HEALING FROM ABUSE

 

 

This page has been created to tell the story that I kept hidden from the world for so many years, it has been healing for me to write the words, and hopefully reading the words will bring healing to others.  Most of this was written in the year 2001 and has been added to as memories come up for healing. This page may act as a trigger to some who have been in similar circumstances.  As this page is new, I will be adding to my story as the memories come up for healing, this is only the beginning....

I was raised in a household where family was very supportive.  My mother and father were both one of five children, she was the oldest, he was the youngest.  Memories of those early years are wonderful.  It was almost like we had 10 sets of parents and weekends were either spent on Long Island or in New Bedford.  I was one of 26 grandchildren on my Mother's side of the family and my cousins were like my brothers and sisters. 

We moved from the east coast to Warren, Ohio when I was 9 and it was a real blow to lose my extended family.  I am one of 7 children, 5 girls and 2 boys, the boys came last and so indeed had 6 mothers to deal with.  There was a big age difference between the oldest and the youngest, my youngest brother was born the day my oldest sister graduated from high school. 

In our family, Mom was the disciplinarian and Dad taught us how to enjoy life and have fun (must have been the Irish in him).  We didn't have much in the way of physical things, but always managed to have food on the table, and plenty of love.  I grew up thinking that all men were like the men in our family, my Dad adored my Mom and I never heard them argue in front of us until we were older and out of the house.  Because of this, I never was really able to deal with anger.

As I was growing up I was extremely shy, and had a terrible time in school.  I knew that I was smart, but I could not sit in class and pay attention for more than 5 minutes, I would then be in a world of daydreams, or would be moving around in my seat as it was painful to sit still.  I can remember teachers telling me that if I only applied myself I could get the grades, but I could not sit still long enough to study at home and turned to athletics.  

When I was in high school I was on a gymnastics team, helped teach gymnastics to earn the money to be on the team, and eventually I also learned how to judge gymnastics as well.  I was involved in track, basketball, tennis, and any other sport that I could get someone interested in playing with me at the time.  I also got a job working in a hospital cafeteria when I turned 16 to earn the money for my tuition to high school.  Eventually when I met my husband to be I was working a full time job, coaching a gymnastic team, and judging as many meets as I could fit in between.  I just seemed to function better under pressure and being involved in all these sports activities I think helped get me through high school.

I did not start dating until I was 21 and got involved in a sexually abusive relationship to a psychotic 27 year old man who loved 14-16 year olds.  It got to the point where I was trying to figure out ways I could end this life here on earth.  I felt that there was no escape from that situation and was full of self-hatred, despair and shame. 

It was at this time that I met my future husband.  The ex was here for an "externship," working in a state hospital in Cleveland for three months in the summer over with six other people from Scotland.  They were given a car to use for transportation by one of the staff docs, and the ex was chosen to take care of registering the car, etc.  At the time I was dating the sexual abuser who was from Cleveland, and he needed to pay for the title on his car.  We met at the title office, exchanged phone numbers, and dated that summer.

I can remember to this day what attracted me to the ex, here I was the original "space cadet," already the figure chosen by the family to make fun of at family gatherings because of the "stupid" things I would do.  I had chosen not to go to college because I knew I wouldn't be able to handle the subjects that I didn't have an interest in, I just couldn't study.  Then along comes this intelligent, well-organized individual, and I let him carry me away to Scotland, and rescue me from the life I was living.  

They say that you should look at the father of the person you will marry to get some idea of what your marriage will be like and I should have done this.  I left my home and moved to Scotland to be married.  It was there that I first encountered religious prejudice and was very shocked at the attitude in Scotland to Catholics.   The ex's family was Scottish Presbyterian and objected strongly to our marriage.  The ex's father appeared to be an alcoholic, I really cannot ever remember him being without a drink in his hand, and he encouraged everyone else to drink as well.    The night before we got married his father got drunk, had a huge argument with the ex, things got a bit heated and violent and he managed to injure the ex's finger in the process.

One of the first memories I had of meeting his family was as follows... we were all sitting in the family sitting room, the ex's dad was sitting on one side of the room and his stepmom on the other -  she was serving tea and sandwiches to everyone and came around with a tray and offered everyone something to eat.  There was a table at his dad's feet which she put the sandwich tray on and went across the room and sat down.  After about 10 minutes his dad says "I would like another sandwich (bearing in mind that they were right at his feet, all he had to do was reach out and grab one without getting out of the chair) and mum got out of her seat across the room went over, picked up a sandwich and handed it to him... I always felt a bit sorry for Mum as she was treated like a personal servant and I considered her to be a saint for putting up with this man as she did, but in retrospect I am sure it took a toll on her self-esteem and feelings of self-worth.

Later on in our marriage he would never help himself to anything, I was expected to serve it to him, and things went bad in the fridge because after some time I just stopped waiting on him like that.  I would ask him why he didn't have a snack and he would say "you didn't get it for me."  At that time I had three children that kept me busy, so the fourth child just had to wait.

I was raised in a very loving family, my aunts and uncles were all there for us as we were growing up, lots of weekends and holidays were spent with them. I was soon to find out that the ex was raised in a totally different atmosphere. There were relatives that you didn't speak to because his dad did not speak to them. It was really sad, but his Dad did not speak to his own mother the last year of his life because his brother got a piece of furniture that was supposed to go to him, when she was moved into a nursing home. There was such a major difference between the 2 families, and I liked all of the relatives I had met, including his dad's brother and felt it was such a shame that the family was so dysfunctional. 

 

We lived in Scotland until June of 1978, when we came to the states and settled into our new home in Pittburgh, Pennsylvania.  The ex was in a five year general surgery training program, and three years into this program he became a member of the US Air Force who sponsored the last two years of his training, and then enabled me to stop working and start a family and our first child  was born in October, 1981..

We moved from Scotland to Pittsburgh, PA, where the ex had gotten into a surgical internship. Things were OK with us, but I already was beginning to feel a bit trapped by this relationship.  We had one car and worked at the same hospital, he in  his residency and I worked in the patient office of his boss.  It was decided that I would wait around for him to be done and we went home together, I would get to the hospital at 6:30, so had 1-1/2 hours to wait around before work.  There were days that I was supposed to meet him in the lobby at 4:30-5:00 and I would sit there sometimes for 3-5 hours waiting for him, not daring to go anywhere in case I would miss him when he was ready to go.  He wouldn't even give me the courtesy of a phone call saying I'm going to be tied up for a while.

Within the first two weeks I was very shocked to find out that things were not going to be like they were in the household where I grew up.  In my family babies were special and were treated as such.  When our baby was two weeks old there was an incident in the middle of the night.  I had had a c-section and found it very difficult to move still.  She was crying rather vigorously one night, and I made the mistake of asking the ex to go and get her for me so that I could nurse her.  In a matter of minutes I heard him screaming at her at the top of his lungs "Don't you know I have to get up and go to work in a couple of hours, shut up" and he started shaking her, so I took the baby from him and managed to comfort her, but it took about an hour to do so.  It was then that I realized that I could not love someone who would do that to a helpless little baby.  At that moment I took on the role of protector and still find myself in that role today with all of my children.  For the next 18 years I protected my children from their father's anger fits.  As he was in the last years of his residency when our oldest was a baby, they hardly ever saw each other and he used to complain that she didn't love him, she didn't really know him, he was just someone who flitted in and out of his life every once in a while.  Throughout the marriage, the job always came first, the people at work were always more important than those waiting for him at home.  It would not have been so bad if when he was at home he was as nice to us as he was to those at work, but when he came home the real him came out, that dark individual who had no patience, no control over his emotions whatsoever.

We moved to an air force base in Oklahoma for two years active duty, and that time was probably the best time of the marriage.  He was very near work and the work load was very light, therefore his stress level was decreased and he became more tolerable to be around.  It was during this time that a second addition to the family was born, who made his appearance in October of 1984. 

We moved back to Pittsburgh after two years and the ex started in private practice, and kept up with the reserves as well.  It was then that the cracks began to really show in the relationship.

When **** was 4-1/2 she had a grand mal seizure at her aunt's house and had an abnormal EEG.  She was having hundreds of little seizures a day, had a bad reaction to phenobarb and Tegretol, and was finally stabilized on Depakote.   I had a very hard time coping with this, and my Dad and Mom came over and stayed with us, which I was very grateful for. At that time I told the ex that there was something serious wrong, that I was seeing what I now know were petite mal seizures, a lot of them.  He just told me I was imagining them, that he didn't notice anything.  After about a week of increasing petite mal seizures, he finally noticed her having them and told the doctor.  She was diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy and put on medication which did keep her seizure free for years afterward.  She decided at that point that "bad things happen to you when you grow up, therefore she wasn't going to grow up."  She was in school and we started to get reports about her aggressiveness, not sitting still in class, talking out of turn, etc.  The whole family started in therapy at that time, and this has basically continued throughout the marriage and after our breakup.

The third addition to the family came on 12/17/87, our youngest was three weeks early.  She came home at 2 days old, but I noticed that her color was really bad and kept mentioning to her father that she did not look good.  He just said that happens with some babies and it would get better.  After two days at home with her eyes turning yellow, I finally called the pediatricians office and told them that I would like to have a blood test done on her.  They told me they wanted to see her first, then they would decide if she needed a blood test.  They took one look at her, gave me a requisition for a billirubin and it was 23, they transfuse at 25.  She spent some time under the billi lights then was sent home when the count started to go down significantly.

 At six weeks old she got pneumonia, and after three days of telling her dad that she did not look good, that I felt there was something wrong with her,  she stopped breathing in the car on me and I had to revive her, she had a mucus plug.  The pediatrician took one look at her in the office, her neck veins were retracting, and put her in the hospital on oxygen.  She spent five days on oxygen before she was OK to send home.  This was the pattern set in our lives, the children would have real medical problems and he would tell me I was imagining it.  He would ask me where I had gotten my medical degree.  Not only did I suffer from this abusive attitude, but it was hard for the medical professionals to treat his children properly because of this.

Our youngest child was born in December, and the ex had to go away with the reserves in April.  My Mom and Dad came over to stay with me while he was away, and Mom told me to call the doctor and get my tubes tied, this from a practicing Catholic, she said that he could not handle the children he had, and that she felt that I should not have any more.  Believe me, I had a hard time believing this was my mother - actually telling me that I should not have any more children.  My mom and dad did spend some time with us before we lost dad, and they really knew Bill a lot better than anyone else.  I can remember my mom telling me "what took you so long" when I decided to leave the ex.   Needless to say, I was in total agreement, and went and had my tubes tied that week, and I don't believe he ever forgave me for that.  The doctor that did the surgery told me I cut them, I smashed them, I burned them, so I really don't think that you need to worry about them growing back together.

We had real problems with **** in school, she was very aggressive with the teachers and children, and was not doing well academically.  She was switched to a different school and we were being seen by a psychologist, who told us that she was deliberately acting the way she was, it was her choice to be this way.  She actually hit one of her teachers in the classroom and I was always getting phone calls from the school about her behavior.  She would not sit still in the classroom, would wander around the room, talk out of turn and never turned in her assignments on time.  She was not well liked by the other children.  She did very poorly in school and the psychologist said it probably was because she was very bored.  She had been tested and her IQ score was over 130.  She skipped 3rd grade on the recommendation of the psychologist, which was the wrong thing to do with a child with ADHD, but we hadn't had that diagnosis yet.  She missed a lot of fundamentals in english and math and struggled with math especially the rest of her school days.  

The ex continued in the reserves and was called up for Desert Storm, was stationed in Washington, DC.  Our oldest decompensated and I had her hospitalized and that is when she was officially diagnosed as having ADHD.  The psychologist called me and said that it was obvious after the first 15 minutes that she had  ADHD, she jumped from subject to subject, and this diagnosis correlated with the history which was given.  

The time he was away in Washington DC was a good time for me, with him gone it was actually nice in the house, the tension level really decreased, and I had a ball with the kids.   There was no waiting for dad to come and see what kind of a mood he was in, he just wasn't there and tension in our household eased tremendously, even with **** in the hospital.  She was hospitalized for a month before she came home.

He returned at the end of March and life was soon unbearable again.   After he came back he seemed to sink into a depression that he never really came out of.  He would come home from work, sit on the couch, yell and scream at the kids to be quiet, and ultimately fall asleep on the couch.  This was not something that happened once in a while, but every day.  When he did decide to come home, it made life miserable for us all, it got to the point that the kids and I all breathed a sigh of relief when he would be "busy at work."  He never ever praised his children, it was always why didn't you do this, why didn't you do that.  When the report cards came home, and there were 7 A's and a B, he would focus on the B and what was wrong that the B was there, instead of focusing on all the A's on the card. 

Our life became one crisis after another, and he began to stay away more and more, leaving me to cope with three active children on my own.  As the years went by our children were diagnosed as having ADHD, obsessive/compulsive disorder, oppositional behavior disorder, anxiety disorder.  I do believe our children have these problems, but they were certainly exacerbated by the home situation they were forced to live in.  Things might have been a bit different had they been raised in the nurturing and loving atmosphere I had been raised in, as I have ADHD myself.

When our youngest was 4, she fell out of a set of monkey bars (she was playing chicken at the time with a friend) and landed on her arm.  She kept complaining to me that her arm hurt, but it was not swollen.  He checked her out, and said it was fine, when I told him I thought we should have it x-rayed, it was "when did you get your MD?"  This came up all the time throughout the children's younger years.  He went away with the reserves the next day, and every time our daughter put any weight on the arm she would scream.  I finally called our pediatrician and she told me to take her into the ER.  She had a fracture and was put in a cast. 

The ex had asthma and always denied having it.  After moving into our house we found out that we had a problem with mice, and got a cat, who in turn had kittens twice.  We kept the cat in the basement and the problem with the mice was solved.  Because of his allergy to cats, the ex was having increasing problems with his "non-existent" asthma, requiring a steroid inhaler.  After one particular night where he used this inhaler all night long, and after thinking I was going to have to call an ambulance for him, I took the cats to the animal shelter.  We did have a dog, but the dog didn't seem to bother him as much as the cats did.

Needless to say, after the cat was gone we had mice in the basement again.  I kept telling him I was seeing the signs they were down there, but he didn't seem to bother about it.  It got to the point where the kids and I did not go into the basement unless we absolutely had to.  I even started going out of the house around to the side of the house when I wanted to use my car so I didn't have to go down into the basement. He asked me to get traps to put down in the basement after he started finding mouse droppings on the kitchen counter, table and floor.  The first week he caught 21 mice, the second 17, then he just let the traps sit for months with dead mice in them.  The freezer was in the basement, and I can remember the panic I used to feel when I went down into the basement to get food out of the freezer.  He did clean the one part of the basement out, he used his gas mask from the Air Force as he did it, you would not believe the amount of mouse droppings that were there.    When we moved there was a back part to the basement that had not been cleaned and the woman helping us clean could not believe the pile of mouse droppings that was in the back part of the basement, he was just laughing about it, but this was a physician, and you would have thought that he cared about the disease issues!!

I was not able to move heavy things, since I had fallen down the steps when our youngest child was a baby.  We had a set of stairs going to the basement and I fell while walking down them one day.  A neighbor had to come over and help me back up the stairs, I never had my back checked at that time, but it was never the same after that fall.  I had to clean around everything but really could not move things to clean under them.  I heard from the real estate agent that the people who moved into the house found dead mice under the fridge, that probably had been there from the infestation we had, six years before!!!  This man now claims that this was not a mouse, it was one of my daughter's gerbils that got out of their cage and went downstairs and died - the next door neighbor knew all about the mouse infestation and can verify that it did indeed happen.

Their father was two different people, at work he was well respected and liked and everyone considered him wonderful, but it was like he left that all behind when he came home at night.  I used to want to gag every time one of his patients or friends used to say how wonderful he was, I wanted to say to them come home and see what he is like there.  He was emotionally abusive to the children, constantly telling them how stupid and dumb they were, calling them idiots and never saying anything positive.  If they did something, there was always something to find wrong with it.   He would lose his temper and strike out hitting the kids repeatedly where ever his hand landed, he especially liked to smack them in the head.  Any little thing would set him off.  All the control that he exhibited at work was left there at work.  

Both **** and **** complained to me about how their dad treated them so differently when they are at the hospital, but changed when there was no one around.  I do know that my oldest discussed this with the ex's former office manager and this person's response was that she still had to show him respect regardless of how he treated her.  Our son said on many occasions that his dad cared more about the people who work in his office then his children and he wished he could treat them as nice at home as he did in the office in front of others.

He seemed to take most of his temper out on our son .  One time I had to remove **** from a headlock, there were many incidents where my oldest and I had to pull the ex away from **** when he lost his temper.

There was an incident where our son did something to set his Dad off.  He climbed out onto the porch roof from the kid's bathroom and was hiding out there.  His Dad stuck his head out the window, he was hanging from the drainpipe on the porch - and ended up falling 18 feet.  When I asked him what happened he said it was either climb back up onto the roof and face dad or take my chances and let go of the roof..... luckily no major damage was done, he did sprain his ankle and hurt his knee, to this day he still complains about his knee hurting every once in a while when he is running.

We had  neighbors who just about adopted our son, he was over their house constantly.  They had a son who was a few years younger than ****, and his dad was very athletic, **** was, too, at that time.  His own dad never had time to shoot hoops with him, or play catch, etc.  I was an athlete when I was younger, but had to stop playing catch with **** when I got carpal tunnel syndrome.  Chris was there every night and played with both **** and his son and **** was included in a lot of the family outings.  **** used to tell me how he wished that Chris was his dad - I used to send him over to their house when trouble was brewing at home with his dad, it became a safe haven for  him.  I don't think that Chris knew how grateful I was to him for taking **** under his wing the way he did.

I was not able to go anywhere in the house without him wondering where I was.  He was constantly asking the kids "Where's  your Mother."  He even used to pick the lock to the bathroom when I was in there, walking right in on me whenever he pleased.  There was no such thing as privacy in that house.  My children have been picking door locks since they were about 3 years old, he taught them how!!

If I was allowed to go out anywhere, he would ask me what time I would be back, would then go nuts if I didn't return home on time.  My mother used to stay with us every once in a while and couldn't believe how he would behave when I didn't get home when I told him I should be back.  I tried a few times to get together with friends, would ask him to make sure that he got home to watch the kids while I went out, and he would find some excuse to not make it home and I would end up staying home.  I eventually stopped trying to go out.  Because our children's behavior had deteriorated it was very hard to find a babysitter, especially as they got older.

My brother was made an officer in the US Coast Guard, and the whole family (all siblings that could be present and their families) went to dinner at a really nice restaurant to celebrate.  I got lobster and he was sitting down the table from me.  My niece asked me for a taste of lobster and I gave her a bit, so he asked me if he could have some.  I sent him down the whole shell, because there was a lot of meat still left inside but you had to go after it.   Being a general surgeon, he was really good at doing that, no one could eat chicken, duck or any kind of poultry as cleanly as he could.  I was sitting there and all of a sudden got hit in the chest with the lobster, he was upset because I sent him the shell and not a piece of it like I gave my niece, not realizing that there was still some meat in the shell.

I would be in the stores and he would say humiliating things to the clerks at the check out, like don't take her check, there's no money in the account.  He would humiliate myself and the kids in restaurants, stores,  you name it, but never in front of his fellow professionals or patients. 

In the last 5 years of the marriage he was extremely depressed, kept getting closer and closer to the edge, and everyone in the house became depressed.  One time he told me there was a sign in the cafeteria twelve signs of clinical depression and he said he had every one except the last.... he was homicidal, not suicidal. I was working 8-9 hour days, having to come home, take the kids to their psychology appointments, doctor and dentist appointments, athletic events and practices, do the laundry, do the housework, grocery shopping and was also expected to keep the house clean.   I had two children in gymnastics, who had to practice at different times, and our son was also in baseball.   At one point it was just take one to gymnastics, drop our son off at his game, go pick our daughter up from gymnastics, then rush back to try to get our son before his game was finished.  It would be 9:00 before the running around was over, and we still had homework to finish, etc.   I finally just had to let the  house work go, trying to keep up with all the rest as best I could.  He would come home and sit on the couch, watching TV all night, or fall asleep on the couch.  I had to get dinner, supervise homework, do clothes shopping, etc.  For the last 5 years or so I did not invite anyone from my family, or friends into the  house.  The kids were afraid to ask their friends over because he would yell at and humiliate them in front of their friends.  I had one mother tell me her son was not allowed to come over to the house, that **** was welcome to come over there whenever he wanted to after her son witnessed one of the ex's anger fits.

One of my sisters asked the ex one day why he treated me the way he did and I was told his answer was "I don't have to be nice to her, we're married."

There was another incident where my son took a knife and stabbed his sister's door with it.  When the ex  found out about this, he told me he was going to stab our son in the back like he stabbed the door.  I told our son  to go to a neighbors until I could settle his dad down.

The last 6-7 years of the marriage life was hell, we lived in fear, never knowing what would set him off.  There was an incident in November of 1998 where the ex and **** had an argument after which **** came and sat by me at my desk, I was working at the time.  The ex went to his gun cabinet in the dining room - right in front of both of us - and took out his handguns and started "playing" with them.  Both of us were petrified and I told **** to get up to her room.  I got up and went to stand by the ex and asked him what he was doing and his response was "can't a man clean his guns?"  I told him that it certainly was an inappropriate time to do so since he was still angry with our daughter.  He didn't threaten her verbally, but the threat was there in his actions.  She has been afraid ever since that he will someday lose control and get his guns out and do something to harm her.  **** reported this incident to the pediatrician and the principal at her school at that time, so it is documented.   The therapist we were working with was also told about this incident.

He used to start shouting matches with me around 11-12 when the kids were sleeping and would wake them up with his shouting.  To this day my daughters sleep with their lights on at night and I feel this is partly the reason why.  My son did, but got out of the habit when he went to live with my sister and brother-in-law.  One night when our son was 7 years old his dad came home at 11:00 at night, found something he did wrong, went into his room, grabbed him, started shaking him and shouting at him.  Imagine how the poor boy felt, going from being asleep one minute, to having his dad screaming at him and shaking him.  I had to pull his dad away from him to get him to stop.    He didn't care whether they were sleeping or not...

The situation was becoming more and more violent and because of this, I decided to try and break the cycle the we were living in in 1997.   After lengthy discussions with the therapist I was working with, I decided to leave the ex, getting a job and an apartment.  The ex now claims that I "abandoned" the children at this time.    At that point I was extremely depressed and so sick and tired of trying to do everything.  .  When I left he took pictures of the mess in the house, showing everyone what a bad wife and mother I was.  I don't think he informed them that most of the mess in those pictures was created by the years of junk that he refused to throw out.  I would put things in the garbage and he would take them back out.  He also probably didn't inform them that during the time I was not living in the house it was vacuumed once - when I brought my vacuum over from the apartment I was staying at and did it.  When I moved back in six months, the same mess was there that he had showed everyone in pictures, he hadn't touched a thing, but I am sure that he didn't tell anyone that side of the story.  He was always trying to make people feel sorry for him, he just eats up that kind of attention.  I always felt that someday they would have to wake up and see the pattern in him, but he still survives in that feel sorry for me mode, my children are mean to me, they don't love me.....if he would only look at himself and ask WHY??  He says it is because I am turning them against him, I didn't have to do that, and besides that I don't have any interest in doing so, he does that quite effectively himself.

I was always available to the children during this period of time and lived 15 minutes away.  The weekends were spent with me at the apartment I had in Cranberry and there were many nights that I stopped home for dinner with them.  

When we separated the first time, he did seem to want to change.  I got an apartment about 15 minutes away from the house, stopped by there for dinner on the way home from work, and on the weekends the kids and the ex would come and stay with me.  He became more attentive, and I felt that maybe he was going to change.  But when the summer was over and school started the phone calls in the morning waking me up started, with one of the kids crying on the other end, the ex screaming at someone in the background, and I knew that it was time to go back.  I had gotten the rest that I needed to go back into the situation without cracking and my kids needed me back there for protection.

He was always "crazy making" trying to say that I was nuts and that there was nothing wrong with anyone else in the family.  The sad thing is, that at one point I actually believed it!!

On one of his parents visits he was redecorating the half bath and I went over and asked him if he was finished his reply was "you're not singing, so I guess I'm not" this was said right in front of his dad.  Then he laughed.  It took me a few minutes to get it, but I had gained weight, and he explained to me "it isn't over until the fat lady sings."  He just thought that was the funny thing he'd ever said, I was humiliated.  These types of comments were made all the time, but this one really hurt more than most.

The ex decided that we would become dealers for a Japanese firm that sold magnets, and he  decided to buy **** a new mattress with magnets in it and took the old old queen size mattress off her bed, put it out in the hallway in front of her and our son's  doors to their bedrooms.  It stayed there for six months, I could not move it and the children walked over the mattress every time they went into their rooms, it was across the hall floor and partially up the wall.  I could not vacuum underneath it as it was too heavy for me to move.  Carol the woman who was helping me sell the house saw this when I showed her the house the first time. 

If I got on the phone, he would turn up the volume on the TV, or stereo so that I couldn't hear anything, and I finally gave up on going out because it was impossible to find babysitters for the kids, their behavior had deteriorated so badly.  We all became terribly isolated.

Toward the end I was working at home, and there were many incidents that there was someone from work on the other end of the phone that would hear what was going on, which was helpful to me.  One time the ex and our daughter got into a rather heated argument and I was talking to a friend on the phone - she actually heard him hit **** over the phone, he was in another room.    

On the way to the therapist's office one time he had our daughter in the front seat of the car with him and I guess they were verbally arguing about something and he told her to shut up, she wouldn't so he hit her.  The therapist asked if this made him feel better he said he didn't know, but it shut her up.  On the way into the therapist's office that afternoon he asked the therapist if she thought they would ever make homicide legal, she just looked at him and said what, he repeated himself and then laughed and said that he sure felt like killing his daughter.  

One day my son said "Mom, why do stay with Dad when he treats you so badly?" and I sat and thought about it, and started making plans for my independence day.  Four months later I filed for divorce for the second time.

Still to this very day this man denies that any of this happened, he blames me and the children for everything that went wrong in our marriage.  The stories that have been told about me  by him are unbelievable.  Anyone who would take the time to get to know me would realize that my problem is that I am too soft and compassionate, and that is part of the reason why I ended up in the situation that I did.  When confronted with some of the things he would say or do in anger,  he would say things like, I was just kidding, or I didn't say that.  It got to the point that I taped him when he would lose it then bring the tape in to the therapist so that they could hear him, because he was so calm and controlled in the office.  I used to call the therapists when he would lose control, they would be on the other end of the line telling me that there was nothing they could do about the situation, one woman said to me "you know what you need to do, Mrs. *********."

We began to have real problems with the children because I would feel guilty about the abuse from their dad and I would be extra nice to them to compensate for it.  The children had one parent who couldn't control himself when he got angry, and another that couldn't bring herself to punish them, which made for a very bad situation all around. 

The ex  claims that a major contributor to our children's emotional problems was the extreme difference in parenting styles between him and me.  I could not agree more - he says he was considered the disciplinarian and I was the lenient one who would reverse any decision he made that I considered to be too strict.  I would not describe the ex as a disciplinarian, but as an abuser, and I would consistently have to intervene when he would lose his temper and physically attack his children.  There is a big difference between disciplining and touching, beating, smacking, humiliating and kicking.  These incidents increased in the last few years of the marriage and I consistently informed the people who were then doing our counseling of these incidents and so they are on my and the children's counseling records.

In general, he left our youngest pretty much alone, but there was one incident where she was taunting him and he lost his temper, chasing her around the house.  I finally had to lay on top of her to keep him from hurting her and can remember calling out to my daughter upstairs to call the police, when I said that he snapped out of it pretty quickly.  That was around the time I realized I had had enough, and so had the kids and it was time for me to refile for divorce.

He was supposed to move out, but would not.  I filed at the end of April, he was still in the house in July.  He went away for 17 days with the Air Force and during that time I meditated and prayed asking for help with the situation.  One Saturday I asked God to help me get this man out of the house, it was the first week of July.  The following Monday I drove home from taking my oldest daughter to summer school, pulled the car into the driveway, and this woman walked up to the car, tapped on the window, introduced herself, telling me that she was a real estate agent, and were we interested in selling the house.  It turned out that she and her husband lived down the street from us in new apartments that had been built.  She was married to a doctor, who was an anesthesiologist.  I told her my story, but told her that I was too ashamed to have anyone in the house, no one had really been into our house for over 5 years, my family had not been to visit, nor any of my friends.  To this day I believe that God sent me an angel in response to my prayers.  

Two weeks later she called to see if either of us would be interested in subletting their apartment, and I told her if the ex didn't than I would.  When I told him that, he decided to move out.  I then had her over to look at the house, I can remember how shocked she was to see what the house looked like.  She and I spent 10 hours a day for the next three weeks cleaning the house, throwing things away.   The ex signed the papers to sell the house, I believe he only did that because he felt it would not sell.  We signed the papers to sell it on August 2nd and it was sold on August 26th.  She had her niece come over to help us clean, and her husband came over and helped, painting the hallway and helping fix things that needed fixed.   We had piles and piles of junk out for the garbage men, one morning it took him 25 minutes to put everything out there into the truck.  One of the neighbors told me he saw the ex out there one morning at 6:30, going through the garbage.  This man saved everything......literally.

Carol truly was a life saver. She helped me tremendously and even got to see the situation with the ex so totally differently. She told me at one point that she had caught him in a lie. Our daughter went to her niece's for a two week vacation and I got a phone call from them that they did not want the ex to come pick her up with me, she had seen him flip out on our son while she was over the house helping to clean it to get ready to sell.

 I will never forget my son telling me "I feel so safe here, Mom" about 2 months after we'd moved into our new home.  After the ex moved, one time we were discussing his losing his temper and I told Drew in front the the ex that if any adult started to attack him that he had the right to defend himself physically from the attack.  

Around Christmas of 1999 our son, youngest daughter and a friend of hers were at the the ex's apartment and the ex lost his temper with our son , attacked him physically and the friend of our daughter was so frightened by the incident her Mother would not let her visit our daughter at her Dad's for a long time afterwards.

When I was first dating the ex, I found out that that summer he had dated two of us, I knew nothing about this, but a year later a friend informed me.  When confronted with this, he said she was his insurance policy.  I asked him to explain, and he said if things didn't work out with me, he had her waiting in the wings.  The rest of our married life there was always someone in the wings that he flirted with and had a "special" relationship with, maybe not physical but the potential certainly was there.  I knew every one of these people, there were a couple that actually called the house to talk to him.  I told the doctor who was in charge of our therapy before we parted ways that I felt that the ex would not leave me unless there was someone else waiting in the wings to take care of him, he was terrified of being alone.  The doctor agreed with me.

When he signed the papers on Sept 30th for the sale of the old house, I was told by my friend Carol who was my real estate agent, that he held the sale up for 1-1/2 hours, and kept saying I don't know why we are doing this, I would have given her anything she wanted, I don't want this.  We later found out that he had already been dating his wife to be at that time, they had been on several dates together.  Both the doctor and I had been right, he had found and cashed in on his "insurance policy."

We all knew that he was dating someone else, the kids met her at a Halloween party in October 1999. They told me that they thought their dad and her were a bit "friendly." He would call them and they would hear a child in the background, yet when they confronted him, he lied to them and told them he was not dating anyone. He tried to make them feel guilty that he would be alone at Christmas in December 1999, and yet he had spent it with the new wife to be and the children knew about it. He didn't admit to the new relationship, lying and sneaking around until April of 2000. I knew about the relationship and really didn't care, either at that time or now.

I would like to say this to others who are in the situation that I lived in - it is possible to get out, start over without the abuser.  It does take a lot of courage and faith in self.  I was lucky in that I had a couple of very dear, supportive friends who got me through this.  All an abuser is is a bully and coward, who picks on those who cannot, or choose not to fight back. 

I was convinced that I was stupid, was not capable of making it on my own, but have proven to myself that I can do it and grow more and more independent by the day.  

Do not protect your abuser as we did as a family, they need to take responsibility for their actions and their behavior.  He was able to get away with the abuse because he could rely on us to be silent about what was going on in our household.

I was discussing the guilt that I felt for staying with this man for the 22 years that I did with a friend and she pointed out to me that I could have spent the next 20 years with him, that would have been the easy way out.  She said it is much harder and takes more courage to step away from the situation than it does to stay.  I hope that each and every abused man or woman finds the courage and faith within to say  NO MORE to their abuser and leave; and when they do leave, may God and his angels keep them safe in their embrace. 

 

   THERE IS LIFE AFTER ABUSE 

 

My children still struggle with their issues with their father, but  I have never been happier, have learned to love whoI am, and am determined to never accept another abusive relationship in my life, I learned my lessons and have nowmoved on.  When I am in contact with this man now, I feel no  negative emotion whatever, but rather great relief that I am no longer his wife.

One of the first things that I did when the divorce was final was to take my maiden name back, I was so proud to be my father's daughter and to carry his name. He was the best father anyone could ever have wanted.  It was the first step on my journey back to who I truly was, I had to reclaim Rita and it has been truly a wonderful journey.

A few months ago I found some of the audio and videotapes I made of this man when he was losing it, and cannot believe the way that we used to live.  I have decided to keep the tapes and give them to my oldest, she is the one that suffers most from the memories she has, and hopefully some day she will be ready for intensive therapy with them, she needs some sort of validation that this really did happen, and expert advice on how she can find peace with it all.    It got so bad that I never went anywhere in the house without a tape recorder in my pocket, and there are some very interesting tapes available.  He can deny  to himself and his new family, and our joint friends that he was not like this, by I still have actual video of him beating on his children in a rage, his face mottled and red yelling "I'm going to kill them."  One cannot deny that which is recorded, and he cannot deny that that is his image doing those things.  I just find it amazing that this man not only builds castles in the sky, but he also moves into them and lives there.  He totally denies who he was to us, and I do not think he will ever admit to the abuse he dished out, even when confronted with real evidence, I am sure he would still deny it.  I cannot believe that I was so desperate that I felt that I had no recourse but to have "evidence" that I was not crazy, did not imagine these things were going on.  What do we do to each other, how do we get to a place where a wife is so frightened by her husband and the father of her children that she feels the need to video and audio record the abusive actions because no one believes that this individual was capable of these things,  a real Jeckyl/Hyde. 

AFTERTHOUGHT:  On April 27, 2002 the ex remarried, and I celebrated my freedom with thanks to Spirit, he is now someone else's problem, not mine.    They are very much alike, and much more suited to each other than we ever were, may they spend many years together.  It is funny, but my favorite saying is "What you give to the Universe you receive back." It seems as he has chosen someone who is everything negative that he used to tell his friends and coworkers I was like. She is totally opposite me, and certainly wears the pants in the family. He is told what he must do, so the control freak has married a control freak who is much more stronger than he is and so she keeps him under control. He cannot make a move without checking with her to make sure it is okay. More power to her. I do not resent her at all and wish them much happiness in their life together.

I am so proud of my children, they have become strong and are able to keep their relationship with their dad on the level that it should be. He still constantly tries to interfere with their lives, but they are strong enough now not to fall for the power struggle and usually come out where they need to be.

As for me, I have reclaimed myself.  I am a warm, compassionate, loving human being who has so much to offer the world.

I found the note below in a newsletter from Silent Tears, and it really triggered something in me, my ex used to say the most hurtful things, then laugh and say "Oh, I was just kidding."  He is an expert at emotional blackmail, and using emotional abuse to get people to feel sorry for him

An Abuser will use many many words to try to make their abusive actions seem like it was a joke or not meant to happen.

How many times have you heard the same excuse that made you feel that your abuser was only trying to make light of his/her action?

This is truly a very common thing that abusers do. They do this in hopes of smoothing over what damage they have done. Even deep down to try to convince themselves that what they have done is excusable...

DO NOT LET YOUR ABUSER MINIMIZE THE PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL, VERBAL OR HARMFUL ABUSIVE ACTIONS THEY HAVE TAKEN UPON YOU -- STAND UP TO SAY NO MORE!

 

Click below to go to a memorial site for victims of domestic violence, may their souls soar with the angels, their lights snuffed out, but their flames still burn brightly elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

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