I Knew I Needed Help

There were signs all over the place; some stuck out like a blinking neon light, and some were a little harder to spot.

That night I stayed awake in the living room, making sure he didn’t go upstairs where my kids were sleeping. I knew he was drunk and passed out, but didn’t know how long this would last and I couldn’t take the chance.

I couldn’t even tell you what we had been fighting about just a few hours before. We fought every day, all day, and this day was no different. What I do remember is his beer breath as he spat all over my face, telling me that I was a c*nt, that I didn’t deserve my children, and that I was the stupidest human he had ever met.

I picked up my keys and purse, ready to go wake up the kids and leave, when he told me that I was a whore. He accused me of sleeping with several people, the only people I hadn’t completely shut out at his request. I froze…and then he said it.

”If you leave, I’ll fucking find you, and you’ll regret it.”

I put my keys down and headed for the living room without a word. He picked up the keys and threw them at me, and I didn’t flinch.

He smiled, chugged the last of his beer, grabbed his gun, and went to bed.

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Leanne had flown me down to help her move out of her shared home with her ex-fiancé and into her new home. She didn’t have many friends left that wanted to get in the middle of that mess, so there I went. We of course went to her dive bar hang out and on the way there she said we were meeting a friend of hers who was going to help set up her new home office after we got all her stuff moved. He was already there, sitting along, sipping a Miller Lite.

She introduced us, and the two of them started talking about work things, so I sat quietly, people watching. As the night went on, Leanne’s bar friends started to appear, and this guy clearly did not like them. Soon it was just the two of us at the table. I thought he was just being polite when he sat next to me and started talking, asking questions, trying to take an interest. Being naturally shy (yep, I am), I was hesitant. But as those Millers kept flowing, the shyness wore off and soon we were talking about music, the right temperature of salsa, and who had the best BBQ in Katy. I was acutely aware of his hand on the small of my back and in my head was making an escape plan for if he made a move. By the end of the evening he had booked us a date the next day to go get said best BBQ in Katy and we exchanged numbers so that “Leanne didn’t have to play middle man”.

Leanne and I left and promptly passed out at her house for the evening.

The next day I woke to several text messages, full of compliments and “I can’t wait to see you today”. It felt nice to have someone say those things to me; I hadn’t heard them in a long time. I went into Leanne’s room to find out what the plan was for the day (there was always a plan, though rarely followed through). Once she learned that her friend had asked me out on a date, she came out of her hangover pretty quickly and said that she wanted me to hang out with her. I was there to help her after all, and she had paid for me to get down there, so I felt guilty that I had even entertained the thought.

A few days later, all the moving was done, and he was supposed to come over to set up the office. We had been texting a little bit back and forth over those few days, but Leanne didn’t really let on that she knew. He had asked me via text to ask Leanne if he should stop for beer, so I asked. The look on her face when she realized that we had been texting was a look I hadn’t seen before, but I brushed it off as surprise.

The next day I left early for the airport. I was anxious to get back home to the kids, sad to be going home to the crappy Wisconsin winter weather, and feeling different than any other time I had left Texas. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what that feeling was, but chalked it up to smoking and drinking too much, not enough sleep, and just a sign that it was time to get home and return to normal life.

Except life wouldn’t be normal after that. Not even close.

The next few years were spent in a long distance relationship full of verbal and emotional abuse. Like, the most awful things you already think about yourself being said to you as though they were fact. He was able to manipulate me into cutting off contact with almost everyone close to me, for various reasons. He knew my financial situation wasn’t great, so he was definitely able to use money to control me as well. The sexual abuse is something I still struggle with, although it’s gotten exponentially better.

We broke up several times. Sometimes just for a day or two, sometimes for a few weeks. I think the longest was a few months - I even entertained the idea of getting into a new relationship, thinking if I could make that work, I wouldn’t go back to him. It never lasted, and I hurt a few people along the way. I know I did, and I am not proud of that.

Our story changed swiftly the last time we got back together, when he convinced me to let him fly up here for a weekend to “talk”. He got off the plane and walked up the terminal, and proposed. I was immediately sick to my stomach, looking around at anyone who was watching (about 3 people, it is a small airport), and all I could think of was how to get out of there. I sat down on the bench and said we have the whole weekend to talk.

By the end of the weekend, he had me convinced that he was a different man. He told me he had been “talking to someone”, working on his own inner demons, and that the proposal was real. We talked about him moving to Wisconsin, buying a house together, and living normally because, after all, the distance is what “made me crazy”.

His job allowed him to transfer here, so he started packing his things as soon as he got home. A few weeks later he brought his two dogs and was officially a Wisconsin resident. We went house hunting immediately, as my little 2 bedroom apartment “was a dump”. We bought a fixer upper in the country just a few miles away, and I put my notice in at the apartment that we’d be moving out after almost 8 years. But when we got to our appointment to sign the papers for the house, he stopped me before we went in and said, “I can’t put you on the house until we are married. I just don’t trust you.”

My apartment had already been rented. I wasn’t going to have my name put on this house. If I didn’t go along with what he wanted me to do, my kids and I would be homeless. I knew that, deep in my core, and at that moment I knew I was fucked.

The night of the wedding he got drunk and threatened to leave me where we were (out of state). I slept curled in a ball, waking up crying, and then going back to sleep again.

There are so many more stories I could tell you about this relationship, but this should at least get you to the conclusion; where I knew I needed to ask for help.

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After spending the night in the living room, too scared to fall asleep, I heard him get up to take a shower. My heart was pounding, my mouth was dry, and I had to pee SO bad…but we had one functional bathroom. I remember telling myself that I could clean it up later if I had to; I was not going to let him know I was awake. He walked into the kitchen, grabbed his keys. More footsteps, coming closer. I closed my eyes. I felt a kiss on my forehead, and heard him walk away. The doorknob turned, his car started, and he drove out of the gravel driveway to go to work.

I waited for probably far longer than I needed to, just to make sure he was really gone, but as soon as I knew he was, I woke up the kids.

We packed overnight bags with a few extra days’ worth of clothes and went back to the apartment complex where my friend lived, and crashed there.

When he realized we weren’t coming home, he absolutely fell apart.

See, narcissists can’t function if they don’t have an energy source, and his energy source had gotten the fuck out of there.

When I knew for certain I wasn’t going back, I scheduled a time with the sheriff’s department for me to go back to get the rest of our things. He had destroyed a lot. When I walked into the house, there were empty liquor bottles and beer cans E V E R Y W H E R E. There was a broken mirror on the floor in the bedroom, overflowing bags of garbage, and just general nastiness. He was lying in bed, vaping and watching something on TV. He saw me and started crying - his typical manipulation move - and as I tried to speak, I started gagging. He got up, I backed away. I could not form words. It was almost like my tongue had swelled to 4x its size and stuck to the roof of my mouth on top of the uncontrollable dry heaving. That is the only time I have ever experienced something like that.

He realized the deputy was waiting outside and went back to bed. I quietly gathered the rest of what I could and left.

I went to the women’s shelter to discuss options. I didn’t feel like I belonged there because it wasn’t physical abuse, “just” all the other abuse. The women who were staying there had gone through far worse things than I and I didn’t feel right about taking resources from them. Selfishly, I knew that I would lose my kids the second I showed that I couldn’t provide for them.

But what I did take advantage of was the counseling through the shelter. I went in thinking that I was wasting my time, that they’d hear my story and tell me that it didn’t qualify. But what I learned was that what I had been through was abusive, 100%.

We did individual and family counseling. I was given books to read and homework to do. I had to admit things about myself that I never wanted to. But I also thought back to that moment when I was dry heaving and couldn’t speak and knew that I never ever wanted to go back to that moment, to feel that way again. So, as unsexy and as difficult as it was to do the work on ME, I did it.

He tried everything he could to get to me afterward. With a strong suggestion from the laywers, he agreed to let me and the kids come back to live in the house (he went back to Texas), he would pay the bills, and all I had to do was keep up with the maintenance, until I could find a new place. He sent an anonymous letter to my oldest’s dad, pretending to be from another parent at school, telling him that I was abusive to his daughter. He called CPS on me for my youngest. He even stole my debit card and other mail out of my mailbox once he learned where I had found a new place to live. He’d call and leave drunken voicemails. He hacked into my emails (he’s an IT guru by trade). And eventually, he kind of just…disappeared.

Because he found a new energy source.

(I’ve met her. She’s lovely, and she had the courage to get out just a few months in, after reaching out to me.)

It’s been years since I’ve seen him, but I do still cringe when I hear his name, see a car that looks like the one he had, or see someone who has similar features. My reaction now is not to feel fearful, but just kind of annoyance that those things bother me.

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Why did I tell you this story?

For one reason.

To show you that when you do the work on you, you can change your life. You get to choose.

XO