Silent No More

© July 31, 1998 - revised December 5, 1999

My life was stolen,
Right before my own eyes.
But it was done so gradually
That I could see only his lies.

The man I thought I'd loved,
And promised to live my life out,
Was the greatest threat to me,
I now see that without a doubt.

At first came his lies and false promises,
And slowly the negativity began to overwhelm,
My life taken over by a harassing monster,
And shifting our marriage to another realm.

Shock filled me with the first violent attack,
Fear replaced love on that night long ago.
But I was still unprepared to deal with it,
I refused to believe it could possibly be so.

My bed that night was instead a bathtub;
Rather than sleep, I washed away pain.
I tried with all the strength in my being
To visualize it going away down the drain.

But if raped by your spouse,
Especially after a bout of shoving,
Despair will replace life's basic joy,
And wipe out years of loving.

At first I believed his promises,
His seeming shock and his word,
"It'll never happen again."
Is what I believed, what I heard...

My spirit and soul knew the truth however
And inside I wasn't faring very well,
Every fiber of my being was crying out;
My spirit was sounding a death knell...

Emotional abuse is still hard to define,
But it was filling my life more each day.
I knew I reached the end of the line,
When I knew how to live no other way.

So since I still can't point out what was
Emotionally abusive in what he did,
What ruined my soul's intensity
With non-physical violence as I hid...

Let me at least say this,
So you will understand:
He did it so well that I followed
His every unreasonable demand.

I tried to keep the peace,
So as to be safe from harm.
I tried just to survive,
Ignoring my internal alarm.

I disconnected from my life to where
Even in the midst of imminent danger
I didn't feel fear, panic, or pain...
As if it were happening to a stranger.

Perhaps I didn't have enough of my self
Left anymore to realize even a right to live.
He had taken over, but the real danger came
When I found that I had no more to give.

As he grasped me by the throat he'd say
That I was safe, that he wouldn't choke.
So I gave up — my self-preservation gone...
I'd lost it bit by bit, with every minor poke.

When once again he tried to rape me
I didn't successfully avoid his attack.
I told him "no" and valiantly struggled,
But he overpowered me as I fought back.

Betrayal... With me married to my attacker... 
Confused, I abandoned even the right to grieve.
Suffering silently in agonizing, soul-denying pain,
Denial blocking out terror too impossible to believe.

That's the place that emotional abuse creates.
There's nothing left worth protecting, you believe.
Because it's gotten so bad that YOU no longer exist,
Nothing to take along when you finally leave...

I was lost from the world.
But what was even worse,
Was living as lost from myself —
Emotional abuse's true curse.