Are you the girl/woman/lady that everyone fills in the blanks for? I am. Or, at least, I have always been that girl/woman/lady. What are we now – biologically female gender identifiers? Broads? Chicks? Birds? Pink Ladies? East Coast? West Coast? She-humans, for the win!
She could be so pretty if only she would lose weight.
She could be so successful at work if only she would play the politics game.
She could appear to be more professional if only she would tame her hair/wear these clothes.
She could be so accomplished if only she would apply herself properly.
She could keep herself safe if only she would follow my instructions exactly, perfectly, to the letter and never ever ever question or deviate or passively aggressively self-sabotage blah blah blah blah blah
No? Okay, it’s only me then. Embedded shame is hard.
If only I could accept my responsibilities,
possibilities and limitations, then I would be content.
Wait a minute. Hold up. That might actually be true.
Sharing my vulnerability, I have tried to determine if I am a psychopath, a sociopath, an empath, telepath, homeopath, allopath, or on a warpath, footpath or bypath. Too much for me. I am no longer “she could if she would.” I am a NewPath.
I want to “call deep on my courage”
to fill in my own blank spaces,
and allow space for them to be appropriately filled.
She could be a determined NewPath, if only she would.
I will.
pssst… you are invited too, you are worthy and loved.
ppsssst… and now you may sing “I’ve gotta Blank Space, baby, and I’ll *not* write your name”
Post Rule #1 Keep in mind that not everyone is reading with the same context as your writing
Where are we today?
The 5K post was a long time coming. I wrote that in the Fall of 2014, when I was desperately attempting to make sense of the absurd twists, turns and terrifying swirls happening in and around my life.
I am okay. Mr Heishim (now he is 7 1/2) is okay too.
Mr STBXH, now Mr exH, is safely in the care of the State at a facility far away from us, which specializes in meeting his needs. All of this has taken a terrifying and painfully long time to happen, with the indispensable help of our entire extended community. There have been desperately unfortunate series of events in between 2014 and our current temporary resolution.
Re-read the last part of the last sentence.
Current TEMPORARY resolution.
Well, obviously, our divorce is not temporary. However, the care of the State facility is temporary and only guaranteed to January of 2018. After then, as mentioned in the 5K plea, as long as Mr exH can declare himself as not being a threat to himself or others, has followed prescriptions, and decides he should no longer be under their care, he may choose to no longer be under their care. But, let’s not borrow trouble from tomorrow, when there is SO much to do today!
I call myself a New Path
I call myself a NewPath. A new path to walk. A new path of thinking. A new path of feeling. A new path of sharing. Not everything on my new path will be smooth and easy. I have no expectation of that. Not everything on my new path with be difficult and terrifying. I have no expectation of that either. My expectation is that I am different than who I was and that journey has compelled me to offer a space of sharing. I have been provoked into a tangent journey in my life. I am a NewPath.
There are many of us who have experienced absurdities, nonsense, scenarios beyond expectation, desire, interest, and our own ability to see beyond them as we are experiencing them (and sometimes long after). If you are interested in figuring out how you might help those of us through these experiences, consider reading this linked post.
Stories which provoke NewPaths will be shared here. If you are interested in sharing your NewPath story, please let me know.
WOWZA! What an overwhelming response from the first post.
Thank you for all of your continued prayers, positive meditations and projections of protective light over us. We are truly blessed in our extended communities of support.
I also received too many (one is too many) similarly awful tales that you were brave enough to share. I am paraphrasing one situation here, to protect your privacy:
“Thank you for sharing this.
My husband threatened to kill me and our son too,
but then changed his mind because we weren’t worth going to jail for”
This is in our sweet little community and playing out
right underneath our noses
right now.
Most of you also reached out to ask what you could do to help. YOU are brave and courageous to engage and ask. I am not sure that if I were in your shoes, I could harness that bravery. Actually, I am fairly certain that I would not. Not because I don’t care, but these situations are uncontrollably frightening: no pause button, no do-over, no Cliff’s notes, no IMBD preview, and no secure tidy ending.
If you are still with me, and wondering
What to do…
TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF SO THAT YOU CAN BE A RESOURCE.
You must remember to put on your oxygen mask before assisting other passengers in this life, including children. Without you having oxygen, you’re risking all of us perishing without your help. And, we need your help.
CHECK IN WITH YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS.
Be respectfully relentless, if you have to. In crisis, our decision making and perception compasses are off balance and we are often unable to determine situations for what they are, but feel as if we are keenly aware. Remind us we are loved and how your words and actions are coming from a place of love.
STOP DEHUMANIZING PEOPLE THAT YOU DO NOT APPRECIATE.
We ALL struggle. We ALL love. We are ALL humans trying to be humans. Sometimes, we ALL miss the mark. No group of humans are not humans trying to be humans. I am not suggesting to not have healthy boundaries/ideologies/values which guide your behaviors and life. I am suggesting that once you place someone into “they are all scary and awful and hateful and the most terrible etc,” you have given yourself, and others, permission to treat another human in an inhumane way. Stop doing that.
Stop giving up your responsibility to other humans.
Pray for them.
Send them positive light.
Meditate on their human-ness.
This may seem contradictory to your awareness of someone being abusive or mistreated. It is not. They are humans struggling without support. You might choose to not invite them into your home, or introduce them to your children, but you might choose to take an extra bag of toiletries to your local shelter this week, or donate to another local resource who is already servicing professional interventions. (for example, if you are driven to help overseas refugee children, find their local resource and donate to them – Red Cross, UNICEF etc)
Your friend that is in an abusive relationship needs professional help. You can provide your friend with telephone numbers, or make those telephone calls yourself. This is not dehumanizing your friend or the abuser. Both your friend and the abuser need interventions other than what they are experiencing, professional interventions, before someone is hurt further. Their intervention may include a religious leader, legal advisor, the police, social services, a judge, rehab, or some other mental health/professional intervention. Make one of these professional intervention entities a recipient of your philanthropy, either with money or time. They can use your support too.
Wouldn’t you rather donate to your local domestic abuse shelter so that they can provide adequate counseling and legal support, rather than donate $20 for a t-shirt at your friend’s 5K because they were murdered by an abuser?
You are not responsible for the decisions that either your friend or the abuser make. You can be responsible for knowing what resources are available in your community. Believe me when I tell you, ALL of us know someone in, or has been in, an abusive relationship. ALL OF US do.
Agencies you might want to be aware of:
Emergency Assistance 911 (call for ANY suspected emergency situation)
I ASK EACH OF YOU TO CHECK ON A COMMUNITY AREA THAT YOU FREQUENT
– the grocery store, your library, the salon, the gym, etc and see if there is a brochure or list of community services for people in crisis, available there. If there is not, contact one of your local agencies (domestic violence shelter, non-emergency police number, food bank) and see where you might volunteer to distribute their list of resources, or to put a list together. I bet your local library has a community resource brochure or web page. If not, ask to volunteer there to put one together, then distribute it to the community areas that you frequent.
Thank you for your enthusiasm and interest in helping. You are the key to our living, not just surviving.
When someone wants to murder you, nothing can protect you.
-Repeat-
Nothing can protect you
Nothing can protect
Nothing can
Nothing
A few years ago in our town, over a very short time period, there were three ladies who were brutally murdered by their husbands. Two of these husbands also murdered their own children. The third intended to, as far as I’m concerned, but wasn’t given the opportunity, so he just killed his family’s cats, his wife and himself instead.
So now our community runs 5K’s in their honor to raise awareness and money for victims of domestic violence. Well, we run them for two of the white ladies, and one family’s children. The third woman and her children were a lower income Hispanic family, so our subtle, not so subtle, racist community doesn’t run for them. But, that’s another topic for another day.
What kind of husbands, fathers, sons, uncles, men do this? Men who are sick. Men who are crying out for help in ways that go unheard. Men that are abusive, controlling, ill, and violent in such duplicitous ways that their neighbors and communities, even their own families and spouses, consistently describe them as the “nice guy next door.”
How do I know about these things? Well, I suppose when you read our story in the quaint local paper, or the little paragraph on our sign-up genius/donations webpage, you’ll get filled in. Maybe you won’t know about any of it until you show up to support our sponsored cause at our memorial 5K, which might be your first 5K and you’ll feel all the community support feels by signing up for the cause. “Oh my, how sad. I think that I saw them at a thing once when they did something.”
I know these things because I’ve seen it happen before.
I know these things because my husband is very sick.
I know these things because my husband wants to murder our son and me.
I know this because he said so.
Not, “I’m going to kill you for not putting out the trash, you knucklehead.” More like, “I am your apocalypse, I’ll make you drink my blood, I’m Sly Stallone, Our 3 hearts beat as one, and I know God doesn’t forgive murder.” You know, he wants to LITERALLY, in the truest sense, kill murder kill us.
Let me tell you, um, yikes. It is extremely scary, and life altering, no matter how sick you know a person is, to know that this other human being wants to hurt your child and you merely for being who you are, for existing.
“Get a lawyer,” you say?
“Call the police,” you say?
“Get him to a hospital,” you say?
Done, done and done.
Here’s the catch though, none of these well-intentioned institutions can actually protect us.
“No, no!” you say?
“You must not have followed the correct procedures.
You must not have said the right things.
You must not have filled out the correct police reports.
You must not have found the right Doctors/hospitals/lawyers, because if you had, you and your son would be safe.”
Indulge me with a moment of your time to dispel these lovely, comforting, and overly confident in naiveté myths for you – to decimate your glorious happy bubble.
LAWYERS: super negotiative finesse and super law knowledge
The lawyer may file papers for you, provide legal advice to you regarding the laws in your particular state, navigate your local court. Your lawyer has to work with all of the other lawyers, judges and court personnel long after your legal issues are over, and therefore will not be vigilante advocating for what you think is “right” all Hollywood style. Also, your lawyer has heard and seen every disgusting side of humanity, most likely, and can only represent actual proven truth – not conjecture, predictions, heresay or those dreaded feelings of yours (tip: see your therapist for those fun times). What you vehemently insist is non negotiable and the most important things for you and your child, may not match up with the actual laws of the land, and may not be within your lawyer’s capabilities. Not because they are incompetent, but you will know this because of your lawyer’s undeniable extreme competence and professionalism – both of which you will need if you need a lawyer at anytime in your life. Also, lawyers are not superheroes with any superpowers, other than super negotiative finesse and super law knowledge.
POLICE: need actual proof
There’s a funny thing about the police too. They cannot arrest or detain anyone because you suspect something or are frightened of something. They need actual proof (gasp!) to do either of these. If someone uses their words, like, I don’t know, “I’m going to murder you” and such, yet they don’t actually murder you, the police cannot arrest that person. As told to me, “words are just words, not actions,” and “if every written threat to kill someone equaled an arrest, most people on Facebook would be in jail.”
MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS: HIPPA
Hospitals, Mental Health professionals – hey, guess what? They are even funnier than the police and tighter bound than the lawyers. HIPPA – google it, as it is AWESOME in a so very not awesome way for anyone with an adult loved one who has a serious mental illness. Also, as an adult, no matter what your condition regarding mental illness, your self-reporting is absolutely the only information that the Mental Health professionals can and will take into consideration. Psychotic much? Okay. Do you feel homicidal or suicidal? Not right now, you say? Okay. Do you want treatment? No, you say? Super! You are clear minded, discharged and free to go. This also frees the hospitals and Mental Health professionals from adhering to any bugaboo “duty to warn” an intended target (insert me, our son) for a psychotic homicidal mentally ill patient (insert my husband), because they just verbally confirmed that the patient can verbally say they are not homicidal right then.
“No, no, no, no, no,” you say.
“That cannot be. I know that the hospital can commit someone and detain them.”
Sure they can, until the adult patient says they want to go and don’t want to hurt anybody or themselves. The adult patient who two days prior sent multiple homicidal threatening emails prompting a Protective Order through the court system, after being picked up by police for threatening to blow-up the hotel he was staying in and to physically harm housekeeping, yes, him, indeed. Clear minded and well = discharged.
“Wait a minute,” you say. “Is this the same guy who was picked up by the same police for erratic and disoriented behavior within 36 hours of being discharged from the hospital after a nine day forced stay?”
Thusly I say unto you, “yup.”
And so, what are we doing right now? How are we keeping safe?
We have a protective order.
It’s like a restraining order, except it begins with the letter, “p.”
We have had open communications between local domestic violence groups, child protective services, police, sheriff, pediatrician, therapist, school, workplace, lawyers, family members, close friends, church etc so that everyone is aware of the situation.
Words, words, words, words, words.
Here is the thing about words.
They cannot actually physically protect you.
Here is the truth.
When someone wants to murder you, nothing can protect you.
Repeat
Nothing can protect you
Nothing can protect
Nothing can
Nothing
You can pray. You can hope. You can peek around every corner waiting for the something awful to happen. You can file every paper, you can contact every agency, you can spread your story far and wide, but absolutely nothing can protect you.
You cannot run away because a psychotic adult can hire an almost unethical lawyer to prevent that, especially since you have a child together. You know, because the law protects parental rights. Even for a murderer. Or, in this case, a wannabe murderer.
More awesomesauce for this hearty party…
Have I mentioned that our son was forced to attend supervised visitation with his father, who incidentally, in case you misunderstood something previously read, wants to murder us
and we have a protective order from a judge in a court showing they believe his father is too dangerous to be around him?
No? Well, it is true.
So not only has our son been frightened of his father’s behavior because of our previous domestic violence in the home, and his father’s attempt to hurt him because I refused to allow him to hurt me anymore, but also re-traumatized each week by being forced to sit in a room with him for an hour and listen to his father’s manic nonsense. Or, as I refer to it, “institutionalized abuse in the form of re-victimization.”
“Son, your father is too dangerous for us to be around him, except you’re still going to have to sit with him for an hour in a room each week and be subjected to his psychosis.”
Our son was six years-old.
Anyone else finding this uncomfortable, barbaric and unbelievable?!!?
Any else feeling like this might be truthiness/movie pitch/rantings instead of reality?!!?
Me too, except I AM ACTUALLY LIVING IT.
For now.
Until we are murdered by my husband
and then the police can actually arrest him,
and the Mental Health professionals will be forced to treat him,
and the lawyers can move on to their next case
and y’all can carry on planning and running our 5K.
When you run my 5K, you should expect tastefully decorated and chilled bottles (not plastic, duh) of water, with matching, tastefully decorated GF, DF cupcakes, which will, of course, have some kind of added unexpected nutritional value (“oh my! I would have never known kale was in there if you hadn’t told me! Amazing!). And napkins. Cloth commemorative napkins, which could maybe double as a glow kerchief or brow sweat mop, as you desire.
As you round the corner to the obscene amount of brilliant festive balloons (clear with floating glitter inside, white ribbon) and giant silky white ribbon indicating the finish line, someone, most likely my irreverent Uncle or sardonic brother, will point you in another direction, yelling, “Just kidding, this is a 10K all the way! Run it for Mrs Herisme and Little Heishim! Go, go, go, go, go!”
And you’ll do it for the cause *fist bump*!
Psssst…. Just a thought. If my husband could have actually received appropriate quality mental health support and guidance, my son and I probably wouldn’t be murdered.
I guess then, though, you’d miss out on my sweet tale
and my lawyer would be about $70K short.
Tra-la
Love, Mrs.Herisme and Son Heishim
Please note, dear Readers,
I should have prefaced this post by saying that it was written in the Fall of 2014.
For an update on our current condition, please read the post dated 4.21.16.
HERISME 