Christine

“Even though I'm trying hard not to let it show, I want to swim past the breakers, and sink to the bottom and stay there with my eyes closed and the water covering my ears.

And yes, I know that's an overreaction. When you read this you'll think "Mom, please. Really?" You'll roll your eyes in that carefree way of yours and shrug those rebellious bangs off your forehead. You'll offer the one-sided smirk that says "you and I are the weird ones in the family - the two that always get each other's hidden meanings".

Only this time, you don't get it. You can't. You won't for another 25 or 30 years - until you lie on the sand, or sit in a stadium seat somewhere or stand at your kitchen stove and catch a glimpse of your first born, your baby, suddenly inhabiting the body of an adult. Someone you barely recognize. In that instant, you'll think "how did this happen? When did this happen? Have I taught enough? Have I listened enough? Have I coached and planned and laughed and worried enough? Can I let go enough?"

I'm afraid I won't be able to do it gracefully when the moment comes. I'm not ready. It's too soon. Instead of compiling pictures for a tasteful collage to make your dorm room homey, I want to climb inside the photos and live them again. Every bedtime story, lost tooth, birthday cake, backyard campout, ballgame, wildflower bouquet, rainy day and homemade Mothers Day card. All the golden moments and all the quiet, ordinary ones. I'd treasure them even more the second time around. If only life came with a rewind button, with do overs.”
― Lisa Wingate, Tending Roses

“One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don’t seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser’s friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone’s image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.”
At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees. Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“Drama dies without an audience”
― Jen Sincero, Badass Habits: Cultivate the Awareness, Boundaries, and Daily Upgrades You Need to Make Them Stick