Feelings
Memoirs of an abused wife
By Emmanuelle
She was beautiful. She was brilliant. She was also one of the most abused of all wives.
Helena was a princess born and bred – a princess to her parents’ eyes. For her were the best of private schools and, upon graduation from college and while still taking up post-graduate studies, the most interesting of jobs. Then she met Fer, a medical representative with a diploma in a pre-medicine course from a university ran by priests.
Their marriage lasted only seven years; love must have lasted much less than that, if ever there was such. Fer was the perfect gentleman from eight to five; at six in the city, the man turns into a beast. Dr. Jekyll releases the bottled Mr. Hyde in the fumes and spirit of gin and tonic.
There seemed to be no obvious marital problem as they were both learned and successful in their own fields. Except that she was beautiful and he was homely. And as the years went by, she didn’t seem to want to stop learning, and he couldn’t seem to catch up. And as she couldn’t let go of her books, he couldn’t let drop of his bottles.
Fer got mired in the depth of his dejection. And his imagined rejection. When he barked the first harsh words, he opened a floodgate to violence.
You see, Helena couldn’t bark back; she wouldn’t know how. She was a princess born and bred; and princesses do not indulge in gutterfights. So, she wrapped herself in silence; and to a drunken bully, there is nothing or no one more intimidating, more irritating – more empowering! – than a silent victim.
The next chapters were ugly, uglier. One night, Fer wrecked their home with his bare hands. The neighbors called the police. They found Fer gone and Helena barely alive, drenched in her and his blood.
When the noise finally settled down, Helena was safe in her parents’ home. She lives there, still.
The following thoughts are Helena’s. The words are this writer’s:
“It had been weeks since ‘that’ dreadful night. I never had a moment alone, really alone, to sit down and go over what happened then and immediately afterwards. Today, I had that moment.
And the shock that registered was staggering. The scenes replayed themselves, in vivid color and sound – fast forward and back, then in slow motion. Movements, words, thoughts, emotions during those moments – these were all around me again. Piercing, slashing, burning, tormenting. Haunting.
Couldn’t turn off the sound. Couldn’t shut out the sight. These were beyond the reach of my raking hands. Ended up scratching my face with these nails. The sounds, the scenes have lives of their own – pulsing and bursting out in images and images from within the thick confines of my skull.
And as the terrible headache starts, that nightmare begins again.
The fear. The cowering. The hurt. The insults. The ridicule. The shame. His resentment, anger and hatred rushing to me in waves so huge, so encompassing. A madness engulfing.
Was I even there? It seemed I saw everything from beyond a mist of cover. This can’t be real; yet it was really happening. I was there but I wasn’t there. Was hearing, listening but was deaf. Was feeling, hurting but was beyond feeling, hurting. I was a ghost of myself looking down at a scene of despicable human chaos.
Oh, what fools we make of ourselves!
Why the silent stance when I should have equally ranted and raved, fist for fist, slap for slap – a roll of thunder in exchange for his bolt of lightning? Misery was not his alone; I too bore the burden – sacrifice for sacrifice. Misplaced hopes for displaced hopes. Wasted tears for wasted years.
But silence it was. While his spoken unspoken heartaches washed over me, smothering, drowning. I watched a lifetime die – right there before my eyes. And I buried him forever, as he wiped his blood, the ‘token’ of his ‘love’, on my face, all over me.
I decided to have everything written down, not to further torture an already tortured self, but to free myself from ‘whatever’ is holding me back, drawing me back, to the ‘martyrdom’ of those years; but more important than anything else, to keep a firmer grip on the vanishing remnants of my sanity.
No need to consult a mind prober, but whatever ‘whatever’ is, more than a mean portion of it has directed or misdirected the path I had decided to take since I learned how to think or not think. And that was so many years ago.
So, help me, Lord. Or Whoever is Up there.”
Helena, you had that help. You survived, and moved on. A lot of other women did not. They were listed as “demented”, “suicides” or “accidental deaths”.
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