“I had good parents who got along well. I watched Jerry Springer and wondered how could those ladies be so dumb? I thought domestic abuse only happened to trashy people. I never thought it could happen to me.

I met my first husband in college and it proceeded fast to I love you and want to be with you for the rest of my life. I thought his jealousy was a sign of passion. Then this charming person began to criticize the way I dressed and the people I was friends with. Before I knew it, I had given up everything about myself and I didn’t know how it happened. 

We met in October, married in March and then I was pregnant. People said it was too fast, but I believed he loved me and we would be together forever. He changed as soon as we were married. I had to quit my job and quit school to be home all of the time with him. He moved me away from my family and made them uncomfortable when they came to see me. Little by little, I became isolated. 

He cussed me every day and tore down my self-esteem. He called me fat, ugly, lazy and incompetent. He said I wasn’t worth anything and no one was ever going to want me. His dad did a lot of the same things and got away with it, so he repeated the behavior. He beat me and did things to hurt me, but I still loved him and went out of my way not to hurt his feelings. I wanted him to be proud of me. If I were better, he would love me more. He kept making me make little choices. Is this worth losing my relationship? No. I can let it go. Then there was nothing left to give up. I am a passive people pleaser and don’t like for anyone to be mad at me. I was on pins and needles trying to be a perfect wife and mom. 

One night he said the spaghetti noodles were overcooked and dumped them on the floor. When I told him I wasn’t cleaning the mess up, he said, yes you are and stuck my face in it. He also dumped spaghetti sauce on the floor. I cleaned it up. For a long time, I didn’t resist. I made adjustments to fit whatever mold he was trying to put me in. 

If he didn’t know where I was, I was a whore. He used scripture against me all of the time about women submitting to men. He loved that I was a teacher to give him status and us income, but I had to come straight home after school.  I would look out of the window of my classroom and see him driving by to check on me  School was my escape and I dreaded the weekend and summer. I didn’t tell anyone about it because I didn’t want them to see me as a failure or trash. I smiled through a lot of pain. 

I knew he was going to kill me. Washing dishes, I closed my eyes and said, ‘God, I need you to take this because I can’t do it any more.’ Two weeks later came the explosion that was the worst and best thing that ever happened to me, and it saved my life. I no longer wanted to be in our marriage. He destroyed the things I loved so I started taking things to my mom so he wouldn’t notice.

I had jewelry that my grandmother gave me in my purse. He found the jewelry and sat in the living room with a gun on one knee and a knife and my purse on the other. I did not lie to him because lying made him worse, so I told him I was leaving. He told me to get a sheet of paper and a pen and write this down, ‘I am sorry I was a bad mother.’ I realized what he was trying to make me write a suicide note. He grabbed my head, pushed it down in the couch and said he was going to kill our daughter, then me and himself.

The next day at school, a woman who was like a mama to me noticed I was acting weird. I told her everything and she said, ‘You can’t go home or he will kill you.’ That broke me out of my trance and I realized she was right. The principal and counselor prayed with me and then we started working on a plan. My choices were go home and get killed or stay there and press charges. I called his mother to get my daughter and he answered. He said everything is fine. He had looked for a new car for me and bought a new dishwasher. Ours had been broken down for months but he said we didn’t need one because he had a dishwasher and her name is Kathy.

I told him I would never come home and there was a warrant for his arrest. That was the last time I ever talked to him. I went to Penelope house with $5 in my pocket and one of my three kids. He took pills and they took the suicide note to my mother. It was a trick to get me out of the shelter. We were there for 10 days when he committed suicide. After that I still couldn’t leave the shelter because his family made a lot of threats, ‘You got one of ours, so we’ll kill one of yours.’ After he died, I went back into our house. The dishwasher was still broken. He would have killed me that day.

It has been ten years since that happened. I am married to a good man and I am happy.

Tell your friends who are in it that you see what’s happening to them. Don’t give on up on them because one day they are going to decide they have had enough and will need help. I tried several times to get away and he would kidnap me and take me back home. I thought this was love, but then I realized I was never getting away from this man.”