How I forgave my abuser…

AA will teach you a lot. Forgiving people who hurt you the most? Yeah, it’ll do that. It’ll also teach you your part in how they hurt you — I mean this in the least victim-blame-y way possible.

When I let my abuser come into my life a second time, I already knew who he was and what he was capable of. None of this was a mystery. It was almost 5 years after he had beaten me the first time, and my excuse was “he was sick and he got help.”

He is sick. He hasn’t gotten help.

I learned that repeatedly from 2015 to the present day. He is absolutely at fault for abusing me, and will never take accountability for that but that’s not something I can control nor impact.

When I realized how I let my boundaries slide, how I turned from alcohol to men to abuse myself — I realized where I was at fault in something I kept rebutting with VICTIM SHAMING when others would try to hold me accountable for my part.

My internalized self-hatred had already come out in my alcoholism, and when I got sober, it came out in my choice of men.

I had a series of unhealthy relationships from 2015–2019. I was sober during all of them. I am still sober. But the connecting fiber of those relationships was my own damaged self-worth. Instead of finding someone who built me up, I repeatedly found people who tore me down — particularly the subtle, more intelligent kind.

I had been in AA when I first got sober in 2014. I went religiously and sort of went through the motions. Nothing was sinking into the depths of my mind, my eyes wide as a child when you unexpectedly scream boo during every meeting. I just knew I needed to get sober — for me, it was sobriety or death.

After a series of mishaps involving a car, lots of alcohol and particular individuals I should have wanted nothing to do with, I quickly realized what was happening when I drank alcohol. I was trying to hasten my own death.

None of this was healthy or ok. The events that no one would speak about were an externalized voicing of my own self-hatred. It was me abusing myself with alcohol for all the mistakes I thought I had made. It took some unpacking to realize mistakes are just opportunities for growth, not permanent faults in character.

When the weapon, alcohol, turns into men, it’s like the wolves come out for a feast.

Looking back, every relationship as I got sober was filled with micro (and macro) aggressions — tiny (and large) acts of domestic violence and red flags. I paid attention to none until I almost died, and even then, I still landed myself in a similar situation almost 3 years later.

When my abuser smothered me with a pillow, threatened me with a gun, and strangled me, I kept excusing his behavior — he was sick. He needed help. He had spent so much time in the military and had childhood trauma. It wasn’t his fault.

It allowed us to continue our unhealthy dynamic over and over again and for me to view our dynamic as acceptable. I deserved this.

In finding my voice, I had to find my worth.

As time went on, I had to find my voice for the violence to stop. I had to speak up for myself as courts and police wouldn’t — they themselves couldn’t understand why I kept going back. I met a woman, through DVSurv5r Network, and the rest is history. I went from someone terrified of a loud man, to able to stand on my own two feet when a man was loud.

The quick transition from scared field mouse to hawk was swift and relentless. Until I realized I had to address my self-worth. Now, compliments still make me freak out and I’m not fully adjusted from the years of damage, but the growth that happened was tremendous.

Having to face that I am a worthy human being who has value has probably been the scariest thing I’ve ever had to do.

I had to re-write my history. The lies that have been pummeled at me by an abusive relationship after abusive relationship down to the one I had with myself. This wasn’t pretty and it still isn’t.

Re-writing your history creates risk. It means that what’s predictable is no longer predictable. It also means you have to forgive yourself for some of the damage you have done.

Forgiving my abuser also meant forgiving myself.

I forgave my abuser and I made amends to him. It’s not something you often hear and you should. I forgave him and made the amends, not for him — he doesn’t understand it. He isn’t connected and present. His sole focus, still, is hating me. That’s not something a healthy person focuses on — the hatred of another human being. I remember once saying to a DCF worker, if he could funnel his hatred towards me into curing cancer, he’d cure cancer.

Now, in forgiving him, and making amends, I don’t mean that his acts weren’t intentional or that his sickness excuses his actions. I also don’t mean that I deserved them or that they were my fault. He absolutely should leave this earth better than he found it, just like the rest of us. He absolutely should do no harm whenever possible, just like the rest of us.

However, he’s not in a place where he’s capable of that. And for that, I forgive him. I could have made better boundaries at any point in our relationship. And for that, I made amends. And in forgiving him, I forgave myself for entangling myself with him because of my own self-hatred.

To learn to love myself, I needed to let go of my own self-hatred and those that hated me too.

To find self-worth and confidence, I needed to find a way to let go of all the hatred, from myself and from others. Forgiving him and myself was a part of that. I can’t have room in my life for those emotions if I value myself, for there are far more interesting and deserving things for me to occupy my time with than hatred (truly of any form).

In making the amends, I admitted out loud to myself and others how I could grow from what I had experienced. It was a firm reflection in the mirror (and to others) saying “You can do better and are capable of better for yourself and others. You have value.”

Putting value to myself, my time, and my emotions meant that I couldn’t have time for his hatred or mine. I couldn’t give those emotions time or space or energy. They don’t deserve them, I don’t deserve them.

In fact, I now know deserve more.