Hi Everyone! Wow!! A lot to get through here. I love the responses
!
We have had to move houses (we are petsitting in Indonesia) so I fell off for a bit. I will have to sift through this and absorb some of these responses.
Things are going much better–– at the moment. Yes, he has changed dramatically. I wrote to you here when he had an explosion that was reminiscent of the past. He has not done that in, well, about a year and a half. During the 2 to 3 years prior to that (3 1/2 to 4 1/2 years), they would come only a few times a year, or maybe a couple.
We have a very complicated story. It would almost seem unbelievable. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. I am nervous to tell it here. I always get lost and end up telling too much. I don’t know why, but I am going to tell it. It brings up horrible memories and I am trying to look forward, not back.
In the beginning period of our 20 or so relationship starting in 1998, he was mostly and angel. But I did see clues and also there were a few extreme and terrifying outbursts. There was also a lot of manipulation. But in between, and for the most part, he was completely smitten by me and was very adoring.
I ended up volunteering in Rwanda, Africa. This was 2003. I was offered work and was there for a while without him and I was not sure I wanted him to come. The worst had not come yet and we were getting along great. I made him promise to never call me the c*** word again and if he did, he would have to leave the country. Obviously, that didn't happen. I've been called that name hundreds of times, but not in a very very long time. I don't recall him raging for the first year or two there.
We started an advertising agency together a couple of years later. That's when he got bad. He got extra bad when we also opened a bar a couple of years after that.
Why I didn't leave is because I became very ill and did not know it until years later in hindsight. I was not able to leave the house for about a year and a half. I was so confused, I would forget why I was crossing the room over and over again. Also, his abuse affected me so much that I started to believe it all. I had reached out to my siblings and one said I could sleep on their couch.
I got some help from a natural doctor in the US and got well enough to get a clearer head. But I was still so frazzled and terrified to make a move. My confidence was at ground zero. So I propositioned him to either leave with me to the island of Zanzibar, so we could think things through, or that I would go live with my brother – which I did not want to do. That would have been another strange hell.
I thought that the job and the bar is what made him into a constant raging egomaniacal abuser. And I was not ready to be on my own.
So in 2010, we moved to Zanzibar. He woke up to what he did and felt extreme remorse. He did not rage on me at all like he did in Rwanda. But then, everything fell apart.
The island was in a complete 3 month blackout. All of our equipment broke. We lost a big contract. We were forced to start a local business to get by, but the clients paid so little. The internet and electricity was so bad that we could not take on international clients. Also, I was still ill and did not know it. Slowly, by slowly, over the next 5 years or so, we became completely and utterly poor and trapped. Eventually, the rages started again..but never anything near what they were before.
Also, I lost so much weight and became very disoriented from my illness. I dropped to a size 0 and I am 5’9”. I had uterine fibroids and heavy flooding for years and did not realize I was anemic this whole time. Even in Rwanda.
I had to increasingly spend more and more time in the house because I could not go anywhere due to extreme bleeding. And, when I was not bleeding, we had no money to go out. Going out was always disorienting after so much seclusion, so I lost touch with most friends. I would explain, but no one realized or believed how bad it was. No one believed my excuse about bleeding.
Eventually, I got a contract for a decent job. What I thought at the time was a decent job designing a slavery museum funded by the UN. He raged on me one last time and I snuck out in the middle of the night.
I stayed with someone who helped me. My relationship was the gossip of the island. Everyone thought I was the crazy one. I was a bit crazy at the time. He is such a charmer and can really control himself in public. I cannot hide how I feel. I became very bitter over the years and could not hide it. So many people thought I was the problem.
The job was delayed for months. I was almost completely out of money. During that time, I felt extra unwell and went to a doctor. She did an anemia test and I was down to a 5.6 hemoglobin level. She told me I needed emergency surgery, but I did not have the money. She also told me that I needed a blood transfusion but she did not trust the blood there.
The job was supposed to give me an advance that might take care of the surgery, but they changed the terms last minute. So I worked fervently to try and finish it. I kept swallowing as much meat as I could each month only to have my levels plummet again the next. Flooding became haemorrhaging. I cannot describe the amount, but it was horrific and terrifying.
I could hardly lift my arms up. My heart would pound out of my chest after walking only a block. There were times I was worried I might suffocate from lack of oxygen.
I was worried to ask my father for help because he was so ill. My mother had a severe stroke. I emailed my sister for help and she never replied. She also never followed up in Rwanda when I reached out for help.
After about 9 months of it, I felt defeated. I was absolutely certain that I would die alone in my bed. It was during this time that I started listening to Ekhart Tolle audios every night. I Then, after 1 year, during an even worse period, I went in for a haemoglobin test and they told me to rush to get a emergency blood transfusion. The doctor would not let me leave the hospital. I spent 3 days there and afterwards, had more energy and clarity than I had in 10 years. I finally realized why I had been sick for so long. But, that only lasted a few days because I dropped again to low levels.
My husband and I had been separated but he came to the hospital to take care of me. After that, I was afraid to live alone because I thought I might die without someone to watch me. I also worried that I could not finish my project without help. I said we are not together, and he agreed. But I knew he would try to get me back.
I remember one night, during a full moon meditation, I was floating in the Indian Ocean for about a half hour far away from the coast off a wharf just after a magical sunset. I said to the universe, ‘Give it to me. I can take it. Just give it to me all at once so I can get to the other side.‘ And so it did.
After that, we lost our place and had to sleep at peoples homes while away or in cheap hotels (all the while working 10 to 18 hour days and getting transfusions) We got hit by a 2 ton truck at full speed and pushed 60 meters.
The contract that was supposed to last a year took 2 ½ years. They greatly underestimated the amount of work and refused to pay me much more. We lived like that for another year until it was finished.
After a year, I finally had had it and directly asked my father for help. I was so stubborn. And worried the stress would kill him. (He died 2 months after my surgery).
After the project was complete, and after the surgery, I just collapsed. I was beyond burnt out and was still trapped in Zanzibar. I had serious PTSD and probably stage 4 adrenal fatigue. I kept getting weird injuries that would not heal. I still was separated in my mind from my husband and we had not slept in the same bed for years. He was bringing in barely enough to get by and pay rent in a shitty, rat infested apartment next to a disco and chained up barking dogs and black mold and so much more. We had to sign for food sometimes from shop owners.
After about a year, I realized that nothing would change if I didn’t raise my vibration to attract something better. But it was so hard in that environment. I realized that the house was my challenge. If I can raise my vibration here, I can raise it anywhere.
I started to listen to Abraham Hicks. I started to feel better. I started to feel like I used to when in a meditative high for bits and pieces. It felt like the Tsunami that I launched during that meditation a couple of years back had started to die down. There was no longer one emergency after another.
And I started holding that high vibration. My reaction to Dan raging at this time (only 3 times in that house) was completely non-reactionary. I watched him diffuse right in front of me. Not completely, but substantially. I started to see him with empathy. I saw pain instead of rage.
Esther Hicks was responsible for all of this. It seemed like the lessons I needed to learn were finding me. I randomly listened all day to her and started feeling sustained pure bliss. My health improved. And after 3 months, my father’s inheritance came in. It was just enough to escape the island. That was just about 1 year ago. Man, it seems like a life time.
I decided we should pet sit and that we should start with India…partially to slowly deal with reverse culture shock (India would be far less shocking for us than a Western country – Dan had left Africa 1 time in 15+ years, and me only 3 times). And also, India would be cheaper to live.
Dan has completely changed in this time. He is a completely different person. That is why I was so shocked by that episode. After only 1 year, I do not have complete faith in him.
I kept getting injuries from non-activity, but that is now subsiding. The PTSD is going away and my focus is getting better and better. After 4 months in Thailand, we have landed in the most beautiful, tranquil place I have ever been, in Ubud, Indonesia.
I have been working on a proposal for a big job with an activist organization that lets you work remotely and am almost done.
That episode with Dan threw me off so badly, but it also seemed to help him see himself. He has very bad recollection of what he did way back when because he was drunk so often (and drunk with power). He has become incredibly humble since then because of all we went through for such a long period of time.
Since we started this post, he has already transformed so far forward. And so have I. This is what I can’t explain about this relationship. We are just catapulting in growth, but always through arguing and upheaval. I can’t describe the speed of the quantum leaping happening here.
Suddenly, we found this fantastic house for less than $200 in the last week and everything feels-just-different. Calm even. Like the storm is over. Like home more than anywhere ever has.
That Venus retrograde in Scorpio seemed especially harsh on us, and I wonder if it is not coincidence that the calm came just after it moved to Libra.
I sometimes wonder if we went through all of that in order to dissolve our egos. And that perhaps we are throwing in the towel, just when we are nearing the finish line.
I have decided to stop trying to decide. Nothing can be done until I get a job anyway and finally, I am ready to work.
If he flips again on me, I am fairly certain that I will decide to leave. We are spending about a month apart next month while he does a petsit and I may have some epiphanies then.
I am sorry for the very long story. I just don’t know how to make it short.
Now time to scour over your wonderful astrological feedback. Thank you all so, so much!