He punched out his room mate when the room mate said something bad about me. Never in my life had anyone ever taken a stand for me. I was impressed and that boy was my hero. He asked me to marry him and I said yes. His being my hero quickly changed as he became my chief assailent. Held up against the wall with a steak knife to my throat was a start to my marriage. If he didn't have his pot to smoke, he was a bit moody. He smashed my car saying it was hit in a parking lot. Later I found out it was because he was doing donuts with it in a friend's yard and smashed into something. He was supposed to be working. He got rid of his truck because my car was better on gas. Now I know it was more of a control thing. Without my car I couldn't leave him.
He refused to wear condoms, didn't want me on the pill because that would make me fat and moody, no form of birth control was agreeable to him. Fine by me. When I got pregnant the response was "I will slip a drug in your drink and take you to someone who will perform an illegal abortion on you if you don't get one yourself". Seriously?! I was terrified to even go to sleep. You need to go to the welfare office and lie to them. Tell them I left you or you won't have any money for that baby, I can't afford it.
The doctor told me I would have to be scheduled for a c-section because the baby was breech. "I have read there are ways to turn the baby around", I pleaded. The doctor's sarcastic response was a description of how he could hold me by my feet, spin me round and round and then slam me against the wall and maybe, just maybe the baby would turn. On top of his mom's admonitions, my husband said it was best so he could schedule the day off work and not have to leave in the middle of a job because I had gone into labor.
On one occassion my husband was trying to convince me to do cocaine while pregnant. Heck, no. "Look, her kid turned out just fine and she did", pointing out a mother whose child was throwing plates against a wall, smashing them to pieces in a fit of anger while his mom snorted a line. Yeah, lovely, very convincing. I bought soem things for the nursery; a bit of rabbit fur to wrap her in, a Native American rug, a dream catcher for over the crib. He accused me "You just wanted money to buy this stuff for the baby!". Well, of course, what mother wouldn't? As if it was unnatural for me to do it. I started keeping a diary for her as well.
The day of the c-section arrived. Upon preparing for surgery I was given a paper to sign allowing student doctors to observe. I was not comfortable with the idea. The nurse told me it was just a formality, no students were there to observe. Incapacited by a needle to my spine, I was wheeled in with a bunch of student doctors overlooking. "You might feel tugging", the doctor told me. I felt cutting and screamed. "You are not feeling that" the doctor told me. I insisted. They knocked me unconscious. I woke and the student doctors informed me "You should have heard the things you were saying while you were under" as they laughed at me. They wouldn't tell me what it was I had been saying, though. Psychologicaly raped, physically assaulted by unwanted medical procedures, embarrassed, humiliated, dismissed, degraded, I became a mother. But my love and bond with her was everything. The moment anyone took her from my arms, she would scream endlessly. I slept with her in the hospital bed with me. One day they didn't bring her right back after her weigh-in, etc. I eventualy wandered to the nursery to find out why. The frazzled nurse burst out with relief and rushed to hand me my screaming child; "I was wondering when you would be coming!". Turns out hospital policy was to not allow the babies to be in the rooms with the mother during visiting hours, too many people coming and going and they didn't want anyone kidnapping babies if a mother was napping. I guess all the other nurses had made an exception to that policy for us because they couldn't handle my daughter's non-stop screaming when they kept her away from me. So that day during visiting hours we spent the time rocking in a rocking chair. her screaming so persistent they even tested her for drugs, thinking she was going through withdrawel. Good thing I had said no to that cocaine!
"I am going to take her to stay at my mother's and maybe you'll be able to see her on weekends" my husband told me. He put her in her carrier unbuckled, put her on the hood of the car and went speeding down the road with her carrier rocking in the wind. He told me breast feeding was unnatural and I wouldn't be allowed to leave the house if I continued. I switched to formula and my daughter adjusted well, but as soon as her father came home and he picked her up, she would puke in his face. "She needs to see a doctor" he decided. She was switched to pre-digested hydrosilated formula that smelled nasty. She never did have issues with dairy in the end, it was her father who terrified her. But she spent the rest of her first year on that nasty formula as I followed doctor's orders.
Women would call the house for him day and night and leave no message. "The woman at the gas station said I could fish in her pond any time", he one day told me. I would be in the work truck with him when he'd gas up and the woman who pumped the gas would chat it up with him, look in at and comment about "his daughter" never even acknowledging me. While I was still pretty much imobile after having the c-section, he came home in the middle of the day, walked all through the apartment and left without even speaking to me. I asked him when he got home that night what that was all about. "I was just checking to make sure no guy was here because I saw a vehicle in the driveway I did not recognize". So my neighbors had company downstairs.....but what was he doing driving by in the middle of the day? None of my bussiness. I was never allowed to touch any money, he made it, it was his and that was that. Finally he put my name on the savings account in case of emergency. My daughter's and my safety was an emergency. I took exactly half the money and left him.
My mother let me stay with her but I had to pay rent even though it meant giving up my car because I could no longer afford insurance and payment: mommy needed her rent money. My father had my husband coming over to visit despite his helping me leave him and knowing what he did. "You're the one who made him part of the family", he told me as an excuse. He was really just a new pot smoking buddy aparently.
He never showed up for even one visitation, even after the judge told him he did not want to hear of that little girl sitting by a window waiting for a father who would never show. She sat in front of the window waiting for "big daddy" who never showed. I made sure the state stoped attaching his paycheck because he called and complained about them trying to take away his driver's liscense. He sent the money anyways. But I was stupid. They had been taking it out of his check every week. He was in no danger of having his driver's liscense taken away. He had gotten a raise and didn't want to have to send more money. I let him have it. I had him make out the checks ot my daughter. I didn't want his money. So, my daughter got spending money every week from her father. It was the only thing he did for her.
But she was my little buddy. We went everywhere together. People criticized I held her too much, but I figured if she needed that sense of security, it didn't cost me anything. As she got older, we went fishing. When we rented a room from a family that had a pony, we went on long bottle-hunting expeditions as I walked leading the pony, bags of cans and bottles hanging from the saddle. Once I raised my voice to her and immediately apologized to her, "It's OK mommy", she responded. It brings tears to my eyes to this day how compassionate we were with oneanother. I was firm but obviously loving to have nurtured a child that open and accepting of my lapses in judgement.
Always asking why her father didn't love her, my daughter obviously developed issues regarding men. She exploded at puberty, got pregnant and called her father if he would let her move in. I had to sit and listen, broken hearted on her behalf, to his excuses as he gave them to her. She finally forced him by running away, though I knew where she went, and telling him I had abandoned her. He gave it a shot but the second she turned 18 she was out on the street. According to both their reports her stay with him and her step mother included knock-down drag-out physical fighting, though depending which one you ask, I have no idea who started it. My daughter has become a compulsive liar. She was out, they would keep her son, though, they told her (how terrifying and traumatic that must have been for her!); her father and his wife.....who happened to be one of the women calling while I was married to him. He lies to her about any contact he has with me to this day and he lies to me about everything. She lies to him about the money she sends my daughter. And thanks to father issues, my daughter is emotionally abusive to the son who lives with her, works as a stripper and uses abusive men as babysitters because she can get material things from them as well as the attention she craves. She clings to and is controlling over a younger sister due to a dysfunctional sense of guilt for when her father took her away from me. She had wished when she was younger, before it happened, that her younger sisters would just disapear. When they did, she felt guilty no matter what I told her. The taking of her sisters unlawfully by their fathers with the aide of police officers traumatized us all irrevocably.
It breaks my heart to see how my daughter and grandchildren are living. They don't even know me as their grandmother. All because a hero was nothing more than an abusive husband and abusive father, and all I ever knew was abusive men who stole my children away to hurt me because I refused to put up with them and their abusive ways. Having the sense to leave doesn't make any difference unless we have the love, support and resources of a support system and/or community.
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