After Handsome’s disclosure, it was my turn to present my impact statement a few weeks later. Fun fact: I started drafting it over two years ago so it was 98% done by the time of the disclosure. I tweaked a few things afterwards, but not much.
Due to COVID, while our disclosure was done in-person in our CSAT’s office, my impact statement was presented to Handsome (read out loud by me) in the front seat of a Ford F-250 Super Duty parked in a local park while our CSAT participated by Zoom. It was far from ideal, but we made it work.
Handsome had been pretty agitated the day or two beforehand. I’m sure it was hard to know he was going to be gutted for an hour. I was reasonably calm, except that I was worried that Handsome might spiral emotionally afterwards. I was concerned that he’d fall into hopelessness. At some point I had a choice to either soften my words to be more palatable, or be honest. I chose honesty. I chose to give my feelings and emotions all the space they needed, especially my anger. I so rarely let my rage out, but I did so in my impact statement. I didn’t do it with yelling or cursing or name calling. I let the YEARS I had to draft it work in my favor.
Our CSAT is usually pretty chill, but she was in tears through much of it. Handsome was in tears multiple times as well. I hit a lot of nerves. Hard. I covered the impacts to me emotionally, physically, socially, financially, and the impacts to my job and to our children.
For a good bit of the last three years, my pain has taken a back seat in therapy. We spent a ton of time focused on Handsome, as we needed to, but that left little time for me. All my feelings that went unsaid, all the things I stuffed down just to be able to function, all the words that had bubbled up only to find they had nowhere to go… they all had a voice in my statement. It was 14 single-spaced pages of gut-wrenching truth. My truth, at least.
I wrote about things we have talked about, like how violated I felt that he brought Angel Baby to our home. I wrote about things that were seemingly off-limits before, such as his blatant disregard for my health and the physical safety of our family. I asked rhetorically how gaslit and abused I had to be to not buy myself a single article of clothing for almost three YEARS because of his raging rants about money. I addressed how foolish I feel now that I know where all of his money was going. I described the hurt of the birthdays and Christmases where I bought my own gifts for the kids to give me because he couldn’t be bothered. I told him I had no intention of dragging him kicking and screaming towards a better marriage.
Perhaps the title of this post should have been “The Unburdening” because that is exactly how I felt. If his disclosure was freeing then presenting my impact statement was like taking flight. I took off my heavy cloak of shame and anger so that I could soar.
In the end, it honestly didn’t matter to me how he took it. It didn’t matter whether he heard all the words or whether he agreed or disagreed. I couldn’t control any of that and didn’t care to do so. I felt better. It helped heal me, and a healthier me is a better mom and daughter and friend, and probably a better wife. That matters to me, and by those measures it was a success.
Onward!