Unspoken words… boxing me into unwanted situations, actually accommodated my abuser.
I didn’t say…
Let’s put all of this in writing.
Let’s get this notarized.
I would really like this read by my own council.
I’d like my liquidity to invest in my own projects.
You are making promises, but somehow I don’t believe you.
I somehow don’t feel I can trust you.
I have no real clarity here.
I never said…
You are asking too much of me.
You are making me do things I don’t want to do.
You are pushing me too far.
I don’t even like this and I never have.
I can’t do this anymore.
This is your fetish and it’s killing me.
You’re killing me.
I’m afraid you will kill me.
But Ted knew all that. He knew I was doing it for him and he knew that my participation was not my consent.
He held me down throughout our marriage with money, with his and apparently with mine too .
He lodged me in his life… as his wife. He primped me up, packaged me and had me parade around town like a femme/sandwich* to limelight his generosity… And then, in divorce, he took it all away because he knew he could. Because that’s how he’d set it up from the beginning. Because in the end, he’d kept all the cards.
He whined constantly about how people loved him only for his wealth and then walked out with everything I’d thought was ours, kvetching to others about how I’d dared expect my part, accusing me of theft for wanting to split.
He’d stitched the story together making himself look like a prince, keeping me a pauper, then fingering me for money love… maybe because he knew that’s really all he was worth.
But Ted owned that narrative, not me…. because I’d never said all those things out loud that were stuck in my head.
I never said them because Domestic Violence is not just physical abuse… it’s emotional and sexual and administrative and financial too.
Ted had twisted my brain to fit his version and I’d believed him all those years.
I never raised my voice because Ted made me fearful, because Ted’s weight muffled me. He entombed me under the auspice of sharing stuff, because he’d made me believe that was love.
But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. It never was.
The day I refused to travel with him for a last week end with friends, while our marriage was already falling visibly apart, I’d just said I couldn’t… but the truth was that I was terrified, afraid to be alone in a car with him, frightened he’d weaponize it. I feared he’d kill me as a means of control… even if he killed himself on the way too.
That kind of concern is not crazy. A woman who senses that level of distress is not delirious, her apprehension does not make her hysterical. Fear like that is a badge, a beacon, a balefire, a burning red flag… of Domestic Violence.
Fear of violence incites submission. Submission provokes shame. And shame engenders silence.
Today I’m alive. And this is my story… which I have to tell.
Translations from French to English
femme/sandwich* —female human billboard
