I have given you a peak into my childhood and the beginning of this tumultuous life; let me continue by fast forwarding to the beginning of the end.
I am 43 years old. I have been married and divorced twice. I have one child, a 24 year old son (who is my joy, my constant and my heart. Shameless proud mom plug). I got engaged at 18, pregnant and married in a short span of time. His father did not come without his own baggage, but we had a good relationship, for awhile. He is a good man, but was very controlling and always spoke to me in a demeaning manner. He was very much a family man when it came to his family, but did very little for or with mine. He expected me to do everything for him and his family, but never gave me the same consideration. I loved his family and it never bothered me to do anything for them, they are incredible people. We had a group of very good friends that we did everything with. Fishing, hunting, boiling seafood, you name it, it was always a family affair and we all got together almost every weekend to do something. Towards the end, we were no longer invited and every weekend was a "boys" trip. By "we", I mean the wives and the kids were no longer included. There was no longer any time being spent and certainly no communication. Arguments became more frequent and the last year of our marriage, he worked out of town Monday through Thursday, came home Thursday afternoon, turned around and went to the camp. He spent no time at all with me, nor our son. At 7 years old, my son asked me after his father had left for the weekend (yet again), "Mom, where did my daddy go?" I replied, "He went to the camp with your uncle." "Mom, what does my daddy think? Does he think that he can kick us to the curb like yesterday's trash?" At that moment, I knew I had to leave. I didn't leave because of the way I was being treated. I left because as long as I stayed and took care of everything, my son would never have a relationship with his father.
Towards the end, the relationship had its moments of volatility. My husband had begun to push me here and there, slap me and before it grew into full blown beatings, I left. He was the first to hit me and when I left, I swore that I would never tolerate the way I was treated ever again. The best thing I ever did was leave. He and I are friends, he and our son have a good relationship and he has never laid his hands on another woman. I was the first, and the last, which is rarely heard of in domestic violence. He is a good man, we just couldn't live together any longer.
My second husband was never physically abusive towards me, but he was emotionally abusive. We had known each other for several years, had lost touch and ran into each other at a concert one night began talking and dating again. We got married a little over a year later. Roughly 8 months after we married, he admitted to having an Opiate addiction and asked for help. I dropped everything and got him the help he needed. He traveled quite often for work and our time was limited. Not long after getting sober, everything changed. He began taking more out of town assignments, was never home and when he was, we never talked and never spent ANY time together. We had become more like roommates. He had become totally emotionless and it seemed I no longer existed. As soon as the fighting started, I walked away. I wasn't going through the begging and pleading just to have a relationship with my husband. He had gotten the job he always wanted, gotten off the pills and no longer had a need for me. Nothing that I ever did was good enough for him, he made that blatantly clear. He was making more money than I was, yet I was paying his bills because he was careless, he never contributed to household expenses. The only thing that mattered to him was himself.
I didn't get involved in any serious relationships for awhile after my second divorce. It was hard enough just dating and I somehow kept getting involved with these men who seemed to be alright, but all ended up hitting me. I was done. I didn't want to be with or around a man. Then I met Steve. Up until this point, I have been hesitant to use his real name, but this is a real story and if someone should recognize who he is, especially a woman, then they deserve to know the truth.
I met Steve in August 2010. We worked at a bar called Neon Moon. I was tending, he was a bar back and worked security. I really wasn't interested in dating him, or being involved in any way but you know how that goes. All of us would hang out after work from time to time and we started talking more. We seemed to have a lot in common, but narcissists are good at portraying themselves that way. We began dating and he moved into my house February of the next year. Everything was good. He had 2 sons from a previous marriage and after some time we got along too.
Steve was a fence installer and I had just finished my last semester of college. I was trying to decide what I wanted to do and where I wanted to work when an opportunity to buy an established fence company presented itself. I had the business knowledge and he had the industry knowledge and the deal was too good to ignore. My mom and I discussed it and we partnered and bought the business. We took the business over in July 2012. Almost exactly one year later, I got beat the first time.
The first beating put me in the hospital with a mild concussion. We had been arguing and it got heated. The messed up part is that the beating occurred after I walked away. I WALKED AWAY! I told him I wasn't fighting anymore that we both just needed to sleep it off and that I was going to sleep in the kid's room. A few minutes later, he appeared in the room. I was laying on the bottom bunk of the bed, trapped when he started beating my head. I was able to escape, got out the house, went to a friend's and to the ER the next morning. "Why didn't you leave then," you ask? Very simple. I didn't have the confidence to think I could run the business without him because of his industry knowledge. I wanted to, but I felt trapped. In true abusive, narcissistic form, he apologized. He swore it would never happen again, he was sorry and that he loved me and didn't want to lose me. He said all the standard lies that all abusers say. I didn't believe him, but I was trapped. I knew that no matter what I did, he would not leave quietly. I wasn't moving, it was MY house. Had I have kicked him out at that point and fired him from the business, I would have become a statistic. 75% of domestic abuse related homicides occur after the victim gets away. I am still at risk of becoming one of that 75%.
He didn't lay a hand on me again until a year later. In August 2014, he started hitting me again. It started slow. A slap here, a slap there, pulling my hair, pushing me into things and it escalated quickly. I called the cops in August and because I didn't have any visible injuries at the time, they really didn't take me seriously. I didn't press charges that time because he always promised he would be out of jail in 24 hours and he WOULD kill me when he got out. I knew I didn't have enough evidence. I kicked him out in December, but foolishly let him back only because I didn't want to ruin Christmas for the kids. I began to pray. I prayed and prayed that God help me get him out of my life for good and help me to stop him from hurting another woman. I prayed that no matter what it took, I would find a way through it if he only made it stop! 3 months later I got what I had prayed for. In actuality, I got a lot more than I had asked for (more on that later).
March 4th, 2015, Steve beat me for the last time. He beat and strangled me almost to death. Before I end this post for the day and let this abbreviated story (I will share detail later, but feel free to ask anything) sink in a little bit, here is a list of my resulting injuries:
Initial Injuries:
- Level 3 severe concussion (worst you can sustain)
- Black eyes for 4 months due to brain swelling and draining
- Soft foods for awhile due to strangulation
- Peripheral vision loss in the left eye
- Bruised sternum and ribs. (X-rays showed no fractures, but I could feel at least 3 hairlines). I still have issues with one that is extremely painful causing swelling in the chest and making it hard to breathe.
- Short term memory loss
- Difficulty speaking
Long Term Injuries:
- 1st rib on my right side is out of alignment (luckily, you can only really tell when I lose a lot of weight)
- The left side of my jaw is so far out of place that one wrong hit and it will dislocate. This will require me to wear a splint for the rest of my life.
- Multiple broken teeth from the hits and my jaw being out of alignment. Loss of tooth size due to jaw misalignment.
- Nerve damage in left elbow, neck, shoulders and back causing loss of feeling in both arms and loss of dexterity
- Emotional, mental and physical stress led to severe periods resulting in a partial hysterectomy
- PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)
Neurological Injuries:
I sustained the most damage in the left frontal lobe of the brain. The left frontal lobe controls; personality, behavior, emotion, judgment, planning, problem solving, intelligence, concentration, self awareness, motor function, spontaneity, memory, initiation, impulse control, social/sexual behavior, speech and writing, comprehension, arithmetic and language related movement.
- Left frontal lobe damage diagnosed as MTBI (Mild Traumatic Brain Injury). This alone affects a large amount of function.
- Chronic headaches due to physical and neurological injury
- Partial On Set seizures
- Increased risk for dementia and Alzheimer's
- Decreased fine motor skills
- Loss of strength in the arms, hands and fingers
- Chronic fatigue
- Decreased loss of cognitive functions
- Hypersensitivity to loud noises, bright lights, scents and interaction with large amounts of people
It was a little over a month after the beating that I was able to see a Neurologist. During the initial examination of my neck and shoulders, the doctor was in awe that I could even move my head. I shouldn't have been able to. The swelling was so severe in my brain, neck and shoulders that it took us until the middle of July to get the swelling down enough that I could be released for physical therapy. There are many mornings (most) that I wake up between feelings of shooting pain and complete numbness from the base of my head through the middle of my back and all the way to my finger tips. I live in pain. Accepting the fact that I am no longer the same person I was prior to the brain injury is the most difficult. Everything about me is different. My entire lifestyle, the type of work I am used to and the way that I work, my physical capabilities, my mental capabilities, etc. Everything is different now. The loss that I have endured mentally, emotionally, physically and neurologically is just the tip of the iceberg of what I have lost in total. As a result of this event, I have also lost my house, my business, my confidence, my sense of worth......
The list goes on. This post my seem depressing, but there are things that I have gained as well. You will come to know in future posts that there are things I have gained but for now, I need to focus on acceptance of the loss....
I hope that you will stay with me.
