My story

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-12-2004
My story
4
Wed, 10-05-2005 - 12:37am

This is something I have never shared with anyone before, at least not in total. So here it is:

My mom was married 3 times, all to horrible men. First one, my father, I never knew. Second believed children should not be seen or heard and was emotionally abusive to my mother. He ran off with another woman who was physically abusive to him later and his new marriage ended. What comes around goes around..... The third one didn't last either, but was a very bad time for me. He was rather nasty fellow who would blow up over some water being left on a washed dish. The result was me being made to stand in a corner (no touching the walls or sitting) for 3 hours straight. Once I was not allowed to sleep in my bed one night and had to spend the night on a wood chair. He would check in every now and then to make sure I did not get off of the chair and sleep on the couch or floor. I couldn't tell you what I did because even then I couldn't understand why I was being punished. Once he took every bit of my clothing and threw it out in the back yard. I was also told once that I was not allowed to go to school a particular day. This was as punishment. He tore up my school picture once and quietly left it at the foot of my bedroom door. He yelled at me about cleaning my room one time, and each time I was almost finished cleaning it he would tear the bed apart, throw everything on the dresser on the floor, and tell me to clean it again, and repeated that about 3 times. The worst was when he screamed at me in a drunken stupor and smacked a full beer stein along side my temple, making me black out for a moment. I left home at 16 and lived with my older brother until I graduated. Despite all of this I was a top student, had honours courses each year, won prizes for my art and writing, and was well liked by teachers. Because of this I was shy, vulerable, and had no self esteem.

I finished high school with high marks and had big ambitions but not a dime to my name. I wanted to go to college but the financial aid officers said that my parents (mother and stepfather) made too much money to offer me the aid. Exasperated, I begged for loans and got them. I signed myself up with the intention of becoming either an artist or an anthropologist. But I liked a challenge so I took the toughest classes I could find (physics, calculus, chemistry). I decided after my first official archeology dig that I liked the science side of it, but didn't like the dirt. So I went into engineering because there weren't many women there. (I liked a challenge) Got excellent marks in that too, despite meeting PAHL in the first year of college.

PAHL was abusive from the beginning. He lied to me about how he couldn't see me because of some obligation, then I would find out he was at a party. He would abandone me at parties and leave me wondering how I was going to get home. He was pushing and at least once I remember getting some serious bruises on my arm. I guess I figured at the time that those things sometimes happen in relationships and that you have to take the bad with the good. I had never had a boyfriend before he came along because I thought no guys would ever be interested in me. He struggled through college while I just meandered my way through and that caused him to critisize me a lot. It became down right hostile and cruel later. I remember sitting on the front steps of my work at one of the labs while this colleague of mine almost 3 times my age told me 'why the h*ll do you want to stay with that guy?' I got married to him about 2 years later.

The marriage almost didn't happen because I found out that he was messing around with what I called a hooker (sorry, but I don't qualify THAT as a lap dance when it involves more than touching and looking). He lied about it and then begged me to carry on with the wedding. I did because I thought he was sorry. I even had regrets during the wedding thinking maybe I made the wrong decision. I certainly that way during the reception. I spent that sitting at the head table with tears in my eyes because his mother was telling my relatives what a b*&tch I was and how I wrapped him around my finger. This was started because I requested for no smoking signs to be posted at the dinner area in respect of my asthmatic cousin present.

Moving on, there were many holes punched in walls at the house that we bought together. I remember being the one to patch each one and think now how ironic that was. He ripped a door off its hinges once. He threw a dish onto the floor so hard that it ripped up the linoleumm permanently. He would disappear for more than a day at times without telling where he was. When I was laid off from my job, he critisized me and yelled at me for being lazy and a b*&tch each and every day until one day I cried so much and said I felt like I wanted to die because it was too much. He pointed a gun (a rather large pistol) at my head and asked how do I like the feeling of having a gun pointed at my head, do I still want to die? I enrolled in the masters programme for mechanical engineering (I had big dreams) and he critisized me for that. He had dropped out of the bachelors programme for criminal justice long before. He said he doesn't want to pay for my *&*^&&* college and I needed to work a real job. The reality was that I was on a research grant. The college paid all of my tuition and an additional 1000 a month to do research. But I found a part time job as a civil engineer while I was going to school, in order to pacify him. It didn't work. He said I didn't make enough money and I was punished each and every day.

I finished the masters and my part time work hired me full time at a great pay. I was making 60k to start which is excellent for a civil engineer to start. I hadn't work there for 6 months before he berated me for not demanding higher pay. He was working as a security guard at a casino meanwhile.

I got pregnant with my son and worked up until two weeks before the birth. I went to work two weeks after. But only one week after the birth, he came home late at night crying and nastily saying 'I hope you don't mind that I quit my job'. He didn't work again until the following year. I said if that was what he felt would be best then it was ok with me. He watched my son for the first couple weeks, then pressured me to find a babysitter for him. I went through two before I received a job offer to live in Austria. I wasn't going to take it because I told him I was afraid it would be hard on him not having work. He wanted it so I did it.

He hated me for it about two weeks into the job here. It became explosive after about two to three months later when he slammed me with a fist? hand? (I don't know it happened too fast) across a table and broke a rib or two. While I was on the floor he kicked me violently until I could crawl to the drawer and pull out the car keys to give them to him. I can't say anything really caused the situation except that I turned the heater on in the car on the way home(it was near 0 F outside). He was very very drunk and didn't want it. I said I was cold and he blew up, opening the car door while the car was moving. I quickly stepped on the breaks and he jumped out. He walked home not because I refused to let him back in, but because I was terrified of him and drove home shaking. That is what caused it.

Later there were many more blow ups. Once a slap or push or whatever you want to call it, upside the head which sent me on the floor. This was over my crying because it was my birthday and mothers day and he wanted to go out bowling with his friends. There was a plate of spagetti thrown across the wall, and stringing my 2 year old son with spagetti across his head. That one really hurt to see my son with food all over him because of his father. There was a full wine glass thrown against the door which left permanent marks. A fork thrust into my stomach and a threat from him to kill both of us, because I was upset at him for telling my mother that she was stupid. There were threats from him to jump off the roof of my work and fall in front of my window so I could see him kill himself. There were threats to kill the people at my work.

I could go on and on, but here I wrap it up. I couldn't take it anymore. I don't know really what did it, but I decided to leave. Not without reservations that are described by so many. Those thoughts that maybe it was something you did or didn't do that caused him to be like that. That if you had been better, he would have been the kind man that you had wished for. That you are unfairly punishing this poor man who just needed a good wife and not someone always feeling hurt. It took time to realized that frustration may be normal in a relationship, but not hostility and violence. This went beyond normal anger. I guess I felt that had I not left before Christmas that I wouldn't live to see the next year. I would have to write so much more to explain why I felt so convinced of that, but I have given much of those details in previous posts.

Since he has been gone, I have been able to breath again. I still have fears of him coming back to hurt me, but I don't come home every night wondering what will happen. My son, who also suffered from his abuse in a big way (another story) now is excelling and so much happier and cheerful than when his father was here. I have started to see a beautiful future for us and it feels great. I go through relapses of uncertainty and fear every now and then but not so severe as time goes by. We are starting to furnish the house as well (something we were never able to do while PAHL was here). Best of all, I now have a career. Up until PAHL left, he would even go so far as to tell people he had my job. I actually let him to keep the peace. I would down play what I did and actually felt that what I have accomplished was meaningless. Now I have taken full credit for what I have, have done, have accomplished, and for that reason I am excelling in my job while before I was a shadow in a corner. People notice it at work and it made a big difference. Yes, it was the right thing to do. It was the only reasonable thing to do, to get that negative influence out of our lives.

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2005
In reply to: hglucky
Wed, 10-05-2005 - 2:04am
You are a beautiful, beautiful person. G-D has blessed you with having so many talents and so many accomplishments. Thank goodness you left this relationship. No one can blame you for being in an abusive relationship but everyone will commend you for leaving it. The fact that you left this relationship and gave way to a brand, new life only shows how much of a progressive person you are and how you longed to move forward in life. You only deserve love and hugs and did not deserve what happened to you before. Now it is time to love yourself and anyone that does not join in that needs to be pushed away to the side.
I wish you so much luck and happiness and I hope that when you look in the mirror everyday you smile thank G-D that He has made you a strong person that pushed through no matter what. Lots of hugs.
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-12-2004
In reply to: hglucky
Wed, 10-05-2005 - 12:44pm
Thank you so much for the kind message. That really made my evening. Lots of big hugs to you too.
Avatar for butterflyqueen7
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
In reply to: hglucky
Wed, 10-05-2005 - 11:40pm
Your story was horrible and made me shudder...so eeriely similar to what I've endured as well. My Ex was once going to kill me in front of our then 15 month old son...I begged him to take me into the back room and he made me get down on my knees and plead with him not to kill me. Then he threw me on the bed. And the stories go on and on. But the bottom line is what you said--no matter what we do, we can never make them be the kind of man we wish they could be. And it's not our fault. I'm so glad you are out and doing well. My one year anniversary of freedom is this month. It's gone fast and been an unbelieveable first year of my new life. Best wishes to you and your son!!!
B
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-29-2005
In reply to: hglucky
Thu, 10-06-2005 - 6:23am

Lucky, it's so good to hear YOU emerging from that long silence.