h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ben.....what?
Take care !!!

hah hah hah (with a fake grin in my face).

Love for you all, wherever you are...

It was a reply to the previous post about FABT's haunted fingers, but it ended up at the top of the page.



Ben

zappgirl...i do understand that you think things are going good and everything is fine. i understand that you think he is serious about changing and not doing this again. i also understand where you posted that you have hit him before too. what i want to make sure you understand is that right now my daughter is having to testify in court that her exboyfriend tried to kill her by putting a loaded gun to her head. i heard him with my own ears on many occasions tell her that he was sorry, he wasn't going to hit her again, he had changed, he loved her, he would make things right. well, he lied. he not only hit her again (with fists and the butt of the gun) but he tried to strangle her and held the gun to the backside of her jaw. it wasn't his gun, he didn't own one, it was one he got from someone else. after he was done and he put the gun down without shooting her (thank the stars) he began telling her once again that he was sorry, he would make things right but in the same breath he was telling her that it was her fault because she made him so angry. imagine, sorry but it is your fault! even now that he is in jail he has tried to contact her to say he was sorry and promising to change. i am just worried for you, worried that these two people (your boyfriend and her exboyfriend) are more alike than you realize. i would hate to see the same thing, or worse, happen to someone else. please just be careful, take a step back and try to look at the situation from a neutral point of view.
sorry to lecture or butt into your personal life, i'm just worried. you can tell me to stuff a sock in it and i will respect your wishes but i'll still keep a quiet eye on this thread to see if you are ok.
Monsy

Everytime my ex-husband realised he had pushed it just too far, he would say how sorry he was. I believed him, because it was what I wanted to hear - it was not the truth, but if it's what you want to hear, you'll accept it. I spent 17 years with him, now I am free from his control and I can see things clearly I realise just what a complete gullible idiot I was to think a man can hit you one minute, say sorry the next and really mean it.

It is not normal behaviour and it is not acceptable in a relationship. The fact that he winds you up so much you lash out at him is not good. One day he'll thump you and really hurt you. I know you don't want to hear this at the moment, but your relationship is not right and could be very dangerous.

Please think about all the advice you have been given over the weeks, it comes from real experience and is given with the best intentions.

Zappgirl, this is just my understanding of how these things seem to go, based on conversations I've had with a fairly large number of people who have been in pretty bad relationships... And it's a worst case scenario.

"You made me do it."

The mating call of the abusive man (or woman). It leaves you wondering what you will make him do next time, and how. Somehow, it seems to get a little worse each time you make him do it. But you love him, and you know that he really loves you. You wish that you could be a better person, and not make him hurt you, and you're really trying.

Besides, he feels so bad afterwards. He's really sorry and he's going to change. He doesn't want to hurt you. He knows that you're the best thing that ever happened to him. It's just that you make him so angry sometimes, he has to strike out.

You resolve not to ever make him hit you again. One by one, you drop your friends. He's the most important part of your life, right? Your friends will understand if you don't have as much time for them.

You start seeing your family less, too. After all, he's your family now. You're making a family of your own. It takes time to do that. A lot of time. It's not easy to arrange your life around trying not to get hit by the man you love. You'd think that your family would understand. Didn't they do the same thing when they started building their own families? But they don't understand. They keep on wanting to see more of you, and saying how worried they are about you.

That's why it's important not to let them see the bruises, not to visit before the black eye has healed. They don't understand, and they'd make a big deal out of it. It's not like he's ever broken any bones, or sent you to the hospital. Yet.

He'll change. Just as soon as you learn how not to make him hurt you. You're learning. Every time you discover a new thing that makes him angry, you know another thing not to ever do again.

Besides, you love him, and you know that he loves you. And where would you go, anyhow? And what about your stuff? You can't just leave. You don't have any friends any more, really.

Your life is dedicated to not making him angry, not making him do anything he'll feel bad about later. You're terrified of his anger. He could kill you. But you love him, and you know that he really loves you.

You've learned that you'll never be good enough, you'll never stop making him angry. Now you're just afraid. And you've got nowhere to go. You don't dare tell anyone. If you do, you know what he'll do next. Your life is dedicated to making it through one full day without getting hurt.

Then it gets worse...

Not Banned yet,is this what happened to you?You tell a very compelling truth.

Zapgirl I haven't said anything in a very long time in this thread although I come back at least once a week to check that you are still with us.I've realized that you are already in denial mode and nothing we say here is having any effect on you.
However the above posting just has to be chilling enough to make you think surely?Please listen to us.You ARE at the beginning of a very long process that WILL result in you leaving this guy eventually one way or another.The worst scenario will be your parents identifying your body,the best will be that your self esteem will be nonexistant and your dreams and life in tatters.So why not shorten the whole process by leaving NOW.Step back and think really long and deep-go home now PLEASE.

i must say that NBY wrote something that sent chills up my spine. as a matter of fact i had tears in my eyes while reading it. a very scary posting due to its truth. i've seen this happen...am trying to keep it from happening to someone i love dearly. i only hope that she has learned and her experience in terror is over. just the same i am going to print NBY's posting out and place it on her bed to read when she gets home from work. i think it has more truth in it than anything i have seen so far. the stages are correct and nothing in the posting is exagerated at all. that is the way it goes, that is what DOES happen EVERYTIME. Please, begging now...before it is too late, read the warning signs.
Monsy

Hi, Incognitas.

Luckily, for me, that's not my story.

"...this is just my understanding of how these things seem to go, based on conversations I've had with a fairly large number of people who have been in pretty bad relationships... And it's a worst case scenario."

That's absolute truth. I also seem to have this neon sign over my head that says "tell me your problems." People do. When they do, I try to listen. That, and I live with a person who has been trained as a counselor and has worked both in a group-home for abused and neglected girls and as a staff member at a rape crisis center. I've done volunteer work (ages ago) at a drop in center for teens living on the streets... runaway and throw-away kids. The pattern is there.

Monsy,

I hope she sees herself in what I wrote. If my efforts to scream "This Is Wrong!" wake up just one person, in time, I'll have accomplished something important.

NBY

Why, God, why did I have to find this thread? I came to this place to not think about my work. Well, I am here. God, you brought me here, so you better give me the right words!

First, Not Banned Yet, I hope you never are banned. But the world has a way of hating people who speak the truth as eloquently as you did. Zappgirl, he or she is 100% right.


Twenty-two years, I've been a forensic pathologist. That means I work in the Coroner's Office. The Morgue. I am part of the team that does the autopsies on crime victims, suicides, highway fatalities, and pretty much all across the board, anything that invites Police curiosity, or if a Coroner's Inquest is ordered for some reason (life insurance companies who want it to be suicide so they can avoid paying... and like that).

I've worked in suburbia, and I've worked in the big city, and practically every level in between. I've worked in sleepy offices where we helped the local Sheriffs do filing, and in the NYC morgue last fall (which is why I'm here now, on a "sabbatical" my employers told me to take -- I got a few bolts loose doing that).

In twenty-two years, you know what I have NEVER, EVER seen? One single day go by WITHOUT at least one female corpse who, whatever the Official Cause of Death, was obviously a victim of domestic violence.

Oh yeah, the official number of women and girls killed by their husbands, lovers, or boyfriends in the USA is only five a day. That's proven, convicted cases. That doesn't scratch the surface. Dead men may tell no tales, but the body of a woman, regardless of the Official C.O.D., has her life history written in it.

They're mostly drug-and-alcohol related overdoses, or driving under the influence fatalites, obvious open-and-shut suicides, or cirrhoses of the liver, strokes, blood-clots to the brain... like that. The younger they are, the more likely they are to be obvious suicides. They're twelve year old hookers, and fiftyish society matrons, and invalids in their eighties who live with their children (and children's spouses).

We're a government agency. We're underfunded, understaffed, and overworked. We don't have TIME to find out the story behind the story... or at least that's what some of my various bosses over the years have said. But I was trained by a very sharp little man, who insisted on my finding out the story behind the story. When I file "Suicide by jumping in front of a moving train" as cause of death, I also include the OTHER things I found.

Never, not once, in twenty-two years, has there not been a female corpse whose skeleton showed cracked ribs, or hairline fractures to other bones, missing teeth, cracked vertebrae, improperly set (not allowed to go/not taken to the hospital) bones that had been broken. Scar tissue old and newer, and fresh. The older the woman, usually, the more there is damage to the parts that don't show.

There are back, leg, foot, and ankle deformities from having to wear extremely high heels all the time. The fetishists leave marks.

There is brain damage, hearing damage, partial loss of vision, broken larynxes (voice box) from choking, that healed, but must have left the victim with a very strange, soft, husky voice.

There are micro-tears to the mucus membranes in genitalia, and usually also similar tears from sodomy and sometimes to the throat. This is because any sex that is not consensual, and you better understand this: IF YOU CAN NOT REALISTICALLY REFUSE HIM SEX, YOUR "CONSENT" HAS NO MEANING, is rough, is frightening, is unwanted by the woman will cause her to be both tense and dry. When she's raped anyway, and that is what it is, make no mistake, that delicate skin gets torn.

I've seen a few anorexia nervosa fatalities. This disease kills something like a third of the women (and men) who have it. I've never seen an anorexia fatality whose body didn't speak of incessant abuse.

She may take a lot of pills and knock back some scotch and then take the car out for a very fast drive, or jump, or end her misery in any number of ways, but however she does it, the story behind the story is the number of times the nose has been broken, or the number of small blood-clots on the brain, or... or... or...

It doesn't matter how rich or poor, smart, educated, deprived, urban, suburban, rural, or anything... this happens to women of all ages. The woman stays because she believes she loves him, when she is, in fact, brainwashed into dependency. She can't make decisions for herself. She's are not ALLOWED to make decisions. She keeps believing that there's a "real" him, who loves her. He tells her so, and he has all the power in the world. She believes it's her fault -- he tells her that too -- and if she could just please him (yeah, some women are beaten up by other women, and there are certainly violent gay male relationships, and occasionally women beat men up, but the power imbalance makes men beating women up the most common) by doing the "right" thing... he'd stop, he'd change, he'd be wonderful the way he is sometimes.

Those sometimes are not worth it. Not at all.

What she can't, won't, doesn't realize is that what he WANTS is a punching bag he can take his aggressions out on, and use for sex, and have as an unpaid maid and prostitute.

Zappgirl, that's what you need to realize, and I know it's ugly and makes him out to be a monster.

Well, as far as your safety is concerned, he IS a monster. And he DOES NOT love you. He only cares about what he wants. What you NEED is less important than what he wants. He IS NOT going to change. He will become more demanding, and more restrictive, and blame you more, and possibly, one day, you will realize that you are trapped, and this man is likely to KILL you.

That's why so many women do it first, I figure. The final act of desperation, to take control of their lives. Die on my own schedule. That sounds like (and is) prisoner-of-war type thinking. If I can't do anything any more, at least let me assert myself in my own death?

That is what I have seen, at least one, every working day for the past twenty-two years. Women and girls who were murdered, yeah, obviously them too, but the ones who make me sick, and sad, and furious, are the ones whose file is closed, because the cause of death is obviously (fill in the blank, no crime). Then I see the x-ray films, and I don't blame her for (doing whatever) to death. I only wish she'd saved herself by leaving him, the FIRST time he hit her, before he started breaking bones.

Do a web search on the story of Joel Steinberg, attorney at law, his illegally adopted daughter Lisa, and particularly his common-law wife Hedda Nussbaum. She lived. Lisa wasn't as lucky.

Leave him. To anyone in this situation... leave him. If he doesn't murder your body, he's sure as hell murdering your soul, your spirit, your identity, and ultimately your existence will matter as little to you as it does to him.



God help you. God help us all.

Murray S., M.D.(aka "Quincy")

Quincy, that one made this tough old bird cry.
Zappgirl, take notice of all of us and GET OUT NOW.

they are correct. you may not think they are but, trust me, they are. this boyfriend is not different. he is not the one who will change. if they hit once they will hit again and again and again. nothing you do will ever make him change. the only thing that will change is that you will eventually cease to live either because he finally kills you or because you get to the point that you kill yourself. even if you do happen to survive with him what kind of life is fear? it may not seem like it is that bad to you right now but that is just because it is very difficult to be in the middle of it and see clearly.
as i said before, i have a daughter that was very lucky...she survived, so far. now if, as a family, we can help her to understand that no matter what he says or does he is not going to change. help her to understand that sometimes 'love' is NOT enough. i think that is the biggest thing...you 'love' this person for whatever reason and think that this love will make everything ok. i pray everyday that marijke doesn't ever allow him to convince her he's changed. that she keeps her confidence and doesn't allow someone to manipulate her into a life of abuse resulting in death.
speaking as a parent, i know that your parents would not want to see you being treated like this and would do anything to help you and keep you safe. that is the 'love' you need. love is not hitting, cursing, degrading. love is joy, love is peace, love is TRUST. there are plenty of men out there who can make you happy and you can make happy without the abuse. please do yourself a favour and trust what we are saying.
Monsy

Hi Zappgirl, Please do me (and youself, in my opinion) a favor and read this entire thread. http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F19585?thread=127001 There's a lot there to think about. NBY

Hi Zapp

Hi guys

especially Hi Quincy.

That must have been a very hard post to type. but thankyou for posting it. even if you didn't get through to Zappgirl you might have got through to someone else. perhaps someone who is in the situation now, or perhaps would have fallen in to one in the furture but thanks to your post will perhaps be more aware in the future of how common 'domestic violence/abuse/mindcontrol' is. I know someone who made it out alive. but who isnt free, and never will be due to a very frightening custody arrangment for a pre school child who is involved.

hopefully you have helped someone out there tonight.

your 'one a day' comment was horrifying. but memorable,


and that's important. and hopefully you will have made a difference today.

thank you again for what must have been very hard to write.

FABT

and beneath contempt. somewhere inside, he knows it, so he's going to stand on you to try to make himself appear bigger, in his own sorry estimation. that's why he needs you, and that's why the kissy huggy sorry sorry baby i'll change... because without you to stand on, he's visibly beneath contempt, even to himself. so long as he stands on you, he can feel like a big man. don't get smart and say you'd prefer if he didn't do that. you'll be making him hurt you... he's never accountable. never.

from pink floyd's the wall "ooh babe":
don't leave me now/ remember the flowers i sent?/
i need you babe/ to put through the shredder in front of our friends.../
how could you go?/ when you know how i need you need you need you/
to beat to a pulp on a saturday night?/ ooh babe

thank you nby, quincy, monsy, fabt, everyone who's trying.



wall flower girl

rip (no names -- they were only women, after all)

FABT, Wand'rin Star, Wall Flower Girl, NBY, all,

Yes, it was hard. I was looking for something like a women's "talk behind men's back" thread, for a laugh (recently divorced after 26 years almost). God brought me this place instead.

I said what I felt I needed to say, could say, believed people (maybe not Zappgirl, and that scares me ) could maybe hear.

No, not "one a day". NEVER, ever, NONE. Always at LEAST one. One is unrealistically light in a busy morgue. Early in my career I worked in the suburbs, wealthy, educated people, with serious money and political connections, and there, yeah one, every day.

I mentioned the man who trained me. I'll call him O'Neil. He was short, like me, and wiry, and fidgety, so we got along, despite the stogie in his face. He was old school, before Medical Examiners were called "Doctor", when you could become a coroner by apprenticeship, and he thought med school pathologists were pansies. But the same things that kept me from wanting to treat live patients -- being fidgety, compulsive, detail oriented, neat, and irritating as heck -- make me a good forensic pathologist.

A prominent businessman's wife took her huge American Lincoln Behemoth out and managed to arrange a tryst with a train. The railroad wanted the world's MOST detailed autopsy, because Mr Rich Jerk was the kind of guy who would have sued the government and Department of Transportation and Conrail, and WON, though the blood alcohol and barbiturate levels in his late wife's remains were amazing. So I did the findings, and gave O'Neil my report, and he gave me the look you give the roach you just noticed on your sandwich. He said 'What, you didn't LOOK at the body, or the films, or anything?' I had, I had.

He walked, harassed, and bullied me through it. I was the new kid. He and everybody in town knew Mrs Rich Jerk was forever having the crap beat out of her, though he was careful, and never hurt her enough to interfere with their social schedule. He taught me that behind most women's suicides, there's someone hurting them so much they can not go on. Finally, I asked 'Okay, so why now?'

He said, 'Because her daughter left for Stanford, last week, so now her kids were gone, she just wanted it to be over'.

There were a lot of lessons that day, in 1980, about how women live. I'd been the average oblivious man. I was married. My wife had finally joined a practice, now she could put our son in pre-school. I had NO IDEA. Most people don't. Cops don't. Judges don't. Many coroners would rather not. This is a hands-tied, I know something horrible and I can NEVER do thing one about it kinda situation.

Maybe telling these stories is my way of releasing some of these memories, hoping that the knowledge of the thousands of such women's dead bodies I've seen will SAVE someone, and she'll tell someone else.

My ex-wife said I was obviously the "wife" in the family. I made less than half what she did, and I have become pretty radical in my politics, and very conscious that for everything I say about women, it goes double for women of color, double for older or teenage (or little girls) women, triple for mentally or physically handicapped women (men, and kids), and yeah, I've seen some same-sex battery cases of both kinds too.

If being the "sensitive" one whose mind blows a gasket after the Morgue (mostly DNA matching, lab work) in the NYC area last fall makes me a "wife", I'm honored. She's... an excellent physician, and a good parent. We were a good team, who lost touch with each other gradually, so the divorce didn't even hurt. She bought the rest of the mortgage from me, and is paying me alimony , only because she wants to. She's sorry for me. I'm not. What I do is mostly routine, dull, boring, and that is GOOD. Forensic pathologists do not want to live in interesting times.

But part of the routine is at least one woman or girl every day my entire working life.

Let people learn, and tell these words to others. The women's skeletons had (and have) their histories written in them like the tablets of Moses for anyone who knows how to read them! I had a good teacher. His father killed his mother. Yeah, surprise.

Enough.

Quincy

Thank you for accepting my purging my own demons, so long as I can do it in a way that helps anyone, besides just me.

Quincy I have found you experiences increadible and they cannot fail to help people in abusive situations. What disturbs me, (as someone who is currently trying to get a divorce from a violent husband), is how many men out there are violent and abusive? It makes from terrified of ever getting into another relationship.

Rainbow, and indeed Zappgirl and anyone else out there who is reading this.

There *are* gents out there, I know, I was married to one for 15 years. And I have been with a couple since then too. And while I am handing out ribbons, my father was one of the best.

Don't be terrified of another relationship, be innoculated - be immune to the lies and see them for what they are. Not all men tell them, by a long shot. But spot them when they do, and be immune.

Keep safe, but don't lock up your heart - for then he really has won.

Ben

A quick story, to join the others here. This one's absolutely, 100%, unvarnished truth.

My aunt is a community midwife. Right now, she works an affluent, rural area - lots of Range Rovers and retrievers. Not a lot of stress, pleasant couples who do the right things. Before that, she worked an inner city area - coincidentally the very same inner city area which very recently became the first part of England where the police carry firearms routinely, all the time, rather than just in specific response to incidents. So, not a nice place. She's told me a number of stories that stick in my mind, and this one seems appropriate.

A community midwife regularly visits women during their pregnancy, checking their health and that of their baby and giving advice. Most of her visits in the inner city were one-on-one - the father was usually nowhere to be seen. One particular visit she had to make, the father was there. Drunk, and ignorant, but not actually abusive. She still had a hard time being civil, but she managed it. The main problem she had with the guy was not his drinking, or smoking, or general detestability - it was the fact the mother's pregnancy had been complicated slightly by the fact that a couple of months previously he'd shot her in the stomach with a handgun.

The child was delivered safely, and that, for this as for many inner city cases, is where midwife involvement ended, unfortunately.

It's not a very satisfying story, because it has a beginning and a middle, but no end that I know.

You can supply your own ending, Zappgirl. Make it a happy one. You should know by now what that means.

H.