Living life in a household full of domestic abuse and believing that it may never stop is the most hellish existence that I have ever known. I truly mean "hellish" because it was close to what I think Hell actually is and I have already lived through it. I lived without the peace or freedom to state my thoughts aloud. I tried to live within a family who did not permit my role as a wife and mother to be "my life" but a position that I was required to fill in order to fulfil my purpose in their eyes. I barely survived emotionally and mentally and lived only a semblance of a life when trying to understand the rantings and illogic tactics of a madman who refused to accept the "me" that I was born to be.
As Oscar Wilde said, I "knew" that
"One's real life is often the life that one does not lead."
and I definitely knew that this kind of existence was NOT my life!
I would wake up and moan, not from lack of sleep but that I had to wake up and face the reality in which I had taught myself to accept. An "husband" who would not hear my cries for help for our family and marriage. A stepdaughter who learned to verbally abuse and disrespect me while manipulating events; teaching her to do just as he had done to me. I literally spent years of my life trying desperately to please a man who "could not be pleased enough". His criticism toward me abounded as was his constant and very vocal disapproval of me as a person, wife, mother or human being. I had started turning inward to preserve the person who I am and that drew me to finally try to voice out my feelings with non-verbal media. I found the "vision board". We used to call them collages in elementary school and gently arranged and glued magazine clippings to represent a certain theme. In my case, it was my only mode of survival.
This board characterizes ME. My dreams and hopes, my purpose and my goals. I knew that I had "amazing hidden potential" and assets beyond what had been attributed to me but to see them in color, on a page, with affirming words was the most healing vision that I had seen in a very long time. My vision board is an example of the hope that I held in my heart of living a life without abuse.
"I had a dream" and this dream was one of love and peace and a safe home where I could be "me".
Sometimes we have to give our dreams MORE than wings; more than words; sometimes our dreams need to take on a visual form. They are real. A vision board help us to see that they are worthy to be dreamt.
I never had a moment when I said to myself, I have "lost me" but during extreme mind-altering abuse, I felt the deep and oppressive FEAR that I WAS losing myself. Prior to that abuse, as a young teen, I was seeking my identity but this journey goes FAR beyond self-discovery. This is more like self-reclamation. In the midst of having a once significant person, spouse in this case, define and tell me who I am and "how I should be" and verbally undermine my sense of confidence in my own abilities with constant and insidious criticism, I realized that I was "losing sense of my self". My person was under perpetual attack. It felt like I was the target and the mission was to DESTROY who I was so that I would no longer be a threat to his delusional reality.
