Love of My Life

The X. He was most assuredly the love of my life. Tall, handsome, charming. In the moonlight, he looked like an ancient King. I could almost see that star shining on his brow, like Aragorn from 'Lord of the Rings'. He was intelligent and gracious. He wrote me love poems, good ones. He told me how he saw me as a wild Indian woman in a vision, his pregnant wife driving a team of horses in a dream. He made me tea. He wooed me in grand romantic style, welcomed me in, lured me close using compliments as sweet bait. I thought finally here is a man who truly knows me! I loved him so!

Think of a villianous fox in a Beatrice Potter tale, the one with that Silly Goose, next in line to be stuffed with sage dressing--dinner! He was suave and smooth. I fell for it as surely did the goose. So kind and gracious to me--me! Little Miss Nobody. Wow.

He wanted me to move in, he wanted me to marry him. So, I married him, and when we kissed during the wedding, that final seal of a kiss, I felt a charge, a current, a subtle energy pass between us in a grand circling flow, making us one. I did. This was a marriage on more than the physical level, it was a union of souls, I was sure of it. (Conveniently forgetting, needing to forget, perhaps, that on the day of our wedding, held at the farm, outside, on our land, in May when the violets bloom like tiny amethysts in the grass, that when one of his former woman friends--never my girlfriend, he assured me--crashed the wedding, all his attention turned from me to her. I became secondary on a day when I should have been primary. Janelle, the woman who had introduced me to him and who now stood as my maid of honor, turned to me at one point as my new husband kept his full attention on the female wedding crasher, and asked me, wryly, "What the hell is that about?")

Trouble brewing. But I remained as optimistic as I could manage, because this was my life now, after all. Besides that, I was pregnant. Six months pregnant, and beautiful, with long flowing chestnut hair and wearing a flowing purple dress. More beautiful than that wedding crasher, surely that accounted for something? Not really, it would take me years to learn, not really for a man who went through women like candy bars, eating the entire piece, licking the wrapper clean, and then tossing it aside.

And me, who never wanted children, pregnant? My baby was an 'unplanned blessing'. Remember contraceptive sponges, taken off the market because they didn't work? Yes. Well. But I was so in love, such a fool for love, I was delighted to be having a baby, his baby, and we had a farm and she would grow up there in the beauty and joy of nature, and he and I would grow old there together and it would all be so fine. He used to spin fantasies of our child working alongside us at the farmer's market and about the house he would build us with an upstairs balcony that faced the sunrise, and a garden enclosed with a high stone wall, and I listened like a bright eyed child hearing fairy tales but thinking it was all too true. All true. He was so wonderful, of course it was all true. And I deserved a happy life, so yes, it would all come true.

What a set-up I can say now, with wiser, experienced eyes. But I was so happy and hopeful then, I thought my dreams for a good man and a nice family and the life I had hoped to achieve had come to me. That was the hook, that was the trap. It took many years for me to awaken to that nightmare disguised as a happy dream, and then to rouse myself, and untangle myself from the details of a marriage and a business and a home, and get my daughter and myself the hell out of there. Because what I know now that I did not know then was his charm, his too-good-to-be-trueness, were the hallmarks of an abuser. And that at some point I would fall from grace in his eyes, never be good enough for him again, and would try over and over to win back that loving attention. Like a child.

When I stood up to him like an adult woman, he would strike me down. With his hands, with his words, with his scorn. Much like my step-father did when I spoke truth to his abusive power. Because as any domestic violence counselor will tell you, it is all about the power, and them having it to control you. Power and control. It manifests in so many ways, from the subtle emotional and psychological madness to the gross level of physically pounding you down. And we get wrapped up in it and whipped around by it until our heads spin and we have forgotten what normal is supposed to look like. I remember trying to figure out how to please him again, to make it all right between us again, and him changing the rules as soon as I had figured out the game. Endlessly. There is a word for that kind of thing: crazy making. They make us crazy, our heads spinning, our hearts broken, our energies focused on the thought, if only I can get this right, he will be happy with me again. It was a nightmare, a life in hell; I was a hostage, a prisoner of war. And it took me many years to shake off the degradation and wake up to the illusion and stand up and walk tall and get out of there, get away. Escape. It wasn't easy. And, I still loved him. But that, my dear friends, is another story.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai