This is the partial and true story of my own battle with spousal abuse. I wrote it several years ago as an attempt to deal with my ongoing struggle to overcome the problems and pain I still have from my two-year marriage. I don't think I'll ever shed most of the emotional scars that I earned during that time. But I thank God that I had the strength
to leave when I did before my son was able to assimilate what was going on around him.
* * *
1989
Sometimes I still get so angry. And perhaps I feel a little guilty, though I don't think I should. It's been three and a half years since I left him, and I haven't seen him in three years. I haven't even talked to him on the phone in almost a year. My son doesn't know him. I don't know him anymore, either. Not really. I know what I left. I know what I'm glad to be
free of. I don't miss much at all. In fact, I can't think of anything off the top of my head that I miss at all. At least not missing it to the point of it being on my mind.
However, I do miss having even the smallest bit of security in knowing that someone is there for me - whether we're fighting or not. I wasn't alone, even though much of the time my love for him was dwindling and slowly becoming a subtle hatred for everything he was. But even up to the day I left . . . there was love. It was the hardest thing I think I'd ever done, leaving him. And I missed the company for a few months after, and I
genuinely believed that I may have been able to return. But then the realization hit me, as the weeks following passed, that it wasn't him that I missed. Just the company. I was finding a peacefulness without him. I was finding time to finally think for myself, to make my own decisions. And it was wonderful. He was no longer there to yell at me for every other thing I did that he didn't like. He wasn't there to tell me not to go barefoot outside (though I had long-since gotten so used to wearing shoes all the time that it was now hard for me not to); I could wear my favorite clothes again; I could eat my favorite foods again and cook without being criticized or having my whole dish ruined because he didn't like some of the ingredients; I could cook a good meal that would be eaten; I could sleep in a neatly-made bed and wake up with the sheets still tucked in.
Just little things like those made the biggest difference. But it's not just the little things that tend to drive a person up a wall. It's the voraciously repeated little things . . . and big things, besides. Arguments over things that, under normal circumstances, would not have mattered; grudge-holding that lasted for sometimes a week; totally irrelevant
accusations. Nothing was right to him.
Well, after I left him, I found freedom. And I knew that no matter how long I stayed away, whether it be a week, a month or a year, I knew I couldn't go back to that prison. I knew that no matter how much he tried - and he did try - nothing could repair that which had been broken. There were too many bad memories for me and - for all I knew - for him, too.
But one thing that does bother me some is that he was able to drop everything so soon and have a girlfriend move in with him. I don't know if they're still together now - maybe he's driven her away, too, or maybe he's terrorized her into staying. I'll never know. I don't really care. But I am curious. Sometimes I wonder if he treats her better than he treated me. I wonder if she knows why I left him. I wonder if he accepts the blame that was his and doesn't put it all on me. But I'll never know.
I never did want to blame everything on him. I still don't. My fault was lain in the fact that I let him get away with the things he did, I didn't stand up for myself and allowed myself to be talked down. I knew I didn't deserve the things he said to me - but I let him say them anyway. And then I began to believe them. And this grew to be a pattern. He thought
he was my lord and master and I was to do as he pleased. "Don't think about it! Do it!" "Don't just do it! Think about what you're doing!!" Well what do I do? Think or do? Or maybe I'll just do neither. I'll just let you guide my hands and mind. I'll just let you do the thinking and doing when you want. Just don't yell at me anymore!!
And when yelling wasn't enough, he had to throw things, or have temper tantrums (grow up!), or not eat his dinner (so starve!). I knew the irrationality in his behaviors was unprecedented. But I did nothing but take it.
I remember one time he kept throwing a roll of tape at me, aiming for my head. I asked him to stop the first couple of times (or maybe I didn't, I don't remember), but he just kept throwing it and hitting me in the back of my head as I washed dishes or whatever it was I was doing. I remember crying inside and trying to pretend to ignore him because sometimes ignoring a child's temper tantrum will cause him to lose interest. I don't
remember how long it took him to lose interest.
I remember a time when his sister was visiting. He had a tantrum which involved throwing two bologna sandwiches across the room because he wanted something else for dinner. He had missed dinner anyway, or didn't want it when I had made it or something.
Once, when I was pregnant, I think, I wanted to surprise him when he got home from work with a nice romantic dinner: roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, at least two vegetables. He came home, dinner was on the table . . . and he told me he wasn't hungry! He was tired. He'd had a bad day. And he got mad probably because I asked him to take a shower before sitting at the table. So he went to bed and I put all the food I'd spent all day preparing into the refrigerator. That was that.
He thought the best solution to every fight we had was making up by making love. But after "making love" so many times with a bruise or two on my legs from a hurled object or foot, sex pretty much lost its zing. So it just became another part of the pattern. And he never wanted to do it when I really wanted to. He always seemed to be able to find some reason to be angry so he could turn his back to me when I most wanted to be held. So many
nights I silently cried myself to sleep, knowing that if he heard me he would be up in an instant turning the light on so we could fight until three in the morning and then "lovingly" make up.
And all-night fights were his specialty. "I don't want to go to bed. I want to stay up and fight!" It was like that was what he lived for - to fight.
I think . . . no . . . I know he grew up fighting. His sister, his mother. Theirs was the ultimate in love/hate relationships. If it wasn't one thing it was another. There always had to be some reason to hold a grudge. Always bitter conflicts. Over NOTHING!! Nothing that made a difference! I was the replacement for his mother and sister after we moved out. He needed the security of a thing to insult and hold grudges against. I was his mother and sister wrapped together. Only I didn't fight back. And he hated that even more. "Why don't you want to fight?" Probably because I grew up in a family based on love, companionship and respect. My family would rather talk or play games or just plain get along nicely than to be constantly arguing amongst ourselves. We got into trouble for insulting each other and we
didn't enjoy deliberately hurting each others' feelings. We were considerate of each other. So try that on for size.
At my family's reunion in 1985 we all went out for dinner. He was there, of course. But he just couldn't understand how seven people could sit at a table and quietly listen as the eighth person spoke of his or her life. He couldn't understand why there weren't four conversations going on at the same time. I think he was a bit awed at the consideration shown him that night. I know he respected my family, but he really didn't seem to understand us. The difference between my family and his was that the members of my family cared about each other and wanted to know what was happening in the others' lives. His family never just sat in a quiet room and discussed life's frivolities. His family sat silently at the dinner table, stuffing their faces to the sound of situation comedies and police dramas on the television. They stayed in their own worlds and didn't care about anyone
else's. They never asked anyway. And if someone was asked a question about what was going on in his or her life, it was taken as an accusation . . . and perhaps meant as one.
So how could he understand?
When I was pregnant he never showed any gentleness when we fought. And the fights were worse by then. They had become less frequent but more violent. We had our fully-consummated-full-fledged-abusive-marriage cycles completed. We would be happy for a while, then tensions would rise and arguments would begin, and then throwing things and then pulling, pushing, pinching and kicking. Even when I was eight or nine months pregnant, he never hesitated to throw me out of the bedroom stark naked, to sleep out on the living room floor.
But the worst was that he had bought a gun the year before . . . an old beat-up twenty-two. He would put that thing in my face at times, or threaten to shoot himself. But then there were the times he sat me in the corner of the living room in the middle of the night, pregnant, naked, shivering and exhausted, and dare me to get up or try to take the gun
out of his hand, or scream for help. I never did anything. I just sat there and cried and privately wished that he would get killed in an accident the next day. But I knew I didn't want that either (?).
After the baby was born things didn't get any better. If anything, they got worse. Yes, he still remembered the time we were fighting in the hall when I was eight months pregnant and he warded off a blow from me with his foot which hit me square in the belly. I felt my baby cringe inside of me. He curled up so tight that I thought surely he would die. I had to lie on the floor for a half-hour until the tightness subsided. The pain of that - physical and emotional - was worse than the kick itself. He always claimed that I never let him forget that, though I never reminded him of it again after going to the doctor. He always did the reminding, and I knew he felt guilty and I silently told myself: "That's how it should be." But I never mentioned it aloud myself. My baby could have died. And I think it was a
miracle that there was not even any brain damage much less blood lost. I made the mistake, too, of allowing him to think I had forgiven him and accepted the incident as an accident. Accident or no, it should not have happened.
But, as I said, after the birth, things weren't much better. I now had two children to care for.
During one fight at this time I actually did scream for help - so loudly I thought I might tear the tendons of my own throat. His method of shutting me up was a choke-hold which nearly caused me to lose consciousness. At the same time he managed to dent the side of the refrigerator with my head. No one heard my screams anyway. I had screamed
before and they didn't hear them then.
My baby became my security guard. When I felt a fight coming I would head straight for the bassinet and to my arms the child would go. It wasn't something I thought about, nor did I plan it. I just knew that he couldn't possibly knock me down when I had that precious thing in my arms. He knew what I was doing (even if I wasn't aware of it) and he just got angrier. But I should have realized that, if he could push me against walls or throw
cans of food at me when I was pregnant, the day would come when he would have the senselessness to knock me flat with a two month old child in my arms.
That day finally did come.
I might add that things had been changing a little during those last few months I was pregnant and after I gave birth. We had finally been going to counseling sessions. I had started without him and he finally had agreed to go. We were both realizing our problems. I was finally realizing that I didn't have to put up with his behavior. So I was staring to stand up for myself, fight back, talk back. That infuriated him. But, surprisingly enough, during the calm periods of our cycles he was beginning to listen to me. And I was starting to become a grande-mal bitch. But only during the calm times. I found myself insulting him, calling him stupid and worthless. And when the fights came I was a little more bold. But I was still cautious. I knew him well. For some reason, it sometimes amused him to see me
physically and hysterically lash out at him. I would see him trying to stifle a smile as I threw punches or dishes or shoes or whatever I could get my hands on. I guess he enjoyed the reaction ( just like being home again with good-old Mom).
But then the fight came where I picked up my baby and turned my back on him and walked out the bedroom door. He ordered me to come back, and when I didn't he came up behind me and laid his hand across the back of my head hard so hard that I was knocked to the floor - child in arms. I could have landed on my baby! I could have crushed him!! I was luckily able to twist myself so that I would land on my side. When I hit the floor I realized
what he had finally done. I laid my baby on the floor where I had landed and within barely two heartbeats was in the kitchen digging in the drawer. I grabbed the first knife my hand hit - an old, cheap serrated steak knife - and within another heartbeat was back across the hall screaming at the top of my lungs like a possessed woman. And I was. And if he had not still been in the bedroom doorway, if he had not slammed that door as I brought that cheap knife down, that knife would have been buried in his chest instead of slicing my own fingers open as it tried to penetrate the door. He didn't know how lucky he was. And again I saw that smile flash across his face!! I could have killed him! Didn't he realize that?
That ended that cycle. Before I had realized that my hand was dripping blood, I had already picked up my baby and headed, crying hysterically, out the front door. I wasn't even completely dressed. I had on sweatpants, a big shirt with no bra on under it, unbrushed hair, and blood dripping from my hand. He caught up with me and got me to come back and get dressed and he brought me to the hospital emergency room where I told the doctor I had cut my hand while doing dishes as he put three stitches on the tip of one finger and seven stitches on the tip of another. Even then I lied to protect the son-of-a-bitch. I wasn't worried about myself. I'd had damned good reason to do what I did, I felt. For the next few days we were so sweet to each other that we might have stuck together from the sugar coating. It was his way of making up and my way of pretending everything was hunky-dory as I made plans for a plane ticket and a ride to the airport.
But even then, my stitches not even half-healed, it was still the hardest thing to do: to pack boxes and write that three-page letter to him and to deliberately leave my house key on the table with the note so I could lock myself out of the house when my ride came. I cried and wished that there could have been another way to do it. And I remember sitting at my friend's house twenty miles away where I would spend the night before my plane was to go. I remember waiting for five-o'clock to roll by when he would find that note and his wife and child gone. My stomach was so tight until five o'clock, and then it relaxed because I knew he was there reading that letter and I knew I was safe and that now there was no turning back. And I cried that whole night and slept barely two hours, wishing I was back home with him, knowing that it wouldn't be right if I was.
* * *
1997
I hope that reading this may help other women - even men - in similar situations to get up the courage to get out and away from this painful type of love/hate relationship. I also hope that it will help those of you who have never experienced anything like this to understand what can go on and how difficult it can be to leave an abusive relationship. Some women fear leaving and entering the unknown territories of "real life." I myself had nothing - no money, no job, no work experience, not even a high school diploma - but I was lucky enough to have a family that cares and who helped me get out and took me in until I was able to take care of myself again. Unfortunately, many women don't have that type of valuable resource, and can only see themselves out on the street or on welfare for the rest of their lives - though there are places and people who can help them avoid that scenario.
But I want to say that the determined mind prevails. I got my GED a year after leaving my husband. I went to college and earned a Bachelor's degree on Pell Grants. I am now working and making arrangements to start on a Master's Degree. These years have not been easy, nor have they been fun. Nine years after writing this essay, I still get angry and resentful and want to blame all my problems on him. But I stop myself and remind myself that I have to make my own future, I have to support my son and myself. I have a strength that comes from pain and sorrow as do many women.
