Life With A Bad Man

In any bad situation, I suspect that in our core, we know what's right and true - and while we might not tolerate it happening to someone else, we make an exception for our own selves.  Honesty is one thing when you're dishing it out, quite another when you're searching for it in yourself - it's always easier to be brave for someone else.


Still, I think there's almost always a voice inside that tries to speak the truth.  We cover our ears, shout it down with denial, overpower it with fear and self loathing - but it still fights to be heard.  Now and then we strike an uneasy bargain - Okay, here's the deal.  I'll admit it's true but then you shut up.  And it stays between us.  It's a bad bargain, a short term bandaid for a severed artery, but it works, it allows us the illusion that everything will be fine one of these days.  At worst, we gain time to collect our wits and make a new plan to keep the secret.  At best, it buys us time to think, to sort out, to examine.  But all time is borrowed and it runs out.


We live in the spaces between what used to be, what is, and what might be.  We live in fear of exposure, of abandonment, of failure or shame or loneliness.  We live in separate rooms, sleep in separate beds, and learn to lead separate lives - but we admit it to no one.   As bad as it might be, it's something we know, infinitely less frightening than something we don't.  And of course there's always that nagging, persistent, other little voice - the one that likes to remind us we don't deserve anything more, certainly not a happy future.


Friends and family are mystified by us and enraged by what they perceive as stubborness, lack of self esteem,
self pity, inertia, indignation.  But this I've learned - until you've lived it and breathed it, you simply can't explain it.  And nobody can lead you out until you're ready to go.


Our little nurse is anything but ready to let go of life with a bad man.  If you ask her, things are perfect and would be even more perfect if everyone else minded their own business.  She doesn't bother to justify his actions, she simply denies them - it's all a misunderstanding, the missing money was just a loan she forgot to mention, her tears are from allergies, the witnesses are wrong.  She's learned to make black just another shade of white and the rest of us can't tell the difference.  Denial allows you to stand in the pouring rain and see yourself dry as a bone.


It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between we fear.  It's like being between trapezes.  It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer.  There's nothing to hold
on to. ~ Marilyn Ferguson


For her, life with a bad man is still better than life alone.  When I was in her place, no one could convince me otherwise and no one will convince her.  It's the difference between giving up and moving on and it has to be learned, not taught.