Oh, Mel.

Hearing the Mel Gibson tapes makes my heart race and makes me sick to my stomach. Throws me back several years and brings tears to my eyes.

People are apparently skeptical of those tapes.
“That’s not him”
“They’ve been doctored”
“Why is she so calm? He should be suspicious because her voice is so calm”
“Did she say that just to piss him off?”

That IS him.
No doctoring was necessary.
There could be many reasons she sounds so calm, but from experience, here’s my guess:

She’s tired. She’s fucking exhausted. She’s been beat the fuck down over and over again. Mentally, verbally, emotionally and physically. She knows there’s no point in yelling because he won’t hear her words. He will be happy to have caused her to lose her cool, but doesn’t give a shit whats actually coming out of her mouth. She can maintain this cool until he hits a very raw nerve, probably about her child(ren). She’s genuinely scared. And believe it or not, the physical abuse (excluding the time he hit her while she was holding her child) is way easier to handle. You can doctor those wounds. At least it makes some sort of sense; a reason for the pain and the tears that follow.

She said that because it’s the truth. Because even if it pisses him off, she’s still hoping that at some point he will hear her and get the right help. Not for her and him, but for the baby. She said it because now she’s fed up. She said it because he keeps trying to turn it around and call her the crazy one.

I’ve talked to the devil. In person. On the phone. I’ve looked that fucker in the eyes. And there is nothing on this Earth scarier than someone you thought you knew looking and sounding like a completely different person. Everything about them seemingly changing right before your very eyes.

Let me be clear: I’ve never been hit. But there were so many times I wished he would do that instead of using words. Instead of yelling. I could have hit back. I would have had a “reason”. A reason that other people could see. Those people who said, “Oh, he’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s so nice! And funny!”

They couldn’t see the pulverized, bruised and bleeding mess that were my heart and soul.