Negative People

For most of my life I've been surrounded by negative people. Growing up, it was my mother. If I said, "Mom, I want to be a nurse!" She'd say, "You'll never make it, you hate the sight of blood. You hate needles." If I said, "Mom, I want to be a teacher!" She'd say, "Why? You hate school." (Doesn't every kid say that they hate school at some point though? lol) When I said, "Mom, I want to go to college and get a degree." She said, "What for? You hated school, couldn't wait to get out, now you want to go back. And what do you need a degree for? It's a useless, pointless piece of paper."

When I was engaged back then, she thought she was going to live with me and my fiancee AFTER we got married. When we sat her down and told her that wasn't a possibility, she went on and on how we were putting her out in the street. That I owed it to her to support her now since she did it for me till I was 16!

That guy I was engaged to, well that didn't work out after all. He wanted to control me. Then one day, he tried to hit me. That was the day I realized he wasn't the guy for me. I'd already been in one physically abuse relationship, I wasn't about to let myself be in another.

Not long after that, I met a new guy. He promised me the moon or close to it. That we'd do everything together, share everything...cooking, cleaning, etc. After a short courtship (8-9 months), I married him. We had to kids together. Shortly after we'd married, all those wonderful promises flew out the window. And the result were things like, "What do you mean you don't know how to operate a washing machine?" (I used to go to a coin laudromat, didn't know how to use one in a house, never had one as a kid.) "What do you mean you don't know how to cook rice? Don't ever make Minute Rice again, it's crap." (I grew up on Minute Rice, tasted fine to me.)

As the years, went on things shifted to "You should have cooked it this way." "This has no taste." "Why didn't you marinate it over night?" (I'm a pretty decent cook TYVM.) "You didn't clean this the right way." "You know how I like things, why can't you just do things the way I like them?" "What do you mean there's not enough money to pay this or that? What did YOU do with it?" (I don't spend needlessly, juggling funds to make ends meet is a BITCH!) "The reason you can't find a job is because you don't have a degree." "Working at *insert burger joint here* and being a 'burger flipper' is for people without an education." (He didn't seem to mind when I was a manger at one of these places and made over $400 a week) "You shouldn't write that kind of story, nobody wants to read that. You should do this instead." "You should do this type of work, not that." "Nobody will be your customer, you won't be successful because of how you look."

It goes on and on. 20 years of negativity from a man who claims to love me. I've been separated from him for almost 2 years now, but the negativity doesn't stop. I've been told, it's actually emotional or mental abuse. My opinion of myself, my self esteem, is really, really low these days. I feel worthless, I feel like I'm not good enough. I'm trying to get out of the relationship completely. But he tells me if I leave, I can't take the kids. If I try to take them, he'll have me arrested for kidnapping. That he only says these things to me to make me a better person.

How do you break the cycle? How do you get the negative people out of your life? How do you start over when this is all you know? How does one learn to live again and that they are worth something?

I have a hard time accepting and believing it when my Knight tells me I'm worth something, that I am important, that I can write and that I'm good at it. (I still have not found my Muse, she's still eluding me. So my story(ies) aren't getting anywhere.) I have a hard time believing him when he tells me I'm beautiful, smart, funny or any compliment for that matter.

Sorry for the EXTENDED wall of text. This is unusually long for me. But, I needed to vent.