The Book-Throwing Incident

Eleven months ago I received a bout of verbal abuse that, for the first time, bordered on physical abuse. It shocked me into writing my experience down soon afterward so that I could try to make sense of it. What follows is what I wrote then, verbatim, with no additions or edits, so some of it may seem a bit repetitive or poorly organized.

We had a big fight this evening that started when she expressed great frustration with me, asking my why I wouldn’t engage with her about vacation plans. Since she had asked me the “why” question, I took a risk I knew was dangerous, and tried to explain why. I said: “I don’t feel that I have autonomy in this relationship”, and: “I don’t feel that you take my ideas seriously”. (I realize that these were thoughts, not feelings.)

I never got around to really explaining why I felt this way, because what I had said provoked extreme outrage: How could I think this of her? It was insulting! All her friends knew her as somebody who paid attention to their thoughts and needs. She proceded to give me numerous examples of how she’d let me have my way, to prove that I had no basis for my feeling powerless. In short, my attempt to explain myself was almost instantly shut down and turned around so that I was now the bad guy, the offender.

The conversation went downhill from there, because I kept resisting her recasting of my motives and feelings, and because I didn’t apologize with heartfelt remorse. She declared that I was 100% wrong, started yelling (she said it wasn’t yelling, just raising her voice), threw a few curse words at me to make her point, told me that what I said was bullshit, that I was “fucking lousy listener”. The climax came when she tore my paperback books and some of my art books off their shelves, pulled my piano music off the piano, threw them all on the floor, and kicked them around. I kept protesting as politely as possible, “Please don’t do that, please don’t use violence.” That made things even worse: she stalked up to me, shook her fists a few inches from my face, and said, “You wanna see violence?” She didn’t hit me, but the threat was clear.

I made the mistake at one point at saying her violent behavior was childish, which resulted in accusations that I was name-calling. I suppose that is true to some extent. I have always been careful never to say “You’re something”, but apparently that is not good enough. I learned from this that I should never say things like that, should never complain directly about her actions, and I have been careful about that ever since.

Later she said she would never hit me, but I am not sure. She has often told me the story about how she nearly killed her abusive mother by knocking her to floor and starting to hit her, then realized what she was doing and stopped. I’m worried that the next Emotional Apocalypse (Robin Stern’s term) will look like that.

At some point during this hours-long fight, she said that she would smash my piano if I dared to leave again (I had tried to leave back in December 2016, but came back that same evening after she threatened to kill herself). This is another clear threat of physical violence, but she seems to think it would be justified.

Later she ordered me to sleep upstairs, but our guest bed is covered with yarn spools, so I had to clear them off. After I’d done that I lay down in exhaustion; it was 11 PM and I didn’t have the energy for more fighting. This provoked more insults: “Is that the best you can do?”, etc. She turned on the stereo so loudly the floor shook, preventing me from sleeping. There was more arguing that I can’t remember clearly. Eventually I came back to our shared bed after being satisfactorily apologetic and remorseful.

This incident was so shocking that I walked around in a kind of fearful daze for a couple of weeks afterwards. Even now, a month later, I’m still feeling very cautious.

A few days later, we talked about this. She never apologized for throwing the books and threatening me. I said I had been frightened by her behavior, and she dismissed that fear, saying I had no reason to be concerned for my physical safety, that she would never hit me, that I cared more about the books than I did about her. She blamed me for what happened by saying that if I didn’t push her, she wouldn’t throw books. Apparently “push her” means “not buy into her mistaken view of my motives”.

Here’s what I wrote to my distant friend T. about this the day after it happened:

It got worse last night. She got so angry with me for being a “terrible fucking listener” that she started pulling books from my bookshelves in the piano room and throwing them on the floor and kicking them. She also did this to the music books I had on the piano and some of my fine art photography books. When I protested, she said something like, “This is what I have to do to get your attention”, and, “You care more about your books than you do about me.” When I said she didn’t need to violent to get my attention, she stood over me, shaking her fists at my face, saying, “You wanna see violent?”

I recognize that she’s acting like her mother did to her, and I said so, and that got me another dose of anger.

She then told how unhappy she was that I was hogging all the bookshelves in the piano room.

I also talked about how I was thinking of seeing a counselor, and I got the expected disdain and criticism for that (“You only think about your own needs”, and “more money spent”, and “more scheduling interfering with our plans”).

She also turned up the stereo so loud I could barely hear her, and said, “This is what it looks like when I don’t take your feelings into account”. This was a response to something I said early on that caused so much outrage: that I didn’t feel that she took my ideas seriously.

When I took my pillow and said I was going to sleep in the old house because of the noise, she accused me of running away and avoiding talking. I tried to explain that I didn’t want to talk if we were just going in circles and yelling (she did pretty much all of the yelling but denied it, saying “I’m just raising my voice”).

So I sucked it up and slept in our shared bed last night, to prove that I wasn’t running away. I got maybe five hours of sleep. When I woke up around 4 AM, I packed up the paperbacks that she had thrown on the floor, plus the few remaining paperbacks, then went out to do my morning garden chore, which is to water the eggplants, peppers, and melons in the two greenhouses. This takes almost an hour. When I got back she said that she saw my packed books and that this was the first step towards my leaving. There is probably some truth to, but mostly I did it to protect the books from further damage, and to free up the shelves so that she could use them. I gave her this last reason but she dismissed it, saying, that she felt I was guarding those shelves, that I kept putting her books on the shelves next to her desk, that these were supposed to be shared shelves, etc.

I really don’t feel safe any more. I thought she was going to take a hammer to the piano last night, something she threatened to do a few days ago, “If you ever walk out again without talking.” (This was a reference to that horrible day in December 2016 when I had called from the library saying I wasn’t coming home that night.)