False Archetype

Villains don't have twirly moustaches and tie their victims to railway tracks.
Victims aren't weak, sappy types, with a seeming lack of bones in their limbs with which to fight or run away.
But I have lain out the tarot deck of these unconscious archetypes so many times.
Here is the Queen of cups, gazing into her chalice; emotional, reflective, empathic.
Here are the lovers: their destiny entwined, whilst the air of communication moves between them their embrace is intimate, supportive.
And here is the prince of swords; the villain of our piece. See the cruel tilt of his lips, the sword drawn back as if to attack. Or, in another deck, he is the faceless master of puppets, driving those lost souls beneath him to push his chariot on.

But here the roles are easily defined, the archetypes play their one dimensional parts out of context of one another. My tarot reading is flawed. I didn't look beyond the face value of the cards, I didn't see  them in relation to one another.

The truth is a villain never looks the part, that is how he is so successful, so villainous. He strides onto the scene wearing a cape! He is Batman! He fights crime! Just as Lee dealt in the petty and not so petty criminals of his own particular Gotham, so too, did he respond to calls on his batphone, springing in to action at a moments notice. He was defender of abused children and battered wives. He knew exactly what the dynamics were with my son's father, he'd seen it so many times in his career. "he's such a narcissist" he said. It was the first time I'd heard the term. Lee was my hero, slaying all the jokers of my past. That is the truth I chose to believe anyway.

As for the victims, the truth is that they are often the strong, empathic, successful type. The kind of person you know you could call in a crisis, who would know exactly what to do. Maybe she is your bright and hilarious friend, maybe she is your sister who you secretly think is much nicer than you, maybe she is the woman in the playground who seems to have it all together. Maybe she is you.
The real truth is it could be any of us. Because if you think that a victim is 'weak and stupid' you won't see it coming. 'It couldn't happen to me,' you think, 'I am not weak or stupid.'

And you'd be right. But you'd also be horribly wrong.

Perhaps if we stopped judging ourselves and looked at the facts, the reality we lived in, rather than our narrow assumptions, we could save ourselves sooner.
'I am not weak or stupid, but this is happening and I want it to stop.'
Change the definition of a word and you change the limits of what it can mean: victim or villain can suddenly be anyone. Not the melodrama played out in flickering black and white films, but the real, everyday people around us.

Change the limits and suddenly victim can become hero. In the end, the only person who can save you is yourself.

When I came off citalopram for the second time I was ready; prepared for the fall out this time.
I'd put counselling sessions in place so that at least there would be someone to talk to this time and actually it was the most logical thing to do, in spite of me doing it for reasons not entirely of my own volition. Coming off the drugs meant that there was nothing softening the blow between me and the issues I needed to look at.

Every time I've had counselling I've started out by saying, 'Yeah, things were pretty bad but I'm actually fine now' only to be a snot filled mess by the end.
And also I've learned that you go in, talking about the recent mess you have found yourself in: Bad relationship, difficult job, whatever, and end up talking about the deep seated root of an issue that happened in childhood.
Thats how it was for me anyway.

I didn't know I was in abusive relationship at the time (which seems amazing now, how did I NOT know?!) so I didn't really talk about Lee. I started talking about my son's Dad and the difficulties there, the postnatal depression which had gone undiagnosed and the anxiety that still stalked me through the nights. Worse of late.
I didn't talk about my herpes diagnosis or the awful fights with Lee. I didn't tell her about how ill I'd been or that I was drinking way more than I should have been. I didn't tell her about the awful awkward silences that stretched out from Lee making him an impenetrable wall of righteousness. How can you verbalise something when you don't know that its even a thing. This was all just background noise, or as I've heard it described recently, 'the water I swam in'.

I started counselling just before Christmas and was vaguely unsurprised given the opening of old wounds and the lack of serotonin buzzing through my veins that everything, and I mean everything, made me cry.
I'd just weep for no reason, suddenly I seemed so fragile. I thought at the time it was an adjustment period, getting used to life after drugs. Lee supported this theory (of course) and told me that when he stopped doing heroine or crack or whatever it was that he'd used to cope with the reality of being his asshole self, that he used to drive home from work, pull up in a particular lay-by or side street, and cry his eyes out. Cry Baby Lane, he called it.
They've always got a story, haven't they? You are coming off anti depressants, Oh, well thats nothing, I gave up crack cocaine and still went to work. You are feeling a little overwhelmed by being a parent, well, they remember a time when all they could afford was beans and potatoes, for years... yes but thats probably because you were buying drugs with the housekeeping money.

I visited a good friend over Christmas, I hardly ever get to see her and when I do she is always full of warmth and kindness. But occasionally, very rarely, she will say something that pushes my buttons.

We had been there a little while and, having had lunch, we were sitting round the kitchen table just chatting and my son wanted me to play hide and seek with him. Honestly I just wanted to sit down and drink my tea and have a grown up conversation.

'you should have had more children,' she said, almost off hand 'he'd have someone to play with then'.

My immediate response was to make excuses, 'well, you know, I had to leave my son's father, you know what that was like and ... well, Lee didn't want more kids... the time as never right...you know...' my voice trailed off and I left fairly soon after.

But her words... they ate at me and ate at me. Everything it was connected to whispering in my ears. I'd wanted a family. I'd wanted a partner. I'd not wanted my son to be an only child, I'd not wanted to skirt around the edges of this family unit called 'normal' and feel like the outsider. I'd not wanted to 'fail' here.
I wanted that image, children adoring their father as he played with them (note, him not me... I'd be drinking tea somewhere), inclusion, connectedness, wholeness. Children all laughing together. I'd wanted that for us.
Or maybe, more accurately, I'd wanted that for myself.

It wasn't till just after Christmas, Whilst visiting another friend with my son again, him playing with her two boys while her partner stoked the wood burning stove that I started crying and could not stop.

The children had been playing board games on the carpet and it hit me; I'd never have this, I'd never have this 'perfect family unit' thing that I'd been wanting, because Lee wasn't interested in it. His relationship with my son at the time was one of distant tolerance, he already was very clear about the no more children thing... and he'd already said I shouldn't be thinking about more children whilst on antidepressants ('can't even cope with one without them?!')

I'd been getting my coat on, trying to get out the door but not really wanting to leave this perfect little scene. My friend, with her back to me was checking the stock in her pantry (she's one of the best cake makers I know). When she turned to say goodbye and give me a hug and I just dissolved in her arms.

Was it grief? Was it a sense of loss? I'm not sure, but I can tell you this now from a million miles away from that day: I am still single. It is still just me and my son. But our home is full of light and laughter, with a heavy dose of parenting thrown into the mix. I don't feel like I've got it wrong by not having more children or a partner to share it all with. Instead it's just very peaceful.
The other evening we'd had dinner and I'd fallen asleep on the sofa watching cartoons. As I blearily awoke he said 'I like it like this, when it's just us'.
They don't count how many siblings they do or don't or should have. Sometimes, like that time, all you have to do is be there with them and thats enough.

I promise, I will tell you more about the good things, and there are so so many. But I'll tell you all this  first, until it is done.

On the sofa that I'd been steered me to, back in another world, my friend tried to get me to speak.
I'm terrible, once I start, for being able to reign it back in. I could cry and cry about the world, everything becomes a melodrama (cue the heroine-throwing-her-limp-arm-across-her-forehead gif). I told her about the 'you should have had more children' comment. Everyone I've since told has taken a sharp in breath. 'Whatttt?'
And I told her I wished I'd just put that comment in its place at the time for what it was: a bloody stupid thing to say.
But I couldn't explain why, at her house of seeming familial bliss, I was having the shit triggered out of me.
Over the years there have been so many times we have sat, dissecting the contents of an argument or a misunderstanding that she and her other half have had.
Talking about is is just what friends do, and arguing is just what couples do.
The difference between it being toxic or not, I have come to understand, is that he loves her and her boys, he wants all of them, he wants everything that goes with family life, all the good stuff and the not so good, children sicking all over you in the night stuff. He isn't there to make himself look good, it's not about what he could gain as being seen as a 'family man'. But by definition that is exactly what he is. They argue. It doesn't mean anyone is walking out the door.

I think now, if I had said, 'your family is so wonderful and perfect and I just feel like mine is nothing in comparison', she may have started laughing.

After that, she persuaded me to stay another night. I hadn't texted Lee much since getting there, but I did tell him that I was feeling a little low and that I was going to stay another night.
His responses were kind of jovial at first, but turned hostile very quickly when I couldn't really say what was wrong. He was angry, I couldn't figure out why

'what's the matter?'

'I'm just trying to understand what is wrong with you'

Eventually he rang me, his hostility building until he was screeching down the phone...

'EVERYTIME YOU GO TO YOUR FRIENDS HOUSE YOU HAVE SOME SORT OF BREAKDOWN. STOP CONTACTING ME UNTIL YOU STOP HAVING FUCKING EMOTIONAL CRISES'

I would love to say that I didn't contact him ever again. That would have been a great ending.
'I didn't contact you because you ARE my emotional crisis. Asshole.'

My friend would have loved it too, 'Shiv, I hate seeing you like this, he's not being supportive, he's making it about him, always. Every time I see you there's something weighing on you. This is too much.'

But we'd recently booked a holiday I argued, what will I do? I knew at that time that I had to end things for my own sanity, but not how.
The holiday I'd saved for had been one I'd been meaning to take for years. At one glorious point I'd almost booked it for just my son and I. Just the two of us, just like I'd wanted to when I'd left his dad, penniless.
With all the money kicking around in the back of my cutlery draw again, I know, it just seemed like the least obvious place to leave a large sum of cash should I be burgled, I wanted to actually have some time away, enjoying the sun and just hanging out with my son. Just us.

But Lee had pressured me, texted, emailed, called me until I'd looked at holidays and booked it for all three of us.
I remember sitting next to him on the night we booked on line and asking him, 'don't you want to read the description of the hotel? I sent you loads of options Lee, which one did you like best?'
He hadn't looked at any of them, he'd left it down to me for once he said. now can we just book it?!
I'd also wanted to book it for later in the year, because I could back then, not being in full time work, and had wanted to go when it was warmer, but Lee needed to take his annual leave before the end of March so we'd found a cheap deal and pressed 'reserve holiday'.

I think I got to Monday afternoon before I cracked and text him, saying that after what he'd said on the phone he clearly wasn't happy in the relationship and that we should sort out the holiday.

When I think about that now I realise that I was as capable of manipulating the situation as he. I passed him the reigns every time. Every time I thought I was in danger of being seen as crazy or unstable or horrible for ending it, I made it about him.
'You are obviously not happy...'

I can see me lying down on the tracks, passing him the rope. "be my villain" I'm saying, "so that I don't have to be the villain here".
If I could, I would sit down next to myself in the coffee shop that I was texting him from and say, 'Stop. Stop what you are doing and be really honest. You are not happy. You.'
And I'd tell myself that I wasn't bad for wanting to end it, but by sidestepping what had to be done and handing him back control I was certainly not being the hero.

But that of course is the victim-blaming part of myself. The one who would stop me speaking entirely for the shame of it. "you were weak and stupid" she'd think, when in reality we need so much compassion for ourselves to face down these things, not tough love.

I was given a book, shortly after my son was born, called Why Love Matters. In it the author explains that babies don't become strong, secure, well adjusted children by being left to cry it out. They can't physically toughen up or learn to cope alone. We have to fill up their well of need first until it overflows. We have to teach them how to calm down, take risks, self sooth and become secure by being their security; by being there and loving them.

Word to the wise, never give a new mother a book like this. Or that awful Gina Ford book... All the 'should' and 'should not's' of parenting can make a woman spiral into madness. Just saying.

But as for the love part, I think we need to be able to look at it all and say, 'It's ok. I've still got you', and fill up our own well of need till it overflows.

That day, as I text him after work, I was afraid. In the end the abuser doesn't have to work so hard because they have trained you to do the work for them. You have internalised all their negative reinforcements, they have conditioned you to react in fear and ignore your intuition. They isolate you from yourself.
Lee had been working so hard to isolate me from my gorgeous, hilarious friend. She is the person I once danced up and down Walcott street in Bath for five hours with. Back in my mega hippy days I'd been wearing Dr Marten sandals - my big toe has never regained its full feeling from dancing so hard on those airsoles.
She is the one I had traveled with to Egypt. Once, on a bleary eyed Al-Italia flight into Cairo, she mistook the bald head of the man sitting in front of us for a Panettone. The air hostess was bringing round landing cards as my friend was dozing softly - as the hostess approached and stood to the side of us, cards in hand, she opened her eyes and must have seen this slightly bronzed, moley head peeking over the top of the seat in front and jumped to a most wonderful conclusion: "they're bringing us cake!'.
Quick as a whip shed flipped both of our trays down and sing-songed 'Ready!' to the astonished air hostess, who slowly handed over the cards and asked if we needed a pen.


She is the person who, when she had her babies and couldn't go out of her tiny flat, microwaved highball glasses of mulled wine for us both and laughed at me as I manoeuvred every piece of the jigsaw into place with a self satisfied double tap. She is one of the few people that will make me laugh like a drain for no reason, maybe some tiny little exaggerated movement that will have us bent over and weak. And she is one of those people everyone loves. Really EVERYONE.

'I don't thing Lee likes her very much' I said to my sister on the phone
'Heh? What? How can he not? Everyone likes her!'

His efforts to undermine my friendship kept on falling into a blank void; I simply refused to acknowledge him. Every time he passed some comment, or implied I should be spending time with him instead, I parried so that it flew straight past me into nothing. But my seeming obliviousness was making him more and more irate. He was right; every time I saw her there was some kind of emotional crises, but it was coming from him, not me.

'I appear to have been dumped.' came his cool reply 'you will need to sort out the holiday and pay me back for my share'.

And I heard my friends words in my head 'Shiv, fuck the money. The money doesn't matter'.

But I couldn't let it go.
With the holiday booked in his name I couldn't see a way out. And so we went.