September 1994--Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel
Probably on a Thursday night while my parents were at the store, and probably on September 1, 1994, I saw the first episode of My So-Called Life. Since no one else was home, I was free to watch it in privacy in the living room and have my own opinions about it. I loved it. Angela, Claire Dane's character, reminded me so much of myself at that age: insecure, feeling out of place at a party, all that stuff. They sure dressed weird, though--and that hair Ray-Ann had! My gosh! Where did she get those ideas? (The series is available on DVD on Amazon.com.)
On probably September 3, we left in the afternoon. Finally, I got to sleep, rather than waking up in the wee hours of the morning to go back to Roanoke.
On the way, Phil said, "This has been the best summer of my life because I spent it with you."
Though I didn't say so, for me it had been one of the worst. For quite some time, I cried every day because of Phil's words or actions. For the past week or so, we had been in another honeymoon period, which I hoped would continue. But as September wore on, Phil kept doing and saying things which showed he no longer cared for me or my well-being, even though he kept saying he loved me. Even his family seemed to have turned against me. I also found myself having feelings for other guys, one I knew and one I met during the first week of the school year. I couldn't imagine breaking up with Phil, but these guys seemed sweet and decent, especially one in particular. Considering the summer I'd just had, it's understandable that my heart would latch onto a nice guy so quickly after we returned to school and out of the bubble of home. One in particular gained my respect, something Phil had lost.
Sunday, September 4. Phil seemed to want to do nothing at first but play with Dave's new sci-fi football game on the Nintendo. It was a weird and funny and interesting game, but I didn't want to sit around all day watching Phil play it. I had nothing else to do, not with everything still packed and in the van. Undine, Jerisland and probably all my books were still in the van. As for the game, it had all these different types of alien creatures, which you would choose from for your team. I believe the field was in the air, and the sides were either fire pits or nothing but air. When you'd call up a picture of a player, some alien announcer would speak in gibberish. I believe he kept saying, "Bleh-BLAHH! Bleh-bleh-BLAHH!"
Then Dave and his Pearl asked if we wanted to go to the Sheboyan County Fair.
As Pearl drove us over to the S-- fairgrounds, "Major Tom" by Peter Schilling came on the radio, and Pearl turned it up. I sat in the back seat with Phil, and told him I wished I had a jam box with me so I could tape it.
Soon after we got to the fair, Phil and I walked by a booth with posters you could win. Phil kept saying he wanted me to win him one of the babe-posters. Fed up by this and his ogling of girls all summer, I pointed to a beefcake poster and said, "I want you to win me that."
He, of course, said no, and shooed me away, good-naturedly. Finally! I found a way to get back at him instead of just getting mad at him.
I thought the fair would be fun, and bought a bunch of tickets so I could go on, I believe, twenty rides. The first ride was Phil's favorite, some sort of box they'd spin you around in as the big wheel went around.
Sometime during the ride, not only did the stuff in my pockets fly out into the box, but the side of the box hit my forehead. Or my forehead hit the side of the box. I had no way of knowing what happened or how it happened. The box moved so fast that the G-force and the speed probably prevented me from crying out. I hated the ride and couldn't wait for it to stop. Endlessly, the box kept spinning and moving around. Finally, it ended. I picked up the things that fell out of my pockets, and stepped out.
Phil saw the bruise on my forehead. I believe he said a bump was rising.
Though I felt okay at first, a few minutes later my head started aching worse and worse. I turned lightheaded and queasy. Phil got me a cup of water from a vendor, and sat me down at a picnic table under the vendor's big awning.
I said I needed to rest for a while.
"Should we go home?" Phil said.
"I want to wait a while before deciding that, to see if I feel better," I said.
Dave and Pearl knew about my injury.
I kept feeling worse and worse. Finally, I said I wanted to go home. I had to get away from the fairgrounds and into some quiet, comfortable place where I could be tended to. On the way out, we passed a parked ambulance, and I asked to go there. For some reason, we didn't. I think Phil even smiled and said,
"Are you sure you need to go to an ambulance?"
I wanted to find a first-aid station, but all I saw was the ambulance. Phil and the others seemed to think there was no need for one.
If I'd known just how serious a concussion can be, I probably would've insisted they take
me more seriously and get help or take me to a doctor. Of course, a person with a concussion is in no condition to be forceful. Just check out these articles:
http://www.muhealth.org/~neuromed/concussion.shtml
I had the symptoms of a Grade 1 concussion, and Cugan later told me it sounded like a secondary concussion; my headache got worse; I should have been closely watched and, because of my severe headache, taken to a doctor.
We left the park and went to Dairy Queen for dinner.
During dinner, I discovered that Phil and I had vastly different ideas of God than did Dave and Pearl.
Phil told them about Undine, that I had been translating it, and how big it was and how difficult, and Dave said, "You're nuts!"
Contrast that to a person from a German-speaking country who said to me in 1998, "I tip my hat to you."
They began to talk about going dancing that night, and asked if we wanted to go. I said I'd better stay home. I suspected a concussion. Phil said he would go.
What? Here I was, injured and probably with a concussion, needing someone to watch over me, and he wanted to go dancing?
Through my pain, I was upset. I turned very quiet. Phil tried to say something to me once, but got no response.
Back at his house, I confronted him about this, but he insisted he wanted to go out dancing.
"My parents will be here, and you can lie on my couch, watch cable on my TV, and relax."
I don't think anyone told his parents about my concussion, because they never came into the room to check up on me. I was in no condition to go walking around telling people I was hurt; Phil should have told them himself.
Phil went on, "You can find things to do, as you always do."
That wasn't the point.
I would've gone dancing, if I were feeling better. It sounded like fun. I hadn't gone to a dance in a long time. We later planned to go to the Friday dance at Roanoke so I could finally see Phil's dancing--which was such a major and odd part of Phil's personality that Pearl, on the way to the fair, said she was surprised I hadn't seen him dance yet. She said you have to see him dance to really know him. I hadn't had the chance because the junior year dances had no good music.
Phil said, "Other people always say, 'Oh, you go ahead and have your fun. Don't mind me.'"
Oh, yeah, I wanted him home with me because I was a selfish twit.
I was miserable. Phil was my husband; he wasn't supposed to go out and enjoy himself while I lay on his couch, suffering from an untreated injury.
His parents had just gotten two new puppies, little black and white ones, and kept them in a cage when they were inside. I sat beside them. Their names were something-Dave and something-Phil. They loved the attention and wanted my petting. I tried to comfort myself with them, and tried to hide my tears.
After Phil left, I watched some true-life movie about sharks attacking servicemen whose plane went down in the ocean. In one scene, a man seemed to be asleep while floating in the water in a life preserver; it turned out his lower half had been bitten off. The whole movie horrified me, especially since it really happened. Watching this all alone sure didn't make me feel any better. I tried to rest, but couldn't with my awful headache.
A week or two later, Phil told me that Dave and Pearl thought I was a party pooper for wanting to leave the fair early. They didn't know how I could have gotten hurt. Apparently, they blamed me for getting hurt. But it was a traveling fair, getting taken down and put up all the time, and people do get hurt on amusement park rides, especially in traveling fairs. This fact was given on an episode of the Sally Jessy Raphael show in 1998. A few weeks after the incident, my friend Pearl said Dave and his Pearl's remarks were uncalled for. She and my other friends would have respected that I was hurt.
I did ask that Phil not drink while dancing, at least. If he came back with alcohol on his breath, that would finish me. I was already upset enough. I didn't want him getting drunk while I ached both inside and out. Besides, as I'd joked before with him and Dave, he was still underage. He recently told me that he drank or smoked whatever people passed around at parties (never mind the laws or his health). I would never do that. He called me a pooper. I lost more respect for him.
After Phil came back from dancing, I needed to talk to him and I believe I told him so. But instead of staying with me in his room, he left again and disappeared for a long time. I finally went looking for him, and found him talking alone with Pearl in the computer room. I asked if he'd come back soon so I could finish talking with him. Then I turned and left.
He soon came back, a smile on his face, and said, "Jealous? She's a nice person, but Dave's fiancée."
I knew he liked her back before he dated me, but I thought this was over now. Still, seeing him there with her made me uneasy. Besides, how is it "jealousy" to want to finish a discussion about how he'd been treating me?
That night or maybe the next day, Phil said, "I would love to be allowed to have three wives instead of just one. You'd be one, Dave's Pearl would be another, and that high schooler who likes me and keeps calling me at the wrong time--she'd be the third."
Did he think I'd find this funny? It only made me feel worse. So he did still want Dave's Pearl! And I wasn't enough for him!
How dare I object? As some drunken guys later told him, I was so "possessive"!
Phil also told me, "Dave and Pearl think you're a party pooper for not wanting to go dancing tonight. They think you're a pooper because you never want to go dancing with me. They remembered a time last semester when they asked us to go dancing, and you didn't want to go!"
What time was that? I probably just wanted to spend a quiet evening alone with Phil. Or maybe I wasn't feeling well or had a lot of homework.
Phil went on, "I used to go dancing every weekend, but I gave that up for you."
This was news to me! He never mentioned going dancing every weekend. He never asked me more than once or twice--if at all--to go dancing on the weekend. We went to Roanoke dances whenever possible, but they never had good music.
When I wrote the first draft of this account of the S-- County Fair in 1995 or 1996, I showed it to Cugan and asked if I was being unreasonable. He said,
"No. Yes, people do often say, 'Go ahead and have your fun,' but they're rarely taken at their word. Usually they don't really mean it. Tell me something: What did you really see in this guy? He didn't seem to take this marriage seriously."
All during our relationship, Dave, obviously influenced by what Peter had told him about me, said nasty things about me to Phil. When Phil said he wanted to date me, Dave said, "Don't date her. We don't get along."
Don't get along? But I didn't even know the guy! We'd never met before Pearl's party, and got along quite well, flirting all evening!
He also kept telling tales about me to his parents. This started way back in the spring. His Pearl did it sometimes, too. They accused me of all sorts of things: calling Indiana on the O'Hara dime (I always used a phone card), telling Phil not to take a one-day job (Phil decided not to and I supported his decision because of a major history test the next day), and probably other things I've forgotten now. Dave's parents seemed to listen to them far too much, because I began to get the feeling that they didn't like me as much anymore. For example, one day during the spring, as Pearl and I both sat in the living room, Maura called Pearl her favorite daughter-in-law.
Phil thought Pearl was nice, but I considered her just as mean as Dave. One Saturday in either May or September, in the middle of the afternoon, long after I had heard Dave take his shower, I found a deserted bathroom. So I took a shower. Because it was the middle of the afternoon and everyone else had showered, and because there were two bathrooms, I took my time doing the various things that I always needed to do after a shower, such as shaving, moisturizing, putting cover-up on my face, combing my hair. I was just about done. Then Pearl banged on the door and yelled, "Hurry up and get out of there! Dave needs to take a shower!" No, she did not politely knock and ask if I could please hurry up. She yelled fiercely, as if I were deliberately holding up Dave. How could I possibly have known that he needed to take another shower for soccer practice or whatever it was, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon?
Phil continued to pick fights, especially, it seemed, on Monday as we moved my stuff into the new apartment on campus. But other than that, it was fun to see my friends again and hear their jokes as we went in and out of the apartment. Mike was there, being his usual self: bouncy, goofy, weird, loud, childlike, sweet, outgoing, hilarious.
After we finished moving my stuff into my room and the living room (my room was too small to hold all the boxes), Phil may have left again for a little while. Dirk lived in the same apartment building as I did; at one point, Phil and I walked away from the apartment, possibly going to the Campus Center. Dirk must have yelled to us from his basement window (these windows were on the upper part of the lower-level bedroom walls, and, once you found something to stand on, or if you were on an upper bunk, were easily cranked open). Phil talked to him through the window, and Dirk was surprised to hear I now had a fourth-level bard in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D).
I spent some time with my roommies and Mike, and we discovered the vents in the bedrooms were good sound conductors. You could hear practically everything from the upstairs apartment. Mike yelled up the vent to our upstairs neighbors, who were Phi-Delts we knew, and I believe they yelled back.
We thought these vents could be a problem, because how much of our everyday lives and conversations would our upstairs neighbors be able to hear? I don't know if they even noticed, but I do remember often being paranoid about this during the year. And I think that, in my room, we did sometimes hear voices from their apartment.
It would be fun living there with my new roommies: Tara, Sharon and Pearl. (We called each other roommies no matter who shared a bedroom with whom.) I was happy to be back. Phil and I had once spoken of marrying halfway through the year and then living in our own apartment on campus, since he'd heard they were supposed to be for married students as well as regular students. When my roommies-to-be and I looked at the apartment the year before while it was being built, I thought I would live with them for only part of the year. But now, I wanted to spend the whole year enjoying life with my friends.
The visiting custom of the apartments was the same as for the suites: Anybody, anytime. The only rules that applied were the ones your apartment-mates agreed on. One rule we eventually made was that if someone wanted to let a friend/boyfriend stay overnight, she had to ask everyone else for an OK. The friend would sleep on the couch and not with one of us, but it made people uncomfortable to walk into the living room in a bathrobe, and discover someone sleeping there.
Phil and Dirk discussed playing D&D that night and ordering a pizza, but I hadn't decided whether to join them. At first I wanted to, but they were already playing D&D, we had no directories yet, and I didn't know where to find them. So instead, I settled down to a fun evening with my new roommies, Astrid, and Mike. Clarissa wasn't there, because it was a day before move-in day. Mike lived nearby in H-- and the others were to be freshman orientation leaders.
We sat around the big, fake wood dining table in this small but lovely apartment. We played games, such as non-alcoholic Spoons. I had never heard of it before, but was told it was a drinking game. Our punishments had nothing to do with drinking. I forget what they were; maybe you were "It" or something like that. I also don't remember how the game was played, just that it involved spoons.
Finally, Phil came along and tapped on the glass doors, and we let him in.
I realized, as I later told Phil, that I was glad to be there instead of playing D&D with him and Dirk. My friends had been my family at Roanoke, longer than Phil had been with me.
Maybe that night or the night before, Phil told me his mom made him give his summer money to her. He'd saved up all summer to buy my engagement ring from a catalog for $300, but she used that money on Phil's car payments! We were both furious.
Phil told me to "Stay with your friends tonight" instead of going back with him to his house. At first I wanted to go with him, figuring I would miss him. But I soon changed my mind.
All the rooms had white plastic wire towers with drawers. One wire tower was in the toilet room of the bathroom, and each of us took a drawer for various personal items.
I call it the toilet room because the bathroom was actually three separate rooms. In the main room were two sinks; to the left of them was the bathtub with its see-through glass door; to the right was the shower room; and across from the sinks was the toilet room. This was the handicap suite, so we had a huge bathroom.
Some time that first week, probably right around Tuesday, I discovered Hot 102 (dance) had turned alternative, and that quickly became my favorite station. Of course, I recognized almost immediately that Q101 was much better, and that Hot 102 (now New Rock 102.1) was copying it. The signal for Q101 didn't cut out until we got close to Milwaukee, so copying it would be easy. New Rock 102.1 used the same terms and did the same shows as Q101. Example: The Retro Flashback Lunch. Another example: "We give the name and artist of every song we play." (That was a wonderful perk, but they stopped doing it in about 1995.) However, New Rock didn't play the same songs as Q101; I greatly missed "Millennium" by Killing Joke and "Insanity" by Boingo. But they did have "Undone (The Sweater Song)" by Weezer and "Snail Shell" by They Might Be Giants.
Now to give you the view from my window. The apartment was on one end of the bottom level, which was partially submerged by ground on one side (hence the high windows). My bedroom was on the submerged side. From my window, you could see the new parking lot for the apartments, a sidewalk, and the edge of Muehlmeier. Venetian blinds probably covered the window.
On the opposite side of the apartment, by the living room, there were glass, sliding doors and a view of the lagoon, the geese, the adjacent apartment building, and the courtyard. Our side of the building was next to the other building. If you faced these glass doors, to your left would be the wall we shared with the next apartment. To your right would be the kitchen and the back outside door. The outside door led to a ramp-like walk which curved to the right, up the hill, to the sidewalk leading to Muehlmeier and the Campus Center. Pearl kept her scooter inside this door. From this door, we could see the woods on the outskirts of the campus.
We had another door, which led to the apartment mailboxes, the little laundry room, and the next apartment. We went upstairs to get outside. The door locked automatically and had to be unlocked with a key card. We weren't supposed to leave this door open, but during move-in days, people propped it open anyway with a heavy-duty floor mat.
The place had that new building smell.
Pearl put her new stereo system in the living room for us all to use. It had a radio, tape player, five-disc CD changer, and remote control! Everything you could wish for--well, except for a record player, but none of us brought our records anyway. Records were too hard to transport safely. But the antenna was weird. It was this black, plastic, boxlike thing connected to a couple cords. I don't know why it wasn't the usual metal pole. By second semester, there were five discs in the CD changer at all times, so we could turn it on and play whatever came up.
On Tuesday I went to the library to set up my work schedule on a dry erase chart. On Wednesday, I would start work, from one to three p.m. Once again, I kept my weekends and evenings free from work, just as I always avoided 8:00 classes. This left weekends free for laundry, cleaning, homework, relaxing, and sleeping in. Junior year, Sharon got five hours done on Saturdays, but I preferred to spread out my ten hours over the five weekdays. Sometimes I had to do, like, one hour one day and three hours the next, but my ideal setup was two hours a day. It all depended on class schedules and other workers' schedules. The librarians wanted only two people working the desk at one time.
I wrote out a class and work schedule, which I soon gave to Phil.
I wondered what time Phil would show up at the apartment that day, but I knew he would. I wanted to see him, and knew he wouldn't want to go a whole day without seeing me, his beloved wife. Not only that, but he knew I would have breakfast in the apartment and needed milk and orange juice, which I couldn't get on campus.
This new guy named Charles came to visit us, and sat in the living room while I unpacked boxes. He was loud and tall. I would later discover he had Italian blood, and he looked it. He said proudly that he was Sicilian. He had a strong, aquiline nose. He was also a 24-year-old freshman, having been in the Air Force. He had a girlfriend named Trina, another freshman. My friends probably met them in orientation. Charles and Trina had only just met, but were already dating. Trina was about 18 or 19. She had glasses and dark, shoulder-length, kind of feathered hair.
Since many of my boxes had been put in the living room for lack of other space, I unpacked them within the first few days so as not to annoy my roommates. I unpacked the porcelain bird as Charles watched, and told him, with a big grin, that it was my engagement ring.
That night, Phil still hadn't shown up, so Pearl and I went to the semi-formal Opening Banquet in Bossard together. I don't remember why nobody else in our group went, but I do believe Pearl wanted me along for company. There was a speaker, Bob Hall; his talk was called, "Hands Off! Let's Talk," and the subject was dating.
http://www.crk.umn.edu/newsevents/notices98-99/BobHall.htm
At the beginning, I said to Pearl, "I guess I don't really need to listen, since I'm engaged." (And married, I thought.)
Hall said to the guys in the cafeteria, "If she says no, let me introduce you to Mr. Hand!" And later, "Guys, she always knows where that hand is!" Pearl went, "Mm-HMMM!"
Later that night, with still no sign of Phil, Pearl and I sat alone in the living room, talking. I told her Phil had been building up muscles from working at the factory.
She said, "Sounds like lust to me!"
I said with a smile, "I'm going to marry him--I can lust after him!"
But sometime later in the conversation, I told her, "I've been losing some respect for Phil, but hopefully now that we're living apart I'll be able to build it back up again."
She said, "That doesn't sound good. Maybe you two should try dating other people for a while."
I said, "Well, I don't want to see him with anyone else, and I know he doesn't want to see me with anyone else." Not only that, but you're not supposed to date other people while you're married.
We put the new, blue, all-cushioned couch along the wall in the nook by the inside wall, the chairs around the TV, and the stereo in the nook as well. Then the dining table went under the light in the more open, middle area. And little metallic bears went all over the table and here and there in the carpet, Astrid-confetti from a party I missed on Sunday. (Astrid loved to send us letters with confetti or little bears in them. You learned to be careful opening her letters, or the confetti would get all over the floor.) For the rest of the year, we kept finding these bears here and there, even when we thought we'd cleaned them all up.
We had a stove, fridge, many shelves and drawers divided among us (one each of each kind of drawer or shelf), a sink (with no stopper), and even pots and pans given us by the school. Mom gave me an old dish drainer, which we needed.
The glass doors with their Venetian blinds were over by the dining table, and two other windows with Venetian blinds were along that wall. One of these windows was in the kitchen, the other in the living room. There were bookshelves in the open area, opposite the glass doors. My bird sat on the top shelf, where it seemed a porcelain bird should be, to watch over everything. We put videos, tapes, CD's and books on these shelves. We each had one or two shelves, and it was understood that anything on the shelves could be used by anyone.
On the other side of the apartment, opposite the bathroom, were the two bedrooms. First was my room with Sharon. We bunked the beds because they didn't fit side by side. They were already bunked when I arrived, though at the end of the year I was told they were originally side by side. We moved around the furniture in the rooms because the original arrangements, as usual, didn't work either. Now we had the beds under the window. Sharon slept on the top bunk.
We each had a wire storage rack, and I put mine beside the bed. Our closets were a little small, but they had shelves, and with the many storage racks provided for us, we found places to put everything. So the room, though tiny, didn't seem crowded, but rather neat and tidy. (The living room was often messy, however, because we often left papers and textbooks lying around.) These racks were like a stack of drawers, because you could pull them out to remove your stuff and then push them back again.
Pearl and Tara had their room (with its answering machine) next to ours.
We liked the bathtub, but not the glass door. We started thinking of ways to cover up the door so no one could see us bathing, and may have even requested a curtain, which we never got. The glass door should have been on the shower, and the shower curtain should have been on the bathtub. The shower, after all, was in a separate room with a door. Also, there would have been more room to pull the shower curtain wide open, and we probably wouldn't have had quite so many mildew problems with it. It had to be replaced halfway through the year. So we never actually used the tub, except to store boxes, and it got really dirty by the end of the year.
Probably on Tuesday or Wednesday, I turned on my radio to change it from South Bend's U93 to Green Bay's WIXX. Lo and behold, there was U93! This happened only once that I know of. I listened to U93 for a while. Someone called in from Milwaukee and said, "I used to listen to U93 in South Bend. I flipped on the radio here in Milwaukee and found it!" If I knew U93's number, I would have called and said the broadcast was traveling even farther than that.
Once over the summer, WIXX had come in on the house antenna. Phil said they boosted their power, so that may be why it came in so far away. However, I didn’t want to hear WIXX: it was on the same frequency as Q101. I never heard WIXX in South Bend before or since that day.
My first class of the year was at 9:15 in the morning, American Lit with Nelson, the teacher from New York. He'd been there only a year, and soon after I graduated, he would move back to New York. Yes, another American Lit class. This was probably American Lit I, and the previous class American Lit II, because this one focused on an earlier period.
As I've noted before, Nelson, with his funny, New York accent, would say "ill-yoo-strate" when he said the word "illustrate." Whenever Phil imitated his accent, he'd always include "ill-yoo-strate." One day in September, Nelson said "ill-uh-strate," like we say it in the Midwest, then stopped and corrected himself, saying, "ill-yoo-strate." I don't know if anybody else noticed, but I thought it was funny.
While working in the library on Wednesday, I found some German dictionaries, some old and some new, and spent my time at the circulation desk looking up the words from "Undine" that I hadn't been able to find. Many of them were there. There were still many words I couldn't find, but they were much fewer now. As soon as I saw Phil again that day, I gushed and exulted about it.
People kept seeing my bird, sitting up on the very top shelf of the bookshelf in the living room and looking out over us all, and they said how pretty it was. Then I got to tell them it was my engagement ring until Phil finally bought me a real one. (How disappointing that I didn't already have one!)
Somebody who parked in the apartment parking lot had a white Ford Bronco. It was weird and funny because that was the same kind of truck in which OJ fled the cops. Whenever Phil and I passed it, we'd say, "No! Not OJ! OJ's here!"
In a similar vein, one day during the summer, Mom wrote "OJ," or orange juice, on the pad of paper she kept on the kitchen counter. Phil wrote next to it, "No OJ!"--meaning, no more OJ news. Just think, we were already sick of it, and that was only the beginning of the news saturation.
Apparently Phil met me at the library, or soon after I left it, and we must have gone over to Krueger lounge. We spent some time there, sitting with Dirk, a freshman named Sandy, and an older woman, maybe in her fifties or sixties. She had come to teach at Roanoke for half a year. She lived in Krueger, since she was only staying in the area for a short time. She had a southern accent and was very friendly.
Sandy was a freshman who lived in Krueger but eventually would move into Dirk's apartment. That sort of thing happened sometimes, though it wasn't supposed to. I don't know how they got away with it. Sandy was a dark-haired, pretty girl with glasses. I think her hair was about as long as or a little longer than Jackie's.
Phil and I were both confused about Dirk and Sandy. We both thought they were dating, until Dirk told Phil they weren't--Sandy was his friend's girlfriend. (Dirk later told me they finally realized they liked each other, and started going out; this hadn't happened yet on Wednesday.) But they certainly acted like they were going out! He would slap her backside, they would make suggestive comments to each other--this was no platonic friendship!
(They got engaged either that school year or the next. Then in 1996 or 1997, I'm told, Sandy broke the engagement, complaining about how Dirk treated her. Then she wanted him back, but he had a new girlfriend, whom he eventually married. How could an obnoxious, plain know-it-all like Dirk keep getting girlfriends, while I had trouble getting dates?)
You'll remember that Phil vanished for an entire day, without a word to me of when he'd come again. He never called. I expected him at any time, and he knew I needed milk and orange juice for breakfast. I had no idea where he was or why he never showed up. I had to borrow milk and orange juice for breakfast the next morning. Now that Phil was finally back, I complained, rightly so. But instead of apologizing or explaining, he just said that one of my friends could have taken me for milk and orange juice.
After we got back from getting the milk and orange juice, before I got out of the van I said,
"I love you and I want to marry you [legally], so why do I have such doubts?"
Once, junior year, Phil said that if either of us were ever attracted to someone else, we should say so. That way, if we were to break up because someone else came along, it wouldn't be a shock to the "dumpee." He lived out this rule, constantly telling me who he was attracted to, even telling me he wanted three wives.
Well, after several days of Phil disappearing for long periods of time--even a whole day--without telling me when he'd come back, I wanted him to be around more. When you've been married to a guy all summer and he suddenly vanishes, you feel like a part of you is missing.
Phil's treatment of me inspired the doubts.
I may also have subconsciously wanted to get back at him for a summer of telling me he wanted all those other women.
So I told him my fears. I told him I was getting a crush on a certain guy. I tried to reassure Phil I still loved him, though.
I don't want to say who this guy was, because he's still a good friend. I had a crush on him junior year, before dating Phil. I was attracted to his integrity. He wouldn't drink underage or smoke anything that was passed around at a party. He didn't make everything into a raunchy joke. He was sweet. He wouldn't play tricks on his girlfriend. He didn't seem capable of making a woman feel like crap. (In 2005, from e-mails and forum posts, I learned that he believed in total equality in marriage.)
Phil left me with a choice. We were both very sad. He said to talk to the guy, and if he felt the same, I could leave with his blessings. He didn't want to see it, but he wouldn't stand in my way.
I cried afterwards and decided I couldn't leave him: I didn't have the heart. I loved Phil, and had only a tiny, insignificant crush on the other guy. Also, leaving a marriage wasn't that simple. So I said nothing to the guy.
I'm feeling overburdened by recounting all the terrible things that happened in September, not just what I've already posted, but what comes later in the September chapter. It starts to feel like too much sharing of sensitive issues, maybe even overstating. So I will summarize as much as possible:
I didn't see much of Phil after that. He thought my friends kept dissing him; I saw nothing. Once, when he came over, my roommies and I were getting ready to watch My So-Called Life, and had friends over to join us, a kind of party. All the chairs were taken, so someone suggested he sit on a cushioned milk crate. This was meant to be used as a chair, and my roommies and I used it that way a lot. Yet somehow, being offered the milk crate chair was offensive to him. He got up and left, feeling nobody wanted him to sit down at all. He was upset with me for not standing up for him. But I had no clue he was upset. I did not see the milk crate as offensive, nor did I see sitting on the floor as offensive when all other chairs were already taken. It's just part of college life. I feel he overreacted big-time and took it out on me.
I never had a chance to tell him I had chosen him over the other guy. Instead, he vanished to a party with Dave, where he told drunken party boys about our problems and lusted after some girls. I believe he even told me he wanted to get drunk and lose his inhibitions so he'd sleep with one of them. Fortunately, he didn't listen to the advice of drunken party boys, but tempered it with the advice of a married friend to give me another chance.
The next day, while I worked in the library with Sharon, I told her I was sad and didn't know what was going on. My old Lit teacher Wesley came up to the desk and we chatted. Remember the crush I had on him? He looked a bit scuzzy now: unshaven, long hair. I think he asked me what I'd be doing after graduation, and I said I'd be getting married. (What a pity: He was now divorced and no longer my teacher. And the student he'd dated, was now married and rejected him. If I'd seen him a day or two later, who knows?) I saw Dirk standing by the copy machine, and may have felt uneasy, but I don't remember now and that may be just a coloration of my memory based on things that happened afterwards. After a few minutes, Wesley went on his way.
I had no idea Phil was upset with me over my friends, until Dirk came up to me and told me. He also told me Phil was pledging Zetas again. Phil knew I had problems with the Zetas, especially now that the cool ones had graduated, and Phil had given me every reason to believe he wanted nothing to do with pledging after how they'd treated him as a pledge the previous year. From what Dirk said, Phil did not care anymore how I felt, and Dirk said when I got upset, "He's got to live his own life." But wasn't it our life together as man and wife?
I felt like crying, though I did not know what was going on, and had to choke back tears as Sharon and I walked back to the apartment. Someone soon knocked at the inside door (I don't know how he got in the building without calling me). Sharon went to answer it, then came back in our bedroom, saying, "Uh-oh, Nyssa, uh-oh!" She left us alone as Phil walked in.
He told me there were too many problems and he was breaking up with me. I couldn't believe it. I also felt upset because I had been faithful to the vows we'd made even when I wanted to break them, yet he just went ahead and broke them. He talked about the party, and said the drunken party boys told him, "Oh, just dump her." He didn't want to listen to them because they were selfish and drunk, but what was he doing, telling guys like that about our problems?
All summer, whenever I doubted the validity of our marriage because it wasn't legally recognized in Indiana or Wisconsin, he insisted on the validity and told me not to worry about it. But now, he said our marriage wasn't real. He could probably get away with that in his church because our marriage was never blessed by a priest (i.e., not valid in the Catholic church), but what about in front of God?
So, it takes two people to end a marriage if one is abusive, but only one to end it if the other person is not subservient enough. And, apparently, Phil decides when a secret marriage is real and valid--which is when he wants it to be.
Well, I considered it real and valid, and this was not a breakup, not the end of an engagement, but a divorce. All the anxieties of a divorced, conservative Christian woman came into play: Will I be an adulteress if I marry somebody else? Must I be reconciled to him or else never marry again? Will I be free to marry again because he deserted me--the Pauline privilege? Will he be an adulterer if he marries again?
I had spent all summer trying to be a good wife--supporting him when he had job trouble, vacuuming and dusting our rooms for him, washing and bleaching the skid marks out of his underwear, praying for his safety. And this was my repayment?
Like an idiot, I thought I'd be better off with him than without him (apparently forgetting all the emotional abuse of the summer), and tried to beg him not to divorce me. He said he had given me so many chances to change, and that I hadn't done so, but if I changed within a month, we could get back together. It may have been this time when he said we might change after seeing other people. I believe he said just before he left, "Keep the faith." (What the heck did that mean?)
If there were any other reasons given at this time, I don't remember what they were.
Basically, he blamed it on me. I think he just broke up with me because I wasn't willing to give in to his constant abuse. By not letting him control me or make me the "victim," I was doing so many "bad" things that I would have to become obedient and change for him to come back to me.
If I was such a bad person, then why did I not act badly with my next three boyfriends? And why did I never cry with anyone as often as I cried with him? Yet I hear that Phil, on the other hand, carried on to his next two relationships at least some of the things he did to me. He would act the same, he would yell, he would manipulate, he would control, he would act petulant when he didn't get his own way, and he would even slap his next girlfriend Persephone (only once because she slapped him back). Cindy later told me that she heard him yell at me in the Krueger lounge, so she didn't like him. Then she heard him do the same thing with the girl he eventually married. I've heard that a common trait of abusers is to blame their girlfriends or wives for their behavior. They'll abuse and abuse and sometimes even go so far as killing them, and still say their wives deserved it, that they did so many things wrong and it was their fault.
("Overt Abuse"). For years, I wondered why an abuser would leave his victim, and thought that it must have been because I resisted. Of course, psychologists and advice columnists might still say I allowed the abuse by continuing to stay with him. But now I see that abusers do discard, so maybe I don't need to figure out a reason.
I could admit to doing some things I shouldn't have, but he didn't take responsibility for his own wrongdoing. I don't think I even thought of them during the talk, but they began to come to me later on.
For some reason, the song "Insanity" by Boingo kept running through my head.
After he left, I broke down and cried.
I told my parents, though I had to call them collect through the new 1-800-CALL-ATT because my phone card number wasn't working anymore for some reason. My mom could tell I was upset just from the way I said hello to her. She had been hoping I wouldn't have to go through this again. I think she told me to eat something. She did tell me to go to that night's dance with my friends, that it would be good for me, take my mind off things.
For at least a few days, I made a lot of collect calls, until my dad got a new number for me. I believe he'd switched long-distance carriers to Sprint, which was why the number didn't work. The new number was very easy to remember, mostly made up of our home phone number. I didn't want to do a thing without my parents' advice, for fear I'd mess things up if I did. I remembered how I messed things up with Peter when I acted on impulse.
Possibly at dinner, I met Persephone for the first time. She was a dark-haired girl with short hair, a freshman, Trina's roommate. Some of the other freshman girls had told her they came to Roanoke to get married. She laughed about it with us, having already discovered that Roanoke guys had a bad reputation. She said, "That's it, I'm not sleeping with any Roanoke guys!" This secretly made me glad, because then she wouldn't be sleeping with Phil.
Either before or after I met her, Phil told me he was interested in a girl named Persephone. I soon found out this was the same one.
I went to the Friday dance, after all, even though Phil and I were supposed to go together and now we wouldn't. This was supposed to be my chance to see him dance. Well, I did see him dance, though it was across the room. It was hard for some time afterwards to hear the songs "Funkytown" (80s version) and "Delirious" (Prince) and remember his foot-stamping. He was a weirdo jumping-bean on the dance floor. Though I didn't notice, he later said my friends kept giving him dirty looks.
Once, he danced over to me, and I said he did dance weird.
It felt good to dance and escape and work out some of my grief, though I couldn't stay there long. I may have left alone, or with my friends.
I believe I kept the engagement bird up on the shelf because I had nowhere else to put it. Phil had told me to keep it. Though tempted to break the bird into a million pieces, I dreamed that I did and began to sob over the poor bird. It wasn't its fault. So I didn't break or even chip it. I later put the game Crack the Case, which Phil had put in my safekeeping, into a cupboard below the sink.
Strange things happened all the time on this campus. This time it involved Red Green. I now found that Astrid and Charles had also been watching it over the summer, and they turned it on so the rest of us could see it--us meaning us apartment-mates and Mike. So all of a sudden, this weird, obscure little show had become popular! But now it bothered me to watch it, because Phil loved it so much and did an excellent impression of Red.
I heard tell, and could see for myself, that the freshman class was about as big as (I believe) the three other classes put together. And now the lunch lines went all the way back to the opposite wall, then doubled up and went all the way back to the outside doors! The line seemed to take different routes every year: Freshman year, the line would go into the Muskie. I think at times it had even gone around the other Bossard walls. I believe sometimes it would also double up over by the Muskie. Anyway, you had to be careful what time you went to Bossard for lunch, or else you'd get stuck in this line, whatever way it went. Sometimes we would just sit down and wait for it to get smaller, because it would, eventually. And what were we waiting for? School food! Ugh! (Though it was better than public school food by far.)
I know I loved goatees junior year, but senior year--I don't know, I guess too many guys were wearing them now.
Sarah, Tara, etc. used to say, "PEO-ple! It's PEO-ple!" (That came from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, one with a tennis-shoed, orange-haired monster in a scientist's castle.) Now Tara got us all saying, "PEEP-hole! We want a PEEP-hole!" We wanted a peephole on our outside door for safety reasons. The door didn't have a window, and neither did that whole wall, so we couldn't see who was out there before opening it. When Mike came along and banged on it, we didn't know if it was him or a crazed Zeta.
I loved the honks of the geese by the lagoon. Though they would threaten me if I went near them, I considered them my friends: their beautiful sounds consoled me.
Sharon said the choir director complimented her on never having "S-- hair." S-- hair, in those days, was big, curly hair.
Now my friends told me the many reasons why they didn't like Phil. I always thought they just found his jokes annoying. I didn't realize it was the way he treated me, that he treated me like a child, that he was too controlling and possessive. (After the divorce, he said the drunk guys at the party called me possessive. In reality, I objected when he leered at--not just looked at--or made crass jokes about other women, and when he said he wanted two additional wives. I never acted like he couldn't be friends with other women. It's not "possessive" to be suspicious of someone who gives you good reason to suspect him. Apparently, he was just projecting his own trait onto me.) My friends didn't say anything because they thought I could see it and was okay with it. But I'd been too blinded by NVLD to notice the things my friends noticed.
Dad said Phil was unstable. In their talks together, Phil often seemed "stupid." Mom said that in all the time he spent with us, he never lifted a finger to help with the chores, or to pay them back for things they bought him for work.
One day, I sat in my room thinking, I'm so depressed and I think I'd like to go to church this Sunday. The phone rang. Out of the blue, Anna invited me to her church. I thought maybe she did have a "direct line to God," as Latosha used to tell her.
The most likely date we went to the church is September 11 (back when that day had nothing bad associated with it).
Anna's church in S-- was noisy and spiritual and full of activity. I didn't feel comfortable joining in with shouts or claps or any of that, being a Nazarene (though Dad told me once that Nazarene churches used to be a lot like that). But a Pentecostal church is the perfect place to go when you're upset, whether or not their charismatic practices are "appropriate" in a church.
Rather than the preacher leading them in prayer, for a time, the congregation was encouraged to pray privately--but out loud. Anna knelt beside me and prayed in tongues. I asked her later what the words meant, and repeated what I remembered. She said she didn't know, but she would always look them up afterwards in a special dictionary for people who speak in tongues.
I saw my old suitemate Tom there! After the service, a man told me that Tom was messed up, then Anna brought him to her church, and there he was that day--a Pentecostal and (as they called it) full of the Spirit! I couldn't believe it. He was so different from the partying suitemate I knew freshman year. One of the guys said, "When he came to us, Tom was a messed-up Catholic!"
People found out I was a Nazarene (sort of a sister church), so they kept trying to convince me to turn Pentecostal, and that their doctrine on speaking in tongues is the correct one. But they did this in a nice way, so I was more amused than annoyed. I must admit, their stories were quite surprising--like young children speaking in tongues--and I was almost convinced. But not quite.
Someone gave me a new King James Bible. I think it was the church's usual gift for newcomers.
Anna and I went to school brunch together and talked about the breakup. Then we went down the Campus Center stairs and saw Phil in the foyer. Anna left me with him, gushing about how wonderful it was that he was there and I could talk to him.
All weekend, though he was a commuter, Phil hung around campus and had long talks with me. They seemed productive. Once, Phil agreed to talk to my parents on the phone; they talked him into going with me to a counselor. Dad told us to make out lists of each other's faults, rather than letting it be one-sided, with only Phil telling me my faults. I started work on mine, and asked Phil to work on his--though, truly, he'd already given me a verbal one.
Mom told me what he said to her on the phone. He told her I was so upset because relationships and break-ups were new to me. She didn't like this. (It also wasn't true: I was upset over the way he treated me, and it's only natural to be very upset over a divorce.) Shortly before we left for school, he seemed to brag to her that he'd had seven girlfriends before and broke up with all of them himself. (Of course, one or two of them broke up with him.) She got a weird feeling from this, that he had something in mind. She also felt he would throw a girl away when he tired of her--confirmation that he had the abuser trait, "unceremoniously discarding." She said, "Oh, so he was going to spend the summer here, eat our food, take our money, then take you back to school and break up with you?"
I don't want to tell everything Phil and I talked about, just summarize a few important things. Things he said made no sense, and I didn't deserve the treatment I got that summer. I didn't intend to do the same things again that I had done wrong, but he had to change, too. He had to recognize his own faults, just as I'd recognized mine. He blamed me for him getting a cold, though I hadn't given it to him. He even said, "I think I'm still in love with Tracy," even though he never loved Tracy and never kissed her. (Back in January, if he'd loved Tracy, I would have backed off.)
By the way, that school year I heard Tracy got a boyfriend who did want to be with her. She would have missed out on that if she'd been with Phil.
Phil said Dave and his Pearl were acting like his parents, and probably headed for a breakup. (That, though he may not have realized it, sounded like our own marriage prior to the divorce.) To my shock, Phil had asked Dave's Pearl to go to dinner with him. She "got very quiet." So a day after our separation, my husband asked out some new girl--who, by the way, was his own brother's fiancée?
He said, "She's giving, like me."
Like him?
In 1995, Sharon, Pearl, Chloe and Astrid held a Christmas party in the apartment, where they all lived at the time, since they hadn't graduated yet. Persephone came to the party. I must have asked if Dave and his Pearl had gotten married yet.
"They broke up a long time ago," she said. "You didn't know that?"
Nope, I was totally out of the loop of the O'Hara life by then.
"Phil tried chasing after [Dave's] Pearl for a while, but she wanted nothing to do with him. In fact, all the women have been staying away from him!"
Back to September 1994. I've heard that women who go through a break-up usually cut their hair, but I didn't--especially after Phil kept telling me to cut it.
I tried to talk to Phil over the next few days about setting up a counseling appointment, and gave him my list. Sometimes he was mean, and sometimes not. He also complained about my friends giving him nasty looks. One day, we sat by the lagoon and discussed what would happen if we did get back together. I felt I would have to give up my own ideas of what was right or what was moral, of how a proper wife should act, and take on his ideas, which were now far more morally questionable than before. But I was desperately stupid enough now to give in. The things he wanted probably made me lose even more respect for him, but maybe I didn't think of it at the time. From the outcome of this interview, it almost seemed he would consider getting back together with me sooner than the month he had mentioned before.
Clarissa came over to visit, and I went to my tree with her to tell her about Phil breaking off the "engagement." With the new apartments over there and the trimming the builders had done, the tree was now out in the open and stripped of shoots and such. I tried to sit in the tree, but it just didn't work. My tree! My tree! I used to wander out there, past the lagoon and the geese, sophomore and junior years, to sit in the tree and read and get away from the difficulties and pains of life. During sophomore year, it was a release from the situations with Peter and Shawn. I really needed it then. But now, there was no tree!
Since I couldn't sit in my tree anymore, I started wandering in the woods instead, and doing this more times in one year than I had done in the last three years put together.
Sharon pointed to her ring finger once and said, "Next time, get a ring."
Sometime soon after the divorce, Phil told me he’d been bathing now--soap and everything--and brushing his teeth, so he could attract women. Sometimes he even shaved. He must have wanted to insult me, because he refused to do this during our marriage. (I think my nose got immune.) He also started watching a network for televised personal ads on S--'s Marcus Cable.
Please bear with me: We're now entering the longest, darkest, most painful part of this tunnel. But at the end we'll find sunshine. And hopefully, the darkness will finally be purged from my soul so I can forgive.
Tuesday, September 13. I sat with Phil, Dirk and some other people at lunch, probably so I could tell Phil the time of our counseling appointment. Dirk said with a sneer, "Here's your list, Phil," and handed him a small piece of yellow, lined paper.
I blanched: It was the list I gave Phil of his faults! What a betrayal! Not only that, but Phil now refused to see the counselor with me, despite agreeing to it before. I soon learned that Dirk had been feeding him the line, "You should be able to work things out without a counselor." This is not true, and I did not appreciate this interference and sabotage of my attempts to work things out with my husband. And this is the guy who later said he rooted for me to get back together with Phil! Sometimes counseling is the only thing to save a relationship, and it is certainly worth a try.
Note this from
http://www.myndtalk.org/htm/abuse.htm: "However, if the abused person demands that the abuser participate in counseling or else--even if the abuser agrees to the counseling, it is likely to be short lived. The abuser will be able to benefit from counseling when the abuser believes and acknowledges that counseling is critical to recovery. Why? Until the abuser owns the behavior and his/her obligation to end the abuse, the behavior continues. Sometimes the courts demand counseling. Sometimes the legal weight of mandated counseling does have an effect. Sometimes the awareness that a loved one will leave the relationship in one way or another will jolt the abuser into an acceptance that the behavior must stop. And sometimes not."
Over the years, I've hoped that Phil's second wife dragged him into counseling and changed him. She seemed like a nice person; I've always felt sorry for her, being trapped into a marriage with him by pregnancy. Cindy heard Phil yell at her the same way he used to yell at me. From what she said to Cindy, Phil told her I was this wonderful wife who did everything he wanted. She tried to be like this vision of me, and admired me. Cindy called this manipulation.
Sharon said in 1996 or 1997 that watching him and his new fiancée was like watching him and me all over again, only worse because she would lie about where she was when she missed Phi-Delt meetings for him.
Pearl wrote a long letter warning this girl not to marry Phil, but she didn't listen. We knew it was Phil, not me, because in 1996, Persephone finally broke up with him for the last time and told me, "I didn't realize how dysfunctional we were until all my friends starting throwing guys at me to date." This girl did not have Persephone's spunk, so she probably would not slap Phil back if he slapped her. So I always hoped that she got him into counseling. After reading the above linked article, however, I began to fear for her emotional and physical safety, and for what was being taught their children. They had passed out of the lives of my friends and their alumni records were outdated, so I had no idea if she finally tossed him out on his abusive butt--until now. Well, I don't know if she tossed him out. All I know is that he's on one of those classmate finder services now on the Web; his public profile says that as of summer 2006 they're separated, and she has the kids.
But back to September 1994. Phil rejected everything on my list. Apparently, I was expected to take everything he said were my faults, as gospel truth, and change; yet whatever I said, was untrue and he didn't need to change at all. How dare I suggest that he was not perfect, that maybe he contributed quite a bit to our problems.
He also said Dirk called the list a stupid idea. Which it was not! My dad, my intelligent, my wise dad, suggested it. He'd been married for over 30 years and had come through the inevitable rough patches with a stronger marriage; Dirk was a kid and had never been married. I should think Dad would know what he was talking about. This was an insult not only to me, but also to my dad. Besides that, what gave Phil the right to call the list a stupid idea? He gave me a verbal list of my faults, so I had just as much right to give him a list as well. And I have since read advice similar to Dad's in advice books and columns.
I learned in 1998 that it's a common trait of abusive men to blame everything on the woman and not take any blame for themselves. If I had known this then, perhaps I would have seen Phil for what he truly was, and decided to have nothing more to do with him. As it was, in Spring Semester I termed him only "borderline" abusive. I was thinking of physical abuse, and didn't realize a man can be abusive in other ways as well. This is a common reason why people don't recognize non-physical abuse. I also didn't know that verbal and emotional abuse often leads into physical abuse.
Anyway, I went alone to what was supposed to be our first meeting with the counselor. She was the same counselor I had seen sophomore year. I told her everything that had happened. When I told her the things Dad said, she said, "He sounds very perceptive."
That night was awful. I tried to talk to Phil, probably about what the counselor said. But he stonewalled, left me for a time to talk to Dirk, treated me like a stupid witch who had nothing worthwhile to say, then said we couldn't even be friends.
This stunned me. Thinking back, I can't remember why he said this. I doubt that I knew then what changed the course of the conversation, because he only communicated through yelling and stonewalling. When I first made notes of this argument a couple of years later for my memoir, I wrote that he probably either overreacted--or was only acting. He'd done a lot of acting those few days, as he told me a few days after this event--and as I realized when I contrasted his words to his actions. All I could do was leave him and not talk to him again.
I didn't realize yet that his actions proved he had never loved me, no matter what he'd told me before or his insistence that he still loved me. When you truly love someone, you don't treat her this way.
In 1996 or 1997, as I worked with Cugan's friend Laura on ideas for my wedding dress, she told me she knew Phil. He used to come into the gaming shop where she was a clerk, and buy dice and other Dungeons and Dragons items. She knew that Phil had to marry his girlfriend. And that shop was in M--, not S--! Small state, eh? He used to go there with his high school friends, whom he kept in touch with after high school. Laura told me they were upset with him over something, and that he'd been ostracized for it, but she didn't know what the thing was. I always wondered if they finally saw how he treated his women. Laura used to think he was a nice guy, but she had been an abused wife herself, and stopped liking him as soon as she heard he was "borderline abusive."
I'll say this as well, in case any of you finds yourself in a similar situation. I have heard and read other stories of emotional abuse. In one, the guy made a date with another woman while lying in bed with his girlfriend, and then told his girlfriend she deserved that. Many times, an abuser will hit his wife because she did something he thought she shouldn't have done. She will then start to believe she deserved what she got. Don't let yourself get into this trap.
In the following months, my friend Helene would say, "It sounds like he's trying to control you even after the relationship is over."
Did he break up with me because he couldn't control me? (Sort of like in the song "Control" by Puddle of Mudd: "I can't control you/ You're not the one for me, no." Or in "Special" by Garbage: "I have run you down into the ground/ Spread disease about you over town/ I used to adore you/ I couldn't control you."
Also, in a letter to the editor in the 9/28/98 edition of US News and World Report, speaking of the Clinton/Lewinsky/Starr scandal and Hillary's insistence on standing by her adulterous husband, a reader wrote, "Even women battered and bloodied will defend their abusers." The typical response of an abused woman seems to be, "He was right and I was wrong. I deserved what I got."
In one way I was typical, in that I didn't see the abuse for what it was. In another I wasn't, in that I refused to say that I deserved what I got and that Phil was right to treat me the way he did. This refusal to be a victim, to just sit back and take it, to act like a victim, may be a subconscious reason why Phil left me--which was actually a mercy. Of course, some people might say I did sit back and take it like a victim, because I didn't just tell him to leave. But it's common for abused women to say, as I did, that I loved him and didn't want to leave. After all the trouble I'd had finding a Christian man at a Christian college, and one who actually wanted to be with me, where else would I find one, especially one I had so much in common with? Also, even when I felt like telling Phil, "Go back to Wisconsin," I didn't because we were married, and I saw marriage as a lifelong commitment that was not to be broken lightly.
But back to September. When you've been married to and living with someone all summer and they suddenly cut off all contact with you, even though they've been abusing you, you feel like a part of you is lost.
Wednesday, September 14. On one of these early days of the week, Helene had come to the library and seen me, and that's probably when I told her about the breakup, while updating the card catalog. She said she had been engaged three times since her husband died in a plane crash, and each engagement had been broken. She would be numb for the first few days afterward. I felt similar, and could barely get through my shifts at the library. Time was molasses, so slow I could hardly bear it. Everything I did at the library, including updating the card catalog, made me restless.
I confided in Helene, called her on the phone once, and often sat with her at lunch during the next several months. I talked about my feelings and got her advice; we discussed a book she lent me about dealing with a divorce. For both of us, a favorite part of the book described a counselor's experience in his support group for divorcees. He had learned of a woman who saw her ex-husband having a picnic with a new girlfriend, and ran her vehicle over them. The people in the group said, "Ooh! Did she back up and run over them again?"
The weird thing is, during the time I confided in Helene, Phil confided in her best friend Kay. He seemed to think of her as a sister. I think it was Helene, or maybe Anna, who once said that Phil had seemed like good marriage material, but he needed to grow up. Later on, Helene said that his turning to Persephone confirmed her worst fears about him, that he would go on to somebody else rather than trying to work out problems. I probably told her how Phil treated me during the marriage, and she said she liked him less every time I talked to her about him.
I spent most of my time with my friends or working or in class or eating or alone in the apartment, trying to do homework and deal with things and get on with life. As much as possible, I wanted to go on with my daily life without my grief interfering. I lost very little, if any, sleep, and kept eating properly. I dealt with things much better than when Peter broke up with me. And after what Phil said on Tuesday night, I kept my distance from him. No, I was never the stalker-type; if somebody told me to stop talking to them, I stopped. The only threat I ever made to anybody was to tell Memadmin if Phil kept spreading lies about me.
I had been trying the past couple of days to get to Career Services, but they'd been closed each time I could make it. The problem was finding a time when they were open that fit with my schedule. I was thinking of finding a job in S-- so I could stay around there, which I used to think I would do anyway, unless Phil and I went to live with my parents after the wedding. Anyway, since it still seemed possible that he would cool off and call off the divorce, it made sense to make sure I could stay in the area until then. And it was also to stay near my friends. I didn't have many left in South Bend that I was still in touch with, but I had a bunch around S--.
Anyway, Wednesday evening I went to the library to take care of some class business, and Dirk was there, working. He said he had a few things to discuss with me, if I wanted to talk to him. So I agreed, and he asked another student worker to cover for him while he took me into the adjoining room, the one with the reference books and oversized books and such. There were couches in there by the oversized books, and we sat on one of them and talked. This spot seemed too public, so I hoped our voices were low enough to not be overheard.
We talked about all sorts of things. I could tell that Phil had been feeding him all sorts of untrue things about me. He gave me advice I did not need; told me to do things I was already doing, chewed me out for things I supposedly did or didn't do. He knew everything about relationships, me, and Phil. He knew the real reason for the secret marriage (which he didn't tell me). He knew Phil was upset about particular things, and why, though I did not. He knew how I could get Phil back. He would tell Phil if I responded appropriately to this lecture. He knew how a girl should act to get men (apparently, my dressing in attractive but modest clothes wasn't enough to "dress to impress," even though a Christian woman should not be "showing her wares," so to speak). He knew that I--Well, let's just quote him: "You're the only girl I've ever thought I needed to tell this to," he said, "but here goes: You'll probably end up an old maid." He knew everything about the Bible and what it really said about sex; if he were wrong, he'd be struck down for the things he'd done. He knew that I should convert to Catholicism if I wanted to marry Phil (even though I would have ended up one of those reluctant, "bad" Catholics who don't really believe it). (He apparently didn't know that there are ways for Catholics to marry non-Catholics so that even the Catholic church recognizes it, even without a Catholic ceremony or Mass. Such weddings can be blessed by a priest, even if not officiated by one. It sounds like Phil did not even bother looking into these alternatives, which is a shame because they could have settled everything to the satisfaction of him and me.)
Unfortunately, Dirk was just like Shawn, and could talk you into believing anything he said. Then later on, after talking to friends or contemplating, you'd realize, "He doesn't know anything about me/the situation/reality!"
For one thing, it's impossible to be an old maid when you've already been married. For another, without adopting any of his suggestions of how to get men, I got three more boyfriends that year, and married one of them.
He chewed me out for telling Phil about my crush on the other guy. Apparently, Phil didn't tell him his rule about attractions to others, or that Phil found it totally appropriate to tell me every girl he lusted after. Apparently, what was good for the gander was verboten for the goose. How dare I be attracted to a nice, non-abusive guy after a summer of abuse, and how dare I mention it after my husband's been telling me I’m not enough for him.
For example, when Phil broke up with me, he kept saying, "You say you want to be a housewife," as if that were a fault, as if I refused to ever work outside the home. I'd tell him that's not what I said, but he kept harping on it. Over the summer, I told him again and again that I wanted to be a housewife so I could have time for my writing, because I saw writing as my life, not any other career. But after we got publicly married and moved out on our own, I'd do my share to bring in money until he got his acting break--I'd even work in a factory if I had to. But my wish was to one day retire from this and write full-time--once we could afford it. I also felt it was best to stay at home with our future children. I never said I'd refuse to work no matter what. I just said I preferred a traditional role.
Now, Dirk started harping on my wanting to be a housewife. Phil must have ignored everything I ever said on the subject, and told Dirk I was not willing to contribute financially. Here's the gist of what Dirk said:
"You should have plans for something to do with your life. You're smart. You can do something, make something of yourself. Look at Margaret Thatcher--she's a prime minister! Just because you're a woman don't think you can't do anything important. Find a career goal."
What I wish I would've said to Dirk: "I do have a career goal: I want to publish novels, as I told Phil many times. And what the heck ever gave you the idea that I thought women could do nothing important? Do you think I could be born in the 1970s and grow up in the 1980s thinking that women were fit only to look pretty in the drawing room? And what's so unimportant about raising children and running a household? Just tell a stay-at-home mother of three kids that she's lazy, she's not contributing and her work is meaningless--and see what happens. Once upon a time, women were expected to be housewives; now that the pendulum has swung the other way, women are often expected to go out and get a job along with taking care of the house, and derided if they want a traditional role. They should be encouraged instead."
I have to wonder if Dirk knew that Phil treated me like a disobedient servant, not a wife, a throwback to the days when men thought women couldn't handle intellectual pursuits.
Just so you know I meant what I told Phil: After college, I got a full-time job in insurance. I worked for a couple of years, became a homemaker for a year after being downsized, then worked again part-time for four years to pay off some debts. Then I became a stay-at-home mother. All along, I have written; my books are now published on
http://www.lulu.com/nerissa and making a little bit of money. Just what I said I would do, and all perfectly acceptable.
This article by Frederica Mathewes-Green, an Orthodox woman who used to be a feminist Episcopalian, describes how feminism--while certainly making good changes, such as the vote for women and more natural standards of beauty--also made some very bad changes. One was the idea that women should find careers more important than staying at home, that "staying home and raising kids was mindless drudgery," that "housewives were dumb."
There's nothing wrong with mothers working, especially if they have to do it. But the choice of a housewife should be respected, not derided. Housewives with children are very busy, and have to use their brains all day long; calling them lazy is ludicrous, as is saying that a housewife is wasting her brain. These jobs would have to be done by somebody even if the wife didn't do them.
But back to September 1994. Though ticked and confused, instead of what I should have said, I said, "Tomorrow I'll go to Career Services." (You'll note I'd been trying to go there already anyway.) He said that was good, and he would tell Phil that. I should have told him off. Of course, I don't remember what else I said. I might have set him straight, or tried to.
Right after I said I'd go to Career Services, I said that the next day I would also talk to Pearl about what he said about InterVarsity. He was pleased with that as well, and said he'd tell Phil about that.
Here's what he said about InterVarsity:
Dirk said that after the stink over the play last year, InterVarsity had really given itself a bad image on campus. (Never mind the fact that we didn't do it to ourselves. It was forced on us by others and by public opinion and rumor.) There were a few other things, too. Supposedly new people did not feel welcome (even though few new people ever came to meetings, and we always lavished them with welcome because we wanted the group to grow). Supposedly we were cliquish, though I don't know where that came from. Unless a new person was mean or cruel or obnoxious (such as Phil), they'd be welcome.
Plus there was the way IV people treated Phil, and since Phil was his friend--and he was a very loyal friend--he hated IV for that. An enemy of Phil's was an enemy of his as well. He gave IV a month to shape up, or else he'd go to the school president and tell him what we were really like, and we'd be banned from the campus. The president would be surprised because IV was his darling. But Dirk said I was not to tell Pearl who told me this, or he'd be my enemy as well: he was a powerful foe, as well as a powerful friend. He said I should distance myself from IV, one reason being that "our friends are reflections of ourselves."
But how could I do such a thing? They were my dear friends (and three were my roommies now), with me long before Phil ever was, and IV was my church when I couldn't get into town. I'd been called one of the "core" members, and I didn't think IV or the people in it were bad at all. My friends supported me now and tried to help me out now that Phil had dissed me; why would I want to be ungrateful and walk away? And how on earth were these good people a bad reflection on me?
Hmmm....What does it reflect on Phil to have a friend like Dirk?
But back to September 14. Late that night or the next, I spoke with Pearl, as I'd promised Dirk. I didn't tell her who said these things, but she guessed all by herself. She was too shrewd not to, since she recognized his style. But I didn't tell her if she was right or not, because I didn't want to get in trouble with Dirk. I also told her what he'd said to me about Phil. Dirk's comments about IV angered her. She said, "He's never come to more than one or two meetings anyway, and we always invite him to things but he never comes, so who is he to call us unfriendly or cliquish?" Besides, we were all friends anyway, so why shouldn't we do things together as friends outside of IV? We tried to welcome anyone who came to IV or wanted to sit with us at meals. And, as I've seen in the years since, being considered "unwelcoming" is a problem common to all sorts of groups and churches, not just IV.
As for Phil, IV as a group was not ostracizing him. Certain people in the group just plain didn't like him. It had nothing to do with IV or him being Catholic or any of that. It was because of his annoying personality and the awful way he treated me. He had tried more subtle means before of separating me from them--such as getting upset when I wanted to sit with my friends after dinner, and badmouthing them to me, telling me they hated him because he was Catholic--but now he was using Dirk to isolate me from them far more blatantly. Dirk probably had no idea he was being used as Phil's proxy, because Phil was feeding him all sorts of untruths about me, our relationship, and my friends/InterVarsity. But I had friends not in InterVarsity who also hated him--Why would Catherine hate him for being Catholic, for example? Cindy was not in InterVarsity, was Catholic herself, and hated him. And I had friends in InterVarsity who were not Evangelical or Fundamentalist--Mike, Clarissa and Astrid, who were in the UCC, a very liberal church; why would they hate Phil for being Catholic? Most of the people in InterVarsity, in fact, were not in churches which saw Catholics as somehow "not Christian" or the "enemy," and now Charles was both Catholic and in InterVarsity, and Persephone also, a Methodist and a liberal, had joined InterVarsity. Religion had nothing to do with Catherine, Sharon, Pearl, probably Tara, probably Mike, and others hating Phil. It had everything to do with how he treated me, so that made them a threat, people he needed to isolate me from. Meanwhile, I didn't much like Dirk, but Phil would be perfectly fine with me being friends with him.
Dirk had told me how depressed Phil was, how desolate he felt, that he came to Dirk's apartment recently (probably the night of the 13th) and said he had no friends. Everyone in the apartment tried to convince him otherwise. So I pulled Mike into my room on what was probably the 15th and asked him to be a friend to Phil. I still loved him, you see. How could I just stop? I didn't like to hear that he was desolate.
He sure didn't sound depressed or desolate when he controlled the conversation with me that night, telling me we couldn't be friends.
I don't think I had told Mike a whole lot about what had happened, so I think he knew things from my roommates and from his own observations. He said he would be Phil's friend, and he also said, "If Phil doesn't like you the way you are, if he doesn't think you're good enough for him, you should just say, 'Screw you.' We like you, and you're good enough for us." His support meant much to me, though I couldn't (yet) imagine saying "screw you" to Phil.
Friday, September 16. It was odd to eat breakfast each morning at the dining table, because since late sophomore or early junior year I hadn't been getting up for breakfast at all. Junior year, the only breakfast I would have was a handful of M&M's from a big bag of them, which would get me through the few hours before lunch. Of course, after a while they seemed to be doing odd things to my stomach, so I figured they'd gone bad and stopped eating them. I may have then started eating dry cereal from those little individual-serving boxes.
I loved eating breakfast from our own little kitchen on our own big dining table. I also washed my dishes each late morning or early afternoon, depending on when I had free time, since I only had one set and needed to use it each morning. However, as I did I felt restless, alone, like a part of me was gone and I was waiting impatiently for its return. I think that usually, no one else would be in the apartment at that time.
At 11am on the 16th, I went to see Counselor Dude about my Senior Writing Project. This project was required for Writing majors to graduate. I told him I'd decided to work on Jerisland, the desert island novel I'd been writing and revising since 1988, and I said,
"I'd better warn you that it's a Christian novel!"--since, after all, his atheist beliefs were well-known.
"That's OK," he said, probably not too surprised--it was me, after all. "I've read Christian novels before."
One day, possibly Saturday the 17th or maybe even the previous Saturday, Anna invited me into her suite room after dinner. It was homey to be in a suite again, if only for a few hours. We had a long talk, and I discovered, in some amusing incident with a fly in the room, that I could joke and even belly-laugh. We both noticed I was taking this much better than the time Peter broke up with me. In fact, I might wake up in the middle of the night and feel despair and/or a restlessness, a sense that time was oppressive and I had too long to wait before Phil came back to me. But it didn't make me lie awake all night. I could get a decent night's sleep each night, even the Friday night after the breakup, instead of just lying there waiting for morning to come.
Over the next few months as I read through Job, I felt the loss, the wondering why, practically everything Job went through. Job asked for a trial, him against God; I wanted a trial against Phil that vindicated me against Phil's actions, claims and complaints. I believe the ending of Job gave me some hope for the future, though I didn't yet know what it would mean for me to be given back more than had been taken away.
Monday, September 19. I wrote in my diary that I'd just had a long talk with Phil, and things weren't as bad as Dirk made them seem. He had the wrong idea about the situation. Not only did Dirk have the wrong idea, Phil said he could act in front of Dirk and control what he thought of things, what he thought was going on, how he thought Phil reacted and felt. Even when Dirk said Phil was so depressed one night that he felt he had no friends and everyone in Dirk's apartment tried to tell him this wasn't true--it was an act! Phil said, "I'm that good of an actor." (The big question I have now is, why would he manipulate his own friend like that?) Phil wasn't nearly as angry as I had been led to believe. Phil's manipulation of Dirk caused Dirk to suggest he get a restraining order, but Phil said that was ridiculous. Dirk, however, had been so controlled by Phil's great act that he told me (probably as a scare tactic) that Phil was thinking of getting such an order. Phil reassured me now that he had no such intention.
In my diary entry, I mentioned Phil was in the fall play. He got a part in Measure for Measure. He said the theater director chose Shakespeare plays this year to avoid the controversy of the previous year.
Phil agreed, probably at this time, that we could be friends and write letters to each other, so one day I wrote him a nice, friendly letter. He came to talk to me about it in the laundry room. He said that even though we weren't "engaged" (as he now called it, rather than "married") anymore, I was still one of his potential "buyers." He may have said we could go on dates. On Tuesday, he said we could only be acquaintances and I had no more chances; now, he reversed that, and began saying again, "Keep the faith." He said, "I'm tempted to kiss me, but I won't because it wouldn't be fair to you."
The outcome of the laundry room conversation was so wonderful and comforting and encouraging that it made me happy for a time. I felt Phil and I were now friends, despite everything, and told Dad about it. I told Dad why Phil wouldn't kiss me, and that it was so noble, honorable, of him.
So far, it seemed that this breakup was much better than the one with Peter, not just because of how I took it, but because of how Phil acted.
I soon got to the point where I called my parents less and less often.
On my dad's advice, I prayed that God would open a door if Phil was meant for me, or close a door if he was not. Dad also kept saying Phil was emotionally unstable, that he had better talk to a priest or a counselor soon because otherwise he was going to go over the edge. He said Phil was a yo-yo, always going back and forth.
I wrote to friends around this time, "If God means for men and women to be together and married, then why the heck did he make it so hard for us to understand each other??"
Something must have clicked in my head on the 21st, because after going to bed, I wrote a diary entry by the light of my clock, which was fluorescent and gave out a lot of light. I was very angry with Phil at the time, and wrote it all down. I won't reproduce the entry here, but I will quote the most interesting parts: "Me shifting blame, eh? I don't think so. Up till now I've accepted just about all the blame that's been heaped upon me. Well, I say, no more!...If you don't think I'm worthy of you, then screw you! You're not worthy of me. ...You told me [many times during our relationship] to go find somebody better because you weren't worthy of me. Well, you have your wish. I see your unworthiness, so off I go to find someone who is worthy." The next morning, I was still angry, though a part of me wanted to see things work out.
September 22. Phil had once mentioned meeting Persephone, and sounded interested in her, which made me feel really bad and jealous of her. By this time she may have had a crush on James, which would have eased my fears a bit if I knew about it. (Odd---he wasn't especially handsome, yet without even knowing him, girls just seemed to keep falling for him--me included.) One day, possibly anywhere between Monday and Thursday, I overheard Phil talking to Persephone at the table right behind mine at lunch. I was all alone by then, and the cafeteria was almost empty. He told her about the time he almost lost his legs during the summer, working at the Mishawaka factory.
When you've been married to and living with someone all summer, and he starts chasing another girl right in front of you, you feel like a part of you has been ripped out.
Next thing I knew, Phil came up to me, startling me, and started talking about the Guy I liked. He asked if I'd talked to the Guy yet, and I said no. (I didn't want to talk to the Guy.) Phil said if I didn't, he would. But all the time he acted sweet and smiled. I didn't understand what was going on. For me to be so surprised about it, it may very well have been Monday, when I still thought he hated me.
My first class got out early that morning, so I sat in the chair in the little lounge under the steps there in the Chase building in the basement, and read the assignment for American Lit class.
I often went there that semester, when Intro to Christianity class let out early and I needed to kill time until Intro to Psych class the next period. Sometimes I saw Phil pass by or heard his voice, because he had a class just above mine while I was in Intro to Christianity. From October on, I tried to ignore him when he did pass by, and pretend he didn't bother me at all. I liked my Lit books, and they, not he, would engross me. Or so I wanted him to think. After all, I didn't sit there so I could catch a glimpse of him. Then I'd go upstairs to class, and sometimes I passed him on the way or got a drink at the water fountain when he was just down the hall. I would ignore him and loathe the sight of him. I hated Phil in those days, sinning in my anger, and wanted nothing to do with him or his friends or his family (though I didn't mind if his mom said hello and wanted to chat with me, the rare times we met that year). But it was impossible to keep a constant distance from him on that little campus.
On the 22nd, I had just come to lunch from a meeting with the counselor at 12:15. Lunch closed at 1:30 each day that semester, since they expanded the hours on weekdays. So I could get lunch, but I had to take whatever was left. I sat in an almost empty cafeteria. It was lonely, especially without my friends there, but I had to work not only with my schedule but with the counselor's.
During the meeting, the counselor told me I was handling this much better than most people handle the breakup of an engagement. I thought this, of course, owed to my past experience with Peter. As painful as it was, the breakup with Peter taught me a lot. When Peter broke up with me, I slept maybe two hours out of the first night, and that was part of my problem. Fatigue makes depression much worse, much harder to deal with, and my inability to eat made me sick.
The counselor also told me my anger, as expressed in my diary the night before, was a good thing, a healthy thing, part of the healing process, and I should concentrate on that for a while. I probably spent at least part of the meeting spewing out to her what I felt about Phil.
While I sat at lunch, probably thinking about the meeting and how enraged I was over how Phil had been treating me, the weirdest thing happened. Phil came over to me, probably from the Muskie, and sat down across from me! I believe he had already finished his lunch. I didn't know what he was doing there. I didn't want to see him.
He started saying some things to me, some nice, conversational things, while I sat there ripping on him in reply with witty and caustic remarks. He didn't seem to get it. Then he said something insulting about me (I forget what), so I stood up abruptly and took my tray to the tray window. He looked stunned. I liked that. However, I had to come back and get my stuff--my bag and, I believe, trusty duck umbrella. I may have put on my light jacket, and I was about to leave with my stuff, but he said something more to me, which got me to sit down again. I don't remember what he said, but it seems to have calmed me down for the moment. But I didn't stay for long. Either I had to get to work soon (2:30), or I had something else to do, or I just didn't want to be around him any more.
My Thursday shift started at 2:30 and went until 4:30. Phil came in the library while I worked. He came and went, but I don't think he said a word to me.
Near the end of my shift, Phil came up to the desk and started talking and joking with me. This annoyed my co-worker Megan, who said,
"Why don't you just go to dinner with her and talk to her there?"
Phil said, "Why would I want to have dinner with her? I just broke up with her."
He soon left, finally taking the hint. I said to Megan, "He is so annoying."
I went to dinner right away, hoping my friends were already there. While I sat eating with them, Phil came over and took the empty seat across from me! Pearl and I were both surprised. He talked and joked with me, while I kept putting him down in witty ways. After the others left, he still talked with me, even though I wanted him to go away. He asked me to go to his house and see a movie that night. I was like, Okay, whatever. I also thought, Is this the open door I was asking for?
That night, I went with him to his house to watch Omen. We sneaked into his room and started watching the movie. He hid me in his room, since he didn't want the family to know I was there; I stayed on a little chair in a corner for some time, while he looked for the movie and his mother talked to him. Then he came back in and we sat down together. He started to put his arm around me, and I cuddled up against him--all unexpected. Then he started kissing me.
He said, "Don't tell anyone we're back together."
I said, "I have to. I'm not going to keep such a thing secret."
"Okay."
"Never do this to me again."
"I've grown up a lot over the past couple of weeks, and I never want to lose you again," he said.
When Phil took me back to school, we walked arm in arm from the parking lot by the suites to my apartment. We passed Kelly, InterVarsity's chief nemesis during the play fiasco. I figured Kelly must have known about the breakup by now, and this must have been such a sight for him! I enjoyed it immensely. Look at us now! Back together and happy again! I imagined Kelly telling the tale, if he wished to do so--telling it to others, seeing their shocked faces.
Blissful, I went to lunch the next day. My roommies sat behind the south Bossard partition (which was up), and I sat with Phil, Dirk and Sandy. I saw Pearl come in the cafeteria; I smiled at her and said, "It's on again!" She rushed over and told the others.
Dirk said he and Sandy were happy for us, and, "We were rooting for you because you make such a great couple."
I took Benny down from the closet, and put Phil's pictures and keepsakes back on my shelves and bookcases.
Phil soon told his family about us, but he didn't think I should go over there again right away, because he wasn't sure his parents would like it. In explanation, he said it was because we had broken up. But he soon talked to his mother, and she said she didn't mind. He just wasn't sure if his dad would mind.
The night after we got back together, my suitemates threw a party for us "summer birthdays." Those of us with summer birthdays had to stay out of the apartment between five and seven, while the others got the place ready for us. I thought Phil would show up during the party. He had a date for the following night with the sixteen-year-old (I guess she was now seventeen) who kept calling him when he had a girlfriend. He made the date while we were broken up, and he said it would be platonic and he would tell her we were back together again. Because of this, I didn't mind so much.
Possibly during the party, Charles saw my videotape collection (Dr. Who, Gone With the Wind, Monty Python, etc.), cried out, and wanted to know who owned it. It impressed him. He also admired my book collection, which included Dr. Who and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. (In October, he started reading my new copy of the fifth book in the Hitchhiker's series. However, I don't think he finished it.)
Phil was gone for an awfully long time.
We had a fun party. We even went outside on the little porch with the nice railing, tied balloons on Tara's hair, and took pictures of her. The Director of Safety and Security came by and said this was an "unauthorized social gathering," too many people and not cleared by Memadmin, so we'd better go back inside and break up the party. So we went inside, and instead turned on an audiotape of the Roanoke choir singing "The Messiah." If he came back, we'd say we were rehearsing choir songs.
We later found out he thought there was alcohol, but there wasn't. We could have as many people as we liked, as long as there was no drinking. Otherwise, it would have to be cleared with Memadmin. We didn't drink at our parties, so this was funny. Now that we were twenty-one, there might be a wine cooler or a strawberry daiquiri or the new drinks with the risqué names Sex on the Beach or Sloe Screw, but that was it. No, I drink nothing but pop.
During this party, we also played Phantom of the Opera music. Mike turned on a Barry White CD to demonstrate to non-choir people what Derek had done on the last choir tour: Mike turned on a song and played the first few notes--Duhduh-duhduh-duh--then Barry's words "Feels so good." I don't know Barry White's music, but it's probably the song "I'm Qualified to Satisfy You." Then Mike pushed the reverse button, and did this over and over again, replaying that first part over and over. Derek had made a tape of himself doing this over and over and over again, and had played the tape over and over on the spring choir tour. This drove everyone crazy. The choir people, Mike especially, adopted this as a catch phrase--or perhaps, catch tune.
There were other couples at this party--Jennifer with the same Jason whom Catherine and Cindy had dated, Charles with Trina. I felt lonely and depressed, almost as if I had no one, even though I was now back together with my Phil. I didn't know why I'd feel that way.
When Phil finally came near the end of the party, he told me the date was not the next night but this night, so that was where he had been all this time--at a coffeehouse with that other girl. The coffeehouse was her idea; her generation seemed to like those things now. He told her we were back together, and she said she wasn't surprised. He looked odd in the black turtleneck he put on to "fit in" at the coffeehouse. He left soon after, and kept waving and waving to me from his van as he left the parking lot by the apartments. It was funny.
One evening in the Pub, there was some sort of party going on. Phil and I were there, as were James and Persephone. Persephone came over to me, and smiled and looked surprised when I told her Phil and I were engaged. She also said she had a crush on James.
I had a day or two of happiness, but then I started to feel a wedge between Phil and me. He was very demanding, very pushy, and his ideas, plans and opinions about various things seemed a lot different from what they had been before. For example, he said he wanted to go to Thailand for a couple years after we got legally married, to study martial arts for movie roles. Thailand? A hot country with a culture and language of which I knew nothing? I thought we were supposed to go to Texas!
If I didn't want to do something he wanted to do, it meant I didn't care like I said I did. I felt like I was walking on eggshells, and the slightest thing might push him away. I felt I had to align all my opinions with his, do things exactly as he wanted even though I couldn't read his mind, or he'd divorce me. He seemed like a different person.
Once, as a girl on crutches started to pass us on the sidewalk, I quickly moved to cross in front of Phil and get out of the way. But Phil put out his foot and tripped me, almost making me fall! I believe the girl smiled at him (or maybe said "thank you"), and he smiled at her. I didn't understand what was going on. I complained that he tripped me, and he said he was "moving me out of the way" with his foot! He treated me like I was the rude one, like I wasn't getting out of the way so he had to make up for it and move me! He humiliated me. I was mad at him, but he just laughed.
Hey--according to this website
http://www.aaets.org/article144.htm, tripping is one form of physical abuse. He also physically forced me to do things he knew I didn't want to do, with a stern, angry-looking face and the unspoken but well-understood threat that he would leave if I didn't. How much farther could he have gone? How far has he gone in the 11 years since I last saw him? Many of the emotional and verbal abuse traits in the article are also familiar, as you will see. It also says, "While physical abuse might seem worse, the scars of verbal and emotional abuse are deep. Studies show that verbal or nonverbal abuse can be much more emotionally damaging than physical abuse." That explains why I've had so much trouble getting over this.
Once, either now or before we got back together, Phil told me his friends had been encouraging him to break up with me--something about keeping him down, not letting him do things, exaggerated junk like that. It sounded like they thought I was the tyrant, when it wasn't me, it was Phil. The reasons were stupid and it sounded like they had no idea what was really going on. My dad told me on the phone that in these situations, "The worst thing you can do is listen to your friends."
One night, Phil, Pearl and I saw Demolition Man, Three Weddings and a Funeral, and some other movie with Rutger Hauer, the guy who played the white-haired robot from Blade Runner, playing an escaped convict in the future. At one point there was the Chicken Movie. I don't know what its real name was, but it was terrible, something about a plague brought on humans by crazed chickens. We called it the Chicken Movie. I don't think we could watch the whole thing.
Phil had brought a plastic bowl and a spoon from home for soup, which was his dinner, and he left them there in our sink, dirty.
One day, as I sat with my friends, Phil came over and needed some money for lunch, so I gave it to him. He said with a smile as he sauntered off, "You're a saint--sometimes." Another time, while we were on the sidewalk by Muehlmeier, he got down on his knees and begged me for five dollars. I gave it to him, but never saw it again, and didn't bother asking for it. This may have been Wednesday or Thursday.
Intro to Psych was a fascinating subject. It taught me a lot about such things as projecting your faults onto others, which I saw Phil doing. The only problem was, it was an Intro class. Like Intro to Christianity, I took it just to get credits. For Christianity, I needed credits of any type so I'd have enough to graduate; for Psych, I needed Social Science credits. But because it was an Intro, the class was full of freshmen. Only a few people weren't, like Astrid's roommate Chloe and me.
Intro to Christianity, which I attended with Mike and Randy, taught how Christian doctrine developed and split over time. The teacher, a preacher with the United Church of Christ, taught that Christ freed women, and St. Paul bound them up again. I believed this for many years until shown that Paul's words have been gravely misused to suppress women. We were also taught that the writers of the Bible saw a difference between Truth and Fact, which explains why, for example, the gospels have different versions of the same story, yet are still considered True. The Truth is that Christ arose; the Facts are how many angels were at the tomb. Unfortunately, we skipped over the section on Eastern Orthodox theology, so I knew very little about it until 2005.
Probably on Thursday, I went to lunch, went through the deli line, and spoke with the cafeteria lady who was at one of the food stalls. (This may have been where the fries, or some other side dish, were.) Sandy happened to be nearby as I told this woman I was engaged, and smiled and gushed about it. Sandy didn't say a word. Amazing how, both times I got dumped, I had just been gushing about my engagement to someone the same day, and Sandy or Dirk happened to be standing nearby, silent.
Thursday, September 29, Phil took a nap in my apartment, after agreeing to go to the IV Bible study in the lounge that evening. But when I went to wake him up for the Bible study, he said, "I thought you said you wouldn't tell me when to wake up and when to go to sleep."
Can you imagine such an irrational comment? I may have said this wasn't the same thing. I wanted him to join us because it was important to me, and he'd also said he wanted to come. But he was so--weird about it, and acted like a jerk, like I had no right to wake him up for anything, no matter how important it was. You see I couldn't even be a normal human being around him. Normal human beings wake up other normal human beings for things they want to go to. I felt helpless, like the tiniest slipup and I could lose him. (To me now, that doesn't make him sound very loving!) He finally got up, leaving some textbooks and pencils (some of the books were Dave's) in my room.
(Just to clarify, since I've discovered that back in the '70s, "jerk" often meant "stupid person": I use the modern meaning of "jerk," or someone who's mean and nasty.)
We had a fun meeting with lots of people sitting on chairs arranged in a ring around and inside the TV nook. After the meeting, Phil talked with someone; I believe it was the guy who came to InterVarsity once junior year, and wondered if Jews and Muslims, as People of the Book, would be saved. Somehow, they got to the topic of how many kids a woman could potentially have. Phil came up with a hundred, and I said from the couch on the other end of the room,
"I don't want a hundred kids!" It was all playful and fun.
Later on, after the meeting ended it was just Charles, Pearl, Phil and me. Phil and I cuddled together. Phil and Charles got into a political argument. I thought Charles was right and Phil was wrong, but said nothing at all about it. Finally, the argument seemed to have ended. Phil may have later complained that I didn't support him in the argument, but how could I when I didn't even agree? Wasn't I allowed my own political opinions?
I asked Phil to drive me to the store to buy milk, but he refused. He then asked Charles and Pearl,
"Does a guy have to drive his fiancée somewhere if she asks him?"
Charles and Pearl both said, "Yes, of course!"
I felt vindicated, and very upset with Phil, though I still said nothing. There may have been a few more words said between them, but I don't remember. He complained to me about people who don't listen--though I thought the stubborn person here was him, not them. I whispered to him, trying to be very calm and loving in my tone,
"Sometimes I feel you do the same."
He said to me, "Thank you for being so supportive."
Supportive? After he'd just slammed and embarrassed me in front of my friends?
He got up and left the apartment.
Charles had some choice words to say about Phil and his behavior that night. Pearl was mad at him, too, and she showed it. They both thought his question about a fiancée was unfair to me, and that he was trying to embarrass me. One of them, or I, said he seemed to be taking out his frustrations in the political argument on me.
A few minutes later, he called me up and said, "You're more than free. Good-bye." Then he just hung up. I tried to find him by calling Dirk's apartment. Dirk's roommate Carl answered the phone, and promised to have Dirk call if Phil came there. He was very supportive of me. Later Dirk called or I called him, and when I told him what happened, he said, "It sounds like you two have broken up." I think Dirk was very kind to me despite the lateness of the hour (probably after 11), and didn't want to see us broken up, but felt powerless to stop it.
I talked to Phil on the phone the next day and asked him to come meet me and talk with me. At least he gave me that much. However, he insisted it be in the Pub, though it was public and often noisy. We set the time for 3 p.m., after I left work.
During these weeks, I read books--a book on the Psychology of Love, which I'd bought sophomore year, when it was used by a Winterim class I didn't take, "Love and Hate." I also started reading a book Helene lent me, on how to let go when you get divorced. Both were very helpful to me. I read them while there was still hope, and read them after the second breakup. The first one I read when Phil and I first got back together. I read it in just a few days to learn how to deal with our arguments. The second one I read as I needed to.
I tried to set up rules to keep our discussion civil, probably using things I'd learned in these books. The rules were to keep me in check as well as him. But Phil rejected this, preferring to allow it to degenerate into an argument. Instead of sitting down and talking quietly with me, Phil played pool. It seemed he didn't want to talk with me, didn't want to listen to a word I had to say. He just walked around the pool table, shooting the balls. Only one person came into the Pub that whole time. Phil said cruel things; one thing was, he made me sound undutiful or uncaring because I didn't confess to the Other Guy that I had a little crush on him (and it was little--it had only just budded a couple of weeks before). He yelled at me for never talking to the Guy like he kept telling me to do, in those two weeks after the first breakup, and said that if I'd done so, I'd know my crush wasn't returned. You see, he'd talked to the Guy. But it hadn't been right for me to talk to the Guy, not while I was with Phil, and not so soon after the breakup. There was also no sense risking the Guy's friendship over something that was so insignificant at the time. But Phil had gone ahead and done that for me.
I became furious, lost patience with his disregard for civility, and began saying what I felt. Phil kept saying, "You're right." This infuriated me even before, because he'd once told me he did this to upset people during an argument.
All of a sudden, while I still had things left to say, Phil abruptly walked out of the Pub into the Campus Center lounge. I almost followed, but when I got to the door and looked around he was already out of sight. Rather than waste my time looking for him, I picked up my bookbag and left. Sharon later said it was good I didn't follow him.
I had been expecting him to at least come back to the apartment to get his pencils and books, especially since his brother would have needed them for his classes and would probably have gotten mad at him for not returning them to him, but he didn't.
Though I still had trouble letting go of all my feelings, I think this time I got so angry that I lost all the love I'd ever had in my heart for him. Though at times the feelings returned, in my heart it was over. The times I wanted him back, were probably denial of the truth, or fear of ending up alone. His true self had been shown to me in vivid technicolor. I hope I haven't done too much ranting in these blogs, but I felt I needed to show at least some of the things that happened (I left out a lot) just in case one of you finds yourself in similar situation. You don't have to stay there. I also wanted to tell people what really happened.
I've read that women who've been abused in some way often have trouble with anger management. That might explain why I got incredibly angry with Phil--more angry than I ever was with Peter or Shawn--and to this day still struggle with residual anger. My friends and family heard me say things about Phil that they never heard me say about anybody else, and it shocked them.
Quoted from
http://www.gracetreecounseling.com/blog/?sectionid=11: "The feelings you're likely dealing with Crystal are anger, pain, betrayal, fear, trauma, sadness, shame and more. These are very common feelings for abuse victims, and in order to get past them they have to be acknowledged and dealt with." Also see later on, "Healing from past abuse."
What also didn't help me get over the anger: Recently, Dr. Phil McGraw said on his show that if a woman does not feel heard, she keeps saying it over and over until she does feel heard. I did not feel heard, so I said what I needed to say in letters. Still, I got no apology, just a guy who acted like I had nothing to be angry about. Why on earth did I not want to say hi to him when he said it to me? Gee, why do you think?
It's hard to forgive and let go when someone never acknowledges they did something horrible to you, when they never show remorse. Years later, it still burns you up, no matter how much you pray for the strength to forgive. The only thing to make forgiveness easier is to finally receive an apology. Even if it takes many years, that's still better than never.
Bullying causes Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, lower self-worth and feeling helpless. It is a
psychiatric injury, which traumatizes a person. When a bully is supported by his friends, when authority figures aren't interested in stepping in--even resorting to blaming you for the bullying, when the bully "gets away with it"--this makes it much harder for the bullied to reach "closure."
Here are listed traits of complex post-traumatic stress disorder and of psychiatric injury; I especially identify with these traits:
"An overwhelming desire for acknowledgement, understanding, recognition and validation of their experience
"A lack of desire for revenge, but a strong motivation for justice
"A tendency to oscillate between conciliation (forgiveness) and anger (revenge) with objectivity being the main casualty
"A constant feeling that one has to justify everything one says and does
"A constant need to prove oneself, even when surrounded by good, positive people
"An unusually strong sense of vulnerability, victimisation or possible victimisation, often wrongly diagnosed as "persecution"
"Feelings of worthlessness, rejection, a sense of being unwanted, unlikeable and unlovable
"A feeling of being small, insignificant, and invisible
"An overwhelming sense of betrayal, and a consequent inability and unwillingness to trust anyone, even those close to you
"The person is by now obsessed with the situation (or rather, resolving the situation), cannot switch off, may be unable to sleep, and probably has nightmares, flashbacks and replays"
These things either have affected in the past, or still do affect, me.
A certain song by The Jesus and Mary Chain played often before, during, and after the second time Phil and I were together: A guy breaks up with his girlfriend. He comes back, she refuses at first, then takes him back. I liked to mentally sing along with the female singer when she said, "You went away; you can't come back." When Phil came back to me, I identified with the line, "You went away, but now you're back." I also liked the image of the groveling ex-boyfriend.
Written October 2011:
After doing more research into abuse and narcissism thanks to dealing with two narcissists who abused and maligned me in 2010, I now believe that Phil's first breakup with me was not intended to be permanent. I believe it was actually his attempt to control me. Because I wasn't submissive enough, he wanted to force me to submit, to show me the consequences of not submitting meant losing him, to break my spirit. And it worked, for a time. For the week he was back with me, I was afraid to do anything that would make him go away again. I was very submissive, giving in to anything he wanted, no matter how baffling (going to Thailand for a year), outlandish or distasteful (doing an act which he knew I hated, and he had not washed himself, so it smelled awful). Even during the two weeks between the first breakup and week back together, I was submissive during our negotiations: For example, he asked if I would object if he started smoking and drinking, and I said I would not. During the negotiations, if I started saying or doing things he didn't like, the rage wall went up again, and he would ditch me, go off and tell Dirk what I was doing wrong, etc. During those two weeks, Dirk came to me and told me to distance myself from my friends, so Phil was, once again, trying to control me by separating me from my friends, the ones who saw him for what he really was. And when we got back together but I "screwed up" by not "supporting" him as he bashed me to my friends, he left again. It disgusts me to think of how submissive I was just to hold onto this controlling man.