Personality refers both to who you are at your core and how others perceive you to be. Personality is a slippery word because it includes both what you feel to be true about yourself and what other people think about you - your thoughts that lead to emotion (invisible) and behavior (visible). So, on the one side of personality, we have the invisible core of "who you are" as defined by you. On the other side of personality, we have the visible version of you as defined by other people. Gurus say that "authentic people" are those who say as they do and do as they say. In effect, the goal of authenticity is to project your definition of yourself to everyone else consistently, and align the invisible with the visible.

When I left my marriage, I severely mourned the death of my relationship. My mourning for the fantasy relationship was as real as any grief I've ever felt. The grief was so real it led me to delude myself about the truth of my abusive marriage. Will, my husband, wasn't all bad, was he? Maybe our separation would scare him straight, maybe our recent civil conversations heralded a new beginning for us, maybe this was all a bad dream. 

Some of you are reading this to receive validation that there is no way possible to leave your abusive relationship. If you're looking for someone else to agree and say, "Why by God, you're right! You are stuck!" then you are a victim and you are absolutely correct. Does that help? Do you feel any better hearing me say that your situation is hopeless? There's no hope - your abuser wins. Go sit over there, sigh, and wait for the next episode of abuse. Feeling better yet?

Does cheating on your abuser help you to cope with their abuse? Does a new love help you to heal? There is a little bit of truth in answering "yes," but there's more truth in a big fat "no."

Staring at this blank space, waiting for me to write something, reminds me of my days of abuse. Each day could seem so clean and full of promise - the trick was, I had to expend energy to make it a great day, use my will to write the day full of actions that led me toward my goals and toward a new and better day. But, unfortunately, I didn't have the energy to create a new day. I didn't have the ability to break the day's chains and move forward. All I could do was sit there and wait for the day to write itself. Slowly, just as the sun moved across the sky, my blank day moved from bright to dark with no help from me. I'd go to bed that night knowing I'd created nothing grand, never mind improved myself in any way. Never mind improving my thoughts, my plans, or the ability to live any dream. No, my days in abuse were blanks. Unwritten opportunities that could have been something grand if only I'd had the energy needed to progress.

Way too many abuse victims continue suffering because they do not put together a viable safety plan. Safety planning can be a very taxing, emotional issue for victims because, in essence, they are confronting the fact that even if they love the abuser, they are in danger emotionally and physically. No one wants to believe that, but safety planning forces you to see the danger.

Please, honey, give me this day, free of pain. Please take back your hateful words, hold my tearful face in your hand, and apologize for hurting me so deeply. I beg of you to hold back your brutish glances under knitted brows and instead, look into my soul shining beneath my tears and see, just one time, that who I am will not hurt you.

Life after abuse surpasses the definition of peaceful. There is no one but me to tell me what to do or how to do it.

In the last post, I wrote about my fear that I will damage (or kill) any healthy relationships I now enjoy due to my inability to trust the ones who deserve it. I mentioned that it is much easier for me to trust a stranger than my lover, but that dilemma is, I think, easily explained: strangers on the street do not have intimate knowledge of who I am that they could use as a weapon. Strangers may use a gun, but that type of killing is not the one I fear.

Trust eludes victims of abuse during their abusive relationship. As much as I wanted to trust my ex-abuser--and told others that I could trust him--it just wasn't so (Trust Issues and Abusive Relationships). I thought if I was trustworthy and expected to be able to trust him, then he would magically become trustworthy and our relationship would spring to life. That never happened because you cannot ever trust an abuser with your heart. But you can learn to trust after your abusive relationship.