself holy when you hurt your kids to hurt their mother? To punish her for leaving? For putting asunder what You joined together?

Because it was never about God 

And always about you 

And you, are a jealous and vengeful little demigod 

So easily beat by Brigid and Mother Moon

silver gray honey

01 Monday Nov 2021

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We got engaged in December. It was cold and clear. In front of cameras of course (it doesn’t count if no one’s watching).

The next day, it began. It was cold and sharp. In my car along the Turnpike (with no one watching, of course).

I wouldn’t say the real you came out because I don’t think there is a real you.

You are honey mixed with gray silver micah. Lacking form and shape. You cannot be held but you stick and don’t let go. Clinging to my hands and I cannot quite get all of you off my skin. Dirt and remnants of what was and what wasn’t latched on.

I soak them in water. Warm and clear. And I watch as you dissolve and wash down my drain.

Drip, drip, drip (better times up round the bend)

25 Friday Jun 2021

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Water torture encompasses a variety of techniques using water to inflict physical or psychological harm on a victim as a form of torture or execution

I’d like to start this post by pointing out the term “Chinese water torture” is racist and nonsensical actually. When this torture technique has been used, it has been mainly by Europeans and there’s no recorded instances of the Chinese ever having used it.

Ok, onward and upward.

There’s this book by Lundy Bancroft I bought years ago titled “Why Does He Do That?” It’s about abusive partners and the many myths that surround our ideas of abuse. He’s a counselor that works with abusive men who either want to change or have been forced by the courts to undergo counseling. We often say abusive men need to learn to manage their anger but Bancroft argues that abuse isn’t an issue of out of control anger. Rather, it is a systemic, deliberate process used to control for the benefit of the abuser. They don’t need to learn to control themselves; they need to learn to stop controlling their partner (and everyone else in their lives they’re controlling).

In the book, he details ten different categories of abusers. The one I am going to talk (err-write) about today is the Water Torturer.

We’re all familiar with the idea of water torture. Not the waterboarding done by the US government. Rather, this idea of tying someone down and dripping water down onto their forehead slowly, drip by drip. The drops come randomly and it induces a psychological breakdown.

Lundy uses this as a metaphor for the kind of abuser who doesn’t yell or hit. He is always calm and appears to the outside world to be a great guy. He rarely slips up and lets anyone see what he’s really like. He knows how to push his partner’s buttons and get *her* to scream and get emotional. Then he says “why are you getting so worked up?” “you really need to work on your mental health problems” “stop abusing me.” He doesn’t punch or kick but he engages in subtle physical abuse such as blocking her from leaving the room or following her around the house arguing when she tries to get away. He doesn’t engage in blatant sexual abuse such as rape but rather makes degrading comments about her sexual interests, her appearance or withholds sex. He makes extensive use of sarcasm, put downs, controlling where she goes, controlling money, undermining her sense of self worth, isolating her from friends and family, badmouthing her to other people and gaslighting. Lots and lots of gaslighting.

Because you see, like Harry Houdini who helped popularize the idea of water torture, he depends upon an illusion to keep her with him. He depends on creating distractions so neither she nor the outside world can see what he really is and what he’s really doing.

The good news, friends, is that you don’t have to remain strapped down to that table. The damage done by this abuse is extensive, but most definitely something you can heal from.

You just have to keep in mind the Wizard of Oz is not real and keep your eyes on the little man behind the curtain. It’s hard to do, but you’re a badass so you got this.

I see this a lot in my practice. I have women who come in with black eyes and broken ribs, but more often they come in telling me stories of emotional abuse like this. They’ve been so worn down by it, like a pebble in a stream that becomes small and smooth over time from the water flowing over it. They are too tired and broken to leave. And they’re in love. And they’re addicted to the chemicals our brains grow to crave when we’ve been in toxic, tumultuous relationships for so long.

The University of Illinois did some research and noticed there are 5 stages to leaving an abusive relationship. The first two stages encompass the very beginning of the abused partner noticing there is something very wrong, something that goes beyond normal relationship issues. She’s nowhere close to leaving, but the spell has started to wear off. Stage three, women start to notice the effect of the abuse on their children. They start viewing the abuser’s behavior as abuse on a regular basis. And they start preparing to leave. Maybe they tell a friend what’s going on. Start stashing away cash in case they need to run. Call a domestic violence line. Stage four is an interesting one.

Stage four is the yo yo stage. You leave but then you come back. You might end up yo yo-ing several times before you truly leave. Why? Because he says he’ll change. Because being on your own is hard, financially, logistically (with kids), emotionally. Because he gets other people to guilt trip you. Because he won’t “give up on you.” Because you’re addicted to the brain chemicals. Because this dynamic is comfortable to you. Because you love him.

Stage five is the final one. You have left and you have stayed away and aren’t going back. The researchers define this as having left and stayed away 6 months or more. The abuse can continue if there are children involved and you are forced to have continue contact with your abuser, but it’s much less than before and you can begin to heal and move on.

It’s hard as doctor to have patients in those first four stages. Hard for friends and family too. But you can’t skip stages and you can’t rush someone through them. They have to make the choice to leave and stay left. You can support them by listening without judgement and validating their feelings. If you’re a friend or family, offering help with kids and other logistics can help too. And if they yo yo back, be there for them. They may be afraid to tell you. They may avoid you. Don’t give up on them. The abuser will likely make even greater attempts to isolate his partner if she goes back, so stay in her life whatever way you safely can and let her know you’re there is she ever needs you.

A lot of doctors shy away from dealing with the issue of intimate partner violence because they find it so frustrating to have a patient that won’t leave or who goes back. There are a lot of reasons women stay or return. And the sad reality is, sometimes it’s safer or necessary for her to stay. Being there to keep her as safe and supported as possible is hard, but it can be life changing for her. If you abandon her because she won’t leave, you’re just continuing the patten of the abuser, seeking to control her.

The longer you stay, the harder it is to leave. So, if you’re in a relationship with a water torturer, don’t put off considering leaving. A lot of times the reasons we come up with to stay aren’t as convincing if we discuss them with someone outside the relationship like a therapist, domestic help line or friend. Once you’re down in his world of gaslighting, isolation and control, your sense of reality is skewed. You need someone who isn’t riding that Tilt-A-Whirl.

Once you are out, the healing is not necessarily the most fun process. It’s kind of like when someone is getting over opiate addiction. There’s a lot they need to dig out from. A lot of pain and sadness and the practical part of rebuilding your life. But there’s also joy. And as the months pass, there is less and less pain and more and more joy. And you will look back and say, how did I do that all those years? How did I survive? And you’ll see what a badass you are. And that there are far better things at the carnival than the broken Tilt-A-Whirl. And you and your kids will eat cotton candy and laugh and sleep soundly at the end of the day cozy in your warm, safe beds.