On the home front, things got better for a while. Justin embraced his new job at another station, and I started to let down the wall I’d been building around me. We went to the movies and out to dinner, and we explored this new city we called home. I felt like we were on a whole new adventure. Justin and I were laughing together again, and slowly, in spurts, trust was building.
There were ripples in our sweet life, however. Out of nowhere, it seemed, Justin would hurl hostile accusations of infidelity at me. Those baffled me more than any of his other insults. Why did he keep coming back to the idea that I had cheated on him? Why did he always resort to the recrimination that I was a whore and a slut . . . and worse? Those monikers became branded on me, if not in a tangible way, at least in my mind.
I used to shrug off the idea that such a thing as verbal abuse existed. I mean, people can say whatever they want to you, but it’s up to you to let it slide off your shoulders, right? They’re just words.
Well, that whole saying about how sticks and stones can hurt but words don’t is a big, fat lie.
It was at this point that I started to comprehend firsthand the depth, the enormity, the true scope of verbal abuse. Justin’s words pierced a little deeper every time I heard his refrain: “You’re a selfish b----! I can’t believe I ever married you! You’re nothing but a whore!” The words dug deep into my soul, penetrating my thoughts and deteriorating my self-image.
Who among us hasn’t had something awful said to us or about us? Something that rattled us, that sunk its teeth in and kept gnawing at us? Now amplify that experience by a million when it’s not a stranger. When the person you love and are supposed to be able to trust most beats you to an emotional pulp, the offense is infinitely more painful. And even worse, you eventually start to believe what that person says.
Put simply, words are powerful. Particularly when they’re coming from someone we love.
The terrifying thing about this cycle is the way the ugliness evolves. It transfers from the abuser’s mind to the victim’s own thinking. Eventually I didn’t need Justin to say the words—I began to berate myself for being stupid or incapable. I doubted my abilities and intelligence because it was what I heard from him, and it became more and more difficult to distinguish his voice from mine. At one time in my life I’d had a pretty clear understanding of who I was. Now I couldn’t begin to describe myself to someone else. The person I knew to be me was vanishing.
Two years into our marriage, there was a night of volatility I couldn’t ignore.
Justin came home as I was getting ready to go to work at four o’clock in the morning—yes, 4:00 a.m. He was inebriated and started pushing me around, telling me how worthless I was.
“You never would have made it this far without me, Christi! The only reason you made it to Phoenix was because I brought you here. You’re nothing but a whore! How could I have been dumb enough to marry you?”
Then he started spouting about buying a gun and not wanting to live. This wasn’t the first time he’d said something like this. In Boise he’d mentioned getting a gun and had made flippant, drunken statements about how he didn’t want to live. But this time felt different. Something about the way he said, “I don’t want to go on,” made me afraid that this might be more than mere talk.
I wondered how far he might really go.
When chaos and threats encircle you, it’s not just your mind that starts reeling. Your body eventually starts to react to it too. That’s exactly what happened to me as Justin stood over me screaming. I started trembling uncontrollably. My muscles tensed up, and my teeth clenched.
My body was telling me what I’d been ignoring for too long.
When Justin passed out, I called his parents.
“I can’t take it anymore,” I told them. “I really think you should be here for him because I’m ready to leave.” I said it firmly but with a hint of desperation. I think his mother could hear the urgency and pleading in my voice.
By midafternoon his father was walking off a plane at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. I picked him up and we went to dinner, where I filled him in on what had been going on for the past two years.
I’d made a couple of other phone calls that day—one to a friend who said she had a truck and could help me move if need be, and one to find an available apartment that I could move into immediately.
For the first time, the possibility of leaving Justin was actually in motion. If this life wasn’t going to change, I was going to change things myself—for my own sake.
As I talked to Justin’s dad, I realized he hadn’t been completely oblivious. He had an inkling that Justin and I were having some issues, but I don’t think he knew they’d escalated to this point.
Justin’s parents had embraced me as their daughter-in-law from the beginning. As soon as we announced our engagement, his mom, Anna, arranged two wedding showers so I could get to know their extended family and friends. She was a woman of style, and we shopped together, shared recipes, and swapped home decor ideas. And I loved the way his dad, Mark, chuckled whenever he called and heard my enthusiastic “Helloooo, Dad!” He’d respond in kind with a “Helloooo, Christi!” I could practically hear him smiling through the phone.
I was—and still am—grateful to Justin’s parents for all they did for us. They pulled out all the stops to come to our rescue as a couple and to Justin as their son. I loved them dearly, and they helped sustain me during that time.
Late that night as I lay in bed, I heard Justin turn the key of the front door and walk in. Then I heard his father say, “Hello, Justin.” His voice was solid and determined. This was no “Hey, I’m here! How’ve you been?”
I can’t imagine what went through Justin’s head when he saw his father sitting on the couch, waiting for him.
“What are you doing here?” I heard Justin ask. I could hear the fear in his voice. At that moment he reverted back to a little boy who had just gotten caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to do. He knew he was busted.
“I’m here to help you save your marriage because you’re about to lose it,” Mark said. “Now go to bed. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I just lay there in bed, my eyes closed and my body tense.
What was Justin going to do? Would he walk in and let me have it? How mad would he be that I’d called in the troops—a solid force all wrapped up in the form of his father?
But Justin walked into our room, crawled into bed, and put his arm around me.
It was sweet and loving. And totally unexpected. It said to me that he really wanted to work this out.
I lay there with my eyes closed but wide awake. For the first time in a long time, I had hope.
I got up the next morning and went to work, giving Justin and his dad some privacy. I don’t know what Mark said to Justin or what Justin revealed to his father over the next few days. But I do know that had it not been for his parents’ intervention, it would have ended there.
When Mark and I were alone at dinner the night before he flew home, he said something that stuck with me. “Christi,” he said, “alcoholism is a disease. It’s like cancer. You can’t just say, ‘I don’t want this, so I’m not going to have that drink.’ It’s not that easy. You can’t just decide to control it. Not without help.”
In other words, Justin was sick. When he lashed out at me, it wasn’t necessarily because he believed all those vulgarities he spewed but because he had a disease that overtook him. That didn’t make it okay, mind you, and it didn’t mean Justin wasn’t responsible for his actions. But it did give me more perspective to try to understand where he was coming from.
One thing I was starting to understand was that we needed to get Justin help . . . and he had to be willing to accept it.
Mark’s words echoed in my head over the next several weeks. As I started to absorb the gravity of this disease and what it was doing to Justin and to our marriage, I got my first true taste of hopelessness. And apparently, I couldn’t conceal it.<
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My boss, O’Neill, called me into his office one day.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I questioned. I wondered silently, Did I screw up a story? I hadn’t been late to anything; I hadn’t missed a deadline. I was pretty sure I hadn’t said anything during our shows that would prompt the FCC to haul me off the set.
It turned out O’Neill was a pretty observant guy. “You haven’t been yourself lately,” he said. “People come to expect a certain demeanor from you because, you know, you’re a happy person. That hasn’t really been you lately. There are some people in the newsroom who are concerned for you right now, and I wanted to know if there’s anything I can do.”
Busted!
I could no longer hide this problem from other people. Which meant I could no longer hide it from myself, either.
So right there in my boss’s office, I let it out. I explained that I was going through some issues at home, and I hadn’t realized they’d been consuming me so noticeably.
O’Neill responded immediately with his support. “If you’re not happy at home, you’re not going to be happy at work, and vice versa. You need to take care of yourself. Just let me know what you need from us.”
I drove home that night trying again to keep it all inside. I was determined to remain stoic. Emotionless. Almost robotic.
Mark’s words were still ringing in my ear: “This is a disease. It’s like cancer. You can’t decide not to have it.”
I walked up the steps to our apartment, turned the key, and walked in. As I shut the door behind me, I literally collapsed, bawling.
That’s the picture of hopelessness: a grown woman, on her knees, gasping for breath between each sob. Yeah. Not a pretty picture.
It finally sank in that I had absolutely no control over this situation. Every time Justin drank, it wasn’t an indication that he didn’t love me enough to stop. It wasn’t about me—it wasn’t about us at all. It was about him.
I’d tried every tactic known to humankind, and I couldn’t make this situation better. I could beg Justin to stop drinking, I could threaten to leave, I could plead with him to accept my love and let me help him, but until he made the decision to tackle this head-on, nothing I could do would work.
I don’t know how long I sat there on the floor crying. I felt helpless . . . and utterly alone. I might as well have been in the middle of the ocean in a small dinghy, just waiting to die.
One ray of hope had emerged from Mark’s visit, and I clung to it like a life buoy. Justin had agreed to go to counseling with me.
This felt like a crucial step for us to take if we were ever going to break the cycle we were in. I desperately needed Justin to absorb the enormity of what his drinking was doing to me—and to us. I needed him to be accountable for his actions. The point wasn’t to punish him but to help him realize how the alcohol was shredding our relationship to pieces. I felt like he was clueless about how serious this issue really was.
The counseling wasn’t just for him, either. I had to deal with problems that were just as debilitating to our marriage as his were. For one thing, I needed help learning how to deal with the resentment I’d held in for so long. I was angry that he’d treated me like this for the past two years. Angry that I’d let it happen. Angry that I hadn’t stood my ground and insisted that he deal with it sooner.
Another issue that often came up between Justin and me was that I didn’t always let him in emotionally. Honestly, I didn’t know how to let my guard down with him anymore. After so many verbal beatings, I felt emotionally pulverized, and I’d built up this iron fortress to guard myself against his next drunken tirade.
I began to envision alcoholism as the body of an octopus, with the tentacles representing all the issues that stem from it. Deceit, anger, verbal abuse, deflection, humiliation. These weren’t things we could remotely deal with on our own.
Clearly, there was work to be done on both of our parts. And for once, we both took our parts seriously.
Our counselor reminded me of a younger, hipper Robin Williams (not that Robin Williams isn’t hip). He had a freeing sense of humor that could break the tension and ease us into a comfortable place when things started to get too acrimonious.
A girlfriend had told me about Dr. Anderson, recommending him as a solid Christian counselor. I wasn’t sure how Justin would react to that, as he wasn’t a man of faith, but thank goodness, he liked him too.
It was important to me to get guidance from someone of faith. God was the one I’d turned to all my life whenever trouble struck, even though I was becoming woefully aware of how often I questioned Him myself. I believed in God, certainly. Believing He’d save me from whatever pit I was in was another part of faith altogether. I’d faced Melissa being murdered, P.A. killing himself, my marriage crumbling to pieces, and far too many tragedies among my friends to count. But at the end of the day, God was still my go-to guy.
Justin didn’t grow up that way, though. While he wasn’t someone who frequented church or seemed to follow any religious tenets, he didn’t completely shut the door to the idea of faith and God. He went to church with me a couple of times, and he accepted that faith was a big part of my life—he just didn’t necessarily partake in it himself. And if he had a relationship with God, well, he certainly never shared it with me.
Dr. Anderson gave us tests to evaluate our mental and emotional states. Two certainties came out of those tests. Number one, Justin had real alcohol issues. Number two, I was sinking into depression. Gee, ya think?
We both knew it was going to be hard for Justin to face his demons. According to Dr. Anderson, there were some wars he needed to win, and those would take place on two battlefields.
For one thing, he was going to have to come to terms with his alcohol issues and all the damage alcohol had done to him and to our relationship.
On another field, he had to start playing his life game differently from here on out. That meant a life without alcohol, which would require him to form new habits, make new strategies, and break old patterns. This alcohol-free life had a whole new set of rules to play by. He had to learn to recognize his own capabilities and identify situations that were just too tempting for him. And in those moments when temptation found him, he’d have to find the strength to walk away. I knew that was going to be torture for him.
My assignment, for starters, was to find a way to let go of the past and live in the here and now. I couldn’t erase the abuse that had occurred, but I needed to learn how to dismantle it and put it behind me. I needed to forgive and move on.
I was proud of Justin as I watched him making a true effort. Even though he still came home after I was in bed, he was, indeed, coming home more often than he went out with the crew. He was pouring more of his energy into work, and during his free time he was reading and writing—even talking about writing a fiction book. It was clearly a struggle, but he was trying.
I ached for him, wishing I could do more to help. I saw that he yearned to be free from alcoholism. I clung to the hope that his drive would suit him as well in this battle as it had in professional settings. That ambition, that will to conquer, was one of the things I loved about him. It would be just what he needed to whip this liquid demon into submission.
As for me, I felt the relief of having someone I could finally vent to without fear of judgment. I desperately wanted to stay true to who I really was while at the same time helping Justin and being the person he needed. I was grateful to have Dr. Anderson to help me find that balance.
We both had a long way to go, but we knew what we needed to do to get there. One small step at a time.
The author Beth Moore writes, “God will hold each person accountable. The question is whether we will do our job.”
I not only wanted to do my job, but I also wanted to do it well and fully.
So Justin faced his alcoholism; I faced my resentment. And things got better. In fact, they got really good.
For
about a year.
Chapter 6
Keep the Faith
Have you ever looked back at a situation and realized you should have seen it coming? Something was about to implode, and on some level, you sensed it? In the days or months leading up to the finale, there was a shadow that followed you everywhere—a cloud of sorts that blanketed your soul. And even though you weren’t sure what it was or why it was there, you knew something was happening. Something was changing.
That’s what happened to me.
In the months before my cloud burst into a full-fledged storm, I was happily living in denial. In the nine or ten months since we’d started counseling, Justin and I had seemed to swing past our, well, past. He wasn’t drinking, that I knew of. He wasn’t quite as edgy. I could see him holding his tongue when he wanted to rail. He’d bite his lip or shake his head instead of blowing up. Sometimes he’d sit and listen to me without jumping in to convince me to see something his way.
I even overheard him bragging about me a few times, about the painting I was doing at home. And I noticed how proud he was standing on the sideline when I sang the national anthem at the Diamondbacks games. He was proud of me. He was making time for me. I was flooded by the warmth of that feeling—the memory of what it was like to have value in the eyes of the one you love.
That’s how it was for us for a while. We got our happiness back, our laughter back. We got our trust back—or at least some of it. Enough to sustain us for almost a year.
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