March 6, 2009

• Getting out of an abusive relationship

  I made a comment on one of the featured web logs about abusive relationships.  Someone asked me to fill them in on the details about what happened when my first husband became abusive.  (To protect that person’s privacy, I did not link back to their blog.)

  As far as my first husband hitting me, we had separated.  He had never laid a hand on me before.  I was staying with my sister and having a really tough time finding a job.  I tried staying on friendly terms with my ex.  He asked me to come back, assuring me he wouldn’t take it as a reconciliation, but that I could get myself back on my feet.  He lived in a one-bedroom apartment at the time.  He said I could have the bedroom and he would sleep on the couch.  Also, the car was in both our names, and there was no way I could make the payments, so he said he would also help me with the car.

  One night, he was on the phone with my sister.  He liked to buddy up to my family and try to get them to side with him against me.  Totally stupid on his part.  I walked past him and heard him bad-mouthing me to my sister.  I said “That’s kind of stupid, don’t you think, bad-mouthing me to my own sister?”  He said “Deb, I gotta go.”  Then he told me to sit down (at the kitchen table.)  I was doing laundry and said “You can talk to me while I do the laundry.”  He grabbed me and slammed me into the chair.  This was the first time in ten years I ever faced him with fear.  I sat and listened to whatever it was he had to say (I don’t remember now what it was.)  When I started to get up, he yanked me back into the chair.  I told him I needed to get the laundry finished and jumped up, taking the basket with me into the bedroom walk-in closet so I could hang things up.  He came in and shoved me against the wall.  When I tried to get out of the closet, he shoved me across the bedroom where I fell over his weight bench.  He said “I would love to go to jail for beating the shit out of you.”  That scared the beejeezus out of me, but he stopped there and walked out of the room.

  He went out into the living room and I heard him making a date with one of his drinking buddies to meet him at the bar the next morning at 9:00 am.  I knew that at 9:00 I was going to get out of there.  So I packed up one suitcase (I was glad we had a walk-in closet and that I was doing laundry, it made it easy for me to pack.)  I packed two pair of jeans, four shirts, two dresses and a pair of dress shoes (interview clothes) as well as enough underwear for a week.  I took two paperback novels.  I left everything else behind – all my CDs, my stereo, all of my books, the clarinet I’d had since high school (that is the only thing I regret not taking with me), all of my scrapbooks, yearbooks – everything I’d kept/saved from my childhood, my diaries and journals.

  The next morning as soon as I was sure he was gone, I grabbed my suitcase and ran it out to my car.  I drove to the Amtrak station and bought a train ticket.  The train wasn’t due to leave until 6:00 pm so I had a really long wait.  At 5:50 I called him – hoping to get his answering machine, which I did – and left a message telling him the car was at the Amtrak station.  Nothing else.  Those were my last words ever to him on Oct. 3, 1992.

  I left him to go live with my sister.  I met someone else and after two years of being with my new boyfriend, I started a divorce.  I had no idea where my ex was, and so got the divorce according to the laws of the state I was living in.  We had no kids or property, so there was really nothing to settle (we had already sold our house and split the proceeds.)  I was divorced in about six weeks and the following summer married my second husband.

  I knew that the first time someone is violent is the hardest.  It just gets easier and easier.  That’s why I got out immediately.  I wasn’t going to hang around and become his punching bag.

  • 5:22 pm
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