by Band Back Together | Nov 17, 2010 | Abuse, Addiction, Alcohol Addiction, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Coping With Divorce, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Divorce, Domestic Abuse, Economic Abuse, Estrangement |
I am forty-three years old – an Interior Designer who has done well for herself over the course of sixteen years. I married thirteen years ago and have four beautiful children. My husband has had a series of losses in his life which turned him into a raging drunk, drug user and abuser (emotionally and physically towards the children and I).
After a series of abusive situations involving the children, I finally made my way to the attorney’s office and filed for divorce. Was that the right thing? I have been nothing but punished since that day in July 2009.
He destroyed the business I have had for seventeen years. He took all the money I had to support me and the children. He stole from the house and took all the money in our accounts.
He has not only hit me a few times, but he hit the children to the point that child services got involved. After they interviewed the children, they told me I would be charged for never turning in all these abuses in the past year. The children and I are all in counseling.
My first attorney did everything wrong, My second attorney took what money I had left and dumped me because I couldn’t pay any more. A guardian ad litem was finally appointed to our family and I had to pay for that out of the investments I had left. She actually believed him and never interviewed half my witnesses. She also never talked to the boys. Then, I was sent to another attorney (a third one) who said he would finish up the divorce for a flat rate. Well, I can’t come up with the rest of the money. He and my -soon-to-be ex’s attorney seem friendly and I feel like I am just getting screwed.
The worst part about all this is that the children are so messed up from the divorce and the abuse they suffered from their father. I have done everything I can to protect them but the Florida courts don’t seem to care.
We are getting ready for trial now and I can’t seem to get anyone to understand how bad this is for me and my children.
They hide in their rooms when he comes to get them.
My nine-year old ran nine blocks away and called me from a gas station because she was afraid to be with her dad.
My four-year old has seen his father throw me up against my desk and hold my head down as he threatened me. He nearly drowned at his cousin’s house and his father was nowhere to be found.
On his second birthday, he took my son out of his car seat because he was crying and stuck him out the window as I was driving down the highway.
My six-year old keeps getting thrown into walls by his father, his dad calls him pussy boy and tells him he cries like a school girl.
He makes him sleep on a sofa at his house to punish him for his mother filing for divorce.
My eleven-year old is pulling out her eyelashes and eyebrows.
Where am I to turn? I don’t know how to get people to understand what is going on and change this for my children.
I bought my house when I was single and have fixed it up, paid the mortgage on it for eleven of the fourteen years I’ve owned it.
In 2004, I walked into my house to find a lender and a lady sitting there because he wanted to refinance the house. I was stupid and signed the papers not really knowing how bad I was going to be screwed – until now, when I can’t afford food, let alone the house. I am about to be forced out onto the streets.
His attorney is trying to get me out of the house so he can move in. The only reason I would do this is for my children so I know they have a bed to sleep in and a roof over their head, but in the process I have nothing.
No money, no place to live, no support and an attorney who told me to marry better next time. My whole family lives up north and the few friends I have here have their own problems.
I never thought this would be happening to me.
I have gone to the courthouse for help with the abuse center. They can’t help me and just send me to the shelter. I can’t find a job and am so confused. I can’t figure out what is going on.
I guess I don’t know what to do at this point. I have tried everything I can except to just take the children and run away. Believe me, I have thought about this so much, but what kind of life is that for them? What if I got caught and then can never see them again?
Do I just give him the kids and walk away? I know that would kill me. I can sleep in my Suburban for a while, but since I can’t secure a place to live because he ruined my credit and took all our money, I will lose the children anyway.
I am a rat stuck in a very bad situation. Crying is not helping me out of this giant mess. Where did the strong business person go? Why can’t I get anyone to understand that I divorced this ass to make my children’s lives better? Where do I go from here?
How do my children survive this nightmare?
by Band Back Together | Nov 17, 2010 | Addiction, Addiction Recovery, Adult Children of Addicts, Emotional Abuse, Family, Psychological Manipulation |
I find it hilarious when someone has a perception of me varies wildly from who I actually am. Sometimes, it makes me want to correct the misconception, yet other times it tickles me sparkly to let them think what they want.
Life is absolutely filled with more humor that way.
When I got pregnant with my first son, I had a role in my family: The Fuck-Up. Disregarding all of the surrounding circumstances (my mother’s relapse slash hatred of me), the blame for all of my actions fell squarely on my shoulders, at least as far as my family was concerned. Although many of my actions were not *ahem* the most mature, my family gave me far less credit than I deserved, especially considering that I was 20.
When my pregnancy was announced, my parents were shockingly supportive of me. Well, at least until I found out much later, of course, that they had asked my brother – who is 10 years my senior – and his future wife if they would adopt my child in the event that I “freaked out.” They had such a low opinion of me that they honestly believed that I wouldn’t assume responsibility for my child.
(note: I am amazed that the keyboard has not ignited with the fury of a thousand suns as I type this).
The rest of my family (save for me, of course. I get a special CHARGE when I get to confront people who have pissed me off.) is so non-confrontational that one might assume that each member is far meeker than they really are, I rarely heard about what a Fuck-Up I was considered to be. Aside from snide comments here and there about “responsibility,” everyone was pretty mum.
It was only when I met, and subsequently married The Daver, that I realized just how poor my family’s opinion of me truly was. You would have thought, by their reactions, that Dave had rescued me from the streets, where I was selling crack and dancing (badly) for spare change.
Somehow he had turned my life around for me. You would never have guessed that I was already at the top of my nursing school class, TA’ing for Organic/BioChem AND tutoring for A & P, while working as a waitress and bartender 20 hours a week BEFORE Dave walked into my life.
My brother, who I have a long and sorted history with, decided that if Dave (whom he adored/s) liked me, then I couldn’t be all THAT bad. My parents finally accepted that I had become a more mature and responsible person, although their time line was off by a factor of about a year and a half. In their minds, I only began to turn my life around once I had met Dave.
I do, of course, appreciate that my family loves him as one of their own. I know that I’ll be left out in the cold the moment Daver and I split up, as both of our families prefer him, but I just wish that they could see that as wonderful as Dave is, he did nothing to change who I am and what I will do with my life.
It dawned on me, as I prepared my home for hosting Thanksgiving this year, that if asked, my family would probably mention that they were “having dinner at Becky’s house” and something to the effect of “she’s really turned her life around, hasn’t she?”
Like I was some sort of street urchin in a Lifetime Original Movie who had some sappy predictable plot line: unmarried, younger girl gives birth to a child out of wedlock, heads down the “wrong path” until she meets “the man of her dreams,” and she miraculously changes her path, learns to cook and clean, and becomes a responsible upstanding citizen with an immaculate home.
Who can -and does- now crochet motherfucking platitudes to hang on the wall.
Yeah, motherfucking right.
I can’t do anything about this, of course. It’d probably be easier to train my cats to unload the dishwasher or teach the coffeemaker to speak Ebonics than it would be to get my family to change their opinion of me.
It just sucks that they have to be so off-base with their perceptions, I mean, why can’t I be mistaken for a Fighter Pilot rather than a Fuck-Up
Or, I suppose, more accurately: The Becky Formerly Known As Fuck-Up?
by Band Back Together | Nov 16, 2010 | Abuse, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Domestic Abuse |
It started with words. Yelling, angry words he slung at her for being lazy, or slow, or a bad cook. She’d just apologize and go on with life. Then he yelled at me, and she wouldn’t stand for it; she’d step in, and up, like she never did for herself. That’s when he started hitting her. I didn’t even know it was odd until I was older, and observed the parents of friends who never hit. By that time, it was ingrained; my stepfather hit, and that was just… life. I don’t know if my mother knew he started hitting me. I played sports, had bruises, a few fractures. Even my pediatrician never suspected abuse.
If it had stopped at hitting, I probably wouldn’t be so messed up. But when I was 8, everything changed. I was beginning to develop; their marriage was cooling off – they rarely even spoke. And he started looking at me differently. High on pain pills for some imaginary back spasm he used to get sympathy from his family – and drugs from his doctor – he came to my room one night, held a hand over my mouth, and touched me. I was lucky; he was flying so high that when he went to take his clothes off, I ran for the bathroom and locked myself in.
He couldn’t exactly break the door down without waking my mother, so he stood by the door and told me all the terrible things he’d do to me, to my mother, if I ever breathed a word. I believe he meant it, even to this day. So I never said anything, and by grace of some higher power, he never tried again. From that day on, I slept with a knife under my mattress, and told my mother I wanted to make my own bed. I learned to climb out my window in 30 seconds, found a neighbor who would take me in at any hour, for any reason, and kept a bag of clothes and a pair of old shoes stashed in a hidey-hole by the side of the house.
I learned what no child should have to. I lived for two years past that awful night in the same house with him, terrified that I would have to use my escape route and leave my mother behind to face him alone. My only solace was that neighbor, whose daughters loved me like a sister, and who slept next to a 12 gauge shotgun. I’m thankful every day that I never had to ask him to go rescue my mother from a maniac.
That’s the beginning of my story, but it isn’t the end. I’ve posted other pieces of my life elsewhere on this site, and on others… in comments, in my own posts. But what I’ve always failed to include, even when I’ve posted my “epilogue” is the Darkness. And yes, it deserves that capital D. It’s frighteningly close to the surface at times. That beginning shaped my life; the good, I’m a survivor and always will be, the bad, I am quick to draw blood, to use violence instead of words or distance.
I have three children. I love them with everything that I am, and more if it’s possible. I am so, so careful to keep them away from that part of me, but I’m still scared. The part of me that’s cautious of people, of situations, quick to react and deadly when I do, has literally kept me alive. But that same part of me could destroy the people I love. I’ve often heard new mothers being told, “If you can’t handle it, if it just gets too overwhelming, put the baby in a safe place and walk away to cool down.” I’ve had to do this more times than I want to admit, and not just during the infant stage.
My older two are only a year apart — god the stress of that! — and at nearly 5 and nearly 4, they are a handful. Any children of those ages would be, of course. But my oldest is intelligent; so intelligent that at times I’m frightened by how quickly she picks things up. I wonder if she’ll out-pace her ability to comprehend what she’s taking in. My middle child is different. Exactly how we don’t yet know, but I’ve seen these neon signs before. I know what they mean. Autism Spectrum Disorder. High-functioning, certainly, and thank god for that, but still… a challenge. I double-stack baby gates in their doorway to keep them in their room when I feel the Darkness crawling to the surface and I just can’t handle any more. I know this isn’t a terrible thing. They are fed, hydrated, clean, overflowing with toys and even a TV with a DVD player because they, like their Nana, love Disney movies. They are never ignored, but sometimes… sometimes Mommy needs a break from the go-go-go of two toddlers-turned-preschoolers. And I feel horrible. But I would feel worse if I let my Darkness get the better of me, I know that. Better to be safe in their room, cared for and dealt with at a distance than to become easy targets for my frustration. But still I feel like the worst mother in the world.
And now there’s the baby. Not so little anymore — 9 months now, goodness — but still so dependent on Mommy. I wanted her so, so very badly, and I don’t regret having her, not even the timing of it, so close to the others. I just get overwhelmed. So she goes in her nice, safe crib with a brightly-colored baby book to distract her while Mommy has a breather. It’s certainly not the worst thing in the world, and yet? Bad Mommy. I know it isn’t true, but that’s how I feel, because my own little babies should never make me so angry they bring out the Darkness. But after the thirty-millionth time of hearing, “Mommy, I’m hungry.” and “I wanna watch a movie!” and “Sissy’s hitting meeeeee…” and “Wahhhh! Wahhh! WAHHHHHH!” in the last hour, I just want to put my hand through a wall. I never, ever want them to see me lose it that way. It would scare them, scar them perhaps, and I love them too much to do that.
I rarely take people at their word. I always look for hidden meanings, reasons to get up in arms. Why? Because if I spot the attack before it happens, I have an edge. It’s like the abused wife who looks and listens and knows the instant before her husband is going to throw that first punch that she better duck. It’s a life-saving reflex that has no place in common conversation. But it’s there. I can’t make it go away. Ironically, I feel safer around men. Women scheme and connive; they are masters at smiling to your face and stabbing you in the back, and that scares me. If I can see the attack coming, I can prepare. I don’t like being blindsided. I can read men, I’m used to doing so, so they’re safer. But even with men, I’m careful.
I still sleep with a knife beside the bed. I take my cell phone with me to bed, too, just in case. I listen for noises in the night. I hate sleeping when it’s bright out because the sunlight makes it hard to fall asleep or stay that way, but I prefer it because the Monsters generally prefer the dark for their sport. Sleeping, I’m easy prey, but awake, I’m much harder to fell. I have nightmares about people invading my home, waking nightmares sometimes, when I try to fall asleep at night. I am still afraid to let my children sleep in their own room for fear of not being able to protect them should I need to. It’s that scared little 8-year-old coming out, waiting for “Daddy” to creep into her room. Every sound in the night that I don’t immediately recognize is a shiver of terror down my spine.
I’ve spoken to counselors, taken meds, but it never helps. Precisely because people can’t be trusted, and the drugs make me not me anymore. I can’t even recognize the person in the mirror and that might just scare me worse than the nightmares. This is a Darkness bred into me from childhood, reinforced through a lifetime of hardness, that cannot simply be erased. I must learn to live with it, to cope. And I hope (god I hope) that acknowledging it here helps.
by Band Back Together | Nov 16, 2010 | Abuse, Healing From A Rape or Sexual Asault, Helping Someone In An Abusive Relationship, Rape/Sexual Assault |
I feel so fucking ugly and dirty and slutty.
I don’t understand it. I know I am none of those things. But the idea is stuck in there.
All those times, all those fucking awful times we “made love”….can I ever allow a man to touch me again? I didn’t know how profound the impact would be until I try to sleep and everything I try so hard to forget comes rushing back and I want to fucking scream. I want the world to know what a fucked up person you are and all the fucked up things you did because it WASN’T right.
I need to vent because I can’t say these things out loud yet. I want someone to be there, but I’m too ashamed to verbalize a word.
Because in those years together, you degraded me into a sexual plaything that would react to your desires and run to please you. In those times, you liked me or so I thought.
How could you…
force me to let you inside?
push my face into the wall?
force me to suck on you, shoving into me until I threw up?
cum on me wherever you wanted?
rip my hair out?
pound into me so hard I screamed and cried and begged?
hurt me like this while other people are in the house and can hear?
leave your mark on me?
trap me in the bathroom to “get ready” for you?
invite another man into our bed to assist you?
call me those awful names?
humiliate me with pictures?
force me to sleep with strangers?
make me feel like I was doing this out of love for you?
put my sexual health at risk but not your own?
come home from work and bend me over wherever you pleased?
digitally assault me while in the presence of others?
How dare you…
make me feel like the only touches I deserve from men need to be rough and sexual?
make me feel like this is all I’m worth?
by Band Back Together | Nov 10, 2010 | Abuse, Addiction, Alcohol Addiction, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse |
For my 25th birthday my parents threw me a party at a restaurant. I had an awesome group of friends and family that came, and it was a fantastic celebration. As I blew out the candles on my cake, I wished for a boyfriend. Lame, right? Well, be careful what you wish for.
I met Aaron two weeks later at a friend’s birthday party. He was charismatic, out-going, and handsome. And a paraplegic. He’d been injured in an accident at the age of 20 when he flipped his car on an isolated road. Still, his attitude was excellent, his outlook on life optimistic. He could talk to anyone about anything, something I really admired. We started dating, and it was fun, light and exciting.
I don’t remember where to pinpoint when it started to go wrong. When we’d been together about 9 months, we decided to take a road trip up the California coast. I went shopping for some new jeans, and I had to get a bigger size. Love and my career (I traveled for work about 60% of the time, so I wasn’t eating healthy homemade food) had made me fat and happy and I’d put on a few pounds. That was the first time he made a comment. He said he wasn’t attracted to fat girls. He didn’t say I was fat, but that he wasn’t attracted to girls who were fat. Either way, not exactly encouraging or supportive words from someone who’s supposed to love you.
In July of that year, when we’d been dating just over a year, we talked about moving in together. When I told my parents about it, they weren’t happy and tried to discourage me. That should have been a big warning sign. If only I’d listened.
I moved in at the end of September and things changed big time. Before we lived together, I spent 5-6 nights a week at his place. I knew his habits. I did his laundry, helped with the cleaning he couldn’t do easily, and did his grocery shopping. I knew more or less what it was like to live with him. But it all changed. Now, instead of just doing laundry, I was expected to keep everything in our home clean. He’d criticize if I didn’t do things perfectly. I became full-time girlfriend, full-time maid. I did it out of love, but there wasn’t any appreciation on his end for carrying the burden of keeping our home. Any attempts I made at cooking were met with criticism. Meals were thrown out.
And then the drinking started. He decided he liked scotch. He’d always been a social drinker, but it didn’t bother me; there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. And believe me, I watched out for it. I’d dated an alcoholic in college, and I was very sensitive to guys’ drinking habits. But suddenly Aaron was drinking more. He went from a double on the rocks, to a triple; then from a triple to two triples, and then to three. By December, he was drinking a Costco sized handle bottle of scotch every 10 days. I went to bed alone a lot, while he stayed up filling and refilling his glass before coming to bed with hot boozy breath. We fought about it. A lot. It was supposed to be none of my business. I still can’t stand the sound of ice clinking in a tumbler. It makes me want to throw up.
In November, I went to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with his family. We were happy that week. His brother-in-law was a CEO and lived in a $10 Million home down the street from Tiger Woods. It was a week of extravagance – expensive dinners out and fancy cars and private jets. We had fun and enjoyed the holiday. I loved his family, and his twin nieces adored me. One night, we stayed up late after everyone else had gone to bed drinking and laughing in the hot tub. We were both past tipsy. Something spurned an argument. He pulled out his camera and started video-taping me. Mocking me and my tears and my slurred speech. I still don’t like to be photographed or taped.
Christmas and New Year’s that year were strained. We agreed to work through some things. I wanted to go to counseling because I knew I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t ready to admit yet that it was because of him. He again made comments about not being attracted to fat girls. Only this time, his comments were coupled with a complete lack of affection. Now it was personal. And now when I cried, accusations of me being bipolar came along with the tears. In actuality, I was trying to keep up my front of happiness and was repeatedly failing. In my heart, I knew things were broken.
I was building strength to put my foot down on things changing when I lost my job the same day I had my first counseling appointment. Instead of being supportive and encouraging, he was furious, and questioned what would have happened if we had kids to support. I was out of work for three weeks when I started my new job on a Monday. He was coming back from a ski trip that day and made me leave my first day of my new job to pick him up at the airport. He never would have done that for me.
We broke up on Friday, four days later. That Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday. We went to his friend and coworker’s house to watch the game. He drank a 12-pack in 4 hours. In front of the friend’s kids. And then wanted to drive home. I was mortified and knew I had to get out.
Things weren’t easy leaving. We kinda sorta tried to make things work for another week before one final fight left me begging him to just let me go. How pathetic is that? That even though I knew it had to end, I didn’t have the strength to end it myself? I hate that about myself. I did leave, though, and found my own place. It was 9 days before I could move into it, so I stayed with him, living with my now-ex-boyfriend who took every opportunity to get in every last jab. We fought, I cried, and he made more accusations about my mental stability. He made comments about my choosing a second floor apartment and how that was a slap in the face to him. February 23rd, 2008 was the day I moved into my new home, my new beginning.
I met Dan in late May and we slowly started dating. Aaron called drunk one night. It was two weeks before Dan’s birthday, at the beginning of October. He was trying to make amends, wanted to be friends. I said we could be civil. A week later, I thought better of it and emailed him and said he wasn’t welcome to contact me anymore, that I didn’t want to hear from him again. His retaliation was a vicious string of venom and hatred in written form. Accusations of me being bipolar. Threats that my boyfriend (Dan, my future husband) had better have a lot of Kleenex. Other horrible things about me that I quickly deleted and have tried to erase from my mind. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response.
It’s been over two years since that horrible final email. I’m not bipolar (I never thought I was). I am mainly healed. I have a husband who is an absolute angel, who promised me he’d never be drunk in front of me, and who holds me tight when something in the present day draws a sudden memory or flashback that knocks the wind out of me. My husband never makes me cry anything but tears of joy. I was never physically abused or harmed by Aaron, but I have wounds. From emotional abuse. It’s hard to say. Emotional abuse. Abuse. There’s no other word for it – for the things he said and did to the woman who loved him – as much as I try to dance around it. I’m working to forgive.
I have so many things I’d love to say to Aaron if given the chance, to scream at him in anger. I like to think I’d be stronger now, and that I’d really fucking give it to him, tell him how all the hurtful things he said have followed me and threatened the happiness I deserve. But I’m scared to hope for a chance to say them, because I’ve learned you have to be careful what you wish for.
by Band Back Together | Nov 9, 2010 | Anger, Blended Families, Breakups, Coping With Divorce, Divorce, Emotional Abuse, Infidelity, Marriage and Partnership, Marriage Problems, Psychological Manipulation, Suicide |
Fourteen years ago, I was a carefree college student. I was content with life, was climbing the proverbial ladder as if there were no obstacles in my way, but I longed to be in a relationship. I spent much of my time kissing frogs and drinking far more than my share of tequila. Six months later, I found you.
I should have seen the warning signs early on in the relationship, but I forged ahead. Six months turned into a year. One year turned into five. And by our seventh year together, we had a child, a mortgage and a blended family of sorts. A yours & ours. I was happy, the kids were happy. You were not, and you had an affair.
Again, I should have seen the signs. We argued, I fought for the relationship, you blamed me for the affair. We worked through “our” issues, I thought.
We added a child, lost family members, added a house and then the ugly monster reared it’s head. You were not happy again. And again it was my fault. There was no affair – just a threat of suicide. I talked you out of it. I thought we worked through “our” issues and we forged ahead.
Eight months later, you were unhappy again, you were suicidal again.
And again you felt it was my fault.
You came home because you had no where else to go, but you tricked me into thinking that you wanted to be here. You insisted you wanted a “normal family”. But when push came to shove, you finally admitted that you really never wanted to come home, never wanted to be with me, you just had no where else to go, no job, and no family.
So you have decided that you are done with me, you don’t want to have the “stress” of owning a house (or two). You say you want nothing, but refuse to leave until your “name is off the house”. You say you need no one, and that you can do it all on your own. Yet we all know you are wrong. You know you are wrong.
Your anger and your blame has nothing to do with me. It has to do with whatever it is that you are hiding from. You need to find help, we need you to find help.
Help doesn’t mean you have to stay with me and your family. Help means fixing you, and whatever it is that is making you unhappy. Because fixing you is fixing our children. Because when you are broken, it breaks them.
You deciding that we are not going to be “us” anymore is probably the best decision you have made for all of us. Because I can no longer take the blame for your shortcomings and insecurities. I have my own, and I need to be the best example I can be for our children. I know I am not strong enough to leave you on my own and I still want to “fix” you/us.
So while you waver in the wind and deny you need help, I’m going to get help for myself, my children and my own well being. I will seek out legal advise and I will seek out counseling for me and for our children. I will find my way from here.
But, I hope someday you will realize how much you are loved, how much you have hurt us and how badly you need to be fixed. I hope that you make the choice of life and that you realize your kids need you, not a “replacement daddy”, as you like to say. I hope you that you make the choice to fix you, so that they too can be fixed.
