Making Bread

It wasn't all depressing. I loved my kids. They were my joy, what kept me alive, what kept me from completely shrivelling up inside. I tried and did many amazing and fun things because we could do them together. Like making bread. What an adventure.

I started when I had only four kids. White bread was on the menu at first. So began what I thought was easy, you just follow the recipe right? NOT. My first four or five times were a mess. The counter covered in flour, the kids covered in flour, the floor covered in flour. And the damn bread didn’t even rise. It was so frustrating. I had put the yeast in warm water to rise, I had kneaded one hundred times. I had used the beast bread flour. The rising was done properly, to the minute. What was wrong? No internet at the time, so instead of stopping and asking for advice or trying to get a book about it, I tried again and again. Any sane person would have stopped at that point. But not me, I tried again. Finally I gave in as the pressures of family life were wearing me down, I just didn’t have energy to keep up with scraping the huge crust of flour and water off of the counter, flour, cupboards and kids for the four white bricks that I seemed to be becoming quite an expert at producing. Several years passed by and I decided to risk it again. We were living in an apartment at the time. This time it worked!!!! I put everything together, kneaded it, my hair plastered to my forehead, flour up to my elbows and four little lumps of dough all around me with four little people covered in flour too. Their enthusiasm was rivalled only by the mess they made. I don’t know what on earth made me think that I could manage to stay sane and make bread with four little ones. But we did it! Four beautiful white loaves. I realized that my yeast had not been working when I was making it before. So I learned to always test the yeast before mixing it in with the huge bowl of flour. Mommy can I eat some? Mommy how much can I eat? Mommy can I knead more? Mommy, Jordan* is touching me? AAAAHHHHHH, Lisa* is throwing bread at me! The mess was phenomenal. But I faithfully made bread after that, knowing that at least there were no additives and preservatives in it. It was white but so good and so “healthy”. After that we moved to our house in the woods. It was beautiful, a house after apartments for two years. So the bread making began again in earnest. I was a homemaker and making bread is a sign of a good homeschooling mother.

But now, I was becoming a REAL homeschooling mother. I needed a wheat grinder. No good bread can be made with just white flour; I needed organic wheat berries and a wheat grinder. So in the very conservative church that we were attending, there was a lady grinding her flour. She helped me purchase one from the States and another learning process started. We were real bread makers now! Grinding the flour, kneading the breading, washing up the kids’ faces, hands, and hair, pulling chunks of half chewed, sloppy lumps of dough out of their mouths and scraping off a dried up messy counter became one of the normal occurrences of my life. Honestly, it was fun for a while. I loved the feel of the dough under my hand. I loved the smell of the yeast wafting up from the bowl.  I loved the feel of the hot, hollow sounding loaves that I pulled out of the oven. And most of all I loved the feeling that I was doing something good for my family and kids. We were eating homemade, brown, organic, fresh-ground flour bread. I was a GREAT mom. 

*names have been changed to protect my children and me.

I don't deserve anything good in my life.

At least that is what I feel like. I realized this in the last few months. It has come gradually. I couldn't understand that I felt like I had no value until I was treated like I had value. My husband to be treats me with value. He tells me all the time that he doesn't love me because I do the wash, iron or make meals. He's happy I do it. Or said he was. But his love was also dependant on my ability to perform. I got sickened in again. It was just a bit more subtle. I wasn't accepting half that he was offering me because I felt that I didn't deserve it. I have felt like I didn't deserve anything for years. I think that it has its' roots in christianity. That "I'm a worm, god only loves me because he can see me through his son. I deserve nothing but death but christ gave me life because he is so good to me." This has tarnished my view of myself since I was little. Of course, if I would have had a less intense, less performance-related personality, none of it would have meant anything. Unfortunately, my personality meant that I took all the god-shit very seriously. God loved me while I was yet a sinner and worthless. Note the "worthless". Meaning without god I am nothing. Meaning that with god I am something but still only a poor, sad, worthless being who has value only because god came to save me. Some would protest (as I once did myself) that that was the point! It showed that I had value because christ was willing to die for me. Unfortunately, deep down under that dogma is the fact that even though you are "saved", you are still worth nothing because it is only christ that covers all your worthlessness so you can somehow squeak into heaven. Anything good that I do is because christ enables me and anything bad that I do is because I, deep down, have a sinful fallen nature.

So how does that relate to the here and now? It means that I accepted to be treated like a less than nothing and worse than a slave for twenty years because I didn't deserve any better. It means that when my new boyfriend tells me he doesn't care if I go out and have coffee, I feel that I don't deserve it. I feel I have to somehow pay for that coffee. In reality, I had attracted another man who felt I was not worth the cup of coffee HE paid for. I was once again being taught that I did not deserve anything but disdain. So am I somehow worth less? Worthless? Am I somehow undeserving? It means that I have a hard time synthesizing the fact that I am allowed to be in a good place.  Why me? Like somehow I should still be in an abusive relationship where I am badly treated. That's horrible. My abusive ex knew and felt that. Abusers zero in on the victims, the ones that feel they should be mistreated. Christianity is the perfect front for abusive men. The bible gives them all the ammunition they need to make sure their wives tow the line. I'm glad I am seeing it now before it is too late.

What am I doing to change my thinking? Well, first, I dumped christianity and the bible. That was a good start. Next, I am trying to take the time to meditate. Meditate on the future I want to create for myself. When my thoughts go around and around I try to turn them around to the life I want. I imagine myself living the good things that I want. Travelling, having a nice car, being able to pay for my own coffees at Starbucks. Making more money than my fiancé (ah, those also were empty promises) Being able to see my kids and family when I want because I have the money to do it. Being free from the cancer that almost took me. Being at peace and accepting that I have worth, that I deserve better than what I have accepted up until not long ago. I have also started doing tapping (EFT). It sounds weird, but it is in a tapping session that I finally realized that I myself could sabotage any chance I had at happiness if I believed I had no worth.

Now is when I choose to live. I choose to be treated well. I choose the people who surround me and I won't accept people who trod on my self-worth and make me into their slaves. I have lost everything in this process. First I had to lose my health because of the mistreatment. Now, in my refusal to be treated like a dog, I have lost my kids, my house, my life savings and my reputation.  Abusers make sure that happens when they are clutching, struggling and screaming to get back the slave, the victim into their house. But you know what? I'm free. And I do deserve good things in my life.

The Evolution of a Good Girl - Part 2

Thus my life continued. You would have thought that I would have gotten wise to the situation. But no, I continued blaming myself and my inability to please my husband for being so unhappy. I started reading books and perusing websites on women who seemed to have it together in the christian world. People like Debi Pearl, Nancy Campbell, Michelle Dugger (even talked to her on the phone), and Teri Maxwell, to name a few. They believed in homebirth, homechurch, homeschool and keeping your husband happy with your joyful attitude and healthy desire for his body. Not all these women ascribed to all those theories but most of them believed in several of those things. Now that was extreme. They had happy husbands, happy kids and apparently happy lives. I wanted what they had. I needed to do something extreme. I repented for having hated my ex so much. I repented for not being submitted enough (wtf?) and I repented for all my thoughts of self-hatred and violence towards myself. I basically repented for being alive. This is what those women taught. You are nothing, you are worthless, you are a baby-bearer, you are a slave to your husband, you are at his beck and call, you must not decided anything, you have no right to choose anything, you have no right to think, you must let him think, decide and choose everything. You must dress up sexy for him all the time (Debi Pearl), you must not express an opinion unless called upon (Teri Maxwell), you must bear many children (all those women). I had been taught since a young child that to refuse teaching was to be hard-hearted and rebellious. I became the opposite. I considered everything that I read. I thought about everything. Since my husband was constantly telling me that I was hard-headed and controlling I believed that these women had the answer for someone like me who was so obviously ruining my family. So I became someone that accepted anything I heard that sounded spiritual. What an idiot I was.

1. I was spiritual if I had kids. Well, that sounded good, I was so miserable with my husband that having children to take care of and to love sounded nice. I thought that they would grow up and I would be able to go visit them and spend time with them instead of having to be around my husband. He wouldn't tell me not to visit our children even if he could tell me not to travel elsewhere. I had to obey him so this seemed like a chance at a bit of freedom later on. I had to plan the pregnancies and take my temperature to make sure that we conceived as my ex's sexual practises were a little odd and weren't exactly conducive to getting pregnant.  But conceive I did, six times over the next nine years. 
2. I was spiritual if I submitted myself to the teachings of other "godly" women who were succeeding. I threw myself into the teachings of Nancy Campbell, Teri Maxwell, and Debi Pearl. Their lives worked. They were submitted to their husbands, happy and successful. They had their own businesses that their husbands had blessed. God must be really happy with them so I thought that if I could just repeat their formula, things would work. I destroyed my health, following their teachings. There is no room in any of their crap that provides for abusive husbands who systematically work at breaking down their wives psychologically. 
3. I was spiritual if I home-everythinged. So home-everything I did. And it made my husband happy as he didn't want me out of the house. He wanted to control who I saw and what I did. Having me pregnant and barefoot and stuck at the house all the time fell right into what he wanted.
4. I was spiritual if my husband was happy. Then god was happy with me. Each and every time I adopted one of these changes in my life that these women recommended, my psycho husband would be happy for a couple of weeks. He felt in control. But like any immature two year old, it never lasted. The more he got what he wanted, the more angry he became over time. His rage got bigger and bigger until the slightest thing that I did would make him angry. There would be huge Hiroshima-like blow-ups for the slightest misstep on my part.  He would scream so loud that spittle would fly all over me. It was especially horrible if we were in the van with all the kids and he decided to blow up like that. I was stuck getting spit on and screamed at. My skin would just crawl.
5. I was spiritual if I dressed how my husband wanted. This created a problem though as my husband liked me looking like a slut. So how can you be a good christian woman and dress like a slut? This internal conflict was hard to deal with especially with all the conflicting advice that all the christian women give, be it at churches or in books.
6. I was spiritual if I followed my husband wherever he went and listened to everything he said. So we changed churches many times. My husband fought with everyone so we never lasted long in one church. But he always managed to blame me. He would come home and tell me that so and so had done such and such. Then he would tell me to deal with it. "Go talk to them" he would say. So I was submitted. I agonised over all these things, but did what he told me in the end. It was awful. Thus, all those people thought that I was the instigator and fighter. I believe that some of those people still believe that now. Especially since my ex followed and told them "See, I knew she was trouble, she just makes fights all the time." 

I can't write anymore. Not now. My stomach is in knots and I feel nauseous. But I need to get it out. I need to sort all this out. I lie awake at night going through the whole story over and over again. I still blame myself for a lot and still believe a lot of the lies that my ex has told me. Many people around me have tried to convince me otherwise, but twenty years of conditioning doesn't go away in two years. Writing this out helps me to see more clearly what was really going on. 

Thanks for reading and thanks for your comments.

The Evolution of a Good Girl

We were in the evangelical christian church. I wanted to please my husband and god. I had been taught since  I was little that god would not reward me if I didn't please him. And here on earth, I would be rewarded with health if I turned the other cheek, submitted myself like Sara did to Abram and called him lord, etc.

After I begged and pleaded to come back (and gave him amazing sex before being allowed to see the kids) we decided to move so that we would be closer to my parents. I wanted the kids to see their grandparents, and I wanted to have a bit of community around me so that I wouldn't get so depressed any more. Remember, in my mind, I was still the problem. Not my marriage, not my abusive husband, ME. So we moved. I packed the whole house by myself, with four kids under five in tow. My ex was so stressed out about moving that his spare time was spent sleeping or watching movies. I was so excited about being closer to my family that I didn't mind. Once moved, my ex began a campaign to alienate me from my family. My mom would buy me something, or do something special for me and my ex would use it. He would yell at me after my mom left, telling me what a bitch she was for buying cheese for me. I was underweight and never ate very well because I was taking care of my kids. So my mom was trying to take care of me how she could. My ex would eat all the cheese or whatever it was that my mom had bought for me. We couldn't afford to buy more so I would once again do without. Eventually the fighting with my parents was too much for me to bear. The conflict wasn't worth being close to them. It is so sad for me to see now that this would have been my way out! I was just so determined to make my marriage work. This time I wouldn't give up, my kids would have a happy mom and a happy life and I would make their dad happy too.

We moved back to my ex's home province in the hopes of starting over again. We lived in a little two bedroom apartment so we could pay off our debts from moving. My husband had to work nights as he had lost his seniority. He would leave for work at 15:00 and arrive at 24:00 then he would sleep all day until it was time to work again. His job was not physical, he sat around all day, even telling me that he had to pretend to have work as there was nothing to do. It was not like he was working super hard. I had to keep the kids quiet. When he was up he would be constantly yelling at me. I was trying to express my needs a bit but once again, I ended up trying desperately to appease him. I tried to make food he liked, I tried to keep the kids quiet, I tried to give him good sex. All this with four kids under six.

I started getting sick, but this time physically. I would shake terribly before meals, I was not able to sleep at night. I had horrible night sweats. I ended up on antibiotics three or four times for sinus infections. My hypoglycemia got ten times worse and I was having a hard time getting through the afternoons. I had a huge food allergy and almost stopped breathing. Then I reacted to the penicillin I was prescribed for an infection and ended up in the hospital again. My body was shutting down. I couldn't keep up what I was doing. I still didn't get it. I once again decided everything was my fault. I started memorising the bible and putting verses all over the apartment to remind myself to be thankful. I journalled my frustrations and thanked god for them knowing that these "brief and momentary troubles" were "attaining for me a glory that far outweighed them all". I memorised the verse that said I could do anything "through Christ who strengthens me". Then I pushed myself to go over and above the physical signs that my body was giving to me. I held onto the bible verses that promised a better afterlife. I began to live for my death. I had hope that all the mistreatment I was getting would be paid back in heaven when I died. So I pushed aside all the suicidal thoughts (that constantly came back because my life was hell), held each thought "captive to the obedience of Christ". And pushed through.

After a year we found a house a little further north of where we were. I was happy and thankful, like I should be, to be in a bigger place. There was forest all around and the kids were thrilled to have a place to play. By this time the Internet had gotten big so my ex now settled into the routine that would be his for the almost the whole of the next twelve years. Go to work in the morning, get home at 16:00 o'clock, sit at the computer until supper was ready, scarf down his supper, go in the bath and yell at me to bring the two littlest so he could wash them. I would try to start cleaning up the kitchen and he would yell at me to come get them, three and a half minutes later when he had semi-washed them. After, he would lay in the bath until I had brushed everyone's teeth and got them to bed. He would listen and when he was sure everyone was in bed, he would dry himself off and sit at the computer again until he went to bed. Every second night the routine was a little different. He would sit in front of the computer, tell me to get in the bath because he wanted sex (I hate sitting in scum so I had to wash it every time). I would wash the kids, play with them for awhile, then get out with them, dry them off, dress them, get everyone ready for bed, teeth brushed, then he would get in the bath. He would stay there until the kids were in bed, get out, get dried off and tell me it was my lucky night. Oh my god, I was so lucky. Every second night an hour and a half of pleasuring monsieur. Do you know I counted up to 830 times of him pushing into me while I was on all fours until he came? I was so lucky. The dishes? I had to do them after, or in the morning if I was falling over from fatigue that night, which happened often. He would always joke and say, "Don't worry about the dishes, you can do them tomorrow." But it wasn't funny because it was true.

Now I'll be a good girl

Now began my campaign to be the most amazing wife and mother that the earth ever saw. I would be submitted. I would be so submitted that even my husband would be nice to me. I would be the best mother ever. My kids would "rise up and call me blessed" like the woman described in the bible as the perfect woman and wife. I could do it. Thus started my quest for perfection. Oh wait. Hadn't I already tried to be perfect the first five years? Oh, I guess I wasn't perfect enough, I would have to try again. I looked to my husband as my guide; was I being submitted enough? Was I being good enough? Was I a good fuck? Was I creative enough in bed? Did I walk the right way, wear the right lewd clothes, the right sexy things, bend over and get fingered in both holes the right way while he jacked off? I knew I could do it if I just tried enough. I also knew that I was desperately miserable. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be cared for. But I couldn't think about that. So I disciplined my thought life. I stopped reading books that talked about women being loved, even biographies or autobiographies. I stopped watching all movies. I stopped even trying to talk to anyone about what I was living at home. I read only books about homeschooling and being a good christian wife. I preached to everyone about how bad movies were and how we needed to "purify" our minds of all the filth in "worldly" books, movies and music. In reality I was hiding my desperation, my incredibly deep disappointment with life. I was miserable. I threw myself into living. But every time I did something that helped me live, my ex attacked me incessantly. He wanted control over everything, my thoughts, my actions, who I saw, what I did, and how I talked.

I chose to do things around the house that needed doing in spite of his anger. He would be even more angry and throw fits, scream at me for days on end then pout for weeks on end. I wasn't allowed to silicone the entry where water was seeping into the house. I wasn't allowed to change the screen door. I wasn't allowed to mow the lawn. I was attacking his manhood and telling him what to do when I did those things. Well fuck. He just wouldn't do these things. The house was rotting out from under us. Someone had to take care of these things. Then he would finally do stuff and then put it under my nose for YEARS afterward as a lack of submission on my part. When I asked him what we should have done, he would just scream and tell me to shut up.

Back home with my abuser

Well, after he stole the children and hid them from me I panicked. I ended up in the hospital, then in a kind of halfway home for the mentally unstable. It was ridiculous. Nobody even thought to ask me about what I was living at home. Nobody considered that I was living under duress. Nobody once asked me what brought me to wanting to kill myself. WTF? I still can't believe it to this day. The kind of abuse that I was going through day after day was enough to drive anyone batty. I am surprised that I stayed as sane as I did. The constant, demeaning and bullying. He wouldn't let me sleep, keeping me up at night to have sex even though I had four children four and under that kept me awake every night. I begged to sleep in the afternoon on the weekends. Just for a half an hour. He refused to take care of the children. When I sat down and looked at the floor, it would be rolling. I was seeing shadows. My skin was itchy all over. I was depressed and crying all the time. I was cutting myself every time my ex yelled at me. Which was often. Now I look back and realize that I was sleep deprived.

A 2001 study at Chicago Medical Institute suggested that sleep deprivation may be linked to serious diseases, such as heart disease and mental illnesses including psychosis and bipolar disorder.^{[citation needed]} The link between sleep deprivation and psychosis was further documented in 2007 through a study at Harvard Medical School and the University of California at Berkeley. The study revealed, using MRI scans, that sleep deprivation causes the brain to become incapable of putting an emotional event into the proper perspective and incapable of making a controlled, suitable response to the event. Sleep deprivation may have been the underlying cause of the overdose deaths of celebrities Heath Ledger, and Anna Nicole Smith.^[22] 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation 

I was not only sleep deprived I was showing symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. My life was spinning out of control and my abuser was treated like he was a hero enduring a crazy woman. He would talk to everyone how I was controlling and wanted to tell him what to do all the time. This was a huge insult in the christian community. It meant that I was not being submitted to god. So on top of not pleasing my husband I was also not pleasing god. I believed his fucking lies. It is very hard for me to look back on all this and realize all of his lies that I swallowed. Why oh why did someone not ask what was going on at home?

I was not allowed to talk to other people or spend time with friends unless he approved. If I dared there was hell to pay. He would be angry and screaming at me, calling me names or he would be cold and distant, treating me like I was not even there, ignoring everything I said. I would speak and he would walk right out of the room as if I had not said a word. It was torture. There were many signs that I was in an abusive relationship but no one bothered to find out what I was living. It was all about how my ex felt.

 SIGNS THAT YOU’RE IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPYour Inner Thoughts and FeelingsYour Partner’s Belittling Behavior

Do you:

• feel afraid of your partner much of the time?
• avoid certain topics out of fear of angering your partner?
• feel that you can’t do anything right for your partner?
• believe that you deserve to be hurt or mistreated?
• wonder if you’re the one who is crazy?
• feel emotionally numb or helpless? 

Does your partner:

• humiliate or yell at you?
• criticize you and put you down?
• treat you so badly that you’re embarrassed for your friends or family to see?
• ignore or put down your opinions or accomplishments?
• blame you for their own abusive behavior?
• see you as property or a sex object, rather than as a person?

Your Partner’s Violent Behavior or ThreatsYour Partner’s Controlling Behavior

Does your partner:

• have a bad and unpredictable temper?
• hurt you, or threaten to hurt or kill you? 
• threaten to take your children away or harm them?
• threaten to commit suicide if you leave?
• force you to have sex?
• destroy your belongings?

Does your partner:

• act excessively jealous and possessive?
• control where you go or what you do?
• keep you from seeing your friends or family?
• limit your access to money, the phone, or the car?
• constantly check up on you?

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm

 This whole questionnaire applied to me. After five years of married life. What the fuck was I doing staying there?

Damaged goods.

I decided that no matter anyone else said or did, my marriage would work. I would change enough that my marriage would work. I was with an asshole for the rest of my life, but I would do anything I needed to make sure that I stayed relatively sane and I stayed with him.

Why didn't I get a divorce when he stole the kids? For someone from the outside, even for me now, it would seem the logical thing to have done. The problem was that I had already been abused for five years. Abuse messes with your mind. It damages you. I had been bullied for years as a child, pushed around, treated like dirt. I had been told by my church and the bible that I had no worth other than as god's child. I was a dirty sinner. Then I went into a relationship with a man who treated my like a faulty piece of merchandise, throwing me against the wall when I didn't function correctly. Screaming at me when I said I was sad or cried. Calling me rude names. The bullying and demeaning that I had grown up with continued. When I had the chance to leave the abuse, I couldn't see a way out. He would take my kids, he would destroy my reputation, I had no job, no career, no education and more than that, my kids were my life. He was seen as a kind, loving, good man. He gave lots of money at church, he volunteered for the soup kitchen to feed the poor, he talked the talk of a good christian man. I could not see my way out. Everyone around me was blaming me for "cracking". My ex was blaming me. He had blamed me from day one, told everyone around him what a bitch I was and I had wanted to be a "good person" so I believed what he said and tried to change. I kept trying to change but it was never good enough. I didn't even know what it meant to treat myself with respect. I didn't know how to fight for it. Anyways, I was not worth it.