manipulation

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on February 15, 2014October 5, 2022

Phil vanishes without a word of why–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–The Long, Dark Painful Tunnel, Part 4

That night, Phil still hadn’t shown up, so Pearl and I went to the semi-formal Opening Banquet in Bossard together. I don’t remember why nobody else in our group went, but I do believe Pearl wanted me along for company. There was a speaker, Bob Hall; his talk was called “Hands Off! Let’s Talk,” and the subject was dating and sex.

At the beginning, I said to Pearl, “I guess I don’t really need to listen, since I’m engaged.” (And married, I thought.)

Hall said to the guys in the cafeteria, “If she says no, let me introduce you to Mr. Hand!” And later, in an unrelated comment, “Guys, she always knows where that hand is!” Pearl went, “Mm-HMMM!”

Later that night, with still no sign of Phil, Pearl and I sat alone in the living room, talking. I told her Phil had been building up muscles from working at the factory.

She said, “Sounds like lust to me!”

I said with a smile, “I’m going to marry him–I can lust after him!”

But sometime later in the conversation, I told her, “I’ve been losing some respect for Phil, but hopefully now that we’re living apart I’ll be able to build it back up again.”

She said, “That doesn’t sound good. Maybe you two should try dating other people for a while.”

I said, “Well, I don’t want to see him with anyone else, and I know he doesn’t want to see me with anyone else.” Not only that, but you’re not supposed to date other people while you’re married.

****

We put the new, blue, all-cushioned couch along the wall in the nook by the inside wall, the chairs around the TV, and the stereo in the nook as well. Then the dining table went under the light in the more open, middle area.

And little metallic bears went all over the table and here and there in the carpet, Astrid-confetti from a party I missed on Sunday. (Astrid loved to send us letters with confetti or little bears in them. You learned to be careful opening her letters, or the confetti would get all over the floor.) For the rest of the year, we kept finding these bears here and there, even when we thought we’d cleaned them all up.

We had a stove, fridge, many shelves and drawers divided among us (one each of each kind of drawer or shelf), a sink (with no stopper), and even pots and pans given us by the school. Mom gave me an old dish drainer, which we needed.

The glass doors with their Venetian blinds were over by the dining table, and two other windows with Venetian blinds were along that wall. One of these windows was in the kitchen, the other in the living room.

There were bookshelves in the open area, opposite the glass doors. My bird sat on the top shelf, where it seemed a porcelain bird should be, to watch over everything. We put videos, tapes, CD’s and books on these shelves. We each had one or two shelves, and it was understood that anything on the shelves could be used by anyone.

On the other side of the apartment, opposite the bathroom, were the two bedrooms. First was my room with Sharon. We bunked the beds because they didn’t fit side by side. They were already bunked when I arrived, though at the end of the year I was told they were originally side by side.

We moved around the furniture in the rooms because the original arrangements, as usual, didn’t work either. Now we had the beds under the window. Sharon slept on the top bunk.

We each had a wire storage rack, and I put mine beside the bed. Our closets were a little small, but they had shelves, and with the many storage racks provided for us, we found places to put everything.

So the room, though tiny, didn’t seem crowded, but rather neat and tidy. (The living room was often messy, however, because we often left papers and textbooks lying around.) These racks were like a stack of drawers, because you could pull them out to remove your stuff and then push them back again.

Pearl and Tara had their room (with its answering machine) next to ours.

We liked the bathtub, but not the glass door. We started thinking of ways to cover up the door so no one could see us bathing, and may have even requested a curtain, which we never got. The glass door should have been on the shower, and the shower curtain should have been on the bathtub. The shower, after all, was in a separate room with a door.

Also, there would have been more room to pull the shower curtain wide open, and we probably wouldn’t have had quite so many mildew problems with it. It had to be replaced halfway through the year. So we never actually used the tub, except to store boxes, and it got really dirty by the end of the year.

****

Probably on Tuesday or Wednesday, I turned on my radio to change it from South Bend’s U93 to Green Bay’s WIXX. Lo and behold, there was U93! This happened only once that I know of.

I listened to U93 for a while. Someone called in from Milwaukee and said, “I used to listen to U93 in South Bend. I flipped on the radio here in Milwaukee and found it!” If I knew U93’s number, I would have called and said the broadcast was traveling even farther than that.

Once over the summer, WIXX had come in on the house antenna. Phil said they boosted their power, so that may be why it came in so far away. However, I didn’t want to hear WIXX: it was on the same frequency as Q101. I never heard WIXX in South Bend before or since that day.

Also, that same week I discovered Hot 102 had changed to an alternative format, which made the necessary break from Q101 much easier.

****

My first class of the year was at 9:15 in the morning, American Lit with Dr. Nelson, the teacher from New York. He’d been there only a year, and soon after I graduated, he would move back to New York. Yes, another American Lit class. This was probably American Lit I, and the previous class American Lit II, because this one focused on an earlier period.

As I’ve noted before, Nelson, with his funny, New York accent, pronounced “illustrate” as “ill-yoo-strate.” Whenever Phil imitated his accent, he always included “ill-yoo-strate.”

One day in September, Nelson said “ill-uh-strate,” like we say it in the Midwest, then stopped and corrected himself, saying, “ill-yoo-strate.” I don’t know if anybody else noticed, but I found it funny.

While working in the library on Wednesday, I found some German dictionaries, some old and some new, and spent my time at the circulation desk looking up the words from “Undine” that I hadn’t been able to find. Many of them were there. There were still many words I couldn’t find, but they were much fewer now. As soon as I saw Phil again that day, I gushed and exulted about it.

People kept seeing my bird, sitting up on the very top shelf of the bookshelf in the living room and looking out over us all, and they said how pretty it was. Then I got to tell them it was my engagement ring until Phil finally bought me a real one.

(How disappointing that I didn’t already have one, since his mom took all his summer money for car payments!)

Somebody who parked in the apartment parking lot had a white Ford Bronco. It was weird and funny because that was the same kind of truck in which OJ fled the cops. Whenever Phil and I passed it, we’d say, “No! Not OJ! OJ’s here!”

In a similar vein, one day during the summer, Mom wrote “OJ,” or orange juice, on the pad of paper she kept on the kitchen counter. Phil wrote next to it, “No OJ!”–meaning, no more OJ news. Just think, we were already sick of it, and that was only the beginning of the news saturation.

****

Apparently Phil met me at the library, or soon after I left it, and we must have gone over to Krueger lounge. We spent some time there, sitting with Dirk, a freshman named Sandy, and an elderly woman. She had come to teach at Roanoke for half a year. She lived in Krueger, since she was only staying in the area for a short time. She had a southern accent and was very friendly.

Sandy was a freshman who lived in Krueger but eventually moved into Dirk’s campus apartment. That sort of thing happened sometimes, though it wasn’t supposed to. I don’t know how they got away with it. Sandy was a dark-haired, pretty girl with glasses.

Phil and I were both confused about Dirk and Sandy. We both thought they were dating, until Dirk told Phil they weren’t: Sandy was his friend’s girlfriend. (Dirk later told me they finally realized they liked each other, and started going out; this hadn’t happened yet on Wednesday.)

But they certainly acted like they were going out! He would slap her backside, they would make suggestive comments to each other–this was no platonic friendship!

They got engaged either that school year or the next. Then in 1996 or 1997, I’m told, Sandy broke the engagement, complaining about how Dirk treated her. Then she wanted him back, but he had a new girlfriend, whom he eventually married. How could an obnoxious, plain know-it-all like Dirk keep getting girlfriends, while I had trouble getting dates?

****

You’ll remember that Phil vanished for an entire day, without a word to me of when he’d come again. He never called.

I expected him at any time, and he knew I needed milk and orange juice for breakfast. I had no idea where he was or why he never showed up. I had to borrow milk and orange juice for breakfast the next morning.

Now that Phil was finally back, I complained, rightly so. But instead of apologizing or explaining, he just said that one of my friends could have taken me for milk and orange juice.

Say what? He took the passive-aggressive route by vanishing without a word, instead of coming out and saying he couldn’t/wouldn’t do it?

After we got back from getting the milk and orange juice, before I got out of the van I said,

“I love you and I want to marry you legally, so why do I have such doubts?”

Once, junior year, Phil said that if either of us were ever attracted to someone else, we should say so. That way, if we were to break up because someone else came along, it wouldn’t be a shock to the “dumpee.”

He lived out this rule, constantly telling me who he was attracted to, even telling me he wanted three wives–and who they would be. One was his own brother’s fiancée.

Well, after several days of Phil disappearing for long periods of time–even a whole day–without telling me when he’d come back, I wanted him to be around more. When you’ve been married to a guy all summer and he suddenly vanishes, you feel like a part of you is missing.

Phil’s treatment of me all summer, and especially now, inspired the doubts. I may also have subconsciously wanted to get back at him for a summer of telling me he wanted all those other women.

So I told him my fears. I told him I was getting a crush on Mike. I tried to reassure Phil I still loved him, though.

I had a crush on Mike junior year, before dating Phil. I was attracted to his integrity.

He wouldn’t drink underage or smoke anything that was passed around at a party. He didn’t make everything into a raunchy joke (just some things). He was sweet. He wouldn’t play tricks on his girlfriend. He didn’t seem capable of making a woman feel like crap.

(In 2005, from e-mails and forum posts, I learned that he believed in total equality in marriage. Also, from Facebook I see that he’s a loving, devoted husband.)

Phil left me with a choice. We were both very sad. He said to talk to Mike, and if he felt the same, I could leave with his blessings. He didn’t want to see it, but he wouldn’t stand in my way.

I cried afterwards and decided I couldn’t leave him: I didn’t have the heart. I loved Phil, and had only a tiny, insignificant crush on Mike. Also, leaving a marriage wasn’t that simple. So I said nothing to Mike.

I didn’t see much of Phil after that.

Also note that when Phil found other people attractive and wanted to include them in his harem, the relationship was not over.

But as soon as I found someone else attractive–boom, the relationship is over and he’ll let me go with his blessing.

So it’s only a crisis and insult if I find someone else attractive, but not if he does, not even if he wants three wives?

****

He claimed my friends kept dissing him; I saw none of this. He claimed their body language showed it; I saw nothing but friends smiling at him and acting normally.

On Thursday, September 8, he gave me no word of when he would next come to see me. So I made plans with my roommies.

My roommies and I were getting ready to watch My So-Called Life, and had friends over to join us, a kind of party. I couldn’t wait to see it, and was excited to watch it with all these friends.

But then Phil suddenly dropped in and said he wanted to talk. I thought it was about Mike and that I would soon turn away his fears, tell him I wanted him and only him and couldn’t bear to go to Mike.

It was very bad timing on his part, which he should have respected, and I figured it wasn’t so pressing that it couldn’t wait one hour. After all, he gave me no clue when I would next see him, yet expected me to just drop everything and change my plans when he came over?

Not only was this unreasonable, but my NVLD made me resist changing plans on the spur of the moment like that.

But I did not yet know that he had this unreasonable and controlling attitude about it, that he expected me to submit to his every whim no matter how inconvenient. I smiled and asked him to sit down and watch with me and see what this wonderful show was like, and afterwards we could talk.

I don’t remember how many people were there, but there wasn’t much room around the TV in that little nook. All the chairs were taken, so someone suggested he sit on a cushioned milk crate, which my roommies and I often used as a chair or footrest. He soon went down the hall instead of sitting down.

I thought he’d gone to the bathroom, so thought nothing of it. My friends and I watched the show.

He took an awfully long time, so I wondered if he had diarrhea or something. I eventually went to look for him in the bathroom or my room, but he wasn’t there.

He’d left without a word, and never came back the whole night! Pearl and I both thought that was extremely odd, wondering where the heck he’d gone to, and why.

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on February 13, 2014August 21, 2022

My husband Phil, Dave and Pearl call me a party pooper for getting a Grade II concussion–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–The Long, Dark Painful Tunnel, Part 2

Here is the inspiration for a couple of scenes in my novel Tojet.

Sunday, September 4. Phil wanted to do nothing but play with Dave’s new sci-fi football game on the Nintendo. It was a weird, funny and interesting game, but I didn’t want to sit around all day watching Phil play it.

I had nothing else to do, not with everything still packed and in the van. My projects Undine and Jerisland and probably all my books were still in the van.

As for the game, it had all these different types of alien creatures, from which you chose for your team. I believe the field was in the air, and the sides were either fire pits or nothing but air. When you called up a picture of a player, some alien announcer spoke in gibberish, saying, “Bleh-BLAHH! Bleh-bleh-BLAHH!”

Then Dave and his Pearl asked if we wanted to go to the S– County Fair.

Soon after we got to the fair, Phil and I walked by a booth with posters you could win. Phil kept saying he wanted me to win him one of the babe-posters. Fed up by this and his ogling of girls all summer, I pointed to a beefcake poster and said, “I want you to win me that.”

He, of course, said no, and shooed me away, good-naturedly. Finally! I found a way to get back at him instead of just getting mad at him.

I thought the fair would be fun, and bought enough tickets for twenty rides. The first ride was Phil’s favorite, some sort of box that spins around as the big wheel goes around.

Sometime during the ride, not only did the stuff in my pockets fly out into the box, but the side of the box hit my forehead. Or my forehead hit the side of the box. I had no way of knowing what happened or how it happened. I’m almost certain I had my hands on the bar at the time.

The box moved so fast that the G-force and the speed kept me from crying out. I hated the ride and couldn’t wait for it to stop. Endlessly, the box kept spinning and moving around. Finally, it ended. I picked up the things that fell out of my pockets, and stepped out.

Phil saw the bruise on my forehead, and said a bump was rising.

Though I felt okay at first, a few minutes later my head started aching worse and worse. I turned lightheaded and queasy. Phil got me a cup of water from a vendor, and sat me down at a picnic table under the vendor’s big awning. At first, he seemed attentive and sweet.

I said I needed to rest for a while.

“Should we go home?” Phil said.

“I want to wait a while before deciding that, to see if I feel better,” I said.

Dave and Pearl soon knew about my injury.

I kept feeling worse and worse–more painful headache, more powerful nausea. Finally, I said I wanted to go home. I had to get away from the fairgrounds and into some quiet, comfortable place where I could be tended to.

On the way out, we passed a parked ambulance. I asked to go there, but we didn’t. Phil even smiled and said,

“Are you sure you need to go to an ambulance?”

I wanted to find a first-aid station, but all I saw was the ambulance. Phil and the others thought there was no need for either.

If I’d known just how serious a concussion can be, I probably would’ve insisted they take me more seriously and get help or take me to a doctor. Of course, a person with a concussion is in no condition to be forceful. Just check out this article from the Mayo Clinic.

This page recommends emergency medical attention if the bump results in a worsening headache and other symptoms I experienced.

According to a doctor I consulted by e-mail in 1999, I had the symptoms of a Grade II concussion! Cugan also said it sounded like a secondary concussion.

My headache got worse and lasted at least until the next day, possibly longer; I should have been closely watched and, because of my severe headache, taken to a doctor immediately. But none of the people with me took me seriously, not even Phil, my own husband! They actually called me a party pooper:

We left the park and went to Dairy Queen for dinner.

During dinner, Phil told them about Undine, that I had been translating it, and how big it was and how difficult. Dave said, “You’re nuts!” Contrast that to a person from a German-speaking country who said to me in 1998, “I tip my hat to you.” Apparently Dave didn’t understand the value of taking on a difficult project just to challenge yourself.

They began to talk about going dancing that night, and asked if we wanted to go. I said I’d better stay home: I thought I had a concussion. Phil said he would go.

What? Here I was, injured with a Grade II concussion, needing someone to watch over me and take me to a doctor, and he wanted to go dancing? Not only did he refuse to take me to a doctor, but he showed no sign of concern for my condition!

Through my pain, I was upset. I turned very quiet. Phil tried to say something to me once, but got no response.

Back at his house, I confronted him about this, but he insisted he wanted to go out dancing.

“My parents will be here, and you can lie on my couch, watch cable on my TV, and relax.”

I don’t think anyone told his parents about my concussion, because they never came into the room to check up on me. With my nausea and overpowering headache, I was in no condition to go walking around telling people I was hurt; Phil should have told them himself.

Phil went on, “You can find things to do, as you always do.”

Yeah, like I could do anything but sleep or watch TV with my head pounding. But that wasn’t the point.

I would’ve gone dancing, if I were feeling better. It sounded like fun. I hadn’t gone to a dance in a long time. We later planned to go to the Friday dance at Roanoke so I could finally see Phil’s dancing.

It was such a major and odd part of Phil’s personality that Pearl, on the way to the fair, said she was surprised I hadn’t seen him dance yet. She said you have to see him dance to really know him. I hadn’t had the chance because the junior year dances had no good music.

Phil whined, “Other people always say, ‘Oh, you go ahead and have your fun. Don’t mind me.'”

Oh, yeah, I wanted him home with me because I was a selfish twit.

I was miserable. Phil was my husband: He wasn’t supposed to go out and enjoy himself while I lay on his couch, suffering from an untreated injury. He was supposed to take me to a doctor!

His parents had just gotten two new puppies, little black and white ones, and kept them in a cage when they were inside. I sat beside them. Their names were something-Dave and something-Phil. They loved the attention and wanted my petting. I tried to comfort myself with them, and tried to hide my tears.

After Phil left, I watched some true-life TV movie about sharks attacking servicemen whose plane went down in the ocean. In one scene, a man seemed to be asleep while floating in the water in a life preserver; it turned out his lower half had been bitten off. The whole movie horrified me, especially since it really happened. Watching this all alone sure didn’t help. I tried to rest, but couldn’t with my awful headache.

This movie was probably Mission of the Shark, about the USS Indianapolis in WWII.

Phil later told me that Dave and Pearl thought I was a party pooper for wanting to leave the fair early! They didn’t know how I could have gotten hurt. They blamed me for getting hurt!

But it was a traveling fair, getting taken down and put up all the time, and people do get hurt on amusement park rides, especially in traveling fairs. This fact was given on an episode of the Sally Jessy Raphael show in 1998.

Also, the September 13, 1999 edition of US News and World Report stated on page 59, “[G]etting banged on fingers or head by a safety bar are common.” The article Fatal Attractions described the risk of injury at amusement parks, especially at traveling carnivals, which “are constantly dismantled and reassembled” (p. 58).

A few weeks after the incident, my friend Pearl said their remarks were uncalled for. She and my other friends would have respected that I was injured.

I did ask that Phil not drink while dancing, at least. If he came back with alcohol on his breath, that would finish me. I was already upset enough. I didn’t want him getting drunk while I ached both inside and out. Besides, as I’d joked before with him and Dave, he was still underage.

He recently told me that he drank or smoked whatever people passed around at parties (never mind his health or if it was illegal). I would never do that. He called me a pooper. I lost more respect for him.

After Phil came back from dancing, I told him I needed to talk. But instead of staying with me in his room, he left again and disappeared for a long time. I finally went looking for him, and found him talking alone with Pearl in the computer room. I asked if he’d come back soon so I could finish talking with him. Then I turned and left.

He soon came back, a smile on his face, and said, “Jealous? She’s a nice person, but Dave’s fiancée.”

I knew he liked her back before he dated me, but I thought this was over now. Still, seeing him there with her made me uneasy. Besides, how is it “jealousy” to want to finish a discussion about how he’d been treating me?

That night or maybe the next day, Phil said, “I would love to be allowed to have three wives instead of just one. You’d be one, Dave’s Pearl would be another, and that high schooler who likes me and keeps calling me at the wrong time–she’d be the third.”

Did he think I’d find this funny? It only made me feel worse. So he did still want Dave’s Pearl! And I wasn’t enough for him!

Just like all summer long, he’d tell me he lusted after this or that girl, and when I got upset, say that other people’s girlfriends just laugh when their men do this. He’d see a young woman and say he wouldn’t mind taking her in the back of his minivan. A big-breasted and blonde high-school girl would hand him Dairy Queen sundaes through the drive-up window, and he’d tell me how much he loved the sight. I’d say my breasts were big enough, and he’d say he saw bigger on previous girlfriends.

How dare I object? As some drunken guys later told him, I was so “possessive”!

Phil also told me, “Dave and Pearl think you’re a party pooper for not wanting to go dancing tonight. They think you’re a pooper because you never want to go dancing with me. They remembered a time last semester when they asked us to go dancing, and you didn’t want to go!”

HUH? What time was that? I didn’t even remember it. If it even happened, I probably just wanted to spend a quiet evening alone with Phil. Or maybe I wasn’t feeling well or had a lot of homework.

Phil went on, “I used to go dancing every weekend, but I gave that up for you.”

This was news to me! He never mentioned going dancing every weekend. He never asked me more than once or twice–if at all–to go dancing on the weekend. We went to Roanoke dances whenever possible, but they never had good music.

But then, abusers will make up things you’ve done or said that you never actually did or said, to make you the bad guy. The gaslighting from this guy was unbelievable! Did he really think I would fall for it when I knew it was a lie?

When I wrote the first draft of this account of the S– County Fair in 1995 or 1996, I showed it to my future husband Cugan and asked if I was being unreasonable. He said,

“No. Yes, people do often say, ‘Go ahead and have your fun,’ but they’re rarely taken at their word. Usually they don’t really mean it. Tell me something: What did you really see in this guy? He didn’t seem to take this marriage seriously.”

Not only that, but I had a Grade II concussion and they were calling me a party pooper because I needed to go to a doctor, not dancing!

All during our relationship, Dave, obviously influenced by what Peter had told him about me, said nasty things about me to Phil. When Phil said he wanted to date me, Dave said, “Don’t date her. We don’t get along.”

Don’t get along? But I didn’t even know the guy! We’d never met before Pearl’s party, and got along quite well, flirting all evening!

Dave also kept telling tales about me to his parents. This started way back in the spring. His Pearl did it sometimes, too.

They accused me of all sorts of things: calling Indiana on the O’Hara dime (I always used a phone card), telling Phil not to take a one-day job (Phil decided not to and I supported his decision because of a major history test the next day), and probably other things I’ve forgotten now.

Dave’s parents seemed to listen to them far too much, because I began to get the feeling that they didn’t like me as much anymore. For example, one day during the spring, as Pearl and I both sat in the living room, Maura called Pearl her favorite future daughter-in-law. Was Maura trying to make me feel like dirt?

Phil thought Pearl was nice, but I considered her just as mean as Dave. Not only did she go along with Dave’s smear campaign, but she did something else nasty as well:

I don’t remember when this was, May or September, but probably May. It was a Saturday, no classes, nobody with work. It was the middle of the afternoon, and long after I heard Dave take his shower. I found a deserted bathroom, so I took a shower. Because it was the middle of the afternoon and everyone else had already showered (including Dave), and because there were two bathrooms, I saw no reason to hurry.

I did the various things I always needed to do after a shower, such as shaving, moisturizing, putting cover-up on my face, combing my hair. I didn’t dilly-dally around in the bathroom: I only took as long as I needed to do what I needed to do, and then I got out. I was just about done.

All of a sudden, Pearl banged on the door and yelled meanly, “Hurry up and get out of there! Dave needs to take a shower!” No, she did not politely knock and ask if I could please hurry up. She screamed as if I were deliberately holding up Dave.

How could I possibly have known that he needed to take another shower for soccer practice or whatever it was, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, when nobody else was around when I started my shower?

I’m so glad to be out of that family: too many nasty people with absolutely no respect or consideration for others. And I was being bullied by everybody together, a mob bullying!

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound

January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD

February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on February 9, 2014May 5, 2021

Phil picks fights and avoids responsibilities to make me feel like a shrew–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–The Long, Dark Painful Tunnel, Part 1

The following quote from Psychopath Free explains everything that happened during this month and the following months, changing “online” to “on a college campus,” where I saw Phil and Perspehone constantly–especially when they both sat right there with my friends and me at lunch–getting all cuddly and cute with each other.

It explains Phil’s behavior, refusing to accept any of my complaints as valid or anything but a shrew who has to cut him down.

While I was supposed to accept everything he wanted or complained about as gospel truth or my wifely duty, no matter how cutting, no matter how painful, no matter how it slandered my character.

The friend he talked to, was Dirk, whom he manipulated into thinking I was an abusive shrew, and who then became Phil’s tool of controlling me by proxy.

Now for the quote:

The final triangulation happens when they make the decision to abandon you. This is when they’ll begin freely talking about how much this relationship is hurting them, and how they don’t know if they can deal with your behavior anymore.
They will usually mention talking to a close friend about your relationship, going into details about how they both agreed that your relationship wasn’t healthy.
In the meantime, they’ve been blatantly ignoring frantic messages from you. You’ll be sitting there wondering why they aren’t chatting with you about these concerns, considering it’s your relationship.
Well, the reason is that they’ve already made the decision to dump you—now they’re just torturing you. They only seek advice from people they know will agree with them. That “friend” they’re talking to is probably their next target.
After the breakup, they will openly brag about how happy they are with their new partner [Persephone, whom he dated immediately after the breakup], where most normal people would feel very embarrassed and secretive about entering a new relationship so quickly.
And even more surprising, they fully expect you to be happy for them. Otherwise you are bitter and jealous.
During this period, they make a post-dump assessment. If you grovel or beg, they are likely to find some value in your energy. They will be both disgusted and delighted by your behavior.
If you lash out and begin uncovering their lies, they will do everything in their power to drive you to suicide.
Even if you come back to them later with an apology, they will permanently despise any target who once dared talk back to them. You’ve seen too much—the predator behind the mask.
This is why they constantly wave their new partner in your face, posting pictures and declaring their happiness online. Proving how happy and perfect they are.
It’s a final attempt to drive you insane with triangulation. To make you blame the new target, instead of the true abuser. —Torture by Triangulation

****

Probably on a Thursday night while my parents were at the store, and probably on September 1, 1994, I saw the first episode of My So-Called Life. Since no one else was home, I was free to watch it in privacy in the living room and have my own opinions about it.

I loved it. Angela, Claire Dane’s character, reminded me so much of myself at 15: insecure, feeling out of place at a party, all that stuff. They sure dressed weird, though–and Ray-Ann’s hair! Where did she get those ideas?

****

Phil’s brakes needed to be fixed. Back in May, he had them inspected, and they needed new pads. We went to Firestone together to have them checked. The service man gave him a paper with everything listed that was wrong with the brakes. It wasn’t just the pads, but that would help at present.

It was understood that Phil needed to have the brakes fully fixed before we went back to Roanoke. That was a 4 ½ hour drive, including Chicago and Milwaukee interstate traffic, and we sure didn’t need the brakes going out somewhere along the way.

Phil installed the brake pads himself with the help of Dad and my brother Jake. Jake said proudly, “I knew he could do it!”

But in September, he still hadn’t gotten the brakes fully fixed, yet I had such trouble with him! I believe that on Friday, September 2, he still hadn’t told his employer he was quitting, no two weeks’ notice, and he had to go in to work that day and tell them. We were to return to S– that weekend.

So on Friday he would have only a few hours, if he got up early enough, to get the brakes fixed. Doing it on Saturday was probably out of the question: Shops tended to close on Saturdays.

Phil wouldn’t take me anywhere without me begging. He wouldn’t take responsibility for himself and get up in time to take a shower before work, even though he set my old clock radio for 1 p.m. each night.

So even though he had plenty of time to get the brakes fixed, he slept through every chance to do it.

Then on what was most likely Friday, September 2, was his last chance to take care of the brakes before we went back to school.

Yet what did he do? He insisted on sleeping late, despite my trying to get him up, and snapped at me for trying to wake him!

But if he didn’t take care of the brakes that day, the brakes could give out while we were on the road, and we both could die! I didn’t know about him, but I wanted to live a while longer.

But finally I got him to get up, and he FINALLY got his brakes fixed. I could not believe him sometimes!

On probably September 3, we left in the afternoon. Finally, I got to sleep in, rather than waking up in the wee hours of the morning to go back to Roanoke, like usual when my parents took me.

On the way, Phil said, “This has been the best summer of my life because I spent it with you.”

Though I didn’t say so, for me it had been one of the worst. For quite some time, I cried every day because of Phil’s words or actions.

For the past week or so, we had been in another honeymoon period, which I hoped would continue.

But as September wore on, Phil kept doing and saying things which showed he no longer cared for me or my well-being, even though he kept saying he loved me. Even his family seemed to turn against me.

I also found myself having feelings for other guys, one I knew (Mike) and one I met during the first week of the school year (Charles). I couldn’t imagine breaking up with Phil, but these guys seemed sweet and decent, especially Mike.

Considering the summer I just endured, it’s no mystery that my heart latched onto a nice guy so quickly after we returned to school and out of the bubble of home. Mike gained my respect, which Phil had lost.

But back to September 3. When we got to Chicago, we had an argument. I don’t remember now what it was about. All I know is it had something to do with Phil having me look at the map to figure out where we were.

(Keep in mind that I have NVLD, which makes map-reading more difficult, especially when rushed. We didn’t have Google Maps to make it easy with specific routes, street views, and text directions.)

We must have gotten off track somehow. He got mad at me for something, maybe for not finding things fast enough or for not finding a certain street. I got upset with him for getting upset with me over something like that, which I couldn’t help. We may have made up later on during the drive, if we ever really did.

When we got back and unpacked what we needed for overnight, his mom threw some sheets at the bed.

He never used sheets before while I was with him, just blankets, while we slept directly on the bare mattress.

Sesame seeds (from fast food) and dirt got on it all the time. Since he never put sheets on, it never got cleaned off except with a swipe of the hand.

Before, I was so much in love that I barely noticed. But now, after spending the summer on sheets I washed weekly, I couldn’t stand getting on that icky mattress again without sheets.

Yet he even made that into an argument. He looked at me like I was ridiculous and a shrew for wanting sheets on the bed. He said if I wanted them, I could put them on.

Why on earth was he so petulant over putting sheets on his bed? He obviously wanted to pick fights on purpose, somehow finding a way to make me the one to blame, even though I did nothing wrong.

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?
April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on February 7, 2014December 28, 2020

Phil says if he abuses me, it takes two people to sign the divorce papers–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–August 1994, Part 4

One day that August, Phil said that if he went to the computer right away and didn’t come upstairs after work, it meant he needed some space. I wasn’t terribly happy about it, because after a day away from him and with my parents, I liked to see him and talk to him right away, and greet him. But I understood, so I let him have this space.

He did like to say good-bye to me every day and kiss me at the door, and another day that August he said that was special to him. He liked knowing that someone cared for and loved him.

I said now that I’d like to kiss him hello, too, but when he came upstairs to my room after work, he didn’t often come over to me while I sat on my chair. He said he didn’t want the kiss to lose its meaning.

It was hard to take, and he did have all that time away from me during the day, but I thought it was a guy thing. I gave him space whenever he asked for it, but he had to let me know he needed it, or else I wouldn’t know. My alone time came while he was gone and I read/wrote in my room.

Despite my best efforts, in September (probably during the fateful first Friday back, which you will soon read about), he complained that I didn’t give him space! But as this shows, I did give him his space.

From August until September, I let him play on the computer alone; once or twice he asked to sleep alone in the guest room, and I let him. I actually liked having the bed to myself for once, though I was lonely. It was a good switch, and I didn’t mind so much. Yet more gaslighting and changing history to justify a breakup!

****

One Sunday, Phil said what I never thought he would say:

Once before, he threatened to hit me; this must have been after the miscarriage, because he later said he didn’t mean it and, “How could I hit the mother of my child?”

But this time, in the van on the way to the evening church service, somehow the topic of abuse came up in the conversation. I don’t remember why, probably after some threat, I told him if he ever hit me, ever abused me, I would divorce him.

He said petulantly and angrily, “It takes two people to sign the divorce papers.”

Somehow, I think the law would be on the side of the abused wife. I remember telling one of Cugan’s friends about this in 1996 or 1997, and she said it does take two people, but the wife could still divorce an abusive husband. She should know: This happened to her.

I had yet to recognize that Phil already did abuse me in other ways quite often. That’s the danger of emotional abuse: not recognizing it because it’s not hitting. If I’d known better, if we hadn’t said those marriage vows, if I had no trouble finding dates, I would’ve sent him packing before the end of the summer.

He was also dead wrong:

Can he keep me from getting a divorce by refusing to sign the paperwork?
Answer:
No, he can’t. He doesn’t have the legal right to dictate to you whether or not you can obtain a divorce. His response is not uncommon for someone who thinks it is OK to beat a spouse but, he is misguided in his belief that he has that kind of control. –Cathy Meyer, Can My Spouse Refuse to Sign Divorce Papers?

Wisconsin is also a no-fault divorce state, so only one person needs to want the divorce, without having to prove grounds for divorce.

****

Phil had become immovable, intractable, willful, obstinate. One Sunday afternoon in August or maybe September, I tried to tell him I needed to go look for pH paper so our natural family planning could be more accurate and I wouldn’t get pregnant.

He kept saying he wanted to sleep, but I said the stores might close soon.

“I can’t have my parents take me, for goodness’ sake!” I cried. How would I explain it?

He said, “You have a license. Borrow the car.”

I hadn’t driven since 1992!! I hadn’t driven very often in the first place, and I didn’t know if I’d remember everything now. I didn’t want to drive again without someone with me to make sure I did it right.

I write here about the trouble I’ve always had with driving, and how I believe NVLD is the cause. NVLD is a visual-spatial disorder.

I’m afraid and not a good driver. I have trouble steering and judging when it’s safe to turn. I easily get confused on unfamiliar roads, or on road construction detours. I have gotten terribly lost, or completely turned around, because of poor visual memory and trouble reading a map. I don’t know what to do in unfamiliar situations. I have a poor sense of direction.

All of this meant I should not just go out on my own, especially since I had no idea how to get any place in the city, despite growing up there. I wouldn’t know how to get to our usual pharmacy, let alone any other place which might have pH papers.

But he showed no desire even to understand or sympathize, just wanted to throw me out on my own where I would probably get hopelessly lost or have an accident.

The drivers’ ed class I took when I turned seventeen had no machines to teach us how to drive before going out in traffic. The instructor took our permits to make sure we’d never be without them in the car, so I could get no practice outside of class unless I broke the law.

It took at least two tries before I passed my final test, and the instructor gave me a DOT driving test waiver, but begged me to practice. However, I was still too frightened to practice much. Then at college, I didn’t have a car.

I’d always been afraid of cars, and got a lot of bad-natured ribbing for it from classmates in junior high because I wanted to be absolutely sure I could cross Ewing Street to my bus stop. That was a very busy street, too busy for young kids to cross every day for the bus (even Mom said so), and it frightened me.

Those kids were very cruel to me. And now, I was scared of driving because cars can kill.

If you have to do something, you have to do something, and in this case, it was finding pH paper. The books I read said I was supposed to check the pH of my cervical mucus, but didn’t say how. All I could think of was that you do what you did in school: use pH paper.

As far as either of us knew, it was vital to success with this kind of birth control. He didn’t want me getting pregnant on Monday because I didn’t know if I was ovulating, did he? And some stores closed early on Sunday.

On weekdays he stayed in bed during the only time in the afternoon when we could go to the stores, and then I had no transportation at all after he left for work. Even if I were more used to driving, there would be no car for me to use.

I sure didn’t want to borrow my parents’ car or have them drive me, and have them find out where I was going and, possibly, why. What the heck did he expect me to do?

We slept late Sunday mornings, often getting up in the afternoon, so it wasn’t like he was suffering from a lack of sleep.

Oh, yeah, it’s so frickin’ unreasonable to ask, on one of your very last weekends in a big city for some time, to ask to be taken shopping on the only possible day of the week since you sleep till 2pm every day, because you’re so frickin’ tired in the middle of a Sunday afternoon after sleeping 9 hours until probably 1 or 2 pm!

In fact, his obstinance makes me wonder if he was trying to sabotage the very birth control he insisted we use.

Or if he had decided to resist every single thing I’d ever ask for, to punish me, manipulate me into anal/oral sex, and establish his dominance as the king of our household, while I was just a lowly female who had no right to get anything she wanted.

If I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, I would say,

“Are you sure you want to marry him legally when he won’t even do anything for you without you nagging him, if he resists every single thing or bit of help you ask for, if he criticizes everything you do, but then tries to force you into things that hurt or disgust you? This is a bad sign!

“If he’s engaged to you, if he even says he’s your husband, if he truly loves you, then he has a certain obligation to you. If you need something, it’s his place to help you. He doesn’t want to face up to any of his responsibilities. Are you sure he even cares much about you anymore?”

Anyway, finally he took me out. I saw him looking at the condoms, and said, “Aren’t you glad you don’t have to use those?”

He said that actually, he wished he could use them, because he wouldn’t have to worry so much about me getting pregnant. So….Why didn’t he change his mind and let us use condoms instead of this weird natural family planning we didn’t even understand?

We found no pH paper anywhere. I didn’t know if you could even get it anywhere. I thought you should be able to, because chemistry sets are common childhood toys.

According to the parenting book I mentioned in the June section, kits for checking mucus were supposed to be available in any drugstore, but we found nothing but one-time-use kits that were very expensive (about $20) and hardly practical for daily use.

I didn’t know how I was going to test the cervical mucus without pH paper or kits, because just testing the consistency didn’t work. It all looked the same to me. I had no one to tell me I was doing it wrong.

(I finally got ahold of some pH paper in 1997: Cugan found it at a science surplus store in Milwaukee, and got me five vials, because we wanted to use it when we got married. But then, in the universe’s typical ironic fashion, I was diagnosed with a hormonal imbalance and had to go on the Pill to regulate it.)

In May or June, we tried calling a local natural family planning clinic (something we looked for but didn’t find in S–) but there was no answer. Plus Phil was afraid to call them now, because we weren’t legally married. He thought they wouldn’t want to tell us until we were, because it would encourage us to have sex before the wedding.

But turns out, that fear was groundless: You have to get used to the routine and your cycle and know what you’re doing, before you start depending on natural family planning. I wonder if he really feared this, or was, again, trying to sabotage the NFP.

One day he said to me, “Maybe we should have sex less often–there’s less risk of pregnancy that way, and it’ll also be more special.”

It seems innocent enough, right? Like a sweet idea? Yet no more than maybe two weeks later, I found out from his actions what he really meant: that he was tired of me not being submissive enough to my master husband, and wanted to divorce me.

Another thing that, looking back, was fishy: In August we watched Mrs. Doubtfire. I expected Sally Field’s character to fall back in love with Robin Williams’ character, the usual Hollywood happy ending, and was shocked when this didn’t happen. I also didn’t like what she said, that, “I’m a better person when I’m not around you.” I didn’t like that Williams’ character told a child that, “Sometimes parents are better people when not around each other.”

To me, who had grown up in a strict religious background, this all sounded like the Devil’s lies, trying to justify divorce and breaking up the home, putting a warm-fuzzy, happy-sounding, new agey appearance on divorce, when what’s needed is counseling and work to save the marriage.

I talked about this a bit with Phil, who always agreed with me that divorce should be avoided at all costs, and is a sin except in extreme cases (i.e., adultery, desertion, abuse). He said the movie was trying to be realistic by not showing the couple getting back together, because that often doesn’t happen in real life. That seemed reasonable enough. But then he said, “After all, sometimes people are better people when they’re not around each other.”

I said that it just wasn’t a good enough reason for divorce. It wasn’t biblically based: Christ never said, “But then, if you don’t get along, if you’re annoyed by the person, it’s okay to leave them in the dust and divorce them.” No, he said quite the opposite. His change of mind about divorce made me nervous. Keep in mind that he was a Catholic, which is even stricter about divorce.

Now, I see it as him making the decision to divorce me several weeks before he actually did, then using a movie to justify it.

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year