Love

I haven't been posting here. I apologize. I've been trying to live outside my head for a while, but you know how difficult that can be. I had to come back here to be with you and to talk over those things that only you and I understand. It is so isolating sometimes. I tried to share a part of myself with a close friend recently and it went very badly, so I have retreated. I know that no one understands except you reading here and blogging out there about this life.

This is mostly my fault because I cannot explain this to myself, let alone someone else. Like, how do you put this kind of love into words when you don't even understand what this kind of love is to begin with? Sometimes I think that it isn't love at all, that it is just control and anger and hatred dressed up as something else. It isn't care and protection. Sometimes it is just power for power's sake. How can hurting me so badly, emotionally, serve any end other than to show me how much He hates me? Why else would he do this to me?

I am going on a trip in a few months and it has already been decided that my suitcase will be inspected and He has already made it known that I am not trusted by myself on this trip. That may not seem like a big deal to any of you, but it seems like an intrusion and a declaration that I am not a competent adult who cannot be on her own without suspicion. It's not a test. It just is. I can choose to leave if I don't want to put up with it, but who throws away their whole life based on one thing like that? But that's where they get you...it is one thing today and tomorrow it is another thing and before you know it, your whole life is under siege. Then you look back and wonder where you made the decision to stay and you see that did it every day in a million little ways and that you didn't understand where it was going. And I don't see how that can be love. It seems like something else.

Of all of the things that got me into this, the emotional control is the part I understood the least. I didn't expect it and I didn't see how it tied into the sexual control or ownership or any of that. I am still at a loss to understand it even now, even after it has become the predominant force is my life. I know that I crave it on some level. I can feel it deep in my stomach, that sort of swooping sensation when he puts his hand on my neck and tells me that he owns me. I know that's the desire for control, or maybe the fear of it that gets crossed with desire. There are a lot of crossed wires in my head.

I know that he craves it too. He craves the brutality just like I do, although I think he fears it a great deal less. The other night I was airing some grievance with him and I was speaking a little more forcefully than was appropriate. I could see the burning in his eyes and I quickly stopped. Later he told me that he wanted to hit me so hard in that moment and I immediately felt an electric charge shoot between us. We both wanted it, but if he had actually hit me in that moment? It would have destroyed me and I would have felt an unbelievable sense of betrayal. I know, because it has happened before. There is confusion about destruction for the purpose of rebuilding me and destruction for its own sake. What happens when they look the same from my position on the floor?

He scares me so much sometimes that I wonder about his motivations. He scares me the most those times when he lets up on me suddenly, when he stops the pain and the cruelty, and he draws me into him. I am still scared and defiant and fighting, I want to push him away, but I am out of strength. I collapse on him and start to cry and he comforts me and I wonder, what kind of love is this?