Maybe you don’t have an Inner Sh**bag. Maybe you’re too nice, too gentle, too
forgiving. Part of me wishes that I
could say as much. And part of me
doesn’t.
I learned Inner Sh**bag behaviours during the course of my
marriage. Sometimes the best way to
deal with my abusive husband was to fight back using his own verbal tools
rather better than he could. Sometimes
I would use my natural flair for language to silence and humiliate him.
This week I was talking to my dear friend Shoshana
Garfield about selling my house. 5+
years after ejecting the Horrid Ex-Husband from my life, I’m still living in
the ex-marital home. While very
grateful to be left with a roof over my head, I have looked forward for years
to the day when the house would sell.
Why has it taken so long? In the last 2 months it has gone from being ‘too small’ and ‘ill
favoured’ in the eyes of the viewers, to having ‘good sized rooms’ and being
‘delightful’. What’s changed? Physically, nothing at all. No redecoration, no clutter clearing – I’d
done all that ages ago.
Only two things have changed about the house.
Never underestimate the abusive intelligence. It is geared to break your spirit and your dreams. An abuser carefully programs into you the belief that you cannot have the things that are available to others – except through him. We all know that script. Reduced to its essence it goes essentially: ‘without me, you will be an outcast. You’ll eke out a wretched existence in a cave somewhere, coated in mud, dressed in rags, scratching around in the dry earth for roots to eat.”
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