“Things stayed relatively happy while we were in school. Honestly, which was a surprise since we were both working and in school; that’s always an insane time. Once he graduated, he started working and saving money, every so often talking about the next steps, a house, marriage, kids. He said all the right things, at the right times, in just the right way and I was simply too busy to see how perfect everything he said was; how calculated it all ended up being. A week before my final semester, I found out I was pregnant.” I pause here, my hands instinctively going to my stomach, remembering how hard it was to get up and make those 8:00 classes while fighting that first trimester morning sickness.
“One thing you need to understand is that my sister and I were raised in an incredibly devout religious home. Our parents were very conservative and staunch in their beliefs. When they found out I was pregnant out of wedlock, they had two reactions. The first was to burst into tears and tell me what a horrible sinner I was, and the second was to demand David and I get married immediately to cover my indiscretion as much as possible.”
“I fought them on it, as I did every time they tried to take control of the major decisions in my life. I knew David wasn’t bad, but when he talked about the future I just glazed over. If I would have taken the time to think I would have realized he wasn’t the right choice but all I could say was that, ‘it just didn’t feel right.’ After a few weeks they wore me down and I relented, letting them guilt me into marrying him. We were set to get married just before Christmas that year, my mother said she always loved winter weddings.”
The pain of those fights floods my mind. Of yelling matches with my mother about how it wasn’t her business and I can take care of myself. Fights with David who seemed equal parts annoyed about having to plan a wedding and gloating that his plan was coming together. I breathe through my nose, and exhale through my mouth, attempting to settle my nerves and hold back the tears that are threatening to break free.
“My parents… they, they died two weeks before the wedding. Car accident. I didn’t handle the loss well. We may not have been close, but they were still my parents and the shock of losing them both like that and being stuck with this wedding while trying to keep the baby a secret; it broke me. The stress caused me to miscarry the baby. The doctors said it’s not uncommon with traumatic experiences like that. With the loss of the baby, and losing my parents, all of it combined was too much for me. I was in a terrible place mentally for a long time. David saw what a mess I was and took advantage. He convinced me to still go through with the wedding to satisfy my parents' dying wish, that I owed it to them.”
“I’ll never forget the feeling I had in that judge’s chambers at the courthouse. I knew. I knew deep in my gut that it was wrong, that I would regret that moment for the rest of my life. I wish I would have listened and ran,” my voice breaks off as I try to choke back a sob. I refuse to break until I get through all of it. I have never told this story before, not to anyone, and I need to get it out.
“David was always a little off, and I knew he wasn’t the one, but he had never been bad. A few months after we got married, he started saying he was upset he was ‘stuck with me’ and that caused him to start drinking heavily. When he drank, he went from annoying bastard to raging asshole. With the drinking came the yelling and the fighting. All the damn time. It took a couple years for it to get truly awful, but honestly in all that time I never once thought he would actually hurt me. Words are one thing, but I truly believed he would never take a hand to me.
“After a few years he started getting upset that I hadn’t gotten pregnant again, that I hadn’t ‘replaced the child I stole from him’… the bastard… he never allowed me to be on any kind of birth control, and always said it was his right as my husband to… ‘avail himself of me…’ and I couldn’t rightfully say no. I was stupid and went along with it, believing that if I just tried enough or did enough that I would fall in love again and it would all be alright. That everything would be good again.
“As time went on his ranting and raving only got worse, more frequent. It was always still just screaming matches though, or the occasional bout of throwing things against the walls, but he still never raised a hand to me. Until he did. He came home from the bar one night and wanted to ‘claim his God-given husbandly right’ but I tried to wave him off, telling him I was on my period. He lost it and started screaming that I was useless and a waste and what good was I if I couldn’t give him the child I stole from him. I tried… I tried to calm him down, but he was too far gone. He backhanded me across the face. I’ll never forget the feeling of it. The pain exploding in my cheek, the force of it knocking me to the floor in shock. He just stared down at me, part of me still hoped he would see what he had done and would crumble to his knees and say he was sorry, to beg me to forgive him. Stupid, stupid girl. He just stared at me, sitting there on the floor, holding my hand to my cheek as I gawked back up at him. His eyes were so cold. So dead. He just nodded once and then walked away.”
The memory of that night finally breaks through the careful hold I have been struggling to maintain on my emotions and tears start to slide down my cheeks, but I refuse to move, refuse to let out a sound. I will get through this.
“It just kept escalating from there. A slap here, a shove there, having to dodge things thrown my way when he was in a particularly bad state. Yet I still never left. I kept rationalizing, kept thinking if I just tried a little harder that he would love me again, if only I would stop disappointing him.
“A little over a year ago now I found out I was pregnant with Evan. I hoped, I truly hoped, that having a baby would fix things and bring us back together. He kept talking about wanting a son to carry on his name, all he wanted was for me to give him that son. He wasn’t all that excited when I told him honestly, he just got frustrated that I wouldn’t be able to do as much around the house when I was already lacking in that area in his mind. I gave up hope for him and threw everything I had into the pregnancy and the baby. I focused on the baby as a way of distracting me from the rest of the mess going on in my life. It worked for a few weeks, but at about eight weeks along I was diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, a form of severe morning sickness that is downright crippling. I was vomiting twelve to fifteen times a day on a good day, any time I sat up my stomach would revolt. I was losing weight and unable to drink or eat because nothing would stay down. When I went to the doctor to see what they could do to help, David refused to let me take any of the medication I was prescribed and flushed all of it down the toilet saying I was only being dramatic to get his sympathy.” I swear I hear one of the men growl at this, but I can’t look up to see which one. I have to just keep going.
“That kept on through the whole of my pregnancy, normal morning sickness goes away after the first trimester, but HG hung around until about three weeks before I went into labor. I was so excited to meet my baby, still held onto a flicker of hope that when David saw his son he would change, everything would magically snap into place. Once again, I was so wrong. He played the doting father in front of everyone, but as soon as we were behind closed doors, he was downright ruthless and vicious in his attacks on me. He refused to do anything to help with the baby, and he would start screaming and yelling whenever Evan made any amount of noise. He would go on and on about how horrible of a mother I was and how Evan was a miserable child because I was doing things wrong and I was trying to hurt him.” my voice breaks on a pained sob. “I knew none of what he said was true, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t cut deep.”