Beginning to tell my story....
I’m not sure how to tell this story, because even in my head it makes me sound like a spineless wimp at best. At the same time, I have to tell it because I don’t know how much longer I can survive this situation, and obviously I cannot fight it on my own. So, here goes. I apologize in advance that it is long, winding, and may sometimes not make much sense, but I know no other way to tell it.
18 years ago I was a happy, carefree child really. I was 19 years old, with a young son, but I was happy. I worked hard, loved my son ferociously, and had the support of my family and friends to help me through. My son’s father was not particularly interested in being a father, so I worked two, sometimes three jobs to support us, and lived with my family as well.
I knew Timmy because he worked for my son’s grandparents and had been our roommate during a period when my son’s father and I lived together. I was having difficulty with my car and my son’s grandmother sent him over to work on it for me. We were, if not friends, at the very least acquaintances and one thing led to another and we ended up beginning a relationship of sorts.
From the beginning, I recognized that something was “off”, as he acted insanely jealous if I spoke with friends while we were out; would often make up these elaborate “break up” stories and when I didn’t react the way he thought I should (break down in tears and beg him not to leave I imagine) he would act hurt and tell me it was just a joke. I wasn’t sure at the time what he was getting at, but I just thought he must be insecure, and frankly I genuinely liked him otherwise—I just wasn’t really trying to get married or anything, I had enough on my plate with my life. Hindsight is always 20/20.
Time marches on. Two and a half years after we began dating, I became pregnant with our first child together. At this point, I was still living with my family, working two jobs and just trying to survive. While I would never call one of my children an “accident”, I definitely did not plan to have another child, and certainly not while my life was still in limbo as it was. However, abortion never even entered my mind. Our daughter was born two days after he was incarcerated for driving on a suspended license and fleeing and eluding an officer. While he was in jail, he spoke often about marriage and starting out right together. I come from a broken home and have never been a big advocate for marriage, but I thought “well at least we can get a place together when he gets out”. Alas, that was not to be, for various reasons. Most disturbing was his insistence that he would not pay for anything pertaining to caring for our child, including child care, as he was not given a choice in whether I had her or not. Thank God for Daycare Assistance and good friends, because I’m not sure how I would have survived paying childcare for two kids at this point.
At this point, I’m still naïve enough to not see the bigger picture, and I continued to allow him to come over, take me out, and date him. I was getting the Depo shot, so I thought I was pretty safe from pregnancy, and I thought that even through all of this, he loved me and our family even against my every other instinct I still believed. For instance, when I got pregnant with our daughter, my uncle had given me a car. I truly appreciate the gesture, but this car was not exactly the safest vehicle to be driving with two small children. Driving down the road, the headlights would suddenly decide to pop off for an undetermined length of time before they turned back on; it would cut out sitting at stoplights and may or may not start back up again; it also had a terrible transmission leak. Irregardless, it got me from point A to point B.
He told me that he wasn’t comfortable with me driving that car any longer so he had a solution. When my tax money came in, I could buy his mom’s old car from her for $1800, he would dispose of the Mustang I was driving (he worked with cars) and all would be well. Turned out several things happened during this time. First, he never gave his mother the money I had given him for the car, and any time he would get angry with me, he would take the keys and sometimes the car and leave me with nothing. Second, he was apparently driving my car (with my tags on it), ran from the police, left the car in the woods, and the tags never got returned to the MVA. So….I owed a $5800 bill to the MVA that he refused to help me pay—as it was my car. Now, I’m no idiot, ordinarily, but I still was left holding the bag. I certainly didn’t have nearly $6000 to pay the MVA (single mom with two young kids at this point, who had just given away the only money I got back from the IRS for this other car), so I couldn’t get tags or anything on my own at this point.
Anyway, I digress. To my shame and shock, I got pregnant again—while on birth control. At this point, I am pretty much resigned to the fact that this relationship is crap, but I’m feeling pretty stuck. After all, he may be irresponsible and a liar, but he isn’t all bad. In fact, he can be a pretty nice guy and gets along with my brothers and my son really well, which was a really big deal to me. At this point, I am still working two waitressing jobs. He refuses to get a place with me until I get a “real” job. So, I quit my jobs and take a job at a bank—taking a huge pay cut in the process, and now needing fulltime daycare for 3 children rather than 2. My family could only help out in the evenings, the banking job is during the day. I keep looking for places close to daycare, my job, and my family but he shoots down every one. He finally finds a place in Lexington Park, far away from my support system. This is when the real fun begins.
Immediately things go downhill. He is verbally and physically abusive. He breaks my things. At this point I was trying to take classes at CSM to get my degree and he makes it impossible, ripping my homework and books, and ranting and raving about “me thinking I’m smarter than him” and on and on, until I quit. I cannot go anywhere except to work and the Laundromat and the grocery store. He takes the keys and/or the car if I’m not going to one of those places. I am on a strict time limit when I go anywhere at all, so trying becomes an anxiety inducing event. He refuses to help buy groceries (even for the things he eats), pay daycare or buy things for the kids (they’re my kids after all), and if he thinks I might have even a little bit of money left over from my check after paying bills and buying things, he takes it in one way or another. Either it outright disappears and he calls me crazy for spending it, or he simply demands that I give it to him. At this point he has become increasingly violent with me, so I give in. I am not allowed to talk on the phone or for anyone to visit me. My best friend got married in April of that year; I was the maid of honor, but I was unable to participate in any of the activities, could not afford to buy her a gift even, and prior to the reception he made such a spectacle of both of us that I had to leave.
We moved in together in March of 2000. By the end of May 2000, I have lost pretty much all contact with my friends, my family, and any life outside of work, necessary outings, and my kids and him. He has broken all of my things, thrown food at me and all over the floor, convinced me that I can do nothing right—not parenting, not cooking, not cleaning, not laundry, not anything, and made me broke. He has also already begun the process of incurring debt in my name. He has beaten me, raped me, raged at me, kicked me, dragged me into the house by my hair, ripped my children out of my arms and locked himself in the house with them while I am outside, and finally picked me up by my throat and thrown me into a wall, which leads to me in the hospital with a collapsed lung. I try to stay in the shelter after that, but he follows me after only one day and I go back in fear. Things get worse, believe it or not. I bide my time until I can leave. In September, I left, after a particular harrowing evening.
He went to work one morning, I pretended to get ready for work and get the kids ready for daycare/school, and I left…driving 17 hours straight through to my Grandmother’s house in Florida. After a week, my mom calls me frantic because he informs her that he has acquired the services of a lawyer and is taking me to court for kidnapping over state lines. I come back to my mom’s. He comes over and seems very remorseful and sorry for what he’s done. He promises to quit drinking, as he claims it is the alcohol that makes him act like this. He cries. He begs. I refuse to give in. He asks me to just please go for a ride with him so we can talk without other people around. I acquiesce, unfortunately. He drives down to the retaining wall in Solomons and parks. It is about 10:30 at night, pitch black, and there is nobody around. He very calmly grabs me by the back of the neck, forces my face into the glass, and states in the most chilling voice I’ve ever heard, “If you ever try to leave me again, you will end up in the water there, and everyone will just think you’ve run off and abandoned your children. So…are you ready to come home yet?” I have never been so terrified in my life and I gave in. We went back to my mom’s house and got our kids (my son stayed there that night, but he wouldn’t allow me to leave our girls). To this day, I don’t know if he really would have done that, but every time I leave and he threatens me, that memory of that night comes back in full force and I give in.
I’m not saying I’m perfect; I’m not saying that I can’t say some pretty horrible things to him when he’s been raging at me for hours, but I am saying that he won’t let me leave him. I’m terrified of him. He still refuses to pay for things; outside of half of the rent and the occasional electric bill. He has watched me sew patches in our daughter’s jeans because they have all split and I have no money to buy her new ones until I get paid, yet he flat out refuses to help pay for them. The next day, he brought home a new $600 RC car for himself and an iPod touch for himself. He doesn’t speak to our children; except on rare occasions. He has flat out been abusive (verbally) to them at other times. He has made chilling comments about the amount of attention I give to the kids and how it takes from him. He belittles me, berates me, calls me names, takes from me and acts as if he is the king of the castle. I cannot talk to him; conversations with him are exhausting roller coasters.
These things are just the tip of the iceberg. I could not possibly describe to anyone what every day in our household is like. I have begged for marriage counseling. I have begged for family counseling. He refuses. I have left multiple times. I always get scared and let him back in. He finds me wherever I go. He follows me in vehicles I don’t recognize when I leave work; no matter what precautions I take. He threatens me that if I try to leave him, he will destroy me; he will take the kids from me (after all, I am the one who looks like the irresponsible one, with tons of debt and the fact that I am so flaky I just keep dragging my kids around like laundry); he will kill me.
This is affecting my children deeply. It is killing me slowly. My health has taken a nosedive in recent years and I don’t think I can take another month of this. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to turn. I don’t know how to get out and stay out—safely. The thought of him taking my kids; either legally or by force; terrifies me. At least when I am around, I am his verbal punching bag, what in the hell would happen if I wasn’t?! What if he kills them, or me, or both. I don’t really believe that to him we are human beings, but simply objects/possessions.
18 years ago I was a happy, carefree child really. I was 19 years old, with a young son, but I was happy. I worked hard, loved my son ferociously, and had the support of my family and friends to help me through. My son’s father was not particularly interested in being a father, so I worked two, sometimes three jobs to support us, and lived with my family as well.
I knew Timmy because he worked for my son’s grandparents and had been our roommate during a period when my son’s father and I lived together. I was having difficulty with my car and my son’s grandmother sent him over to work on it for me. We were, if not friends, at the very least acquaintances and one thing led to another and we ended up beginning a relationship of sorts.
From the beginning, I recognized that something was “off”, as he acted insanely jealous if I spoke with friends while we were out; would often make up these elaborate “break up” stories and when I didn’t react the way he thought I should (break down in tears and beg him not to leave I imagine) he would act hurt and tell me it was just a joke. I wasn’t sure at the time what he was getting at, but I just thought he must be insecure, and frankly I genuinely liked him otherwise—I just wasn’t really trying to get married or anything, I had enough on my plate with my life. Hindsight is always 20/20.
Time marches on. Two and a half years after we began dating, I became pregnant with our first child together. At this point, I was still living with my family, working two jobs and just trying to survive. While I would never call one of my children an “accident”, I definitely did not plan to have another child, and certainly not while my life was still in limbo as it was. However, abortion never even entered my mind. Our daughter was born two days after he was incarcerated for driving on a suspended license and fleeing and eluding an officer. While he was in jail, he spoke often about marriage and starting out right together. I come from a broken home and have never been a big advocate for marriage, but I thought “well at least we can get a place together when he gets out”. Alas, that was not to be, for various reasons. Most disturbing was his insistence that he would not pay for anything pertaining to caring for our child, including child care, as he was not given a choice in whether I had her or not. Thank God for Daycare Assistance and good friends, because I’m not sure how I would have survived paying childcare for two kids at this point.
At this point, I’m still naïve enough to not see the bigger picture, and I continued to allow him to come over, take me out, and date him. I was getting the Depo shot, so I thought I was pretty safe from pregnancy, and I thought that even through all of this, he loved me and our family even against my every other instinct I still believed. For instance, when I got pregnant with our daughter, my uncle had given me a car. I truly appreciate the gesture, but this car was not exactly the safest vehicle to be driving with two small children. Driving down the road, the headlights would suddenly decide to pop off for an undetermined length of time before they turned back on; it would cut out sitting at stoplights and may or may not start back up again; it also had a terrible transmission leak. Irregardless, it got me from point A to point B.
He told me that he wasn’t comfortable with me driving that car any longer so he had a solution. When my tax money came in, I could buy his mom’s old car from her for $1800, he would dispose of the Mustang I was driving (he worked with cars) and all would be well. Turned out several things happened during this time. First, he never gave his mother the money I had given him for the car, and any time he would get angry with me, he would take the keys and sometimes the car and leave me with nothing. Second, he was apparently driving my car (with my tags on it), ran from the police, left the car in the woods, and the tags never got returned to the MVA. So….I owed a $5800 bill to the MVA that he refused to help me pay—as it was my car. Now, I’m no idiot, ordinarily, but I still was left holding the bag. I certainly didn’t have nearly $6000 to pay the MVA (single mom with two young kids at this point, who had just given away the only money I got back from the IRS for this other car), so I couldn’t get tags or anything on my own at this point.
Anyway, I digress. To my shame and shock, I got pregnant again—while on birth control. At this point, I am pretty much resigned to the fact that this relationship is crap, but I’m feeling pretty stuck. After all, he may be irresponsible and a liar, but he isn’t all bad. In fact, he can be a pretty nice guy and gets along with my brothers and my son really well, which was a really big deal to me. At this point, I am still working two waitressing jobs. He refuses to get a place with me until I get a “real” job. So, I quit my jobs and take a job at a bank—taking a huge pay cut in the process, and now needing fulltime daycare for 3 children rather than 2. My family could only help out in the evenings, the banking job is during the day. I keep looking for places close to daycare, my job, and my family but he shoots down every one. He finally finds a place in Lexington Park, far away from my support system. This is when the real fun begins.
Immediately things go downhill. He is verbally and physically abusive. He breaks my things. At this point I was trying to take classes at CSM to get my degree and he makes it impossible, ripping my homework and books, and ranting and raving about “me thinking I’m smarter than him” and on and on, until I quit. I cannot go anywhere except to work and the Laundromat and the grocery store. He takes the keys and/or the car if I’m not going to one of those places. I am on a strict time limit when I go anywhere at all, so trying becomes an anxiety inducing event. He refuses to help buy groceries (even for the things he eats), pay daycare or buy things for the kids (they’re my kids after all), and if he thinks I might have even a little bit of money left over from my check after paying bills and buying things, he takes it in one way or another. Either it outright disappears and he calls me crazy for spending it, or he simply demands that I give it to him. At this point he has become increasingly violent with me, so I give in. I am not allowed to talk on the phone or for anyone to visit me. My best friend got married in April of that year; I was the maid of honor, but I was unable to participate in any of the activities, could not afford to buy her a gift even, and prior to the reception he made such a spectacle of both of us that I had to leave.
We moved in together in March of 2000. By the end of May 2000, I have lost pretty much all contact with my friends, my family, and any life outside of work, necessary outings, and my kids and him. He has broken all of my things, thrown food at me and all over the floor, convinced me that I can do nothing right—not parenting, not cooking, not cleaning, not laundry, not anything, and made me broke. He has also already begun the process of incurring debt in my name. He has beaten me, raped me, raged at me, kicked me, dragged me into the house by my hair, ripped my children out of my arms and locked himself in the house with them while I am outside, and finally picked me up by my throat and thrown me into a wall, which leads to me in the hospital with a collapsed lung. I try to stay in the shelter after that, but he follows me after only one day and I go back in fear. Things get worse, believe it or not. I bide my time until I can leave. In September, I left, after a particular harrowing evening.
He went to work one morning, I pretended to get ready for work and get the kids ready for daycare/school, and I left…driving 17 hours straight through to my Grandmother’s house in Florida. After a week, my mom calls me frantic because he informs her that he has acquired the services of a lawyer and is taking me to court for kidnapping over state lines. I come back to my mom’s. He comes over and seems very remorseful and sorry for what he’s done. He promises to quit drinking, as he claims it is the alcohol that makes him act like this. He cries. He begs. I refuse to give in. He asks me to just please go for a ride with him so we can talk without other people around. I acquiesce, unfortunately. He drives down to the retaining wall in Solomons and parks. It is about 10:30 at night, pitch black, and there is nobody around. He very calmly grabs me by the back of the neck, forces my face into the glass, and states in the most chilling voice I’ve ever heard, “If you ever try to leave me again, you will end up in the water there, and everyone will just think you’ve run off and abandoned your children. So…are you ready to come home yet?” I have never been so terrified in my life and I gave in. We went back to my mom’s house and got our kids (my son stayed there that night, but he wouldn’t allow me to leave our girls). To this day, I don’t know if he really would have done that, but every time I leave and he threatens me, that memory of that night comes back in full force and I give in.
I’m not saying I’m perfect; I’m not saying that I can’t say some pretty horrible things to him when he’s been raging at me for hours, but I am saying that he won’t let me leave him. I’m terrified of him. He still refuses to pay for things; outside of half of the rent and the occasional electric bill. He has watched me sew patches in our daughter’s jeans because they have all split and I have no money to buy her new ones until I get paid, yet he flat out refuses to help pay for them. The next day, he brought home a new $600 RC car for himself and an iPod touch for himself. He doesn’t speak to our children; except on rare occasions. He has flat out been abusive (verbally) to them at other times. He has made chilling comments about the amount of attention I give to the kids and how it takes from him. He belittles me, berates me, calls me names, takes from me and acts as if he is the king of the castle. I cannot talk to him; conversations with him are exhausting roller coasters.
These things are just the tip of the iceberg. I could not possibly describe to anyone what every day in our household is like. I have begged for marriage counseling. I have begged for family counseling. He refuses. I have left multiple times. I always get scared and let him back in. He finds me wherever I go. He follows me in vehicles I don’t recognize when I leave work; no matter what precautions I take. He threatens me that if I try to leave him, he will destroy me; he will take the kids from me (after all, I am the one who looks like the irresponsible one, with tons of debt and the fact that I am so flaky I just keep dragging my kids around like laundry); he will kill me.
This is affecting my children deeply. It is killing me slowly. My health has taken a nosedive in recent years and I don’t think I can take another month of this. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to turn. I don’t know how to get out and stay out—safely. The thought of him taking my kids; either legally or by force; terrifies me. At least when I am around, I am his verbal punching bag, what in the hell would happen if I wasn’t?! What if he kills them, or me, or both. I don’t really believe that to him we are human beings, but simply objects/possessions.
Replies
I had read most of your entries before, but reading this one now with everything all together, is sooo powerful! I see some similarities between our h\'s but you definitely have sooo much more to endure than I ever have. I feel for you and hope and pray that you keep finding the strength to get out of this!! Hugs!