Machete fights, cockfights and marital discord

There are so many levels of knowledge.

I only know about machete fighting because it was in a Film Movement flick I watched today.  Sure, I know what a machete is, although not in my personal life.  Nearly three decades of animal rescue work has informed me of how people use animals for fighting, cocks, dogs, pigs and who knows what the hell else.  Animal fighting is another thing that I have seen only on film, professionally.  Again, but not in my personal, life experience.  Both of those were in that movie today, totally informative and in context, but still disturbing. 

I hate, really hate any kind of violence.  I, like many people, had a chaotic and horrible childhood.  I, like many people, survived and have gone on to have a decent life, although I cannot say that that is true for all of my siblings.  I believe that my distaste for any kind of loud or messy disagreements is a result of what I experienced as a little girl.  You too, huh?  So, looking back over my life, there have been very few times when I shouted or yelled or loudly bothered another person.  Well, except for my own child, and in my defense, not having roll-models for what an effective and loving parent is like does not prepare you for the struggles you may face with your own flesh-and-blood, no matter how many hundreds of parenting and psychology books you have read or how many parenting classes you have taken.  I thought that all of those books would have given me the tools to be the greatest, most wonderful mom in the world.  I was wrong.  I was, still am, a great mom, but conflict was one thing for which I was woefully and inadequately prepared.  So, there was some yelling going on in that arena, but I am separating that.  Yes, I am.

I never fought with my friends or classmates or co-workers.  Not only did I roll over and just take it, I was often the peacemaker for other people's disagreements and conflicts.  I was always much happier to be walked over, pounded into the pavement and left to dry up, than I was to even stand up for myself.  I am better about that now, have been for many years, but I still will do anything to avoid conflict of any kind.  Except for that one exception, the exception that proves the rule, or however that saying goes.

When I got married I was still a doormat.  God, how painful it is to write that.  Doormat.  But, that is what I was at work and in my family and, well, everywhere.  So, it figures that I would have been fully invested in my doormathood when I chose a spouse.  Another thing I hate is going over all those years and all that crap, so I will only say that I married for love.  I believed that I had found someone who loved me for who and what I was.  I believed that I had chosen well and that I might not live happily every after, but I would live in love and loving support of that wonderful man and that he would return the same to me.  I believed that my marriage was forever and that whatever happened, we would work together, as a team, a real team, to make our lives happy and, well, all that stuff that you believe about finding the right person and then marrying him.   There were no shining knights or white horses, but I was not interested in perfection, just an ordinary man who would love this ordinary woman.  Well, I was wrong about that, too.

He groomed me, testing to see how far he could go and I never, ever, ever saw any of it.  I always thought that I was just not experienced in the right way of doing things or talking or any of that stuff and those issues that married people have in their lives.  I remember trying to talk things out, have conversations about problems and they always ended with my understanding of how far from right I was.  I never saw it as a problem, it was just about how I could learn and improve and maybe find a way to be a good wife.  I finally gave up and simply tried to stay out of trouble as much as possible.  I was not very successful at that because the rules seemed to be changing all the time and I could never keep up. 

They still do that, the rules, and it is only more than forty-two years later, and more than two-thirds of my life, that I can see that I never stood a chance.  Maybe in the early years, if I had known, if I had been paying attention, if I had the kind of life experiences that taught me what decent treatment was like, then I might have made a break for it.  But, I did not and I am glad because we did have a wonderful daughter and that makes up for a lot.  It really does. 

Still, I wonder what kind of a life I might have had if I had met and married a nice person, someone who was not carrying such an unhappy burden.  I wonder what it would be like to really have someone who could love me in spite of my shortcomings.  Maybe in my next life I will have earned the right to have such a person in my life.  As for this life, it is too late now for me to find anyone.  I am stuck here, glued to this geography by finances and inertia, and my fears that he might be in the early stages of some kind of mental decline.  I spent nearly two weeks living elsewhere, helping a friend whilst she was out of town.  There, it was wonderful and I thought that if I found a way to manage the whole money thing that living somewhere else could work out just fine.  And dandy.  Then, I came back here on Monday and I never had a chance to say hello or 'hey' or anything else because when I saw him he looked at me with such hatred or something that I was struck speechless.  There have been longer periods than these past five days in which silence was the third member in this relationship, although there seems to be a different quality to it this time.

I am happy to have never experienced a fight with weapons of any kind, not even a nail clipper or spork.  I am thrilled to have never witnessed a fight initiated by cruel and insane humans where innocent animals have been forced to fight to the death.  I cannot complain, two out of three is not so bad.