November 16, 2009 by Miss

I’m re-posting this from writing it over 2 years ago. It still holds true, as it is my story and it needs to be shared.

Abuse can be described in so many ways. None of them are pretty. Today I’m choosing to write about my personal experience with abuse. Why? Because maybe someone out there reading this is going through the same thing I did. Maybe they are in denial and think that what is happening to them isn’t abuse. Maybe they can see that they CAN get past this, that they CAN survive this. I did. This isn’t going to be pretty or pleasant to read. Abuse isn’t. But it is the facts as I remember them and it did happen to me.

From the age of around 15, I was verbally and physically abused by my boyfriend. I would eventually become his wife. The abuse that I received progressed slowly. I fell in love (well what I believed loved to be at that time) and once he knew that I was in love, he completely changed. He began with the verbal abuse, making comments here and there that I was fat, ugly, stupid, a moron, a slut, and my personal favorite: worthless. The physical abuse started a little later, when he learned that he could verbally abuse me and I wouldn’t fight back. He started with pinching the inside of my legs if we were sitting next to each other and I was saying something he didn’t like. Usually it was something that he thought I would make him look stupid over. It was always things like that. Anything that I said would usually set him off so eventually I just stopped giving out my opinion on things.

Once while I was still in high school and he was home on leave from the Navy, we kinda broke up over the phone. I had boxed up all his stuff and when he told me he was going to come get it the next morning, I left it sitting on my front porch. My parents had left for work and I was getting ready to take the bus when he showed up. He started banging on my front door and I really thought he was going to break it down so I opened it. He barged into the house and chased me upstairs. He didn’t like what I was wearing so he ripped my shirt down the middle. I remember him pressing me up against the wall with his hands wrapped around my neck. I was screaming so loud that the bus driver heard me from down the street, a block away. I managed to get to the phone and call the police but I hung up before I gave them my address. Once I hung that phone up, he let me go and sat on my bed defeated. He told me that I had ruined his Navy career and basically, ruined his life. The police came and handcuffed him and took him to the back of their cruiser. He stared at me from the back of the cop car and shook his head at me. I told them it was a mistake and they chastised me for making the call. They allowed him to drive me to school.

The only time that I was safe from this was when I was pregnant. Once my son was born, it started up again except now, I was a bad mom. I couldn’t do anything right when it came to our son. I don’t remember a lot of that time. Sleep deprivation will do that to a person. I know it didn’t get better. He had started to hit me, but he never left bruises. I would compliment on that talent during my braver moments.

Things just progressed from bad to worse. I guess as I got older, I stopped caring as much. I fought back sometimes but of course, never won. I pretended that I had been knocked out when he threw me to the ground and picked my head up and slammed it on the floor of our laundry room. He proceeded to slap me in the face a few times and eventually just dragged me outside and put my head in the dog bowl of water while he turned the hose on me to wake me up. I don’t even remember what we were arguing about. The last time that I threatened to leave and actually started to pack, he got angry and decided not to let me. He ended up stripping all my clothes off and laying on top of me for two hours until I “changed my mind”. He stripped me so that I couldn’t run away.

When it was bad, it was bad. I would literally just turn my brain off and wander away. I would think about something else, in that last year, my thoughts would go to R the most. I would think about something fun I did with my son. The power of  my love for my son is what saved my life. In my darkest of moments, I tried to figure out which would be easier: killing him, or killing myself. I planned his funeral in my head and told myself that I would never cry. There were times when he would go out at night drinking with his friends and I would pray that he wouldn’t come home and I honestly didn’t care what happened to him.

Abuse is powerful. Its hate in its purest of forms. And the worst thing is that it comes in so many different forms: animal, child, elderly, self, I could go on and on. This is why I blogged today. I didn’t do it for attention. I didn’t do it for anything other than awareness. Its not fun to remember these things. It still feels humiliating. Its embarrassing. It’s something I would never in a million years wish on anyone. But it did happen to me. And I hope that talking about it will help someone.

So that’s my story in a nutshell. If you think that you might be in this similar situation in any way shape or form, please visit the the website for The National Domestic Violence Hotline. Because guess what? YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

My ex was a rat bastard of a husband. I’m coming up on a personal anniversary this week and that is why I am posting this story. A lot has changed since he was this man. I’m not making excuses, nor do I ever forgive him for what he did to me. While I occasionally still see small glimpses of this boy, he has done a lot for himself to not be this anymore. Losing me did that. Will he ever be a different person? Probably not. But I don’t have to live with what he did to me anymore, he does. What he did to me, does not define me.

And it NEVER will.