If La-Z-Boy
received money every time someone sat in a nice, comfy armchair angrily
defending or attacking one subject or the other, it would be the most
successful corporation in the entire history of humans. Having a unique perspective on some of those
subjects, it has always made me shake my head in disbelief at the vehemence
employed by people who have….an opinion.
That’s all. Nothing more. No experience, no training. Just an opinion.
The subject
du jour as I type is the unfortunate encounter by a pro football player and his
now-wife in an elevator. It is clear
from the video tapes that they were both physically involved, but only the
woman was knocked unconscious. People are screaming from the rooftops about
what would make an otherwise intelligent woman choose to stay with a man who
would “do something like that” to her?
Let me tell
you MY perspective. I can’t tell you
hers because she has not shared it with me, nor am I in the least bit part of
their family drama.
When I was
just six weeks under 20, I found out I was pregnant and married the father of
my baby. I didn’t love him, and he didn’t
love me. In fact, I was a little scared
of him, especially because I wanted him to like me….which turned to “love me”
after we got married. One of the many
wonderful things he said to me in our time together was, “I’m not going to get
you a ring. It’s not like we love each
other or anything.” Another was, “[Joey]
and I used to sit in the back of the chapel and laugh whenever you’d get up
during fast and testimony meeting.”
Still warms the heart.
I can’t
explain why I slept with the guy, let alone enough times to get “lucky” and
score a pregnancy, but there it was. My
life was never going to be the same. It was
literally the worst decision(s) I had ever made in my young life. And 34 years later I still haven’t made a
mistake to equal or even come close to that one. I hurt not only myself but other people who
saw me differently. It still hurts
beyond my ability to bear, just typing it.
So that’s enough of that.
In my faith,
there is great emphasis put on being families for eternity, which is why we
have the temples we are building all over the world. It was not only nearly unheard of back then
for an LDS couple in my sphere to get a divorce, it was even somewhat scandalous! I was so young and naïve. I didn’t know that many of my friends were or
had gone through sexual, emotional, and physical abuse while I had been
unscathed in those areas.
After just
over a year of marriage, and before our daughter turned a year old, even though
my husband and I had fought bitterly and often, we went to the temple to be “sealed”
as a family because that’s what we had been taught that you do. In fact, I can still remember how “proud”
some of the adults who had been such a big part of my life were when we made
that choice. As if somehow we had fixed
the problem and righted the world once again.
I should mention that he was a returned missionary, so I am going to dispel
that rumor right now: Marrying a
returned missionary doesn’t guarantee in the least that your marriage and
future will be better or even satisfactory.
I know plenty of great people who did not serve a mission in their
youth, and I know probably an equal number of people who did serve who are not
the kind of people I’d want to spend any time with.
He was mean
to me. He told me early in our marriage
that if I ever got “fat, [he’d] divorce me.”
Seriously. That was pretty much
the tenor of our marriage. It was a
loveless, angry place. But other people
liked him because he seemed so affable, and he was a talented man who could fix
or build anything. So people probably
never considered that beneath all that affability was a monster.
Like many
people, I assumed that the only people who are abused are stupid or ugly or
drug addicts or alcoholics or mean spirited or…anything but what I have ever
been in my life. My parents’ marriage
was as volatile as most, but it was clear that they loved each other, and we
would all have fallen over in shock if our dad had ever laid a hand on our
mom. I mean, I grew up in a time where
parents, including my own, spanked regularly, and I have memories of running
away from a looming flyswatter at least once!
But I sure wasn’t an abused child, and I never felt unsafe with my
parents.
I had been
married to the older man for just over year, and I was working full time for
Kelly Services, often accepting legal secretary assignments, because the
husband just couldn’t get a decent paying job.
It was a world that intrigued me (the law), so I really enjoyed it. I ultimately was hired full-time by one of
the law firms. But while I was assigned
to work with them as a temp, I had an experience that changed me more than I
could have imagined. The husband and I
were involved in a loud argument, like always, and I remember saying something
stupid like, “Go ahead. Hit me. I dare you!” because he had raised his hand
to me as if he was going to do so. Of
course, he took me up on my “offer,” clipping me under my chin, and I fell to
the ground in disbelief. That same week,
while involved in another argument (there was a pattern), he actually grabbed
me by the throat with both hands and squeezed enough for me to think to myself,
“Oh, you really CAN’T breathe when someone strangles you.” Seriously, how would your mind deal with such
an experience you’d never imagined would be a part of your life, yet now, here
it is?
After already
experiencing over a year of belittling behavior and escalating anger, I was
already beaten, though I didn’t know it.
I can tell you the FIRST thing I thought in the immediate
aftermath: “How could he DO that to me?” Our toddler daughter was crying in the bath
tub, so I went to her to console her.
And then the doorbell rang. It
was the police. I was absolutely
mortified. I actually felt shame and
guilt because HE had physically attacked ME.
That became the pattern of our life together: Months of peace, ratcheting up to increasing
anger on his part, then he would hurt me.
And I always kept it quiet. I
couldn’t talk to anyone about it. It was
too humiliating. No one would
understand. Heck, *I* didn’t understand.
And so it
remained for another 13 years. I can
remember a time when he came up to me as I sat in my backless chair at my
computer, transcribing for court reporters (before I went to school to become
one myself), and, after first throwing the remote control for the TV at me and
denting my brand new desk, he came up behind me, grabbed my shoulders, and
jammed his knee into my lower back, marking the beginning of my future sciatic
pain which still troubles me now. It was
so bad, I fell to the ground, crying, and he actually sat back in his La-Z-Boy
recliner and continued to watch television.
I couldn’t move, and walking was so painful.
But you know
what I did? He actually left and went
who knows where, while I slept in our bed that night and then got up for church
the next day, making up excuses about why I was in pain, so I could be set
apart for my new calling, which I can’t even remember at this point. After a few days of continued agony, I called
my chiropractor, making up an excuse that my husband and I had been “wrestling,”
and I had hurt myself. Myself. I have wondered all these years whether she
actually believed me.
In 14+ years
of marriage, I honestly do not remember a single time this man apologized to me
for the things he did to me and then to our children. When our oldest daughter was a baby, about
seven months old, he was changing her diaper in her crib, and she did what
babies do: When her diaper was off, she
peed, but since he hadn’t put anything under her, she got the sheet wet. So he grabbed her by the ankles, lifted her
bottom up, and spanked her so many times and so hard that she was literally
bruised black and blue from hips to ankles.
And I was so ashamed.
I remember
spending all those years trying to hide the things he did to us. I can’t even tell you why I did that. I left him at least half a dozen times in
those years, but I received no other support from anyone. My parents would let me sleep on their couch
or, if they had one, in their spare room, but I was really alone. Mind you, I was too ashamed to tell anyone
what was going on, so how could they? It
was just too embarrassing for me.
Another time, I remember, after he had physically injured me yet again,
I made preparations for our daughter and me to move the two hours back to where
my parents lived. I even “quit” my
job. When he saw what I intended, he
grabbed my bowl of cereal and threw it against the kitchen wall. Then he grabbed our daughter, refusing to
give her to me so I could take her. He
finally relented, and off we went. That
lasted about two weeks, and then I just had to come back. He was surprised to see me. Didn’t even seem GLAD that I was there. I still don’t know why I felt so compelled to
be with him.
THAT is the
reason I wanted to write this blog. I
can’t describe to anyone who has never been there why (mostly) women continue
to stay with the men who abuse them.
Each story is unique, of course, but there is some almost unbreakable
elastic that keeps pulling us back. I
fought myself over that for so long. The
last time I did that, I went and applied for several legal secretary positions,
and none of them paid well enough for the hours I would have to spend away from
home for me to be able to satisfactorily care for our three children.
I was
working as a transcriptionist for court reporters who still dictated their
notes, but the work was getting less and less as reporters started using
computer-aided transcription. And then I
found out there was a court reporting school near Sacramento that was practically
free because it was attached to an adult education school in the Sacramento
City School District. My then-husband
never learned that the main reason I started attending school was so I would
have a viable career that would support me and the kids when I finally did kick
him out for good. Because I knew that it
wasn’t a matter of “if” but a matter of “when.”
There
continued to be humiliating, just-painful-enough episodes over those next few
years. I still managed to have kids with
him. First, I was afraid to say no to
him; second, because I kept hoping that if I would just try harder, our
marriage would be better, and we could truly be a forever family.
The ONE time
I fought back, he was hitting me and threw me on the couch. I fell back and tried kicking him away with
my feet. He took that as permission to go
after me even harder because I was trying to hurt HIM. I never made that mistake again.
When I was
nursing our son, I developed mastitis in one breast, though I didn’t know what
was happening. I had a fever and was in
pain, and I was just so out of it. He
stood in the dark bedroom, where I lay crying on the bed, and berated me for
bawling like a baby. The next day I
decided I needed to be seen by a doctor, so I had to call my mother to come
from half an hour away to take me to my appointment.
As I type,
more and more stories, bad memories are crowding my brain. Believe it or not, this man actually got in
my face, yelling at me, every fiber of his being poised to attack me, a few
years after we got divorced, and when I was happily married to my current
husband, who had to step out of the car and come get between us so he could
protect me.
This man did
such a number on me emotionally and psychologically that I was unaware how far
I had crawled into that world. When I
was in school, I performed very well, and I just blossomed under the praise and
respect I received from my teachers and my peers. I remember one day allowing myself to fully
form the thought, “I’m really not stupid.
I am a good student and a good person.”
I was seriously surprised to come to this realization. It might interest you to know that just a
couple of years later I was tested and learned that my IQ was high enough for
me to join Mensa, were I so inclined.
But because he had drilled it into my head that I was stupid and had no
common sense, that never even occurred to me.
Just six
weeks after passing my state test to work as a reporter in California, while my
firm was still hand picking depositions for me to take as I grew into the work,
our son, who was five, and our daughter, who was barely two, were jumping on
the trampoline while their father mowed the lawns. Our daughter, who had recently started
wearing glasses and didn’t like them, threw them down onto the trampoline. Our young son, who didn’t even think about
it, picked them up and threw them off the trampoline, probably so they wouldn’t
get broken because one of them jumped on them.
Unfortunately, they flew over the nearby fence into the neighbors’
yard. My then-husband started screaming
at our son, stopped mowing, though he never turned the mower off, jumped on the
trampoline, and punched our son in the stomach, all the while yelling at him so
that the spittle likely hit him in the face (ask me how I know about THAT). He
started shaking him by the shoulders and then threw him down to the ground,
ordering him to go to his room.
I was just
shaking. I was SO angry. I didn’t know what to do. I went back into the house, went to see our
son and try to console him. Then I went
into the kitchen, pacing as I tried to figure out what to do. And then our son came walking into the
kitchen. My poor, sweet boy. He had the biggest blue eyes and bright blond
hair. With fat tears rolling down his
cheeks, he pointed to his arm, and said, “Mommy?” I was horrified to see that his arm was
actually shaped like a letter Z. He had
a Colles’ fracture, meaning both bones in his wrist had been broken. In his case, there was also some dislocation
going on. It was 5:00, and the
pediatrician’s office told me to take him straight to the ER. I took our son and the two daughters who were
at home and put them in the car, getting ready to go to the hospital. Husband hopped into the passenger seat, and I
summoned all of my mama bear-ness and told him to get OUT right now. He actually did what I said, so I must have
scared him for once.
When we
arrived at the hospital, I told the first person I met exactly what happened so
they could get the police over to our house to arrest him. As the night progressed, I learned that he
was hiding inside the house so the police would not find him. When they asked me whether there were any
guns in the house, I came to the horrified realization that he, indeed, had a
gun under the bed, and who knew what he would do? That becomes important later, though the gun
was never in play that night or at any other time in those last years of our marriage. That’s right.
Years. Right after this, I
discovered that I was a couple of months pregnant with our youngest daughter,
much to my dismay. Not that I was
dismayed by her being in my life but by the idea of having yet another child
with this awful man.
You haven’t
known real pride as a wife until you’ve had to bail out your husband, not once
but twice, both times for physically abusing your children, because it didn’t
stop there. There were slaps across
little faces that led to blood splattering across the bath tub and at least one
chipped front tooth, also from a slap.
At the time of his second arrest, I was told that my children would be
taken away from me if I didn’t leave this man, and something else happened to
them.
And THAT is
what tipped the scale and gave me the courage to finally take the leap out
there and kick him out. Not only could I
no longer bear the idea of seeing my kids continue to be in danger, I didn’t
want them taken away from me. It took
weeks for him to finally leave, though. I
even had to threaten to call the sheriff to help. And I was horrified again as I saw people I
had known longer than he had turned to him because he had something to offer
them, while I had nothing they wanted.
You would
think that finally sticking up for myself and the kids would earn me some kind
of pride and respect from others, but alas, no.
I can’t even explain it. All I
can figure is that my life has been a source of great disappointment to them,
and this was just “one more thing.”
Really, it beats me (no pun intended).
Literally
the day our divorce was final (and I was right, he was a FAR worse ex-husband
than he’d ever been as a husband), I met my current husband on the internet. We joke that we are hipsters, because we met
in a chat room on AOL before anyone would have considered meeting and marrying
someone they met in that arena.
Our marriage
has been rocky at times, especially as we tried to raise and deal with our
respective families and exes as well as bringing another two children into the
mix. But I have never….NEVER feared for
my safety or for the safety of any of our children. He is a man who has also made mistakes and
often paid a huge price for those mistakes, but he is a good person. He is my friend. Literally my best friend. Ever.
No one…..NO ONE…..has ever treated me as well as he does.
Have I
mentioned that he has never mistreated or abused me or the kids? Why do you think our marriage is so
successful (17 ½ years and counting)? It’s
in large part because each of us has been through the wringer, and we recognize
the goodness in one another and how great we really have it now.
But did I
tell you that he has never laid a hand on me in anger? I guess I did, and there was a time in my
life where I just assumed that NO man would lay a hand on me in anger, let
alone use excessive force on his own children.
Joke was on me.
The bottom
line in this very long blog is I can’t really explain to you why I kept trying
to make it work for over 14 years. And I
can’t explain to you why hundreds of thousands of other women throughout the
world have and continue to make that same mistake. It’s a sticky mess of a web that doesn’t let
its victims go easily. And when we do
get out, even we can’t understand why it was so hard.
Oh, and that
gun I mentioned? It never occurred to me
that I was in mortal danger in those years of abuse. But while my ex-husband had pending felony
charges for injury to child (he had beaten our son….same son…..in the arm,
bruising him significantly), he screamed at me over the phone, blaming me for the
inconvenience in his life as if it were MY fault that CPS wanted to keep an eye
on the home situation. That was the last
time we ever spoke. Five days later, I
received an early morning call. He had
taken that gun into the garage of the home he shared with his second wife and
shot himself in the mouth, dying in seconds.
Two
things: Don’t live your life in such a
way that your being gone actually betters someone else’s life; and don’t think
for a second that killing yourself will solve everyone’s problems.
But then I
had the horrible realization: I never thought
he could do that to himself, yet he did.
Wait, I also never thought he could hurt me or the kids that way…. I am so grateful that he only took himself
and not the rest of us with him!
So….judge not. Be grateful if you are not there. Be grateful if none of your children or other loved ones has ever been there. But if they have or currently are there, love them, be compassionate, and even though you don’t understand WHY, give them your support as they try to figure out how to escape.
