Was it even abuse?

I recently read a book with this title (authored by Emma Rose Byham); I was drawn in because the question so aptly describes what one asks themselves after something occurs that might possibly fall into the category of "abuse." There is so much emphasis on physical violence because that's an area that leaves little room for questions. Bruises, broken bones, and other injuries are visual evidence. Words can be disputed. If someone, say, punched a headboard but not your face, does that count? The silent treatment, verbal threats, name calling, flexing their shoulders while glaring at you, using personal wounds for shaming -- do these things count?

There is quite a bit of behavior we file into gray areas, and those gray areas lead to moving on with your life, and sometimes burying it because you know the apology acknowledging all of the mistreatment is never going to happen. You can't get stuck on it, life keeps lifing. If we held all abusers accountable and siphoned them out of society, we would have to annex entire continents to house them. Where is the line for what's acceptable and what is not?

For as long as I can remember, one of my sister's front teeth was gray. It was like a lightbulb disconnected from power while the rest of her teeth remained bright. The story was that she fell and hit her tooth, and I accepted that. I didn't think to ask for details or where it happened, or to even ask her directly. She fell, she hit her tooth, and this also meant a series of dental appointments including a root canal to deal with the dead tooth. She was seven years older than I was, and from what I know about the story, she was 12 when she "fell."

Only in adulthood did I learn that my sister wasn't clumsy; my dad had punched her in the face.

Their relationship was often contentious. I know she was looked upon as the kid who didn't live up to her potential at school. This was high crime to my parents, both of whom survived childhoods short on money and education. They provided us with a comfortable home -- we each always had our own bedrooms, we never lacked food or clothing, and we were fairly well-traveled. From what I can see now, as an adult, they did what they could to ensure we had what they had both lacked as children. But, whenever my sister seemed to fail in appreciating what she had simply by being who she was, arguments, and physical punishment followed. I don't know what led to the punch, and, it doesn't matter.

My dad's patience was short and his temper was scary. If something set him off, there would be a change in demeanor and a shift in the atmosphere. He'd unfasten his belt and pull it through the loops -- no one got hit with the buckle, but the leather end tip wielded a painful and lasting sting. Once, when I was on the verge of being punished, I fled to my mom and asked what I could do to prevent it. "Tell him, 'Please don't hit me,'" she said. The next time I faced punishment, I did exactly that, and it worked. My dad never brought out the belt or hit me ever again. I was really young, maybe 4 or 5. It would make a great story of redemption except he never stopped abusing my sister.

The last time was when she was 19. Our house was not a home where you could expect to stay beyond society's expected timeline. If you were an adult but not in college, you had to do something, preferably independently funded and away from home. Valerie joined the military.

She signed on with the Marines to be an air traffic controller. Why? Because they had the nicest dress uniform. It's as good a reason as any for a 19 year old with a sense of style. Because it's the smallest armed service, they were not going to have a slot in that specialty available for her until months later. "Go talk to the Air Force" our father said over dinner. My sister being my sister, rebelled, which led to yelling, and finally him standing up and striking her. She left the house for a long walk. And not long after that, she signed up with the Air Force.

The thought of her being in the Marines was laughable, not because she wasn't capable, but because each service has a certain mentality. Even if its uniform wasn't the prettiest, the Air Force was best suited to her personality. She made a career out of it, retired, and still works for the Air Force as a civil servant. Around company, my mom used to joke that my sister was originally intent on joining the Marines because of the uniforms. She always left out the part where her husband hit their daughter for disagreeing with his advice to talk to the Air Force recruiter.

His advice was sound, and his response to her will always be wrong. Abuse is always a means to an end, and sometimes even results from good intentions, as wild as that sounds. It's rooted in trying to control another human being to achieve the outcome you want for them, you, or both of you. Isn't that the twist with abuse? We often receive abuse from people we love, who are supposed to love us, but if abuse is about control, and love is about freedom, the messaging becomes confusing. If they abused us, did they even love us? If I love them, should I soften the story so the good in them isn't completely eclipsed?

My dad mellowed with cancer. We spent the last five years of his life in California, and my sister got married and had his first grandchild. While I was in high school I got into a fender bender; I spent the afternoon dreading his reaction when he came home from work. His only question to me was, "Are you okay?" It was as if some changeling had taken over, sparing me from the lecture that I was careless, or that I'd have to use my library salary to pay for the damage. I don't wish cancer on anyone, but if he never had it, I might never have seen that side of him. From what I know, he and my sister made peace towards the end. She made peace with our mother as well, even though I witnessed her confronting her about "the fall." My mom was in deep denial, and perhaps that's what has to happen when you are financially dependent on an abuser. The moment you are honest with yourself about the ugly truth of your situation, you either acknowledge that you have to change things or remain complicit.

I don't know why our mother gave me the advice to ask him not to hit me. It meant I carried something similar to survivor's guilt because I was spared and my sister was not. As a mother it's hard for me to understand. As a mother, I also acknowledge that I parent my kids based on their individual needs, and that I'm going to get a lot of things wrong.

If you asked me if my ex-husband was abusive years ago, I would have adamantly denied it. His way of exerting control wasn't usually with physical violence, but with shame, threats, the silent treatment, gaslighting, sulking, name calling and physical intimidation. Early in our marriage, when I took over a year to find a job, he asked, "What would your dad think?" I was caught flat-footed. It seemed like an honest question, but also a gut punch. He never met my dad, he only knew he was ambitious and fairly successful in his field, despite not having a college degree; I'm guessing he believed someone like that would be disappointed in his unemployed college-educated adult daughter.

He used that line again, nearly two decades later in our marriage, referencing my affair. Whenever I confronted him about it, he dug in. "I'm not shaming you," he said, "I really want to know what he'd think." Every time I mentioned how much it bothered me that he weaponized my personal loss not once but twice in our marriage, he would defend himself, insisting his question was earnest. Eventually I knocked my dad off the pedestal my spouse had built for him. "I don't know what he'd think," I said, "Maybe he had an affair himself."

For the longest time I believed I deserved the punishment. I figured most couples recovering from infidelity went through this until they sorted themselves out. Sometimes things felt calm, and then something in the moment would affect him. One morning I confronted him about an old relationship injury, a piece of artwork from an ex-girlfriend he'd insisted on keeping. I wanted to know why the compromises I had offered were not enough. When he replied that he was a "knucklehead," I wasn't satisfied with the explanation. "No, what's the real reason?" I insisted. What was the motivation, what did he get out of pushing his agenda? He didn't want to hear it. How could I, the cheater, have the nerve to question him about old shit? We sat in bed, facing each other, and approximately six inches from my face, he punched a hole through the headboard. This time I did know what led to the punch, and, it still didn't matter.

I got out of bed and shouted "This is not okay!" And then I got ready for work. Because life keeps lifing.

When you're asking Google if punching furniture is abuse, you already know the answer, yet I still did exactly that. Had any one of my friends had come to me with that story, my assessment of the situation would have been solid. So why was it so hard to assess things for myself? If part of you believes you deserved it, advocating for yourself can feel like a steep hill to climb, made more difficult because you're starting from the bottom of a pit.

We are so often told to accept abuse because a man lost control of his anger. Strange how that doesn't happen in professional settings with their bosses, co-workers or clients. Sometimes we're even asked what we did to provoke it. I'm tired of living in fear of men's anger, first with my dad, then with my ex-husband, and now, perpetually of all men I encounter.

His behavior afterwards showed me he knew he was wrong. He single handedly disassembled the heavy wooden sleigh bed that I loved, and hauled it down two flights of stairs to the basement. He asked me to choose a new bed that I liked, and he offered to pay for it. The old bed frame remains out of sight -- stowed in the storage area in the basement -- its damning hole in the headboard serving as proof that what I experienced happened, and that I'm not crazy. When I confronted him about it later, in a calmer moment, he'd say the headboard was thin, and he didn't expect his fist to go through, that his reaction was akin to pounding a fist on the table for emphasis. There was no acknowledgement of how intimidating it must have felt considering he was twice my weight and ten inches taller than me. No voicing that he was sorry, and no remorse for reacting in a way that frightened me. There was no apology, but instead, a rationalizing that each individual in a couple has their moments, and that I'd done awful things too. And besides, if I hadn't kept pressing him, he wouldn't have done it. This twist in logic made me responsible for both my behavior and his. More recently, he claimed that I should know he'd never hurt me, and I thought, but he had no problem with me believing for a moment that he would. "What if our older daughter got married and her husband punched the headboard," I said. "I'd investigate what happened," he replied. What was there to investigate? In what universe is this acceptable? More denial.

This isn't the only instance, and I am not even getting into the other examples, or my kids' experiences. I have journals with notes, and have told my kids to write down their thoughts and feelings, especially for those times when I wasn't there as a witness. Having a record ensures time won't erode the memories. I used this example because it's the only one I've got with photos of physical proof of a man who punched a headboard in an effort to get his wife to shut up. Visual evidence gives everyone who sees it a snapshot of the scene.

When I realized I was married to someone who expected me to be okay with how he treated me, who expected his "forgiveness" to be a license to punish me in whatever way he believed I deserved, I could no longer deny the ugly truth. I read books, I listened to podcasts, I did whatever I could to affirm that abuse is never deserved, even if you've done something that hurt that person. I was fortunate to be able to leave. I recognize it's often not an option, and that we celebrate marriages in quantity of years, but not quality of the relationship. There is shame in leaving, in downsizing your house, in being the cause of a "broken" family. If everyone has to be complicit with abuse in order for a family to stay together, isn't something still broken?

What about the good times? That was another excuse -- can't we take the bad with the good? To paraphrase words from a close friend of mine, how much poison in your beverage makes it acceptable to drink? Ten percent? One percent? Three parts per million? The good times are part of the cycle, and you can spend years in good and neutral times. It doesn't dilute the unacceptable.

Another book I read, titled "See What You Made Me Do" by Jess Hill emphasizes that there is no obvious indicator of who is abusive and who is not. When everyone experiences each other differently, and if Joe down the street is cordial and charming to me, how am I supposed to know he goes home to his family and turns into Mr. Hyde? And, families commonly have rules not to discuss their business with anyone not under the same roof. And what counts? A stern look isn't an arrestable offense, but it can be the effective method to keep another person under control. Coerced sex gets into murky territory, and pressing charges makes everyone's life harder. If someone does talk, and the police arrest the abuser, who is also the breadwinner, a family may wind up living in poverty. With all of these factors in play, paired with the confusion of accepting abuse as something that accompanies love, how do we solve it? Is abuse something we are supposed to accept as an aspect of being human?

I drafted this two weeks ago, and have dreaded writing it. Some of my older posts mention my ex-husband in mostly glowing terms, and full of adoration. Some of that stemmed from that need to show the good side of him, to affirm to myself that I had chosen well, and some was genuine affection. The points of contention remained hidden, because blasting it on the internet isn't the way to address problems in your marriage, but if the marriage is over, all bets are off.

Silence works in favor of the abuser; while I don't want my blog to become a series of tales of woe, I also don't want to deny the ugly truth.