Is it an abusive relationship? I’m not sure. I find myself often wishing that he would just hit me, because then it would be clear to me, and to everyone else, that this is what is happening. But the truth is that I have never been hit, and though sometimes the way he speaks to me makes me want to stab myself with a knife for some reason, I cannot say for sure if it is he or me who has the problem. So I checked Wikipedia.

1. Blames you for his / her anger. (Yes.)
2. Trouble controlling feelings like anger. (yes)
3. Tells you what to wear, what to do or how to act. (no, yes, sometimes)
4. Tires you out and makes you doubt yourself. This usually comes in the form of escalating trivial arguments into full-blown mega-fights which last hours… and hours… and hours. (this is also an effective form of mind control) (yes. yes!)
5. Accuses you of “making up” problems or relationship issues to have something to worry about. (kind of)
6. Says hurtful things, but later swears that he/she didn’t and accuses you of “having memory problems”. (sometimes, no accusations, but does claim not to remember)
7. If you find yourself doing things because “s/he will be angry otherwise,” (yes)

But there were a lot of nos, too. There were a lot of “not exactly,” “sometimes,” and “kind ofs.” So I’m no better off. He could be gaslighting me, or maybe I really am the one who is crazy. I don’t know which way is up anymore.

"Checklist" was written by Anonymous and submitted to ABDPBT: The Bathroom Wall for publication on June 15, 2009. Copyright ®2009 ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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In case you missed what just happened, while you were complaining that there weren’t any clean bottles (my fault, no doubt), after yelling at me for not immediately responding to you about bringing down a bottle for our son, right after telling me to “stop yelling, and to get a grip on [myself],” what happened was, our son saw me through the slats of the stairwell railing, and looked at me, and looked at you. And then he said, in his little man way, “be nice to Momma,” but you wouldn’t have understood it, since you don’t understand him as well as I do, you would have heard, “yar yar yar to Momma,” and nothing more. And after he said it, he climbed up the stairs, my pint-sized hero, in spite of you saying, “Come on!” to him, and gave me a hug. Because he knew what was happening, even at so young an age, he saw the broken shards of my love, and ran to pick them up. And I love him so much for it, even as my heart breaks that he would ever have to see such a thing.

"Darling," was written by Anonymous and submitted to ABDPBT: The Bathroom Wall for publication on June 14, 2009. Copyright ®2009 ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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I am not supposed to say that, I’m thinking. He can be the sweetest and most generous of men. But there are those times, too, that he speaks to me with the kind of disdain that it would be hard to muster up for anyone other than your worst enemy–or perhaps not even that, for the scum on the bottom of the shoe of your worst enemy, perhaps. He speaks to me like I am a child–an annoying child, at that–and he says things that I’ve always suspected about myself but that I had hoped were not true. I am told that my own issues–the perfectionism and the hypercriticism of myself–feed into this tendency, act as a magnifying glass to the insults he says to me, making everything worse than he could possibly ever intend. That could be true. But it doesn’t take away the sting of the insults, or decrease the difficulty I have in facing the argument when it happens, giving up a little bit of my autonomy and will-to-fight each time, until I either give in to whatever it is he wants me to do, or just lie about it and do what I want.

Months ago, we had been talking about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and who we would vote for in the primaries. I had been on the fence. I had things I liked about both candidates. But my husband wanted to vote for Hillary. He wanted everyone to vote for Hillary. And when my husband decides something like this it is very hard to disagree, because it cannot just be, “this is my choice,” it has to be a prolonged discussion, a debate, a justification for choosing one over the other. I’m not sure that I ever would have preferred Obama, but because I felt I wasn’t allowed to choose him, I did. In the confines of the voting booth, when nobody was there to witness it, I punched the hole next to Obama’s name and felt like me again. Just for a second. And then I walked outside and acted as if nothing had happened. And if I never told the truth I never actually lied, either, I just let him believe what he wanted to believe, and tell people what he wanted to tell them, for months afterwards, until I felt like I wanted to tell him. Maybe it was jut to hurt him, I’m not really sure.

"Things aren’t going well here." was written by Anonymous and submitted to ABDPBT: The Bathroom Wall for publication on June 02, 2009. Copyright ®2009 ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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HIM: “Are you too tired to be a part of the family today?”
Me: “. . . I can be a part of the family.”
HIM: “WHAT?!”
HER: “. . . I can be a part of the family,”
HIM: “Is it just that you don’t want to do what we’re doing?”
HER: “I’m tired.”
HIM: “I know there is only a certain amount of me that you can take–”
HER: “What?”
HIM: “But, you know, is this the way you’re going to be?”
HER: “What?”
HIM: “Why don’t you think of something you want to do and then we’ll do that.”
HER: “Why can’t you just come and get me after an hour? I can sleep for like an hour.”
HIM: “We’ll go out and maybe when we come back, if you’re awake–if you’re conscious, then you can participate.”

"Conversation" was written by Anonymous and submitted to ABDPBT: The Bathroom Wall for publication on May 31, 2009. Copyright ®2009 ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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People, we are going to start up a book club in the near future, so I’m setting up some forums for use with this and for other general discussion. You can participate here. Yes, I know the format is a little weird and keeps changing–I’m still working on it! And I don’t really know how to use phpBB, so we will be figuring this out together. At present, anybody can post anything, pretty much. This policy will probably not last, but I am going to use it initially until we figure out a good set of forum rules to guide us. Enjoy!

"Announcing . . . ABDPBT: THE FORUMS!!" was written by Anonymous and submitted to ABDPBT: The Bathroom Wall for publication on April 02, 2009. Copyright ®2009 ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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I have to admit to my own personal bitchy moment (just one?) when I was reading a mommy blog the other day. The gal is picture-perfect, the family look like Barbie & Ken with little Barbie & Ken children, her crafts and “homekeeping” projects are prominently featured, and then on the side of the page I saw she has a picture of a huge Mormon temple with the words “I belong” and I thought: Of course you do!!

What is WITH these women? Seriously? I think it must be kind of like the pressure American-born Asian kids feel to excel in math or science because everyone has that expectation of them. What would happen if a Mormon woman didn’t keep a good house, or had an ugly husband, or didn’t have beautiful glossy flowing hair?

All I know about Mormonism is from watching South Park and Big Love (which yes, I know, I know….is about an offshoot version that isn’t the “real” Mormonism but c’mon, we know there are tons of Mormons out there who DO watch it, and Barb’s sister and mother are Mormon, and the daughter’s friend from the fast food place, and the neighbors etc etc.)

"mormon bloggers" was written by Anonymous and submitted to ABDPBT: The Bathroom Wall for publication on March 28, 2009. Copyright ®2009 ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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I’m posting this here because I wanted to see what people thought. I’m a little ashamed to say I found out about it from Chicken Liver’s site. OK, no I’m not. It’s to do with censoring a post for using the word “damn” (allegedly). Let me know what you guys think about it.

http://mothershandbook.net/2009/03/16/gene-common-sense-chromosome/

"For The Record, This One Is By ME" was written by Anonymous and submitted to ABDPBT: The Bathroom Wall for publication on March 18, 2009. Copyright ®2009 ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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Lately I’ve been really wishing that C Jane and NieNie weren’t Mormons. It kind of gets in the way of my enjoying their blogs, because it makes them seem a little bit crazy. I mean, I think they are great ladies, and I’m glad that Stephanie is home and recovering, but the more they talk about Mormonism, the more I want to flee. It’s so culty and weird, like they worship a giant chocolate bunny or something. That is all.

"Lately I’ve been really wishing" was written by Anonymous and submitted to ABDPBT: The Bathroom Wall for publication on March 17, 2009. Copyright ®2009 ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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So two mommybloggers are making complete asses of themselves, on Twitter and on their blogs. One of them apparently nursed someone else’s baby at a conference (not my cup of tea, for sure, but whatever). The other one apparently saw this and was shocked. So the shocked one wrote a blog post about it, and the nursing one went apeshit and tweeted all day and night, and then wrote her own blog post. And now I have spent over and hour reading the post and comments and tweets, and it’s an hour of my life I cannot get back.

If you care THAT much about someone else’s boobs, you need a hobby. If you care THAT much about what someone else thinks about your boobs, you need one too. This is pathetic. I can only guess that they are secretly in cahoots to drive traffic to BOTH blogs, because, otherwise, who would act like this? This crap didn’t work in junior high, and it sure as hell does not work for grown women.

THIS is why no one takes mommybloggers seriously.

"Boob Controversy" was written by Anonymous and submitted to ABDPBT: The Bathroom Wall for publication on March 10, 2009. Copyright ®2009 ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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I have realized that the part-time person we hired to “help me out” with my job has now made me completely redundant in this office. She’s got a to-do list six miles long, and I’ve got time to post on all the blogs I love. Seriously? I guess what this means is that I’ve got to come up with ways to be “innovative” and “relevant.” Right? Luckily I work in education and the likelihood of losing my job is slim.

"I have realized" was written by Anonymous and submitted to ABDPBT: The Bathroom Wall for publication on March 02, 2009. Copyright ®2009 ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved.

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