SURVIVING DOMESTIC ABUSE

I use to think that when I was a kid, I would never get involved with someone who hurt me in any way, shape or form.

I understand why a woman will not leave when she is being treated badly. I understand why someone would want to hurt another person for what they have done to them. I understand all those questions that you might have for a person that has been involved in domestic violence. I understand both sides now and only hope that if someone is involved in a bad situation that they will seek help from friends, family, support groups, counselors or church. That they will not be considered weak for being in their situation. It is not their fault and they deserve much better.

I dated my ex and he never laid a hand on me. I thought, I have got this great looking guy and he was such a tough guy when we were in school and I am so lucky to have him. We moved in together and that is when all hell broke loose. The downhill ride of domestic abuse.

It started out with just plain lack of respect from him. He would go out and party with his friends and leave me at home, but if I went out, he would be furious. He always wanted money. Little did I know that this was the start of 20 years of drug addictions on his part. Money came easily for him, but then it disappeared easily too. When he would run out of money or just did not want to take me someplace with him, he would start fighting. Eventually he started punching me in my head. That way no one could see the marks. Next it went to slapping and punching me on the arms, legs, back, where ever it would go unnoticed. One time he made the mistake of punching me in the mouth several times leaving sores around the inside of my lips for a week. I could barely talk due to the pain. This was just the physical abuse that was endured. The verbal abuse was there, but took a back burner to me.

At first, the people around me did not notice anything, but the further I got into the relationship, the signs of depression started showing. My friends noticed how controlling he was.I was asked about the situation, but always refused to tell anyone. I was in denial. I never would put myself in a relationship like this.

I did not tell my parents. First I thought my father would kill him and next I thought I could not make it without him. Little did I know, I was making it without him for over 20 years. He would be physically there on occasion, but never mentally there. He was out to please himself and not another person.

I convinced myself if he got help for his drug addictions, this would make him stop. The drugs were the problem all along, I thought. They did not make him think rationally and I felt sorry for him because he had this so-called "disease" and could do nothing about it. After 4 treatment facilities and 6 detox facilities in which the drugs became increasingly more serious and he never completed one of them, he was still the angry person that came to be when I moved in with him.

Yes, he apologized and cried and said he loved me and it would never happen again. We split up several times only to end up back together again. He ran around on me and when he was caught held a gun to my head because I was going to confront the other person. He could not remember the lies he told me and would get caught frequently lying to cover up another lie. He started selling everything he could, nothing of value could be kept. You could go out of town for a day, or go to work for 9 hours and come home to find that the TV had been sold, your favorite ring was missing, the kids Nintendo disappeared. The excuses were endless. He spit in my face, tried to run me over, slammed a window on my fingers, threw things at me. I was target practice for food, silverware and dishes.

I eventually pressed charges on him twice for domestic violence. Each time he was found guilty and fined. He never spent a day in jail, until I had him arrested for forging a check. They did keep him for about 3 months at the longest. By this time a co-worker asked me to go with her somewhere one night and did not tell me where. We ended up at a Al-Anon meeting. It was the start of healing. I heard other stories, not exactly like mine, but very similar. A group of 10 women meeting every week to discuss how to cope with overall addictions and abuse from our significant others.

Eventually, I stopped attending those meetings and several times I went to counseling to try to figure out what was making me stay with him. Basically, I knew I had to be strong and leave, but I had to do it, no one else could do it for me.

Obviously, this did not happen in a month, a year, years or even 10. I felt like a really slow learner. I started to get angry at God for making me live through this. I could not understand what I had done so bad in my life to deserve this treatment. By this time, the hitting stopped, but my everyday name was b----. My face was being squeezed,my neck grabbed and my hair pulled. I was drug off of the bed and I was constantly being shoved against a wall and told how much he hated me, how he wanted me dead, how he had done so much to make my life better than it was and how much better he was than me.

I wanted so bad for him to love me, realize what he was doing wrong and say he was sorry and really mean it, but it just was not happening. He and I broke up one time and started seeing other people. I was honest about this with him and he was not. He called me names for two years until I found out about his situation and found out it was still going on after we got back together. Something inside me snapped and I began to despise him. I realized that I no longer loved him, he was just a habit that I was having a hard time breaking. I started asking God to forgive me for all the terrible things I had said to him and begged him to give me the strength to leave and stay gone. The leaving was easy. The staying gone was the hardest part.

After a huge fight over money and drugs one day, he told me if I did not leave he was going to kill me. He had a look in his eyes that I had never seen before and I knew he meant it. I put several boxes in my car and never went back.

I had so much anger towards him. He had kept everything. I was able to get some personal items, but everything else, he sold or gave a way. Many items were put in the trash by him. He became angry when I refused to talk to him.

You see, I decided I needed to have a clean break from him. I did not need to talk to him, there was nothing to say. I did not need material things, he could have them if that is what he wanted. He eventually will have to face his own demons and I personally do not want to be there when he does.

It was not easy, I prayed each night that I would not just go back to him, because I really wanted to and it was hard to stay away, but I prayed. I chose to move out of the area for several months to avoid any temptation to be around him. I stayed with friends and cried a lot, but they let me and they supported me. They knew this is the way I had to handle it. They did not criticize me, they only encouraged me to keep busy and to stay there until I felt stronger.

Eventually, I ended up in the same area again with him as that is where my family is. Naturally after you leave someone, you start to hear all the things they did to you that you never knew about. This made my anger towards him just strengthen. He tried to talk me to going back with him, but I could not even talk to him in a decent tone of voice. I eventually took the phone outside one day and yelled to the top of my lungs at him. I told him all the things I wanted to say and refused to allow him to talk. Actually he probably could have hung up half way through the conversation and I would have never noticed it. I told him the hurt and pain that he caused me. How he had no respect for me. How he had no respect for himself, much less me and how he could never love anyone, because he did not love himself. I finally told him, if he was the last person on the face of the earth, I would not go back to him. I hung the phone up and cried. I felt so much better though.

Whether he listened or not did not matter, I got these things off of my chest and I felt better. I was letting go of feelings and emotions that were keeping me from moving on.

I still have problems. I jump if someone gets loud around me and sometimes end up with panic attacks that I cannot control. I have a hard time being happy and I have to keep reminding myself that I deserve to be happy. My trust level with other people is very small and I have a hard time letting someone else help me.

On the other hand, I have a much better relationship with my family. I smile a lot. I do not have to ask permission to do things that I like. My panic attacks have slowed down and my ability to relax has become much easier to control. I do not worry about the little things as much and still continue to pray every night that I can let go of some of the bad memories and stop having terrible dreams. I want to be able to fully forgive him for everything and am trying really hard to do that.

I thank my ex everyday now for making me understand that love is not enabling someone and for taking me on a journey that made me a much better person than I was before.