Married again

I moved back to Redcliff towards the end of 1996.  I was in a terrible state and as I said, it was one of the lowest points of my life.  I managed to get a job, my parents helped me to find a house and helped me to get my boys into school.  Family were there for me, both mine and my soon to be ex-husband’s and helped us out with furniture and even clothes.

I had lost a lot of weight, probably because I stopped eating and partly because of my involvement in the theatre.  Life settled into a kind of rhythm and I slowly began the process of recovery.  But still I was not dealing with the main problem.  Still I was not acknowledging that something that happened when I was just a child could be affecting my life nearly twenty years later.  

That part of my life stayed in its little box, only to be taken out late at night when I was alone.

I joined the theatre in a nearby town and assisted them with the choreography and dancing in one of their shows.  Then my mother, seeing how much the theatre helped me, agreed to produce and direct a pantomime.  That too helped me to further bury my problems and gave me the chance to escape into my other world.  It also gave me the chance to meet Danni, who turned out to be the best friend anyone could ever wish for.  Obviously I didn’t know that at the time though and continued on with my life, hiding from everything that was really me.

I progressed well at work.  Being a fundamentally lazy person, but also someone with the ability to see things from a different angle, I was very good at streamlining processes and procedures and this brought me a lot of attention.  I was rapidly promoted and was soon in a position where I could support myself and my boys without assistance from family.  I was not receiving any form of support or maintenance from the boy’s father; in fact I even ended paying for the entire divorce myself, despite being granted the costs by the Courts.  But some fights just did not seem worth fighting and to me at that point in my life, this was one of them.

And without realising it, I started my hunt for another man.  One who would need me and therefore provide a purpose in my life.  I moved from one short term relationship to another, slipping quickly back into the habits of my teenage years.  It wasn't that I was seeking meaningless sex, but the misconception that there was a link between sex and love.  I truly believed that if I gave myself totally to a man, he would love me for it.

But I was of course, also looking for a man who I could support.  

Eventually, I found him in 1999, in the form of a man who had mental issues of his own.  Unbeknownst to me, he was Bi-polar, something he managed to keep hidden until after we were married.  Until then, he was a dream man – loving, attentive, amazing with the boys.  Once we were married however, he stopped taking his medication and my private hell returned.  

He was overly possessive, even jealous of any attention I paid to my sons.  If I so much as looked in the direction of another man, he was convinced that I was having an affair.  Our arguments were frequent and violent.  But how could I tell anyone what was happening?  I was already obviously a failure and was now in a position where I could not face the recriminations that I believed I would face if I told anyone what was happening.  I could not admit to anyone that I had messed up yet again.

So I put up with it.  The verbal, psychological and physical abuse.  As long as he was good with my sons, I would put up with anything.  I obviously deserved the treatment I was getting.  I was a bad person who pretended to be something that she was not.  Deep down inside I was dirty and needed to be punished.

I slowly retreated inside myself and the 'other' Bella was dragged out for public performances.  At work and socially, I gave no sign that anything was amiss.  In private, behind closed doors I was someone else entirely.  My lack of confidence and low self-esteem were clear to be seen.  I remember on occasions, when he was particularly vicious, shutting my 'self' away.  It was almost as though I had turned off a switch and was no longer there.  The first I would know of it however, was when I 'came back' and had no recollection of what had happened in the previous few hours.  

I suppose this was a form of protection.  I don't remember ever having done it at any other time in my life, either before or after, but looking back at it now, it positively terrifies me.  How could I have so totally withdrawn from myself?  What did it mean?