The following is a partial excerpt from a PTSD (post -traumatic stress disorder) checklist that I found online.

The reason I put this here is for you to understand why I go back and forth between the present and the past.

Boruch Hashem for the most part I manage very well to stay grounded and in the present. Sometimes however, I can get triggered by an event, or something that someone says, or even a smell or a picture. This “trigger” can push me back into the past and cause the following symptoms.

PTSD symptoms

B. The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in one (or more) of the following ways:

(1) Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including images, thoughts, or perceptions. 

(2) Recurrent distressing dreams of the event.

(3) Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, including those that occur on awakening or when intoxicated). Note: In young children, trauma-specific reenactment may occur.

(4) Intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event (triggers)

(5) Physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.

I hope it is not confusing to the readers when I vacillate between my current marriage and my previous marriage. In order to make things more clear, I will write at the top of each page which marriage I am referring to.  I will use the letter  M, which refers to my first husband.

First marriage to M

Why did I marry him?

It is the question many people ask me. I often wonder myself why- especially since I knew as I stood under the Chuppa, that  I eventually divorce him.

I was 19 years old and just out of seminary. I had my whole life ahead of me, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do with that life.

My parents did not engage in trying to find me a shidduch, which was what all my friends were doing.   I was not allowed to go to college, so the next best thing was to find a job.

I had an easy time finding jobs because I was a diligent worker and I wanted to please. The jobs I found however were very boring and I didn’t stay very long at each job. I had no degree and no skills, so I took whatever I could get.

One of the jobs I had was in a gift shop. I was assigned to package gifts in different attractive ways. I am creative and I loved the job. But one day the boss (an older guy) came over to me while I was working. He stood close behind me- too close- and started touching me. I quit as soon as I realized what he was doing.

I had a lot of free time on my hands, so I enrolled in a self- defense class.  The instructor was a young guy who claimed to be frum- even though he didn’t always dress so frum.

He picked me out almost immediately. Predators know their victims and it didn’t take long for him to recognize his victim. He had startling blue eyes and he was muscular and charismatic. The other girls in the class were crazy about him. But he chose me and I felt special. He began by asking me to stay after class so that we could practice a move that he thought I needed some help with. I was glad of the attention and I willingly obliged.  Slowly we began to spend more and more time together. We talked for hours about his life. He was an amazing story teller, and his imagination and his stories were often riveting, (I found out much later that everything he told me was lies).

I told no one that I was spending so much time with M. I knew it was wrong, and I knew that my parents would be angry and disappointed. Even though I was aware that what I was doing was not what regular Bais Yaakov girls do, I couldn’t stop.  I had finally found someone who liked and cared about me. He told me I was pretty and that I had beautiful eyes. He said I was special and that he had never been with such an amazing girl before. I lapped up his words with a terrible thirst and a mindless need for someone to give me the attention he was offering. If someone had held a gun to my head I could not have stopped seeing him.

 By this time my parents knew that I was hanging out with this guy. They half-heartedly tried to dissuade me from seeing him, but just as with everything else they didn’t really care that much as long as I wasn’t bothering them.

One day, M and I went for a walk. It was late evening and the sun was low in the sky. The air was warm and I felt happier than I could remember feeling in a long time. We walked along a path where flowers grew on either side, and I remember inhaling the sweet smell of roses. Soon we came to a half built house. He smiled at me and said “Lets go and see what this house is like inside”. I followed behind him, and we stepped inside the dark interior of the construction. He kept on going until we had reached a large room with an opening for a window. I couldn’t see very much, but I trusted him and I followed blindly. All of a sudden he turned towards me and roughly pushed me up against the wall. I had no time to ask him what he was doing, because in one swift motion he had lifted up my skirt and pulled down my underwear. I was shocked into silence. I tried to scream but no sound came forth. The wall behind my back felt hard as he pushed against me. I looked at him and I felt as though I was seeing him through a screen or window. Everything felt far away, as though it were happening to some other girl, in some other place.

After he had finished he motioned for me to follow him. I quickly adjusted my clothing and we walked out into the cool night air.

We walked home in silence. I tried to gather my thoughts. I knew something terrible had just happened to me, but I did not know what it was. I felt as though my soul had been smashed into a thousand pieces, and that I would never be able to recover the pieces of my being.

Head down, I trudged home. Shame, guilt and fear enveloped my being and I felt as though I had stopped breathing. I walked into my house and went straight into my room. I took a shower and tried to scrub his hands off my skin. Afterwards I went into bed where I stayed for two days. I wished for peaceful death. I lay in bed paralyzed unable to think or move. My parents went on about their business and did not even bother to check if I was still breathing. One of my sisters brought me occasional glasses of water, which most likely saved my life.

Two days later I slowly came back to life. I got up from my bed and began to eat. I went through the motions of life, but my mind was in a different place. I walked through the days feeling his hands on my body. No amount of baths or showers could get rid of those hands.

I was 19 years old, and I felt as though I was 100.

I tried to get out of bed, and the room seemed to spin around me. I felt as though the ceiling was coming towards me, and my head felt as though it were made out of a block of cement.
I was scared, I didnt know what was wrong with me. Only yesterday I had been perfectly strong and healthy, and now I was  completely incapacitated. Somehow I got the kids off to school and I was left just with the baby. My husband realized that I couldnt be left alone, so he stayed home from his job, and made me a doctors appointment.

I spent six months traipsing from doctor to doctor. I had my heart checked, and my ears. I went for eye tests, blood tests and MRI's on my brain. Every single test came out negative. 

Every doctor I went to pronounced me perfectly  healthy. It was astounding! I could not walk without assistance, sounds had become intolerable- I could no longer multi-task, it seemed as though my brain was in slow motion. I felt as though I was watching the world through a filter, or a video screen. My head felt so heavy I could barely hold it up to walk. My life as I knew it, slowly ground to a halt.

After 6 months of searching for answers, I almost wished I had a brain tumor just so that I would know what was wrong with me. Fear of the unknown was too much for me to bear. I lived in fear that I was going to drop dead at any moment. 

The last doctor we visited was a neurologist in a well known city hospital. 
He took one look at me, checked the MRI of my brain and told me to find a therapist.

My husband and I almost laughed out loud. A therapist? We didnt even know what therapy was. I did know that the idea was ludicrous. I had some life threatening illness and this dr tells me to go to therapy!!

In the end I had nothing to lose. I wasnt getting better, and there were no more tests to be had. I found a therapist and went for my first appointment. When she asked me what I needed from her, I told her that my neurologist had sent me to her, but I had no idea why.

I began therapy and with the therapy my nightmares began.
Within two months of sessions I began to feel suicidal. I recall the day when I became aware that my mother was less than adequate and that my childhood was not what I had thought it was.

The shock of awareness caused me to become extremely depressed and anxious. 
I was beginning to become aware of the tragedy and enormity of my childhood, and the knowledge was too overwhelming. 

As I progressed in therapy, my physical symptoms began to diminish. 
I became more functional physically, but emotionally I was a wreck.

I was married for the first time when I was 19, to a man who physically, sexually and emotionally tortured me. I have written an account of some of the things that he did. Boruch Hashem I was able to escape after only 18 months of marriage. I was one of the lucky ones because I am alive to tell the tale. Many women who  are in domestic violence situations cannot get out, and sometimes they are killed. We hear these kinds of stories in the media, but I can assure you they are true in frum homes too.

I yearned to have children whom I could nurture and love, and so after I got divorced I actively engaged in trying to find my second husband. I made a conscious decision to move forward and not look back at what had happened. I did not want to dwell on the horror I had experienced, I wanted to start anew and begin my life once again.

I was young and optimistic, and it did not take me long to become engaged to my current soon to be ex-husband.

In retrospect and after many years of therapy I realize that I was an easy target for an abusive personality. I was lacking in the most basic of self-awareness,  and I was a people pleaser. I could not say “no” to anyone and I lived my life for others.

We were a “perfect” Shidduch. He was an aggressive man, who believed that the world “owed” him. He also believed that he was perfect and he blamed the world for his problems. Nothing was ever his fault, and nothing was good enough for him.

I played right into his beliefs and he fed off my lack of awareness and low self-esteem for 20 years.

I had just come out of a dangerously abusive marriage, to the point where I was lucky to be alive. In my mind, if my husband yelled or called me names, or threw objects at me, it wasn’t so bad. I mean having an angry husband doesn’t come close to being threatened with a gun. It took me many years to understand that I did not deserve to live in this manner. I did not know then that I was a good person who deserved to be treated with dignity and respect.

From the beginning his attitude towards me was; “I am the master, and you are my slave- you had better listen to me otherwise your life won’t be worth living”

I accepted my role and I tried hard to please him. However I was never good enough. My skirt was either too long, or too short. My clothes were the wrong color, my shoes were too trendy, or too frumpy. The books I read were wrong/bad/disgusting. (Lots of memoirs and stories of abuse- which I realized later I was trying to identify with the lives of others) The music I listened to was not fit for a Bas Yisroel. (MBD, Avraham Freid….) I wasn’t allowed to go to the library, and I wasn’t allowed to have internet access.

Slowly but surely he isolated me from my friends and family. After a few years I had become a recluse baby machine. I was having one child after another, working full time (from my home) and taking care of the house kids and husband. I accomplished all of this, while he complained and criticized almost everything I did. He did not like me to leave the house, and so I became more and more isolated.

I had no sense of self, and I did not know how to take care of myself. I didn’t eat much, because I was never hungry. I took care of my children, nurtured them both physically and emotionally, but I had no clue how to take care of myself.

One day about 6 weeks after I had given birth, I woke up and I could not get out of bed. I tried to stand, but the room swam in circles. I pushed myself and crawled on the floor to the bathroom, but I could not walk. My baby was crying, the older children needed to get to school, and there I was completely incapacitated.

To be continued:

Child support.

One of the dreaded actions in divorce cases.

At least for myself this money has become dreaded.

 I was not expecting it to be easy.

 I was definitely not expecting to be handed the money on a silver platter.

I was however  expecting a little respect and dignity.

Apparently he does not care about the smaller aspects of human communication.

So this week he failed to give me the small amount of money he is required to pay by law. I am unfortunately at this time completely dependent on this money. I use it to buy food and pay some bills. It is used for all those little extra things that my kids “remember” to tell me about 5 minutes before the school bus arrives in the morning.  A Siyum , or some arts and crafts that the class is doing and costs 5 or ten dollars. And sometimes a child just wants a few dollars in his pocket to buy himself a drink.

I am in the midst of trying to put the pieces of my life back together. Not only financially, but emotionally too. Two decades of abuse is difficult to overcome- I am not complaining, it happened and it made me the person I am today. I am sure that someday soon I will be earning my own money and I will not have to rely on him utterly and completely.

He did not treat me in a way that I deserved to be treated. He humiliated me and caused me to shed bitter tears. Why then do I expect him to treat me with respect now? Now when he is so angry that I am moving on and away?

Perhaps this is my survival instinct perking up.

Somehow throughout my trials and tribulations I always managed to muster up some hope and faith in the human condition.

I am doing it now, in believing that perhaps he will become a mensh, and maybe just maybe he will understand that I need his money to take care of his children.

And maybe one day he will give it to me on the right day at the appointed time with dignity and respect.

One of my daughters is despised by my husband and his entire family.

It is curious, due to the fact that this child happens to be a person of great personality. She is smart, happy, outgoing, very pretty, caring and extremely talented in many areas. I do not know one person who dislikes her, with the exclusion of “them” that is.

She was the child, who when I went to PTA the teachers would say: “if all the girls in the class were like your daughter, I wouldn’t have a job!” She wasn’t the teacher’s pet sort of student- she was just a pleasure to have in a classroom. She was studious, curious, always wanting to please. She didn’t have to study very hard to get top grades, but she studied anyway because she enjoyed it.

Her bubbly personality and her ability to draw people to her caused great jealousy on the part of my husband. From the beginning he used her as a scape goat. She could do no right in his eyes. It did not matter if she was the most talented sweet child, in his eyes she deserved to be punished and humiliated.

She was the one who was sent to her room for something that she was not responsible for. My heart aches when I think of the tears she shed and the hurt feelings she suffered. He picked on her continuously, berating her for anything and everything.

Her hair was too long, and then it was too short- after that it was too curly, so when she straightened it, he said it was no longer Tznius. Her laugh was too loud, and her eyes too accusatory (she knew the truth), her skirt was too short and then it was too long. Her friends were not frum enough and she liked them too much. She used HIS phone to talk for too long (this was before cell phones) and when she stopped calling her friends, the books she read did not meet his religious standards. (Box Car Children and Nancy Drew- because the pictures were not Tznius)

I cry now when I think of his systematic abuse of our child, and my inability to protect her. I have only found out recently from my siblings, that my husband used to call them and complain bitterly about the terrible wife and daughter he has, and how this child is ruining our marriage. They believed him, and I never said a word in our defense. I did not know I could defend myself, I did not know I was allowed.

Now that I am nearly divorced, my husband’s Rosh Yeshivah brother need not hold back his seething anger towards myself and my daughter. He never liked me; we did not have even one conversation in 20 years, and that includes the time of  my making a shidduch for one of his children!

I should not feel surprised at how quickly and easily his venomous words spew forth. They have been bottled up for 19 years (or maybe only for the public) and now he can legitimately publicize and demonize his wicked sister and law and her daughter.

It amazes and sickens me all at the same time.

Yet it also brings home the reality of the Jews at the time of Rabbi Akivah, when the sin of “Sinas Chinom” was rampant.

Hating a person for no valid reason is a terrible thing to do.

I am realizing though, that whoever you are, Rosh Yeahivah or not, you can still cave in and live your life hating people for no reason.