spiritual marriage

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:

My letter to Phil, Part 2–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–October 1994, Part 5

First part of letter

Trust seemed to be a problem as well. Up until I found out about the games you’d been playing with me, like you termed it I’d have trusted you until the ends of the earth; but for some reason, you seemed to have trouble trusting me. I don’t know why that was.
Like you thought that someone could steal me away from you even after we married, even though I told you how firmly I believe in the bonds of marriage. As the Bible, the Catholic church and the Nazarene church affirm, those bonds are not to be broken, and I was not going to break them.
It hurt me that you kept thinking the “perfect” person would steal me away or that you could never introduce me to your friend S–. (Really, we’d probably have gotten along well, but I loved you, and I’m not into sadomasochism!)
As a song by the Christian group 77’s says, “If you’re looking for a perfect man that you can worship, baby, He ain’t on this earth, baby, no more.” Couples can’t be clones of each other; they’ve got to be individuals. Your old-fashioned, non-feminist (usually) [as he said he wanted] girl was not going to run away to find somebody better!
That bit about “being a better person when not with you”–that was taken straight from “Mrs. Doubtfire,” wasn’t it? Well, I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t buy it now. It’s not a biblically sanctioned reason for divorce. If you don’t believe me, grab a concordance and a Bible and look up passages on the subject.
It also feels to the other person like they’re being blamed for how their partner acts. The person isn’t the problem, it’s how their partner relates with them. They just need to learn how to relate better.
As that very movie shows, divorce tears families and people apart. That’s why God hates it (Malachi 2:16 and surrounding verses; also see Matt. 5:31-32, Deut. 23:21-23; verses that may relate: Deut. 15:12-17).
(You may call me a holy roller, may even say I’m preaching, but if I know someone’s a Christian, I feel free to make references to what God says in the Bible. Not spouting off verses right and left, but mentioning or quoting things that apply when it seems appropriate.
(Usually, people seem to appreciate it because it reminds them of how God feels about something they’re struggling with, gives them a better understanding of things. If it convicts them of wrongdoing, they might not always like it so much, but that’s human nature.
(I don’t like to feel convicted of something wrong, either, but sometimes a person needs to hear it. You even tell me Bible verses at times.)
You say the counseling idea is “like beating a dead horse.” Well, I don’t agree. It was never given a chance to revive the horse.
Three “dead horses”–couples that were already divorced–saw those tapes I mentioned, and were brought back to life: they remarried their ex’s. According to Gary Smalley, good results because of the tapes have been reported without exception.
Love, happiness are increased; even the once-divorced couples report more affection for each other than they had even when they were first married. This would certainly include a restoration of cherishing, which means “to care for kindly” and “to hold dear.”
Maybe this sort of thing could even help your parents restore their first love–in fact, probably could. [His mother had told him the only reason she hadn’t divorced his dad was because Phil and Dave were still at home.] And keep things from breaking down again, as long as the principles continue to be applied.
Once again, one person could feel their life had been wasted until they met the other person. [Phil used to tell me that his life had been wasted until he met me.] If I didn’t think this sort of thing had a fighting chance, I wouldn’t bother with it, wouldn’t bother even mentioning it.
One of the principles, one example of how to break the communications barrier, is one Smalley learned from his wife: When a woman says “Don’t touch me,” what she really means is, “Hold me, talk to me, make me feel better.”
This is true. I can think of an instance in which you apparently didn’t know this, and it had consequences. It was after that horrible argument we had near the beginning of the summer, when you were getting overwhelmed by that second sales job.
[This was when I thought he was talking in his sleep as he often did, but he just had his eyes closed.] I finally got you to come upstairs and go to bed, my bed, but I was so angry and felt so betrayed that I said, “Don’t touch me.”
If I’d really meant that, I’d have told you to sleep in the guest room. I wanted you to hold me, to try to talk things out, to be so worried about my attitude that you’d make me let you hold me. Instead, you took me at my word, and turned over to go to sleep, leaving me feeling abandoned.
If you’d known what a woman really means when she tells her husband not to touch her, we could’ve resolved the problem better and more quickly. It isn’t that she’s lying, it’s just that she’s upset.
Another thing is the “space” issue. I see that as another example of poor communication. I’m not always a good reader of body language; I go by what people say.
When you’d say you just needed some space, that it wasn’t me but you needed to sleep in the guest room that night, I wouldn’t like it, but I’d understand and sleep alone that night without complaint.
When you just disappeared and I found you in there, I’d feel like you were deliberately snubbing me or running from some argument. I’d feel hurt, angry, abandoned.
To kindly say you need some time alone is much more effective than just getting mad or running off. I’ve done that sort of thing myself before (to Clarissa), and it didn’t work, just made me feel ashamed because I knew I was probably doing something wrong.
We used to be able to resolve things [in the beginning of the relationship, we prided ourselves on being able to resolve things using already established principles that we hadn’t even heard of until afterwards]; I think we’ve forgotten how.
And I think if we learned how again, plus more tips that we never knew before, we’d see that “first love” returning, remember why we wanted to be together in the first place, why we wanted to be married and knew we were each other’s ideal.
But even if we didn’t, we could learn principles that can be applied in other relationships. Either way, we’d both win.
We wouldn’t have to “get back together” before watching tapes or reading books or whatever; we could watch them, and then see if we’d want to give it another try or to just move on.
But there couldn’t be a “yo-yo effect” afterwards. If we decide to try it again, then we’ll have to both give it a good try, not keep changing our minds when problems don’t go away right away.
Maybe there wouldn’t even be any left by then; maybe they all would’ve been taken care of through time and through learning how to communicate more effectively. And I think God would be pleased by our efforts and bless us.
It seems we resolved things better until after we married. Perhaps what happened was, you unconsciously tried to make it into your parents’ relationship, which is familiar to you, and I unconsciously tried to make it into my parents’ relationship, which is familiar to me.
The two conflicted–unhappiness is incompatible with happiness, “light has no fellowship with darkness”–and everything broke down.
I hope you take this letter well, and in the kind spirit it was intended in. I wanted to tell you about the tapes and other possibilities, and to tell you some things that I feel you should know.
I don’t know if you’ll listen to me, but I couldn’t trust that these things would be said to you by anyone else, as much as some others want to say them to you. If some anger or bitterness still came through, well, I felt I needed to say what I did. [Reading it over, I don’t really see any.]
But forgiveness is divine. I don’t hate you. If I can never even be friends with you, it would kill me. I hope and pray you don’t turn into another Peter, because that would just finish me off, to see someone else I care for turn scuzzy.
But anyway. If Mom can get ahold of these tapes or something like them, I plan to watch them. But don’t tell me yet what you think of the idea, what you think of seeing them yourself.
Sometimes decisions made in haste are regretted later. Give it maybe a couple weeks or more, let it sink in, mull it over and put it on the back burner; then decide.
Don’t listen to friends who don’t know what they’re talking about, which would probably be most of them–“The worst thing you can do,” Dad says, “is talk to your friends.”
[Dad’s advice used to be so influential with Phil. He’d sit talking with him for hours–though Dad, at times, thought he was an idiot!]
Advice should be taken from the wise. Pray about it, pray for guidance; God, the wisest of them all, hears the prayers of His children, and won’t leave them all alone. That includes you.
Love,
Nyssa

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 March 22, 2014May 8, 2023

I return Phil’s things and he skewers me; consolation from friends–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–October 1994, Part 3

On October 2, I went to Immanuel Bible Church with Pearl, driven by a middle-aged (or older) man who went to the church. We were to go there several times during the semester.

It was far too conservative for me, though I had no idea until reviewing the website just now, just how conservative it was. I would have–metaphorically–run screaming if I’d known!

I wanted to go to the Evangelical Free church, but our driver had graduated. So I went wherever I could, whenever I could–that is, until I got too used to sleeping in.

Once, possibly this first time we went, we passed Phil on the road as we left Roanoke. He saw me, and I think he smiled at me. I just sat there, stunned.

****

I started putting Dolphin Philosophy, complete with my usual drawing of a frolicking dolphin, on the message board we had by the bathroom door. I wrote this on 10/2/94, which the dolphin Darwin said on SeaQuest DSV: “Darwin scared. People bad!”

In a return to sophomore and junior year practices, I also started drawing little beetles on the board as well, every now and then.

Around this time, I’d look around at couples who’d been together a couple of years, and wonder, Will I ever have a lasting relationship, one that won’t fizzle out before the end of a year?

I’d look at people who were engaged or married and had been together for several years or more, and wonder, Will I ever last in a relationship long enough to get married and spend most of my life with a guy?

We had Cinemax and HBO in the apartments. But then at the general meeting for all the apartments, the meeting in which our Resident Assistant (RA) gave us cleaning supplies, somebody mentioned we were getting Cinemax and HBO.

The RA told us not to tell anybody from other residence halls, or they’d get jealous and complain. Soon after, the cable guy hooked up our bedrooms so we could get cable outside of the living room. (Without cable, not one channel came in on campus.)

We discovered that Cinemax and HBO were now scrambled. We feared this would happen!

****

I found one of my small packing boxes. I put in it the game “Crack the Case,” some mementos and pictures of Phil that he’d given me, and the porcelain bird. (I kept very little.)

I was glad to include that game, which reminded me of him verbally abusing me and making me feel stupid whenever we played it.

I also put in the books and pencils he left behind that night he made the final decision to divorce me, and the bowl and spoon he left behind on the previous weekend.

I had cleaned them; I may have cleaned them before his final decision. Otherwise, I probably would’ve been tempted to keep them dirty.

I put in a note that said simply, “These are some things of yours. I can’t keep the bird anymore.” I found our marriage contract, ripped it in two, and put it on the top.

I sent these to him through the campus mail. I remember packing the box in the living room by the TV, and Sharon might have been there.

Sharon thought sending the bird back (and the ripped-up contract) was a good move that showed him I was breaking with him.

He told me to keep the bird. I’d been tempted, even encouraged by my friends, to break the porcelain bird, but a dream told me I’d regret doing this. Instead, I gave it back to him, getting it off the living room shelf and out of my life forever. It’s sad that that woman’s piece of art ended up meaning what it did to me.

Phil found me the next day, probably around the fifth, on my way back to the apartment after lunch. He mentioned the “torn-up paper” and had a long talk with me. He was civil, though he wasn’t kind.

He seemed offended by the torn-up marriage contract, even though he had been the one to nullify it.

He told me he was interested in doing something with Persephone. He said he was going dancing on Saturday night in Fond du Lac–which we had planned to do together–and he was going to take her along instead.

I think he was going there with a group.

He also said, “It was never ‘us.'” What a cruel thing to say! And what was it supposed to mean? To discount the past eight months, to discount our entire marriage, like they meant nothing!

I don’t think I said much to that. We also talked about how maybe in the future we’d be ready for each other, and I said I just wondered, how long? (At the crack of doom, I guess.) I came back in the apartment and cried.

I later got the impression that he and Persephone went dancing in Fond du Lac all the time. It seemed like dancing in Fond du Lac was popular with S– young people. It seems odd, because Fond du Lac kids talk like there’s nothing to do here. And I believe the dance place where everybody went is now something else.

****

I traded a shift with Dirk, 9 to 11 pm in the library. I sat folding Roanoke folders. I kept one for myself because they were free. Some guy dropped off these folders for us, just as he did the year before.

I liked them, but one of the librarians hated them. She didn’t like how they were made, that they were unsolicited, and that since they were dropped off in the library, we student workers had to spend time folding them. They were then left in a pile on the desk for anyone to take.

I liked mine, and later on in Winterim class, I decorated it with Celtic drawings and markers. I ended up storing in it some papers I wanted to keep. So she complained about them, but I loved mine.

Working at that time of night was scary, especially in what could be a haunted library. And even if it wasn’t haunted, it was still scary to be out and about on the campus at night.

I was alert to shadows and bushes as I walked home, as I often would be that late at night, watching for guys who might want to jump me. I didn’t use to be so jumpy at night on campus, until the rapist sophomore year put the fear of darkness into all us women without even stepping foot on the campus.

****

October 7-8. I went to the InterVarsity Lock-in at Mike’s house. It was held in the basement, which was made up into a rec room, and in one corner was the door to Mike’s bedroom.

It was nice to be there with my friends and not see Phil at all, but I was also depressed. Persephone was there, and once asked me, “Is something wrong?” I didn’t tell her it was Phil.

Guess what? Phil dropped her off! She apparently considered him weird, and just thought of him as a friend, but he insisted and she thought, Okay, whatever.

I tried to enjoy myself as best I could. After all, many of my friends were there, and especially Mike.

While standing around the pool table eating and watching people play, Persephone’s roommate Trina said to me, “Right now, P is in his room having sex with a girl who Phil and I both think isn’t that pretty.”

This girl, apparently, was considered a slut, who all the guys (except Phil and, I hope, Mike) were hot over, and other girls didn’t understand why. I didn’t know her, and didn’t know what she looked like, so I could say nothing about her.

As for P, a freshman, he had a girlfriend, but was known as a womanizer. The girlfriend wasn’t on campus. (Shortly before the end of the school year, according to Pearl, he said that his girlfriend taught him the value of a relationship without sex.) In her absence, he slept with whomever he could find.

Spring Semester, Charles kept going on and on about him–P did this, P did that, P is so funny, P is so cool–so Pearl began saying, “I think Charles is in love with P.” We’d laugh, especially since Charles was very much heterosexual.

We watched the Saved by the Bell movie which aired that evening, in which the blond kid married his girlfriend, the girl with the lovely, long brown hair (which she later cut off! ergh! when she went to 90210).

I didn’t watch the show myself, but some of my friends did. I didn’t like watching someone get married, though, after my own marriage to Phil broke down before we even had a public wedding. But I forced my feelings down so my friends could enjoy the movie.

We spent the night camped on sleeping bags, blankets and pillows on the floor in the basement. Once I got up to go to the bathroom, stepped around my friends, and reflected on how life went on without Phil, that I was doing this apart from him and still having a good time.

Mike’s mother made us breakfast pizza the next morning.

****

We had made Mike an honorary woman and Phi-Delt because he hung around with us instead of guys, and acted “womanly” at times. He loved the distinction.

Also, my friends and I recently went to Country Kitchen. We were Tara, Pearl, Sharon, Astrid and me. I don’t remember anyone else being with us.

I think that was the time I had a strange desire for the car to crash and I’d die (because of Phil), but I fought it off because that was so awful and would kill my friends as well. I get thoughts like that when severely depressed.

There, we had ice cream desserts, and somebody asked who of us had crushes on Mike. Astrid didn’t like admitting it, but we discovered or knew that she did or used to. Sharon did or used to. And I did. Pearl thought Tara did, but she didn’t.

We wondered why so many of us liked him, because he was basically a dork (we meant that in the best possible way; we liked him the way he was). We wondered if we didn’t have a big enough circle of guy friends, and that’s why we all kept falling for the same guy.

Of course, it could also be that he was one of few truly nice guys on that campus, not a drunk, druggie or out for all the booty he could get.

This may have been the time when a waitress kept banging drawers and snapping at us, so we thought she was having a nervous breakdown.

I don’t think it was anything we did or said. Working at the S– Country Kitchen at night was said to be very stressful because of groups that come in and sit and have something to drink but nothing more, making the place very busy but with small tips.

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 March 21, 2014April 18, 2023

My friends tell me Phil is psychotic–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–October 1994, Part 1

From a letter I wrote a friend on October 1:

Everyone says Phil is psychotic, unstable, in urgent need of professional help. My dad says he’s on the edge.
Even Phil’s friend Dirk, who’s trying to be objective but is Phil’s confidante much more than I’d even want him to be mine, says that pressures of school are probably getting to him as well as problems with me.
His home life is probably the biggest cause of this “psychosis,” especially since he lives at home instead of on campus. Arguments are the way of life there, and it’s doubtful whether his parents even love each other anymore.
[When I asked Sharon, a Psych major,] if he was having another nervous breakdown…she said, “No, it’s a psychosis.” She says he was already acting weird last semester.
(Maybe that’s why my friends started to not like him, even though the semester before they tried to get him to do things with us, and seemed to like him.)
Dad says he’d better find some counselor to talk to or maybe his priest, before he goes over the edge.
…Why do I keep falling for guys with problems? I don’t even know about the problems until later, usually. Why do the sweet guys I find keep turning out to be jerks? I like weird, not psychotic!
For months my guy seems like a rare find, and then all of a sudden he changes on me. I plan to send my story to [a magazine] as a warning to other people: Don’t get a “spiritual” marriage that isn’t legal!
I don’t want to regret the special times when Phil and I have “been” together, but I have been starting to. I don’t know what to think of myself as: divorced or “fallen”?
I hope we do end up together, because our spirits have joined [Evangelical belief] and I don’t want to explain to my future husband that he’s not my “first.”
…Nothing makes any sense anymore. My life was going along great and I knew where I’d be after graduation.
Now I don’t know what’s going to happen anymore. I just want to leave this place, this whole world, but there’s no way I can myself without sinning [suicide=sin].
I feel like Job when he said, “Why does death come to those who don’t want it, and some seek for death and don’t find it?” (paraphrase)
I’ve been turning to my friends for a place to keep my sanity and make life bearable. I don’t feel so lonely as I would have. I’m not always inclined to do a whole lot, but I force myself to get out and do things.

This is one benefit I see in today’s more open society: Spiritual marriages and even sleeping with a boyfriend have become more “acceptable” than they were when I was in college.

I do see a spiritual marriage as real if the two people are truly joined in their hearts, and would no longer advise against it, unless it would cause problems with your religious leaders.

I don’t think I’d have such a moral quandary if I went through this now, in 2014. But in 1994, I felt like I’d fallen morally.

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 March 19, 2014March 22, 2023

Fierce anger against Phil and PTSD from the abuse–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–The Long, Dark Painful Tunnel, Part 15

My friends were disgusted with how Phil had been treating me. This included at least two guys–Mike and Charles–so it wasn’t just the female perspective saying he was an a**hole.

I later learned that James, too, thought he was a creep, and that Phil and Persephone deserved each other because she was the most negative person he ever met.

Sharon said Phil was domineering and possessive. It was funny because he or his “friends” had been saying I was possessive! I sure couldn’t remember being possessive. She (the Psych major) said he had a psychosis, and that his whole family was psychotic, so she tried to stay away from them all.

Though I still had trouble letting go of all my feelings, I think this time I got so angry that I lost all the love I ever had in my heart for him. Though at times the feelings returned, in my heart it was over.

The times I wanted him back, were probably denial of the truth, or fear of ending up alone. His true self had been shown to me in vivid technicolor.

I hope I haven’t done too much ranting in these blogs, but I felt I needed to show what happened, just in case one of you finds yourself in similar situation. You don’t have to stay there. I also wanted to tell people what really happened.

I’ve read that women who’ve been abused in some way often have trouble with anger management. That might explain why I got incredibly angry with Phil–more angry than I ever was with Peter or Shawn–and to this day still struggle with residual anger. My friends and family heard me say things about Phil that they never heard me say about anybody else, and it shocked them.

Quoted from Abuse in a Christian Marriage:

“The feelings you’re likely dealing with Crystal are anger, pain, betrayal, fear, trauma, sadness, shame and more. These are very common feelings for abuse victims, and in order to get past them they have to be acknowledged and dealt with.”

Also see later on, “Healing from past abuse.”

What also didn’t help me get over the anger: Recently [this was written in 2006], Dr. Phil McGraw said on his show that if a woman does not feel heard, she keeps saying it over and over until she does feel heard.

I did not feel heard, so I said what I needed to say in letters. Still, I got no apology, just a guy who acted like I had nothing to be angry about. Why on earth did I not want to say hi to him when he said it to me? Gee, why do you think?

It’s hard to forgive and let go when someone never acknowledges they did something horrible to you, when they never show remorse. Years later, it still burns you up, no matter how much you pray for the strength to forgive.

The only thing to make forgiveness easier is to finally receive an apology. Even if it takes many years, that’s still better than never.

Bullying causes Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, lower self-worth and feeling helpless. It is a psychiatric injury, which traumatizes a person.

When a bully is supported by his friends, when authority figures aren’t interested in stepping in–even resorting to blaming you for the bullying, when the bully “gets away with it”–this makes it much harder for the bullied to reach “closure.”

Here are listed traits of complex post-traumatic stress disorder and of psychiatric injury; I especially identify with these traits:

An overwhelming desire for acknowledgement, understanding, recognition and validation of their experience
A lack of desire for revenge, but a strong motivation for justice
A tendency to oscillate between conciliation (forgiveness) and anger (revenge) with objectivity being the main casualty
A constant feeling that one has to justify everything one says and does
A constant need to prove oneself, even when surrounded by good, positive people
An unusually strong sense of vulnerability, victimisation or possible victimisation, often wrongly diagnosed as “persecution”
Feelings of worthlessness, rejection, a sense of being unwanted, unlikeable and unlovable
A feeling of being small, insignificant, and invisible
An overwhelming sense of betrayal, and a consequent inability and unwillingness to trust anyone, even those close to you
The person is by now obsessed with the situation (or rather, resolving the situation), cannot switch off, may be unable to sleep, and probably has nightmares, flashbacks and replays

These things either have affected in the past, or still do affect, me. [This was written in 2006.]

“Sometimes Always” by The Jesus and Mary Chain played often before, during, and after the second time Phil and I were together: A guy breaks up with his girlfriend. He comes back, she refuses at first, then takes him back.

I liked to mentally sing along with the female singer when she said, “You went away; you can’t come back.” When Phil came back to me, I identified with the line, “You went away, but now you’re back.” I also liked the image of the groveling ex-boyfriend.

On the 29th, I wrote in the new Journal my friends and I started,

There’s also this emptiness, like a part of me is missing. Especially when I’m alone and doing mechanical, everyday things. “Meaningless, everything is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes)
It makes friends and (Mike will recognize this) “future hope” so important. [I think “future hope” must have been a term from Intro to Christianity class, probably meaning Heaven, hope that things will get better.] The emptiness starts to go away a little bit.
Maybe this is really a cry for help. You guys’ll have to keep an eye on me. I’ve found myself not caring how close the cars are on the drive[way]s, and it’s scaring me.
I’ve been through bad times before but gotten through them. [namely, Peter and Shawn] Things always get better. But how long until they do?
…Someone who accused InterVarsity of being a clique [Dirk] also said that maybe I should pull away from it. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
I need InterVarsity–an oasis of spirituality and learning how to get closer to God. My faith is really being tested since a couple nights ago.
I feel like God told me one thing but the exact opposite is true. Which can’t be, because God doesn’t lie. He wants me to trust Him, even in all this when I can’t figure out what He’s doing or if He’s even doing anything. I’m sure somebody should be able to relate.
For years, He’s been telling me time and time again, “Trust Me.” Which is so hard to do, when it should be so easy to trust someone as trustworthy as God is. That Psalm 13 really fits.
(For those of you who weren’t at Pearl’s Bible study last week, that’s what we studied. David crying out to God in desperate circumstances, and finally saying that he knows God will help him.)
…I saw a poster in Counselor Dude’s office that asked, If you couldn’t write, would you die?–In my case, I think so. There’s just something about putting words on the page that makes life worthwhile for me. Another reason why I think this journal is such a good idea. Probably also a reason why I write such long letters!

Written October 2011:

After doing more research into abuse and narcissism, thanks to dealing with two narcissists who abused and maligned me in 2010, I now believe that Phil’s first breakup with me was not intended to be permanent.

I believe it was actually his attempt to control me. Because I wasn’t submissive enough, he wanted to force me to submit, to show me that the consequences of not submitting meant losing him–to break my spirit.

And it worked, for a time. For the week he was back with me, I was afraid to do anything that would make him go away again. I was very submissive, giving in to anything he wanted, no matter how baffling (going to Thailand for a year), outlandish or distasteful (oral sex, which he knew I hated, and he had not washed himself, so it smelled awful).

Even during the two weeks between the first breakup and week back together, I was submissive during our negotiations:

For example, he asked if I would object if he started smoking and drinking, and I said I would not. During the negotiations, if I started saying or doing things he didn’t like, the rage wall went up again, and he would ditch me, go off and tell Dirk what I was doing wrong, etc.

During those two weeks, Dirk (Phil’s puppet) came to me and told me to distance myself from my friends. So Phil was, once again, trying to control me by separating me from my friends, the ones who saw him for what he really was.

And when we got back together but I “screwed up” by not “supporting” him as he bashed me to my friends, he left again. It disgusts me to think of how submissive I was just to hold onto this controlling man.

(For more on the above-described situations, see here.)

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year