alreadyknewblog

“He’s just so mean.”

It always felt embarrassingly small.

Like I was complaining that someone cut me in line at the grocery store.

Mean.

Not abusive.

Not dangerous.

Not violent.

Just…

mean.

Every time I said it out loud, I felt ridiculous.

Mean isn’t a reason to leave your husband.

Mean isn’t something you put in court paperwork.

Mean doesn’t explain why you’re crying in your closet at midnight, nightly.

Mean doesn’t explain the panic that comes with waking up every day.

Mean doesn’t explain why your children are hyper-vigilant of Dad’s mood.

The problem wasn’t just that he was mean.

The problem was what happened after.

He’d calm down.

He’d apologize.

Or most likely, he wouldn’t.

Life would continue.

Dinner still had to be made.

Kids still had to get to school.

Work was still there waiting.

There was never enough time for my nervous system to finish reacting before it had to start pretending everything was normal again.

It becomes… ordinary.

Not because it stops hurting.

Because it’s what you’ve come to expect.

A few months after my divorce was final, I was walking downtown and saw a woman sitting on the curb.

She was crying.

I almost kept walking.

But something inside me made me stop, I asked if she was okay.

We talked for a while.

She kept apologizing for crying and taking my time.
(ouch, I recognized this one immediately) 

She was locked out of her apartment after an argument with her boyfriend.

He wouldn’t let he back in or give her the keys to her car until she apologized to him.

At one point, she shrugged and said,

“He’s just… really mean.”

It felt like someone had reached into my chest and squeezed all the air from my lungs.

I saw the quiet desperation behind those words.

I knew exactly what she meant.

Those were the exact words I had used for years.

“He’s just mean.”

It was how I translated constant criticism.

Walking on eggshells.

Terrified of of bringing up the wrong thing.

The way my body was always bracing for a shift in his mood.

The way I learned to make myself smaller because smaller felt safer.

Mean.

Such a tiny word.

Small enough that people don’t panic when you say it.

Small enough that they don’t ask too many questions.

Small enough that you can say it without having to admit, even to yourself, how frightened or lonely you’ve become.

That’s one of the more quiet pain of emotional abuse.

We search for softer words.

Not because what happened was soft.

Because the truth feels too heavy to hand to another person.

So we buff it’s edges.

We make it easier for others to hear.

Easier to dismiss.

Easier to survive.

Until one day you hear another woman say the same words

they don’t sound or feel small anymore.

They sound like a plea.

And you realize that all those years, every time I said,

“He’s just so mean,”

what I was really trying to say was,

“Something is happening to me, and I don’t know how to explain it.”