One Link at a Time: Chains Can Be Broken

By Betty Lee Wilson

This is a true story (part two of my story) written to give hope to anyone who has, or is now, dealing with some form of abuse. This book allows the reader to experience the painful process of reliving flashbacks, memories and nightmares. Opening old wounds so that I could heal required a lot of effort and determination. The devastation of abuse at the hands of my parents and in other relationships and my steps to survive is clearly told. My parents programming was so strong that my brothers and I continued playing our role's even as adults. Everyone in the small town where I grew up thought we were a normal loving family. The chain of people abuse can effect throughout our lifetime is endless. This book is not a plea for sympathy. My goal is increased awareness at the chain of injustice brought on by all forms of abuse. Chains can be broken / One link at a time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 12, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595891252

Betty Lee Wilson

This book is a true story, (my story) written to prove that overcoming the horrors of all forms of child abuse is possible. This book covers the steps that led me away from complete devastation to forgiveness and freedom. While living in my hometown.

Book preview

1

Easy Way Out

My third marriage ended abruptly after almost 10 years. My husband Leroy called and gave me four hours to get out of our home. A feeling of helplessness swept over me. I could not believe what I was hearing. Leroy said he had met someone and he wanted her to move in that night. He said my son and I could go to my daughters place. I remembered months later that he had asked me if I wanted to stay in the place we were renting and that I had said no. I still haven’t figured out why I chose to block that out? I am glad I did because I was quickly divorced.

I had sensed when Leroy had met this girlfriend over a week before his phone call asking for a divorce. Leroy had no idea that I had envisioned him picking her up while she was hitchhiking down the road. A few days earlier I had started to drive to a Boise bar where I knew they would be. I was sick and tired of his lies. I had hoped to catch him with her. I hated knowing the truth and being told that it was my imagination. I cursed my ability to sense things I had no way of knowing. I told God if alcohol, lies and cheating was his chosen lifestyle, I wanted out now.

The ability to sense things began when I was fourteen years old. I was living in California with my husband. Dean and I drove up in front of the house his brother was moving into. I looked at the house and felt strangely uncomfortable. I had never been there before, but I was familiar with the house, inside and out. Dean and I walked in. The inside was the way I had envisioned it. Bill was standing on a chair painting, just like I knew he would be.

The moment we started talking, it dawned on me that I knew everyone’s lines before they said them. I broke out in a cold sweat. I could not believe what was happening. I hoped no one knew my thoughts. I looked at Dean but he wasn’t staring at me like I had lost my mind so I must have been acting normal. I was fighting hysteria so hard that I missed my cue. I skipped my lines a few times. Everyone else’s lines changed from what I heard inside my head before the words came out of their mouth. Through the years there were many similar experiences, but none as overwhelming. I always changed my lines immediately to break the spell. I was too scared to play it out and see how long it would last.

I have worked real hard to keep the intuitive part of me from being active. It is not easy to explain knowing the things that you sense without reason or logic to validate your awareness. If I had been able to use it to win the lottery or do something worthwhile it might have seemed worth it to me. There is a lot of ways to tell if your husband is lying to you without seeing him or the image of him with his latest conquest. All the while he is telling you that you are the only one for him but it becomes impossible to believe. I finally learned to ignore the look of sincerity he kept on his face. To bad it took me ten years to do so.

Occasionally through our years of marriage Leroy would tell me that he wanted a divorce and say cruel and hurtful things to Jay and me. I would feel like I was almost over the edge. When I felt like I couldn’t take it anymore, Leroy would soothe the hurt with loving tenderness and tell me he was sorry. He would say he had changed his mind or he would convince me that I misunderstood what he was saying. Looking back it seems to me that he subconsciously needed to feel like a hero by rescuing me from the edge. Either that, or he was simply as confused as I was. I always seemed to forget that he had been the one that had pushed me to the edge so that I needed to be rescued when this happened.

Six months before Leroy’s call saying he wanted a divorce I had been diagnosed with brain epilepsy. I had blacked out and hit a tree going home from work. The morning before the wreck I had been disoriented. While driving to work, I had spaced out and was almost to Boise when I snapped out of it. I had to backtrack to the Emmett turn off. Then, I spaced out again and automatically drove to the ranch where Leroy and I had been living when we separated a year before. By this time in my life, I was very confused and disoriented, I was able to do my job at work, but it took a lot of struggling to keep my mind on what needed to be done. I had not seen this as anything unusual because this had happened to me before.

After the wreck my brother Randy drove me home and later took me to the Emergency Room at Mercy Medical Center in Nampa. They took blood tests then gave me an EEG. I was told that I had brain epilepsy and was put on Dilan-tin immediately. I was in shock. I could not think straight. and I heard only about half of what people were telling me. Six months of not being able to drive had seemed like a lifetime. It also left me dependent on others; something I have always hated.

The doctor scheduled me for an MRI (brain scan), and told me I had to make an appointment to see a neurologist. My head felt like I was in a fog and my insides felt like they were doing flip flops. I was so spaced out from the Dilantin I had difficulty getting words out clearly enough to be understood. I was constantly telling myself how stupid I was, or what an idiot I was. This reinforced my ever present feelings of worthlessness especially when my 13 year old son Jay had to start watching me. After three or four months Leroy’s patience had ended and he was not home much. At this point I could not even sit up straight in my chair and I yelled a lot at Jay out of frustration.

After Leroy and I separated, I was able to change doctors. Jay went with me and explained that I had to get off Dilantin because we are on our own so I had to be able to function. The doctor changed my medication to Tegretol. I was finally able to make sense again when I talked and my shaking was only on the inside.

In reality my condition was probably a blessing. They pulled up to see if we were gone before three of my four hours to get out had passed. In the months to come, the feeling that I had not tried to defend myself would haunt me. I watched as they drove away wanting to match the hate Leroy must have felt for me. I was devastated, not because Leroy wanted a divorce, but because of the amount of time he gave me to get out. I wasn’t even allowed one hour for each year that I had invested in our relationship.

Friends thought that Leroy had figured that I would break down emotionally and go to my daughters for a few days, like I had a year ago when he wanted time with a different girl. This would give him time to see if he wanted to keep this girlfriend after playing house for a few days. That was probably why they appeared just after 3 hours. He was sure I would be gone. They refused to believe his only motive was rubbing his affair in my face. His reasoning did not matter because I felt like he was purposely flaunting it trying to hurt me when he drove up to our home with her in our pickup. I knew I was sick of living the way I had been.

For the past month, even on dilantin, I was not incoherent enough to believe that every paycheck had to go on the same part to repair our pickup. Leroy always claimed the pickup broke down as he was leaving work to come home. Someone (a guy) he worked with was always kind enough to drive him to parts places in Boise after driving to all the local parts stores only to find out that they didn’t have the part in stock after all. I asked Leroy if it wouldn’t have been easier to call first before driving there. He had an excuse for that too. Unfortunately an idiot always answered the phone and said Yes we have the part when he had called. Yes they got there, the part was sold out but they could order it for him.

I should have realized Leroy simply did not want to come home, but it never registered until long after I received the phone call telling me he wanted a divorce. My son’s Dad gave us enough money to make sure we had groceries or I don’t know what we would have done. Leroy was home early if he made it home by midnight. I couldn’t believe anything he said anymore and honesty is something I have always valued highly in any relationship.

I only remember Leroy physically hitting me once but ours was another abusive relationship. If I ever think about getting involved again there is a series of behaviors I will look for that will be a red flag. James and Leroy always claimed they were right no matter what and only told the truth as they saw it. They had to make any decisions big or small. My opinion was never asked for but I never volunteered it. They liked to embarrass me or the kids when they had an audience. Both men abused drugs and alcohol. (Prescription drugs are drugs and can still be abused.) Both controlled the money in our relationship. They seemed to like telling their bosses off or other figures of authority. They had their own self destruct mode with extreme mood swings as bad as, or worse than mine. The combination of my moods and theirs blended like oil and water but was great for generating the chaos I needed at the time.

I was emotionally starved in both relationships and respect was often non existent. Neglect is another form of abuse. Both men constantly told me what they thought I wanted to hear to avoid confrontation. Broken promises came easy for them because they always had valid reasons in their mind for breaking them. Neither James nor Leroy could see that they had a problem and would yell at me, I don’t have a problem, you’re the one with the problem and today I see that they were right. They liked the way things were between us. I didn’t, so yes it was my problem. To bad I was unable to realize that at the time. Still, there was an undeniable comfort in knowing what was expected from me with both of them. I can see a pattern here because our relationship’s felt familiar. I might as well have married my step father because the pattern was the same. Sick as it is this dysfunctional treatment was my normal.

I never knew my husbands and they didn’t really know me. I can’t fault my husbands for only letting me see what they wanted me to see about who they were. I could be very judgmental while I remained guarded. I was also unable to share parts of myself. There were some parts to my psyche that I did not even know existed at that time. I also wore blinders and I only saw what I wanted to see according to my own perspective. Something I think we all do at one time or another, but I was an extremist.

Not that I would know from experience but it seems to me that a healthy marriage has to be a journey evenly shared by two people. Was the attraction between my last two husbands and myself love or only Chaos? I decided until I knew my taste in men had changed I would rather not be involved in a relationship. God has showed me that I don’t need a man in my life to generate chaos. I can do a good job of creating it on my own.

Creating my own chaos is easy. To be truthful, all that I do to stay busy is a safe productive form of generating chaos. It helps keep depression from setting in and immobilizing me. Keeping myself busy holds poor-me-ism at bay and I will get tired enough to sleep a little. Sometimes what seems like extreme kindness towards others can actually be laced with selfishness. I think we get something in return out of the things we do or we don’t do them. There can be positive and negative rewards for our actions but we will get something in return.

Years later I figured out that if I demand honesty and respect from the people around me it saves time and energy. A lot of people can’t handle these demands from me and won’t stick around. Life is too short to invest in another toxic relationship of