Victim, or Survivor? E-Prime Write Off
Aug 03 '01
The Bottom Line Cry, Scream, and Beat the walls - but do not live in that pain, that past. Live for today, and for the good things in your life.
Feeling the lowest in my life, after suffering through the extreme trauma surrounding the death of my daughter, the decision of my then-husband to leave our family hurt due to the extreme vulnerability of my already broken heart.
Married in March of 1998, my family seemed complete - 2 children parented by a loving couple. However, the problems of our marriage surfaced from the beginning, the exchange of our vows had not even occurred.
Living in a healthy marriage requires an effort from both spouses to uphold the respect and dignity of your partner. My husband and I had chosen from the beginning to handle our disputes through arguing, belittling eachother, and avoiding any topics requiring thorough and deep discussion.
When our precious daughter, Gabriella, died, my husband and I found ourselves encompassed in grief. Through going to work and fighting amongst eachother, we managed to avoid the real pain that we both felt at that time. On November 8th, following an extremely emotionally abusive argument in which I felt endangered the physical safety of my 2 year old son, my husband made the choice to leave for a week to "cool-off". He returned home on November 12th. After a long discussion, I walked to our bedroom and laid down for a nap due to the night shift I needed to work that night. My husband followed me, wrapped me in his arms, and apologized for his behavior the previous week. He then attempted to initiate sex, and I felt very uncomfortable. After informing him I needed sleep and that I could not feel comfortable making love given the past events, my husband stormed off in fury - and I cried myself to unconsciousness.
Work that night continued as usual, and I relished in telling others that my husband had returned to our family. At the end of my shift, 8:00am, I returned to my home, only to find my house virtually empty. The only furniture in the living room consisted of a couch, rented from a "rent-a-center" establishment, and 3 fish aquariums, one of which contained baby guppies recently born. As I looked around and saw my husband sitting on the couch, the noise of my 2 year old son filled my ears like music. At least I knew that no harm had come to him. I listened, in a daze, as my husband explained that he needed to return to Utah and that he no longer wished to continue our marriage. I cried, I sighed, I felt relief. This falsity known as our marriage had crumpled, and I earned permission to continue with my life the way that I chose to. I shut the door on him, and our marriage, forever.
I sat in the living room, and pitied myself. I called my friend Ron (who would later become my husband) and expressed how confused and hurt I felt. I walked up and down the stairs for hours. I wandered over to my aquariums to watch the fish, thinking that the serenity of their movement and the sound of the filter would calm my weary soul. As I peered in to view the baby guppies, my heart sank. I saw the little babies floating on the surface of the water - I felt like a little glass box filled with water and dead fish summed up my life quite nicely.
One can imagine the confusion of the 22 year old mind without life altering events such as those that plagued me late 1998. With room for maturity and growth, I paved the road necessary to achieve greatness in my life. I moved in with my current husband, Ron, 3 weeks after my ex-husband left. Gaining stability and a false sense of security, I made the decision to relocate and soon found myself in Denver Colorado - child, new man, and new beginning. And for 6 more months, that sufficed!
But a mind will only hold up for so long. Someone once shared with me an analogy - we take our grief, and wrap them in pretty little packages, stuff them in this closet of our mind, and hope that if anyone should happen upon the closet door and open it, only beautiful wrapping and fancy bows will appear to them. One day, however, we go to the door to enter a package and realize the closet exceeds its intended capacity and everything tumbles upon us. On August 4, 1999 I experienced just that. I could no longer bring myself to go to work, to talk on the phone, to leave my house. Overwhelmed with emotion, pain, and rejection, I shut myself off from everyone around me. In an attempt to escape the emotional distress, I cut my skin with knives, razor blades, or other sharp objects. Somewhere in my mind I believed that physical pain, seeing my own blood, would distract from the emotional trauma, and I never needed to face the unraveling ribbons surrounding the packages I so beautifully wrapped.
Why do I feel the need to share this with the public? In my heart, I understand that knowing your feelings are ok and natural helps. I also have learned a very important lesson from all of this - we can choose victimization or survivorship. I hurt so bad, anger fills me when I think of the man who left behind a wife and a child two months after dealing with the death of his daughter, I get sick at the thought of transitioning from a family of four to a family of two in less than a couple of months, and feel saddened when I realize that this man I loved, and dedicated my life to, abandoned me and my child with virtually nothing, and no future support either. However, I cannot dwell on this or allow it to consume my life. Perhaps I could have chosen to get community support - maybe help from my family. But I knew that in order to become the person I needed to see in the mirror, I could only pick myself up, brush off the dirt, and start living. I still have my tears, my sorrow, and thoughts of the dream that would never happen. But I do not live in those tears, I live in the joy I have found. Life exists all around us - instead of wishing for what we do not have, we need to feel grateful for the abundances in our lives. Thank you.
~Heather
I took the challenge and submitted this entry as part of proeditor's E-Prime Write-off. The write-off consists of reviews that avoid the "to be" verbs, a discipline known as E-Prime. We participants strove to enliven our writing and increase our precision by using exactly the right verb instead of the tried and true (but ordinary) "to be's".
As a reminder, the "to be" family includes be, is, am, are, was, were, been, being; plus contractions - 'm, 's, and 're. If you found any in this review, please leave me a comment.
Don't forget to read the contributions of the other participants: nfp (write-off "dedicatee"-Happy 50th Birthday, Nick), proeditor (host), infoscott (webmaster), tlimjoco, eplovejoy, Sloucho, GinaHill, rich2003dm, epicure, wovengold, pageclot, hhassell99, teskue, magenta321, LEDOMAINE, lernerj, DrDad, Howard_U, jankp, nylawgirl, amykhar, mike24, zzJulia, and dequebec. Thanks to infoscott, you can find easy links to all the write-off entries at the web page he designed just for us: http://eprimewriteoff
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Epinions.com ID:
hhassell99
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Member: Heather Sawyer
Location: Lakewood, CO
Reviews written: 56
Trusted by: 45 members
About Me:
Home Schooling, Breastfeeding, SAHM and a whole list of other qualities that annoy people.
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