My ex and I were trying to make it work, after all we just had a beautiful little boy together, but newborns are a lot of work at the best of times and Eli… well he was more difficult than most. From relentless power chucking to blood curdling screaming, he never slept for more than 20 minutes at a time and demanded to be held, standing 24/7. How angry my ex would get at my little boy would infuriate me, and as Eli got older and began to get around, his carelessness endangered Eli on several occasions. While he was supposed to be watching him, I’d find Eli doing things like sucking on batteries or swinging a pair of scissors around. And then the time he got into my exs tobacco pouch and poured it all over his face and ingested some. made me feel like I had to be watching Eli constantly and couldn’t leave him alone with his own father, it was stressful and exhausting.
However, nothing compared to how he made me feel about myself. He spoke horribly about me to his co-workers, his friends, his family and to his ex before me. Made up lies about me to my friends and even made jokes about me being a racist to his entire indigenous family. He would gaslight me whenever I got upset and make me feel like it was my fault that he treated me that way. I let him break me down until I had no self-respect left for myself and succumbed to the fact that this would just be my life.
What it would take for me to actually say, enough is enough, was when his actions turned towards my parents. He screamed and cursed in my mothers’ face, threated to bash my dad and was stealing money from both of them. That was it! I let him walk all over me, but I could not handle him disrespecting my parents. Our relationship was over, but I was not free, I would have to continue to see him for Elis’ sake.
I felt so trapped, now a single mum, with so much hatred for my ex. The ever deafening lies from the voices in my head that my life had no potential, I would never amount to more than this and no one would ever love me with my ruined body from a 10-pound baby. The abyss of my depression was at its deepest, but I was a mother now… I could no longer numb my pain with sex, drugs and alcohol. I suffered in silence, fighting thoughts of ending it all. But Eli… his little face and the way he called me Mumma, his little hugs and watching him grow were the only things that kept me fighting so hard. Until, those thoughts turned to “what if I took him with me?” at least I wouldn’t be alone right?
Then one night I had a dream…
Managing Mayhem 