VOICE
10 April 2018, 10:15
So. Something came up, that I’m just realizing that is happening.
I never thought something could happen to me like this. I thought I was a strong willed individual, and since my personality was so bold this could never happen, but apparently it did and still does happen.
I have had integrated Doug’s voice in my head.
This was brought up to me, by a friend of mine, and I realize I do this all the time. I was talking to my friend about a car issue or non issue, as it were, and I had quipped that I was stupid not to know this or that. He said, “No, why would you call yourself stupid?” That stopped me in my tracks. I had remembered several other people saying the same thing to other subjects I had said I was “dumb” on or “stupid”. Then I had actually realized, that a good number of people had said I was beautiful in the past couple of months, and immediately, something in my head told me “NO” and I would rebuke or laugh off or even diminish the compliment. I have realized, this is Doug’s voice in my head. This was the things that Doug had told me or initmated or “joked” about with me (some of it was my mother, but most was Doug). I seemed condition to answer like this. I DO know before Doug, if something came up that was a mistake or was something I was ignorant about, I didn’t say I was “dumb” or “stupid”. I would just acknowledge my lack of knowledge, and then learn from whatever thing it was and adapt. I would go on.
Now, I’ve noticed (after it was pointed out REPEATEDLY) that I immediately blame myself, or say that I was stupid or dumb. I wouldn’t just realize that it was just an innocuous lack of knowledge or experience on my part, but that it was some sort of fault, and I deserved blame for it. Whether there was blame to be given, whether it was just something that was just a random issue, I was volunteering myself for the blame, or apologizing for being not just having a lack of knowledge, but for being stupid.
When the first car blew its head gasket, and Doug was trying to get it back on the road, he grilled me on whether I saw the gauge go hot and did I keep on driving. I had said that I saw the gauge go up a little but then go back down. I got a complete lecture on how I should have pulled over, and how could I have not known there was a problem. It was MY fault I blew the head gasket. That is why, on the second car, I was paranoid and watched my guages like a hawk. When that head gasket blew, it hit me hard that I did something to make it do that, and I kept telling the mechanic and everybody that would listen, that I watched the guages, and I put water in the car. Billy (my mechanic) spend a good fifteen minutes reassuring me that something like this just happens, that its a split second it could go hot and blow the engine, that it WASN’T my fault.
Another incidence, was that I had my laptop on the floor in my computer room. Not in the middle of the floor, but near the G5 tower on the floor, out of the way. Doug, way drunk from a night of binging on Ultra Lites, came stumbling in and stepped on it, breaking the screen and actually damaging the track pad and keyboard. Forever more, and probably still now, it was “STUPID” of me to put my laptop on the floor. “Noone would do that.” It was my fault that the laptop was now damaged.
So. I pondered on this. I started remembering many times like the two above. I was just “stupid” or “wrong” to drive in the right hand lane and only “stupid” people do that. It was “stupid” of me to do free photography and graphic design for the no kill shelter. I was doing something deliberately to disrespect him because my car was dirty and full of trash and crap. Yes, he actually SAID “stupid.” When I confronted him one day that he called me stupid, the answer I got (the answer I got on a LOT of things) was “I didn’t say that…”
Incidence after incidence. I started remembering. I joked that men in their 40s sometimes discover they are gay, and forever more, “you CONTINUALLY call me gay…” I may have made a joke about him coming out of the closet or being latent (I would make these quips after he had made a rather homophobic comment on his part) – I would estimate I did this two times that I can remember, so add maybe one or two times that I didn’t remember. But he had turned this into something I did CONSTANTLY. So, CONSTANTLY I was telling him he wasn’ t doing things right, or CONSTANTLY I was putting him down. No. I wasn’t. I actually objectively looked at my behavior towards Doug. The pattern was, I asked him/nagged him a little bit (twice? three times?) on something I needed him to do, or that he did wrong, and then suddenly I was nagging him and I was this bad person putting him down all the time, and then… I just started not saying anything. If he didn’t do something he was suppose to, I did it. If he did something wrong, I would just correct it. I started just not saying anything about anything. I surrendered my own voice and stayed silent. And I became cowed.
He has put in my head, that I am this naggy harpy who was bringing him down all the time, and that I was constantly wrong, continually stupid. That I was abnormal and abhorrent.
And. I have internalized all this. I see myself as this, whether its consciously or in jest. I am this horrible person. I am the horrible person that he has constructed. I am stupid, unattractive, and abnormal.
I have just realized how DEEPLY this all has ingrained itself in me. And I am a strong person, so this was an insidious and effective campaign. I am only now realizing this has become my default.
I have also come to realize that everything that was assigned to me, was some sort of projection of self loathing he had for himself. I was never any of these things. I never deserve blame for things that had no blame. I never deserved “stupid” for a substitute for lack of knowledge. I never deserved…. I just never deserved a lot of this.
It is SO ingrained now, it’s going to take a long time to even realize when I default to all this, much less try to change it.
I am hoping that he doesn’t realize how damaging he was, because it would be heartbreaking to know he was doing it all on purpose.
