Abused & Rising Above: The First Time

  The brain is truly a fascinating thing. The way that we recall, or don't, certain events in our life is so different for every person. As I said in my first post I became very good at pretending things didn't happen or at least not dwelling on them, but ultimately I know this was not really good for me. Sure it helped me get to where I am now, ready and capable to start dealing with all the shit I tucked away, but I couldn't live a happy and full life if I continued the path I was heading down.   

I have been thinking about one particular event in my life a lot lately, and I know why my brain is having this surface over and over again currently. I was having a really hard time putting pen to paper, so to speak, the last two day I have been thinking about writing this. I am about five months pregnant. The first time my husband became physically violent with me was the last time I was five months pregnant (almost 6 months) with our son, who will be turning four years old in December. My first time title is slightly misleading because it was not the first time that abused happened per my definition, but it was the first account of physical violence. I personally think that verbal attacks, emotional manipulation or battery, physical violence, and a whole bunch of other things are abuse. Anyway, I'm sure my brain keeps reliving those circumstances because of the similarity in situations.    

My husband and I separated, but we still live close in community. Even though we are no longer together, and never will be again, it can be really hard to see someone every day that you have issues with that are unresolved, which is a big part in why I am doing this writing. I don't want to pretend or run away from my scars anymore, I just want to heal them.    

So here is the event that keeps rolling through my mind, and how I feel about it.   

My husband and I had gotten into a bad financial situation because of a slum lord and health issues I was having that cost us a fortune. We had been living in an efficiency motel for many months, when one of my husbands coworkers offered to let us stay with her and her family for the summer while her kids were with her ex-husband. I couldn't believe someone that I had never even met was so generous to make such an offer. I felt very awkward about it though because I hated the idea of someone giving us charity - there always seems to be strings attached - but my husband talked me into it saying how it would finally afford us enough of a break to save up the money to move into a new place. The efficiency motel room was very expensive.   

So I reluctantly agreed, we packed up everything and drove like an hour south to their house. She was a really nice woman, her husband was also nice - he was a social worker for the Department of Children & Families working on his PsyD. They had a baby that just turned one year old as well so it was nice for our daughter who just turned two year old to have someone to play with. 

The second day we were there, my husband came back from work with a few bottles of wine and a six pack of beer. I guess his friend has asked him to stop and get a bottle of wine to go with dinner. My husband offered to make dinner as a thank you for letting us stay there so he and I made stuffed chicken breast with corn and something else I can't remember. He was drinking beer the entire time we cooked which I was very much against because he always became very full of rage while drinking. We had an agreement he wasn't going to drink anymore, but he never stuck to it for long. After beer number 3 it was obvious there was trouble brewing because he was pretending to be excessively happy, which was basically the high before the low hit. I tried to very politely remind him of our agreement and that three was way more than plenty. He got a little irritated and told me it was fine because he was happy not upset. This continued through dinner and while I was washing the dishes and cleaning up he continued to drink with his friend from work. I think they finished the beer and even opened the wine and at that point I just wanted to get everything cleaned up and get to bed with our two year old daughter. She was going to be sleeping with us in the guest room. I was pregnant, I was tired, I had worked all day and took care of the kids, made dinner and cleaned up. I didn't want a confrontation, especially not in these peoples house that I didn't know and was extremely grateful they were allowing us to stay here or a few months. I thought there was no way he would ever try to start something with me with the current circumstances. I had just finished cleaning up and I was making some tea, because it helped me breath better at night to drink something warm before bed. My husband coworker decided it was time to go to bed so she said good night and headed upstairs to where her husband was already sleeping since he had an early morning the next day.   

Not more than a minute after the bedroom door closed was my husband hovering over me in the kitchen, talking down to me in his dark and dangerous voice about how dare I comment on his drinking and having a good time with his coworker friend because he was in a good mood for the first time in months. He was already quite drunk, dangerous drunk I used to call it, not even close to passing out but way past the point of being happy. I decided to just apologize and try to get out of the kitchen. He wouldn't let me leave. He turned everything I had said into an insult, a personal affront to his personal existence, so he would have a reason to pursue the confrontation. He was drunk and always angry and wanted someone to take it out on. I told him many times that I didn't want to fight with him and to please be quite so we didn't wake up the home owners. It just made him angrier so I tried to get past him and out of the kitchen. I had abandoned the tea on the counter to just try and escape. Ever time I tried to get around him he would block my path and finally he chest bumped be backwards when I was trying to get past him. I started to fall backwards and barely caught my balance by grabbing the counter so I didn't land on the ground. It took me a second to recover, I was just shocked that he and done that. I was looking at him, my mind started racing and I was trying to figure out what the hell was happening? How did it come about? How was I going to diffuse the situation? I looked him right in the eye and all I saw was anger. He wasn't even looking at me, but more like he was looking right through me. I suddenly became very scared because I realized this was not just a normal day of him being drunk and yelling at me till I sobbed and talked him down. I felt cornered and wanted to get out of kitchen. I felt like I should yell for help but I was still shocked. I told him I needed to put our daughter to bed and to please move and I tried to push past him again. This time he shoved me back hard with both hands and I flew backwards and hit my back hard onto the corner of the kitchen counter. It hurt so much since I was already having pregnancy back pain, I wanted to cry but instead I steadied myself on the counter and tried to think of what I could do. A million stories and images of women who had the crap beaten out of them flashed through my mind and I thought, "I will be dammed if anything like that happens to me, and possibly hurts my baby." So I grabbed my cup of hot but not boiling tea on the counter and threw it in his face. I was hoping it would distract him long enough to grab our daughter and get to a locked room, however it didn't quite go as planned. It wasn't hot enough, or maybe he was just too drunk, to cause any real distraction but I was able to get out of the kitchen, grab my daughter who was in the living room, and I was heading for the hall way powder room because it was the closes one with a lock. He slipped on the water trying to grab me coming out of the kitchen so I bought me like a minute, but that wasn't long enough. He caught me in the hallway before I got into the bathroom and slammed me into the wall. The next part of what happened is a little fuzzy to me. I had been holding our two year old when he slammed me into the wall but she was on the opposite side of my hip that hit the wall. She did start trying though and I can't remember if I pushed him away of if he backed off for a second once he saw I was holding her but I did manage to get into the bathroom. I was trying to get the door shut but I couldn't get it shut or locked because he was pushing it open. He flung it open hard enough to where I went flying back into the counter. At this point my oldest daughter basically slid out of my arms to the floor and was still crying. My this point I was crying and yelling at him that he could have hurt her when he slammed me into the wall. I don't remember exactly what happened in the bathroom, I just have images of him yelling at me about how it was my fault if our daughter got hurt. I remember looking around to see if there as anything I could hit him with to get him off me because I was pinned between him and the counter. I remember my stomach as starting to hurt from him pushing me into the counter. I started begging him to back off and calm down, but I was crying so hard it probably wasn't very clear. I was scared, and so very sad, and angry that he could have hurt our daughter. Somehow I got out of the bathroom, I honestly have no idea how. Our little girl had run out of the bathroom at some point and I ran out looking for her and to try and get upstairs so I could lock myself in the guest bedroom. I didn't see her and I was trying to run up the stairs when he grabbed my leg and tripped me. I fell face first into the stairs and the only thing I could think of was the scene in Fried Green Tomatoes where her husband kicked her in the back and she fell face first down the stairs while she was pregnant. I just kept telling myself to get someplace safe and the baby would be ok. I kicked him off and got to the top of the stairs and our daughter was sitting by the bedroom door. I scooped her up and bolted into the bedroom and locked the door. I grabbed my cell phone and tried to call my husband's mother for help. She knew of his anger issues, but like I said he was never physically violet with me before. She didn't answer and I started texting her hoping to wake her up. The whole time I was trying to get ahold of her I was sitting on the floor with my body weight up against the door, even with it locked I didn't feel safe. My husband was pounding on the door and saying the most awful things in hushed tones. Finally my mother-in-law text me back and basically said he was not her problem anymore and she didn't want to deal with it. I begged her to come - I told her everything that had happened so far - told her he was out of his mind drunk and I didn't know what to do. She refused to help and I was even more devastated. Finally, he left the door and went outside. He proceeded to blare the music from the car radio while he screamed at the top of his lungs. I could see the drive way from my room. He cried and thrashed around on the drive way screaming all kinds of incoherent things. I thought for sure that someone would have called the cops and I was hoping that was the case so he would just get arrested and it could be over. I forgot they lived in a new housing community and almost all the houses around us were empty still. This went on for hours while I tried to comfort our daughter while snuggling her in bed and trying to get her to fall asleep. Eventually he go in the car and sped off, tires screeching and all. I sent him mom another text to warn her that if he was going anywhere else it was probably her house since it was like 3 am by that time and he had no where else to go. I was so scared but at the same time emotionally and mentally exhausted. Not to mention physically in a lot of pain and very tired.  

After about another hour of me sobbing uncontrollably, snuggling our daughter, and me trying to process all the crazy that had just taken place I must have passed out. I was laying on my left side on the edge of the bed. I was suddenly startled from sleep as I felt a hand tightening around my throat with my head being pulled as far back as it could go by my long hair. I could feel his hot breathe right on my ear and my nostrils were filled with the disgusting stench of old beer. I started to pray this was a nightmare, and tired to wake myself, but as soon as he started speaking I knew it wasn't and I was filled with nothing but terror. I will never forget what he said in the most hushed evil and hate filled voice I had heard to date, "You think you can lock me out to keep me away? How dare you try to keep me away! You can't ever hide from me. Don't ever try again. Do you understand me?" I tried to respond in some way but I couldn’t breath from his hand tightening around my neck. I wanted to scream or run or anything but I couldn't get away. I couldn’t speak so I tried to nod the best I could to get the "Yes I understand" answer across. He let go of my throat and I just started coughing, I couldn't stop, I tried to sit up but he kept me pinned to the bed. I was coughing and chocking and crying again. He let me go and paced around the bedroom, ranting and making threats. The dawn was just starting to break through the blinds. After a little while of his he laid down on the other side of the bed and very quickly passed out.   

I laid there totally frozen in terror. I wanted to get up and run but I was so scared I couldn't move, just worrying about what would happen to me if I did. I had never felt so helpless in my entire life. I cried because I was so alone and stuck with a monster. I cried because I couldn't figure out how his mother could be so cold, or scared, that she wouldn't even come to help me and her grand children. I cried because I was sure the home owners had heard everything and were going to kick us out and that if we were alone maybe next time he would kill me. I cried because I had no idea how I would protect my kids if I couldn’t even protect myself. I cried because I knew I would have to leave him. He was the only person I had ever even tried to trust in my life, and that trust was shattered into a million pieces, my heart broke a thousand times that night.    

I have thought about that night so many times I can't even count. Trying to process it and understand why it happened. I have even tried to look at it through my husbands eyes. I tried to imagine what it felt like or looked like to be him standing over me and what he could have been thinking. I have never been able to figure out how you could do things like that to someone you call your queen and soulmate. I don't think I could ever understand it from his perspective.   I cried while I wrote this because I can remember how I felt then. Now when I stop and read over it, I remember that I am not that person anymore, and I am not in that situation anymore. I am surrounded by wonderful people who have a genuine interest in my well being. I maybe pregnant, but I am 100 times healthier now then I was then. I would never allow someone to treat me this way now. I am mentally so much better off then I was at that point as well. I have already worked through many of my traumas, and it gets more beneficial each time. I don't ever have to worry about locking my doors again, literally or metaphorically, and that is probably the best gift I could ever give to myself!  

I could not have made the amount of progress I have in such a short period of time without the wonderful people @gardenofeden. Everyone: @everlove @saramiller @qiqi-power @rileyechard @fmatinata @piercetheveil, and all the others I have met that don't have/use Steemit, are the most unique, genuine, outstanding, kind, and loving people I have ever known. This place is not just an amazing example of how to live a sustainable life to better the environment and world around us. It is a also a place where people transform their lives to encompass who they were meant to be before becoming unconscious creatures hell bent on survival at any cost. Without the GOE people like me would have never been able to accomplish outstanding things I could never achieve without the knowledge and energy that exists here. My gratitude could never be fully expressed, especially to @quinneaker for creating and maintaining this paradigm.