Toughest blog I will ever post about me.

Today, this morning, when talking to my girl, Susan, I came out and said something I had never admitted to myself before.

I am a victim of abuse.

Over many years, and in many ways.

I am a large and powerful man. But when you are faced with the kinds of things I endured in the latter years of my marriage, size matters not.

I have finally faced and accepted that so much of who I am today, and the way I feel about things at times, comes from more than a decade of verbal, emotional and at times, physical abuse.

Oh, what I endured. I cannot begin to describe it.

At times, I felt as if I was a POW, at the hands of a merciless tormentor.

My ex wife was severe manic bipolar, and it was worse in the latter years of our marriage.

To her credit, since the divorce, she has done extensive counseling, and has been on medications to control her bipolar condition.

But those years haunt me.

At times, looking back, I cannot believe what happened. Or the insanity of it all. How and why I stayed...I still do not understand.

It was only when she threw me out (with a restraining order, talk about irony) did I get the space I needed to see my old life from a distance.

Suffice to say.

The abuse was constant. I never knew when it would come, though. The mood swings of someone who is bipolar are impossible to predict. And you never know what will set them off.

I have been beaten around the head. Struck with objects. Had scalding coffee poured over my head. Been kicked and punched and had food and other things thrown at me in a rage.

And the verbal assaults and torment were unrelenting.

She would start fights with me at bedtime so many times that I would have to go to the couch to get away. Then, she would come to the couch and stand over me, demanding that I talk to her. And the hours would tick by, and I'd have to try and get up the next morning to drive the 72 miles to work. Often on 3 hours sleep.

The harassing phone calls at work. To make sure I knew how miserable she was with me, and how I was such a failure.

Constantly putting me down.

The one line that will never leave my memory is "Just look at you, who would want you?"

She knew how to play on my own weaknesses. She told me what a failure I was as a father to my children. What a failure I was as a husband.

I retreated. I hid. I went to my basement office and worked on computer games as a second job, for almost a dozen years. I tried to find a haven.

Then, she would walk down the stairs, stand outside the office door, scowl at me, threaten me, and deride me.

I took so much abuse that it begs comparison to the frog in the pot analogy.

If you put a frog in a pot of scalding water, it will immediately try to jump out to save itself.

If you put a frog in a pot of cool water and slowly turn up the heat, it will boil to death.

And I was nearly dead.

Only in her violence did she end up saving me. By throwing me out, while having an affair with my next door neighbor, did I get out of that pot.

But those years of torment, torture, sleep deprivation, and physical abuse have taken a huge toll on who I am.

I often realize now that much of how I feel, and how I react, is based on the fact that I am a long term abuse survivor.

I am a huge and very powerful man.

But I was powerless against her. For I could not bring myself to inflict grave harm on her, to stop the onslaught.

So I took the blows. I felt the pain. And I let her nearly kill any belief in me that I was good. Or worthy. Or lovable. Or even deserved to exist.

And I battle that still today.

I am thinking of finally giving in and seeking counseling.

As a survivor of horrific and persistent abuse. As a battered man.