So there is but fire In you, in me?

 Intolerance, it took me three months to get to it. Which quite frankly seems fast. For a 180 degree shift Taking the dive into pure, uncompromising anger, has to be done. Probably best it be done quickly. Probably better if I had been placed in a padded cell with no internet access. Yesterday my son looked down his nose at me as I loaded up the car (in a rage) to dump another boot load of husband's belongings at his parents house, my son feels that I'm being 'passive aggressive'. I said  "You know I have never cut anyone out of my life before. No one, because no one ever openly lied to me, or has repeatedly spoken to me as if I was a dog.."  My husband is lucky I'm not just burning his belongings. I'm not good and I'm not kind, dumping his things is the best I'm capable of right now. As I said it the truth of my words come back to me as waves of power. I have survived this....

I am looking at the twitching milk-vomit spaghetti mess of a smashed up synth and sharing what I know. For me, my husband is best represented by Ash, the android - the synth - in the Alien film. Ash, it looks normal, friendly, sounds intelligent - and it has an agenda revealed in action, not in words. And for almost all of the time, it isn't scary or horrible, or dangerous. The program code that causes it to become malevolent is activated by being in the right place at the right time, and then it is implacable, devoid of reasons you can know - acting on reasons that have nothing to do with your love, life or happiness. No, though the metaphor is perfect. I'm being kind. People who chose to gaslight -  are not synths - my husband always had choice. But it helps me to externalize, to see it as a program, pre-determined behavior because it helps me get past my 'if only he'd known how much he was hurting me he would have stopped ' delusion. That actually is a delusion.

  Incubation. We provided him with a compelling and powerful victim narrative.  The monster grew from that. It started with supportive texts from her. From June 2019 until last Sunday I was struggling with confusion, bewilderment and hope. To put it mildly, a period of time lasting for one year during which the prevailing malevolence of his responses to my sadness just plain didn't make sense to me. I thought I was anxious, and that justified his discomfort... Of course there is so much wrong with that idea...but what was the alternative view. That he actually hated me?  I asked that a lot. He ignored me / snorted in derision / hugged me. He never looked shocked or reassured me. At first I tried to restore my equilibrium through searching for responses from him that would prove to me that all the ugly, cold and deceptive moments I thought I was experiencing, were my mistake.  And all the time he was -  malevolent.  The effect of her intrusion on our lives was his 'personality c