I’ve been holding on to my feelings for a while now. Sometimes because I know J reads this, sometimes because I don’t have the words, sometimes because I’m annoyed that I’m still bothered by the past.
All through the years of verbal abuse, whenever I was upset he would tell me that I was being too sensitive; he would say, ‘Yes, I called you fat last week, but that was in the past why can’t you just let it go already?”
After the incident, he went to anger management and counseling for a few months. We’d talk through instant messaging and emails. He’d ask how I was feeling. Sad, I’d tell him. Alone. Scared. Upset. Angry. Confused.
His ears would prick up at “angry”. It seemed like that was the only part he’d cared about hearing. And then he’d turn all of his anger management techniques he’d learned in therapy on me, eventually telling me that I was just like him.
I knew it was absurd then, and I know it’s absurd now. I did nothing wrong, but from then on in order to keep him from having any ammo, I shut my anger away and locked it tight. Those months living alone in Italy I was sad, devastated, afraid, unsure, terrified for myself and my kids and our future, but I was never angry. I felt bad for him. I felt bad for blowing the whistle on the abuse, I felt bad that he had to live in a dorm and wasn’t allowed back home. All his stuff was still there. It was like he was a ghost. But I kept my anger in check.
He flies back in tomorrow. He’ll be back and he already stated that he wants to stay with me the month he’ll be on leave. I can’t allow that and it upsets him but I just can’t.
Now that he’s almost here, I find myself swallowing the anger, and it is bitter. I have every right to be angry, being angry doesn’t make me like him, it makes me human.
