Women Against Abuse

My ex-husband had a very violent temper, and I was constantly trying to make him happy to avoid the next outburst. If he was upset, it was not uncommon for him to put a hole in our wall, throw things, or break items that meant something to me.

During one of the fights in our first apartment, he knocked over shelves and threw everything on my dresser onto the floor. It was so loud, and glass shattered everywhere. We were very friendly with our upstairs neighbors at the time. Instead of being concerned about my safety, I was worried about what they were going to think. I loved him so much. I wanted to protect him. I thought it was my job to keep the peace as his wife. I didn’t want anyone to think badly of him, so I hid as much as I could.

I covered up, and he reinforced it was always my fault. “Look what you made me do,” he would say to me, still so angry.

I have only recently been able to talk about the forced intimacy in our marriage; what I now know is appropriately referred to as marital rape. I didn’t think it was possible, but so many times I didn’t want to; and he knew that. But he pressured me into “fulfilling my duty as his wife.” I would just lay there and cried until he was done. I didn’t know what else to do.

One fight that stands out in my memory was when I was eight months pregnant with our second child. I knew something was off because his volatile temper was escalating even faster than usual. I jokingly said, “what is wrong with you – do you need to go to rehab or something?” I thought the comparison would make him realize how crazy he was acting. Only, he was abusing drugs. He raised his right hand high behind his head and started to swing it down to hit me. I said, “Go ahead, hit me. Do something that leaves a mark.” That was when the hand stopped. I could feel the anger rippling off of him. His face resembled an angry ape. His eyes were large and his breathing was heavy. After a moment of staring me down, he stormed off.

He first entered rehab when my youngest was 8-weeks old and my oldest was about to turn four. They were so young.

He relapsed his very first day out of rehab, and immediately entered another rehab. He called me his first night there and yelled at me about how this was all my fault. He wanted to know what I was going to do to fix this. When I didn’t do what he wanted, he removed me from the list of people the rehab could talk to. That was when I realized we weren’t safe. He would continue to threaten me and the boys, and I sought a temporary restraining order.

This was the moment that put me in front of the judge. The judge who asked if I had ever been hit. No…I had stopped him. But that wasn’t the whole story. What about everything else?

I thought this would end the manipulation, the lies, the abuse. But it continued through court. Our divorce took forever because he was rehabbing and relapsing. He wouldn’t show up to our court appointments. When he did, I was told I needed to find forgiveness and find a way to heal the family. It was still my responsibility.

Meanwhile, I was doing everything alone - caring for the children, packing up his things and my things so that I could sell the family house. He didn't contribute anything to support the kids or for the house, arguing that he couldn’t. Even when the court ruled that I wasn’t responsible for his bills, he would take money from our joint bank account. The bank gave me such a hard time closing the account to get the theft to stop. It was impossibly stressful.

I really thank God for the friends, coworkers and family who supported me through it all. After the divorce I got remarried, but my ex just kept trying to get custody and then failing to show up because of his drug addiction. And still, I was told it was my job to build trust and figure out how to heal the family.

He died from an overdose two years ago. With everything I’ve just shared, his death still tears me apart inside. There was always a part of me that hoped he would find recovery and come back to the kids. I took an incessant amount of videos and photos of the boys to share with him so that he could see what he missed when the man I loved finally came back. But that never happened. There are still times I feel guilty about choosing the children and choosing myself. I worry that I made the wrong decision – that if I had stayed with him, I could have made him better.

That’s always the question people have about victims of domestic violence – “why don’t they just leave?” I totally get why they don’t leave. I didn’t leave because of the abuse. I ultimately left because of the drugs. He could have hit me that day when I was pregnant, and I would have stayed. I would’ve put him first.

Amidst all of this, there were so many wonderful things about him. He was a goofball. He loved baseball. He loved children. I still remember him playing with our oldest – they would meet in their imaginations and play the best games. I remember when I was teaching at night. I would come home, and he’d be ready with an ice cream sundae, telling me to put my feet up. All these moments existed in the same relationship. That’s why I stayed for as long as I did.

So, no, judge, he didn’t hit me. But how about listening to my whole story?