Cat

The x-ray showed a chip in my mandible. The young doctor looked at me in a way that told me he did not buy my story. I had said I fell, my babies then diaper clad toddlers were restless on my lap as I remember looking away from the doctor, tears wanting to flood out of me, words wanting to vomit their way out into the open so that there would be no more secrets. But somehow I regained my composure, dressed and left as if it was a routine thing.

I had gone to the ER because of him several times over the course of our lives together. I never went to the same ER twice in a row, I never went if I had too many bruises everywhere and I never went without a story, a lie to back up my injury, to conceal what was my truth. I was letting my husband push me around and worse, that I was terribly embarrassed about it. I was given numbers for shelters, for safe houses that I could retreat to. Assured they would take my babies and me, keep us safe. But I never left because I rationalized that it only happened when he was drunk.

As it turns out, my husband was drunk a lot. He drank when we were dating, we met through a friend and we met at a bar. Drinking was a social past time of our single lives, melded into our married lives and then our lives with children. It was not until after I had my first child that his drinking changed, or rather that he changed from the drinking. He felt displaced or threatened by his son, and he began to drink more to cope with those feelings. He became a bully in the home when he was drunk and that is also when he started having blackouts. Blackouts that would protect him from the bitter memories of the evil things he was capable of while being drunk and the tool he needed to feign innocence.

Initially I went through stages with him, while I was learning about this new part of him that would be unleashed while drunk. I learned not to object to his actions, his behavior — it was like poking a lion at close range and he would attack. At first he apologized but after a few months that stopped. I learned to be sure that my children’s bedroom door was tightly closed and to get as far away from it as possible so that they would not be awoken, so they would not be witness to anything. I learned how to take a punch and that biting and hitting back would earn me much worse. Living with my alcoholic was much like living with someone who had two personalities at that time; he was, for all intents and purposes, my very own Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

It began innocently enough in the beginning. A slap and then an apology. A push or a shove followed by a request for forgiveness. Promises that it would never happen again would lead to it happening more frequently and more violently. Suddenly it escalated to dragging, punching, choking and much worse within a year’s time. Initially I fought back, breaking one of his fingers in the process, and he in turn broke and cracked my ribs, chipped my mandible and bruises — there were always bruises. I learned it was always better to not fight back.

This went on for about four years until finally one night my toddler boys came to my room, when I was on the floor after a beating, a broken, sloppy mess. Their faces, always a source of comfort to me, looked fearful and drawn. Their little chubby cheeks had big alligator tears running down them and that was my wake up call that my life had to change; if not for myself then for them. That was the first night I called the police on my husband, first night I pressed charges for battery, first night he was taken away in a squad car to sober up in jail. I would call several times over the course of the next few years until finally I went to court, pressed charges, and he was held accountable for his abuse. He was sent to anger management classes, put on probation, made to do community service and he stopped hitting me. The judge ordered him to not be at home or come near the home while he was drunk after that and he complied.

Years later he would get his final DUI, edging him into sobriety. He would embrace AA and the tools of the program in order to remain sober, in order to find a life that mattered somewhere in the ruins of what he had. And for me it took many years to see how my embarrassment was misplaced. I have lost many friends and family who did not want to stick around and see my bruising, knowing that they were powerless to do anything about it, because I did nothing about it and while I never understood my fear of being honest with the world around me, admitting I was abused in the end was the most powerful thing I could have done for myself.

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Cat blogs at Wait. What? You may recall her son’s post on Violence UnSilenced back in June.

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53 Comments | August 20, 2009 | Filed Under domestic violence, survivor story