The last 12 years
It all began on November 5, 2001. The weather outside was bleak and overcast. The sun couldn't even break through the thick low hung clouds but that didn't matter. Today was the day everything would change. Today, we would become a couple and life as we knew it would change forever.
I had just ended a relationship that was unhealthy with a man who lived on drugs and drinking. My mother had passed away a little over a year before, when I was just 22. She left me alone to raise my two little boys, one turned two the day after she passed and my baby, my youngest at the time, was born 37 hours before her death. She was 40 and we never saw it coming.
After she passed, my life took on a life of it's own and I started turning to others for consolation. The other's I turned to were men, men that controlled my every move. I stopped having a mind of my own, and began doing what ever they wanted. I became the person that people thought I was, when I wasn't.
I had watched my mother live her life in turmoil, sad and angry all the time, but I didn't see her that way until years later. She married a man that I am sure she once loved. After she passed, I realized that she had just settled.
Anyway, On November 5, 2001, I left the bad relationship and moved into my aunts house with herself, my uncle and her three son's. I was sad, but not because of the break up but because I didn't think I was ever going to get my life together. Boy was I ever wrong, or so I thought!
I started seeing an amazing man that same day, I mean why not? He had just saved me from ruining my life, he had packed me up and moved me, bettering my life. I had stars in my eyes when I looked at him. He had saved me!
For a few months he courted me, coming to my aunts and bringing me little gifts (nothing you would think was wonderful, but I did) like my favorite drink or my favorite chocolate bar. He would take me out and we would spend a few hours together, always alone because we only got a few hours a few days a week.
On Valentine's day of 2002, we moved into our own place, our first place together. This was such a happy day for me.
A couple of months went by and everything was perfect. We loved each other and he provided me with the love and attention that as a child I begged for. Then one night, we got a babysitter for my boys and we went out with a friend, we had so much fun, drinking, hanging out, visiting other friends, then it happened. I saw a side of him I had never seen before, a side I didn't think he had. He got jealous when I was talking to another female friend of mine.
He instantly got angry, he thought we were talking about and laughing at him. He said we needed to leave. We got in the car and started our 20 minute drive home. Everything was tense, but I tried blowing it off and talking about our night, trying to make him smile. He got angrier and angrier until I got angry back.
Once we got home, I opened the door to get out and he reached over and grabbed me by my hair. I started crying and screaming. Our friend stayed quiet watching all of this from the back seat. My crying made him angrier and he pulled me through the front seat, from the passenger side, out the driver side door by my hair. Once he let go I ran inside crying and locked the door. He didn't let that stop him. He came in and cornered me. I tried to get. I threw things at him and missed, breaking a window in the process. He walked out the door. I went to my bedroom and cried my heart out. I couldn't believe he was like this. I was scared.
The next morning, when I woke up, he was there. He held me and cried. Told me he was so sorry and it would never happen again. I believed him.
After a few days we were back to our normal happy selves and I tried not to think about that night.
A few weeks went by and everything was back to normal, or so I thought. He came home from work angry, he had had a bad day. It was apparently my fault and we fought again. It was physical again.
This behavior continued off and on for a year or so. One night, he choked me in front of his brother and a friend and I had had enough. Not only was it humiliating, but I had our 6 month old little girl in my arms when he did it. I lost it. All of my pent up anger came out. All of the pain and hurt he caused
me had bubbled to the top and I blew. I punched him in the face over and over again, until I split his lip and blackened his eye.(he is 6 feet tall and 260 pounds) We broke up.
After a short break up, he came crying to me. He knew if he cried I couldn't say no to him. I let him back in and for about 6 months things were like they were the day we got together. At this point, he started calling me names. Vulgar names, but I figured if he wasn't hitting me that it was okay.
Over the next few years, about 7 years total,..we went through this same cycle, he would call me names, we would fight, break up, he would cry and apologize and I would take him back. I had no one to turn to, he had made me push my family away, I had no friends. He was all I had, without him I was literally alone.
Then the unthinkable happened. During a break up, he asked me to hang out with him one night. After much deliberation I said yes. We went out with his brother and sister-in-law. We had such a good time. It might have been the alcohol covering the truth, but I felt my love for him rekindling.
Later on that evening a friend asked us to stop over, so we left the others behind and headed over to our friends. Our friend only lived a few miles away. He felt like racing another person on the road, going 70 mph in a 35 mph zone. I kept begging him to slow down, telling him he was going to kill me. He laughed and told me not to worry. Then it happened, we crest the hill and there was a kid on a four wheeler crossing the road, he tried to avoid hitting him by swerving, but hit him anyway and sent him and the four wheeler over an embankment and sent us into a tree. We hit that tree at 70 mph! He jumped out and told me to get out and quick. I couldn't. I was stuck. I was bleeding and the motor was on my lap and the truck was on fire. This was it.
I was going to die.
Without going into all the details, after a stay in the hospital and being release to my baby sister so she could care for me because I had almost died and I couldn't walk at all (I was broke from the waist down)I found out that he had told the police that he wasn't with me and that I had stole his truck. He didn't want to lose his right to carry a rifle during hunting season. He came to me and begged me to lie for him, to take the blame because he loved me.
He ended up in jail for almost killing me and lying to the police. I put him in jail.
While he was in jail I tried to move on. I couldn't. Everyone thought I was nuts for loving him still, after everything he had put me through. He got intensive therapy in jail and continued it on the outside. Still does to this day.
Today is March 14th 2013, and we are still together. It has been almost 12 years. We have been through some very difficult things, but with counseling and hard work we have both made changes. I have learned to be stronger and he has learned to either talk or walk away when he gets angry. This will be a battle forever but one I am willing to fight. Many relationships like ours don't end up this way, either they end in break up (which to be honest they really should), or the abuse continues or someone dies.
By telling you my story I am by no way telling you to stay in a abusive, controlling relationship,..I actually am going to tell you NOT TO! DON'T! My situation is a little different or maybe I am just stupid. It has taken a lot for us to get to where we are, I can't imagine myself without him and I love him.
I am not going to say that I would do it all again because honestly I wouldn't. I am going to tell you, we were young and both brought up in homes with abuse and after many years of following the same cycles that our parents had, we broke through. We stopped that cycle.
Remember, DO NOT STAY IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP, DO NOT DISRESPECT YOURSELF LIKE THAT! But also remember, people can change, BUT only if they really want to and they have to see what they really are in order to want that! Honestly MOST ABUSIVE CONTROLLING relationships NEVER change so get out while you can.
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