The worst thing that someone can do to another person is play with their mind. This is the technique my abuser employed against me from early on in the relationship. He targeted me because I was young, filled with naiveté, and had loose boundaries stemming from childhood traumas. I was a successful professional, financially independent, and in a failing marriage. He knew exactly what to say and what to do. Surprisingly, we shared the same interests, family views, long term goals, and childhood pains. When we were together we were inseparable. It was as though I was looking in the mirror. Yes, he had flaws, but I was willing to work with him. After all…I had my own personal issues, right?
Before I knew it, I was love bombed, pregnant, and separated
from my husband. I found my prince
charming and was ready to ride off into the sunset on our white stallion. But there was one problem, my prince charming
was hiding a big secret. He was not who had pretended to be. As a matter of fact, he was the opposite of
the person he had portrayed. He was a
monster. He could not hold the fake
persona together for very long. As a
matter of fact, when I announced that I was pregnant his mask fell off and what
I saw was rather repulsive. He
congratulated me with a series of obscenities and total disconnect. His response left me in a state of
confusion. What happened? I could not comprehend.
I spent the rest of our relationship searching for
my prince charming. But instead, my prince
charming became the occasional house guest and the monster under the mask took
over. The monster under the mask had a
field day with me. His words and actions
were always incongruent. He would snare,
“I love you.” It was the weirdest thing
I have ever experienced. The monster
would hide my belongings and then assist me in searching for what he had
hidden. The strangest thing was that the
monster always seemed to recover all “lost items.” He would blame the children and I for
misplacing things, such as my keys, my debit card, etc. I thought I was going
crazy for a long time. I would repeatedly try to
reassure myself by saying, “I know I’m not crazy! I know I’m not crazy!” But the monster made it his point of duty to
attempt to convince me that something was wrong with me and I was indeed losing
my mind. The monster under the mask made
many empty promises and false commitments to our family. In all of my naiveté, I held on hoping for
change. He was aggressive, possessive,
and controlling. I lived with the
monster and his secret for many years and continued having children with
him. Whenever he was abusive he would
apologize and become my prince charming once again. Prince charming only hung around temporarily though,
and the cycle of abuse repeated itself over and over again.
In the very end, my prince charming had left for
good, never to return. The monster under
the mask had taken over completely. The funny thing is…my perception of my prince
charming had nothing to do with the monster under mask. In the end, I realized that the beautiful
prince charming that he had introduced me to was just a mirror image of ME!
