Article - Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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Article - Laura Knight-Jadczyk
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Chapter 14
A day or so later, my husband came in and initiated another of the endless series of diatribes he habitually generated which always started with him picking at one of the children. I would defend the child, trying to reasonably explain to him that each of them was different, that they had a right to their own opinions, likes and dislikes, and that they were not little clones of him who existed just to reflect what he believed, or to do what he wanted. The other children would join in and try to support my reasonable remarks with examples of their own. They all loved their father and all of us knew that he had a "problem" because of his religious fundamentalism. He was bigoted and judgmental, harsh and even cruel in his judgments, and if the children did not immediately agree with him, they became "outcast" also, damned and doomed to perdition unless they quickly changed their ways and views - to his ways and views, of course. As usually happened, the discussion ended up with him becoming more and more antagonistic and harsh and saying many mean things to all of us, couched in Christian theology that was for our "own good," of course. As the dynamic progressed, and I tried harder and harder to soothe and "make nice," trying to mediate and sustain his parental authority, even though I knew he was completely wrong, and protect the children from this psychological destruction, I saw with horror that what was really happening was that he was feeding on all of us! I instantly stopped trying to reason with him at all, told him that he was entitled to his beliefs, and I was entitled to mine, the children were entitled to theirs, and I wasn't going to discuss it at all with him anymore. He left in a huff with some parting shots directed at all of us that I can't even remember. The children were upset, I was upset, and I sat there pondering what I had just seen. As I did, one of my daughters came in to hug me and tell me that she was sorry that I had to go through such things over and over again. Then she said something that nearly knocked me over: "I don't know how you have lived with it for so long; he's just not LIKE US. He's like a cat in a houseful of dogs." Out of the mouths of babes. Actually, he was like a cat in an aviary of birds, but she made her point. He wasn't "like us." At that moment, I realized that I had to DO something. The Universe had been giving me clues for years, and I had been ignoring them, stubbornly clinging to my self-sacrificing, make everything nice, shove it under the rug, let's work it out view of things. I had read all the pop-psychology books, I had tried all the guaranteed methods of self-help, taking the brunt of the burden of making things work on myself. I had expended untold amounts of energy in trying to compromise, to work it out, to support and sustain this man and to simultaneously protect the children and myself from his clear predation. I had done all of this for years in the firm belief that all could be made right, all could be healed, all could be worked out with sufficient devotion and giving. But now, suddenly, I was seeing it all in a completely different way. He was a predator, and we were prey. We, the children and myself, were his sources of energy. Where his energy was being drained to, I didn't know, but I had a pretty good idea. What is important for the reader to understand is that I didn't blame him for being "bad" or for being "wrong," or for anything at all like that. I simply realized that he was "not like us" in terms of the Theological reality, and therefore, something had to be done. It was one thing for me to be aware and willing to sacrifice myself to this energy feeding dynamic. It was something else altogether for me to "pass it" to my children by example and obliging them to live in it. A mother's primary role is as advocate and protectress of her children. And in this case, I saw that the one my children needed to be protected from was their own father. The toughest part is the fact that I also knew that I had to do something FOR my husband as well. Cats that feed on pigeons have as much right to be and exist as the pigeons do. They are not "bad" because they are cats and because they eat pigeons if given the chance. What was even more difficult was the knowledge that even if I explained to him what I was perceiving, he wouldn't get it; he wouldn't believe it; he wouldn't agree. He would insist to his dying day that his mode of being - his "catness" - was right. In the end, I knew that I had to bear the burden of doing what was right FOR him - strange as it may seem - because he was neither able nor willing to see it or understand it. I remember thinking that the only way I was going to be able to get through it was to take all the blame, to completely release him from ANY responsibility because, on the many occasions I tried to get him to be responsible for anything he said or did that hurt me or the children, it was a dead end. For example: if he was being a steamroller toward the children, I would spend hours explaining psychology of the child to him, and how damaging it was to a child to not be accepted and allowed to have their own likes and dislikes - that he would tell them "that's stupid" or "you'll go to hell for that" and so on was abuse. I tried to engage him in a cooperative work with raising the children. He would seem to listen and I would think I was getting somewhere, and then a glassy look would come into his eyes and he would say: well, if nothing I do is right, I'll just not do anything. YOU raise the kids and I'll stay out of it. Then, I would try to explain the importance of BOTH parents being involved and united for the sake of the children and the glassy look would come and he would twist that around and tell me that since he wasn't wanted, his way wasn't accepted, HE wasn't respected... well, to heck with all of us. And that was NOT what I was saying!!!! I was saying that, as parents, we had to put many of our own things aside for the sake of the children. He simply could not think beyond himSELF. So, when the time came, and it came within a day or so, I knew this and I knew that no amount of explaining in any terms other than just repeating that "I made a mistake when I married you and now I am correcting it." and words to that effect. That put all the blame on me. My objective was not to put him down, to lay blame, to do anything but get myself and the children out of this situation. And the "war" began in earnest. He was fighting to retain his position, to reclaim his "feeding territory." And I was equally determined that he was not going to feed on any of us any longer. When he said "I knew you would do this.... all women are alike... blah blah" I just agreed even though I knew that his view was completely twisted. It was not necessary for me to be "right" because I knew that when I was right, it didn't matter anyway because he was going to see it the way he saw it anyway. I just kept remembering a funny thing that I had read about how to get proper service from a store clerk who keeps trying to sell you something you don't want... just keep repeating what you DO want, and when they say "what about this over here???" say, no, I don't want that. I want this. So, I knew what I wanted to accomplish, and I knew I would be subjected to a "sales talk" of some kind, and I knew that I had to keep repeating over and over again what I wanted and insist that the focus stay there. Whenever he tried to engage me in a discussion, I said: that's fine. I know you see it that way, but I don't and this is what I want. Over and over. When he started listing all the things that he had done, I just agreed that he had done them and that it was good that he did, but it didn't change the fact that I had made a mistake, and it needed to be corrected and I was going to do it. Then the name calling and accusations... and I agreed with everything. "Yes, you are right. I lied to you. I never loved you. blah blah." I just agreed that everything he said was right, but it didn't change the fact that I was going to do what I was going to do and that was that. In his initial declaration of "territorial rights," he made it clear that he wasn't giving an inch. If I didn't want to be around him, if I had decided that it was over, then I was the one who was going to have to "leave." If I didn't want to sleep with him, I would have to sleep somewhere else because he wasn't giving up his right to sleep in the master bedroom. I didn't argue with him. I moved into the baby's bedroom and slept with her. After a day or two of this, of sleeping somewhere other than on the special orthopedic mattress that had been bought after my accident, the children told their father that he was being very selfish to make Mom sleep on a bed that hurt her. Of course, he wanted to appear to be the "injured party," so he immediately moved into the playroom and slept on the sofa in there and gave me the bedroom back. After failing to change my mind with argument, insult and manipulations of the overt kind, he went into the "pity trip" mode. He claimed that he had nowhere to go; that he would have to build a camper on his truck and live in the woods somewhere. He then asked for several days to make his preparations. I just wanted him out of the house. I was hanging onto my resolve by a thread, and I knew I couldn't take much more of the "pity me" trip because that had always been my weak point. I knew that, for the sake of the children, I had to win this battle. I had already spent too many years teaching my children by example how to be "prey" and now I needed to teach them by example how NOT to be prey.
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