Tag: verbal abuse

Such a perfect couple…

Such a perfect couple, people always say…
They don’t know that for so many years we have said the same sentences.
“Don’t talk to me that way.”
“I talk to you that way because you made me so mad.”
“Well, that doesn’t give you the right to talk to me that way.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I believe we have said just that paragraph over five thousand times.
Exactly like that, except now and then a f’n works its way through.
So, now it’s decision time.
Because I keep repeating the same sentences too.
How do I change the script?
Our responses are so automatic.
Can you actually change within a destructive relationship or do you have to leave it?
I learned a long time ago, that you alone are responsible for what you accept from other people. I have accepted verbal abuse.
I am also responsible for how I respond to other people. I’ve become angry enough to start screaming right back at you. I don’t want to be that woman.
I don’t know how to be near you without being angry anymore and that scares me.
Can I change? Can you change?
I guess we would have if we could have.
Such a perfect couple people always say…

Truth Lies

Truth lies
between us.
You mold it
you change it
you stomp it
until my composure
shatters like glass.
I didn’t say that
that isn’t what I said
you weren’t listening
I didn’t mean it that way
you’re just too sensitive
dont dare walk away
don’t put down your head.
Go ahead, close your eyes
you’re such a frigging bitch.
I do everything for you.
Reality is subjective
that I know is true.
I just don’t understand
the way you twist reality
wrapping it around my neck
when I won’t agree
shouting that I’m crazy.
Verbal abuse?
Oh no, never you.
It’s always me because
I made you so mad
so, your anger is my muse.

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Does It End October 31?

My first question was, why not everyday? Several women (angrily) asked me that same question when I posted or re-blogged articles related to domestic violence, emotional, verbal or sexual abuse. Well, I told them that I wondered that too, and that I didn’t name the dedication, I was just trying to honor the victims and the survivors because I come from that country and I am fluent in that language.
The question I have asked myself repeatedly this month is this: What does national awareness do for the victims? Does it change the abuser’s mind? Does he (or she) say, “Damn it! I’m not going to swear and scream at you until National Domestic Violence Awareness Month is over, you lucky bitch!”
Does he pay the bills, buy some food, keep his hands off his daughter because it’s National Domestic Violence Awareness Month?
Will the family have a month of peace? Will her neighbor buy ice for her black eye?
The abusers and the victims are all too aware of what domestic violence is and the people who don’t acknowledge it all year long because it’s easier to look away, well they don’t give a flying fig that this month is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month either.
The women who go to shelters expecting to find a way out, expecting someone to teach them how to stand on their own two feet, hoping for training so that they can get a job that will support them and their kids in the future, what do they think about National Domestic Violence Awareness Month?
How about asking the ones who returned home because the shelter was lacking in anything but a whole new set of rules, a bed and some used clothes.
The shelters where women in my family have gone provided a time out, nothing more. If you run a shelter that provides therapy, job training, education, legal representation and daycare, I apologize and I’d also like your hot line phone number.
I will post articles about abuse in October anyway, hoping that even one woman might find the courage to grab her babies and run for safety.
I have read the survivor’s stories and I have read the  “he killed her” stories.
I have a “he killed her” story. I had a cousin who was murdered in front of her young son, while living in a shelter.
I cry and I hold every victim’s and every survivor’s story that I have ever read or witnessed in my heart. Including my own.
Victims and abusers, survivors and inflictors, well, to them every month is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. They just don’t talk about it.
So as this official National Domestic Violence Awareness Month begins, I feel helpless. I have no answers, no help for the millions who will go to bed hungry, crying and/or bruised tonight. For those who will sleep in their cars because it is safer than their home or because they have no home and friends and family are sick of helping them only to see them go back to the abuser.
I have tears, but Lord knows, they already have enough tears of their own.
Maybe we could make everyday Domestic Violence Awareness Day.

WWTTMFinalFinalcover copy

Cry until you laugh…Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie
A No Help At All Handbook

Our Prisoner Of War

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prisoner of war, can he ever forget what he

heard, what he saw?

turns on the TV, slams his bedroom door

still hears their shouts, damn their stupid war!

love has been beaten wrong side out by thoughtless acts,

lost to words that pound like fists,

scream and shout!

no hands were laid upon her, twas conflict that stripped her bare

naked soul withering, disintegrating, until she didn’t care.

bruises fade to yellow, begin to melt away

fresh sounds assault the soul, raising welts of colorful array.

she slips in to say goodnight, he pretends he doesn’t see

whispering to herself, a trembling hand shuts off his blank TV.

secrets confront his ears, unrelenting silence surrenders up to him her fears.

my angry son, when you grow up and are a man, will you take prisoners of war?

will you beat them with your voice, bruise them with your anger and never

lift a hand?

will you use their love to build a prison, design each brick to beat them down,

enslave their trusting hearts?

when she cries, will you turn your head, slap her face with words instead?

will your harshness sting and blind her eyes, cloak the disorder you disguise?

when she sobs herself to sleep, wondering if she’s insane,

will you kiss away her tears just to strike again?

prisoner of war, can you ever forget what you heard, what you saw?

when you leave this house can you wash clean, shed the stench of in between?

can you ever forget what you heard, what you saw, can you ever be released,

our prisoner of war?

by Jeanne Marie

Verbal Abuse I Say

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Why not everyday?

Women Who Think Too Much by Jeanne Marie

nostalgia2
I can’t be anyone but me.
I can’t see anything
That I can’t see
Until my eyes are opened
Then I can’t look away
When you call me a bitch
I want to move so far away
When you loudly call me
F—— pathetic in Denny’s
I eat my stack of pancakes
Covered in syrup and butter
Even though I want to run home
But home is where we live
So honestly, home is no better.
As I yearn to be alone
Syrup and tears
Taste familiar together.
Where is the woman
I thought I’d be?
Where is the man
I thought you were?
The perfect couple
They always said
But if this is love
I’d rather be dead.
You say it’s my fault
When you yell
Swear and scream.
I make you so mad
That’s why you’re
Being so mean.
Verbal abuse I tell you
No, it’s not you…

View original post 50 more words

Verbal Abuse I Say

nostalgia2
I can’t be anyone but me.
I can’t see anything
That I can’t see
Until my eyes are opened
Then I can’t look away
When you call me a bitch
I want to move so far away
When you loudly call me
F—— pathetic in Denny’s
I eat my stack of pancakes
Covered in syrup and butter
Even though I want to run home
But home is where we live
So honestly, home is no better.
As I yearn to be alone
Syrup and tears
Taste familiar together.
Where is the woman
I thought I’d be?
Where is the man
I thought you were?
The perfect couple
They always said
But if this is love
I’d rather be dead.
You say it’s my fault
When you yell
Swear and scream.
I make you so mad
That’s why you’re
Being so mean.
Verbal abuse I tell you
No, it’s not you say
With a confident smirk
Your conscious is clean.
So, when I’m gone
Will you look in the mirror
With only yourself
To be called a f——jerk?
The worst of it all
Since you ask, is
Becoming just like you
As I call you a f—— ass.
by Jeanne Marie

Crushing Me

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What do I say now, when there’s nothing left?
When I’m gone what will you remember about me?
Will you remember all of my mistakes?
Or will you remember the things I tried to be?
Will you remember the times I held you close?
Or just the times I failed to make the grade?
Will you remember the times our world turned upside down
Allowing black clouds to fog my brain?
Oh God, for love, the price I’ve paid.
Will you remember when I danced in the rain
My arms spread wide up to the clouds or
Will you be left with the times
our love brought you pain?
Looking back across the years
I recall the smiles, but I taste the tears.
So many wrong choices, how could I know
That the pain would go on forever
And that the dying would be so slow?
I see loved ones who have passed on
And I wonder what they think of me.
Do I disappoint them?
Or are they waiting arms open wide?
They say God doesn’t give you more than you can handle
So where did this crushing mountain of grief come from?
And who the f… are they, the invisible ones who say?
How do I start over when there’s nothing left
But regret, remorse, pain, pain, pain and more pain?
Surely, I will die soon enough. I know we all do.
But can I last that long?
How, when I can’t even breathe
With this mountain of pain crushing me, burying me alive?
Will you remember how you always corrected me
As if I were a child who didn’t know her own mind
Until it became true?
Will you remember me loving you?

by Jeanne Marie