I will tell you this, at least in my case, it was a slow steady path to domestic violence. It certainly didn't start on the first date. The first year, two years, three, that was what I found so troublesome. We had these incredible years together. How could the man I believed had hung the moon and stars himself and just for me, ever become a monster that terrorized me? Even in light of everything that I have been through it is still hard for me to believe. Part of me wonders if it even is the same person really. Because who I fell in love with and who he was when reality hit me in the face are so contrary. It left me not knowing what was real, even now it is hard for me to accept that he could contain both good and evil. Because the good, was like crack to me. The smiles, laughter, jokes, hugs, kisses, nuances that I held so dear. Those things are all ripped from you as if that person died, and you are left with a ghost. Sure he looks the same, sounds the same, but surely someone you loved that much couldn't be capable of such an atrocity. I spent so much time chasing the good. Trying to please him, thinking maybe I could undo what he had done, say or do the right thing to change him back. But back to what? Had he ever really been the person I once believed he was?
You always think if a man ever laid a hand on me, that would be it. I would be out the door so fast and never look back. I know I always said that. But. I didn't. It started with disapproval, with accusations of me being crazy, with me not being "enough." I am far from perfect, I might be a little crazy and even as I try to take responsibility for my baggage, or short comings I can't help but feel that he exacerbated them on purpose. The more deranged, and unwound I became the less sure I was about my place in the world and what was normal. The more I thought I needed him and he was a saint for putting up with me. He made sure all bills were in my name and they were always outstanding. He got me to quit my job so I could stay home and take care of the house and I would get what basically was an allowance.
Next I needed to sell my car because we, "needed the money." Other times he acted as though we were filthy rich, but even in times of prosperity it never seemed to be the right time to buy me a car. I literally had no life anymore but waiting for him to come home from work. Then he began to "travel" often for work. This was actually time he spent with other women. The more I questioned the more he made me believe I was actually insane. I was so ashamed of what my life had become, that I had given up school, work, hobbies, friendships. I didn't want to see anyone I knew because I didn't know what to tell them when they asked what was going on in my life. He made me into a liar. I realized that the stories about my life were actually only stories about him, things we did together or even things I wasn't even around for. I still stayed because I wanted to marry him and I thought that I would be rewarded someday for all my perseverance and for sticking with him for better or worse. The next step was throwing things, punching walls, breaking my shit.
I rationalized with hey he wasn't hitting me... He would laugh it off. I never got an apology, not sure why I expected one. His love was never unconditional. I made accusations and he played the victim, after five years how could I possible accuse him of cheating, what kind of person did I think he was?
I was a total wreck. I kept snooping I knew things just weren't adding up. Next it was throwing me to the ground, dumping kitchen junk drawers on me because the house was so unorganized he never wanted to be there. After finding an email where he told a female co-worker he loved her I snapped, screaming and, hysterical I demanded he quit his job. That one ended with him throwing me on our bed kneeling on my chest and choking me with one hand, the other cocked back in a fist. I had to scream for his brother in the next room. We never spoke of it again, and I know if asked his brother would deny it until he was blue in the face.
The catch 22 is his brother is the second biggest liar I have ever met. His parents were both abusive and horrible should never have had children. His younger sister has arguably the worst eating disorder I have ever in my life seen. So some of me doesn't even blame him entirely for what he became.
At various points in our relation ship he would delete his facebook. Then he started and instagram. He refused to let me follow him and kept his profile private. I couldn't find a way that this was normal for any couple. He made such a big deal about how this was about my trust issues and how he never even used it except to look at cool cars and such. Liar. It was because the new woman he was deceiving loved to post pictures and tag him or post pictures of them on vacations together. I had moved back in with my mom while we waited for our dream home to be ready, he told me he was staying with his parents as well.
One night in the car I finally told him how I desperately wanted to kill myself but I couldn't do it for fear of the guilt others might feel. I didn't want to disappoint anyone. He drove me to the middle of no where and took my pocket knife and cell phone. I thought he didn't want me having a knife and maybe he was going to take me to a hospital. Instead he told me to strip naked and get in the back of his car, he was going to have sex with me and then kill me and leave me on a back country road. I refused. Not because I didn't want to die but because I refused to have rape be the last thing that happened to me on this planet. He even went so far as to have me get out of the car in the freezing cold, take out his knife and pretend like he was about to stab me. The eerie calm attitude he had through this entire ordeal was horrifying. I am still left wondering if he was partially serious. He got back in the car and started to drive off leaving me on the side of the road. He stopped and then told me to get back in the car. It was literally bellow freezing and I had no way to call anyone else so reluctantly I did. On the drive back to my mom's he said if I had actually had sex with him he would have gone ahead and killed me, because then he would have known I really meant it when I said I wanted to die. I was left wondering if he had ever done anything like that before, he seemed so calm, and amused. It made me sick.
I must commend the woman he was seeing on her badassery she finally realized his lies weren't adding up and contacted me directly. After both of us providing lots of proof (including a video of him masturbating filmed in the bathroom of my mother's home telling her he was at a hotel). I showed her the bathroom which she instantly recognized. We both were sure we had been hoodwinked.
We planned to confront him. The irony was he was in her home with lots of things we had bought together that he told me he was storing until we could move into our new home. It was a metaphorical slap in the face of epic proportions. Little did he know we had invited the local police to keep the peace while she told him to get his shit and get the fuck out of her house and her life. When I walked in finding his things, my things in her bedroom and him in her shower there was no excuse, no lie he could tell to make this go away, to try to spin it. He saw my face, and then he punched me in it.
The rest of the day was a blur, I never thought I would find myself in the Domestic Violence office of a court house. But there I was, I could hardly make sense of things. I honestly still have trouble believing this all happened to me.
I was a smart, middle class woman, from a good family, I was a feminist and a liberal and still here I was filing a restraining order. It can happen to anyone. It is like a cancer, you notice a spot here and there and it makes you worry, it doesn't look good, but you aren't ready for it when the doctor says melanoma. But you are almost relieved because now you have something to hold on to, you aren't insane, and you can treat it. I am not trying to downplay cancer here, I just don't know how else to put it. This relationship took five years to slowly eat me from the inside out and when it came time to drastically cut away all the sickness it felt like a relief.
It was hard the first few days, the betrayal, the total fucking waste of my life, the shame that I had let myself be swindled. But then an air of fuck-it set in. After all the avoiding and ditching of my friends they were still there and god dammit they were NOT going to let me wallow in what a mess my life had become. It hasn't been long since it happened and I can tell you already I have not been this happy in many years. It still stings, I still have questions that I know will never be answered, and even if they were, the answers would probably be lies. I had no choice but to radically accept my current situation and start dealing with it and picking up the pieces of my broken life. I am afraid of a lot of things, of him, of failing in my new life, of letting someone else in, of being alone but I can tolerate them and face them all one at a time. It might suck, but I can tell you so far it has actually been incredibly fun, and I finally feel like I have control over what happens to me and my life again.
So if you are asking yourself, "am I being abused" leave, leave now, and don't look back. It is not worth your happiness, your life, your safety, your time. There will always be someone else out there who will love you. There are men out there who don't hurt the people who love them. Don't be afraid and don't let it take up one more second of your life being unhappy. I hope you listen even though I didn't, even though I thought I knew better.
