Wendy
My name is Wendy and this is my story.
I was 17 years old when I met Andrew where I worked. He would cruise through and I thought he was the coolest thing since sliced bread. I was currently dating Scot, who was three years older than I and the love of my life. I guess at the time I had no idea what I really wanted, so I chased after a person who I could look cool next to and dumped my fabulous boyfriend.
Three months into the relationship I discovered that Andrew had anger problems. Let me correct myself, RAGE problems. He was my age, too, and was very insecure about himself. He tried to portray himself as a badass to all of his friends when inside he was weak. He had family problems that I won’t get into, just know that he didn’t deal with his feelings about them like he should have.
I don’t remember why he became angry at me (like most times), but when I tried to leave he hung inside my car door to try and keep me there. His mother came out and defended me. He then chased her with a shovel and threatened her. His own mother.
I left and felt bad — as I always did — so I went back.
This kind of game went on over the course of about five years. There was one time that he held a gun to my head and threatened if I ever left him, he’d kill me. And I believed him.
Andrew also had a drinking problem. One night after he had had about 4 40ozs., I showed up at his house after work. He wanted me to perform a certain sexual act which was beyond anything I’d ever allow myself to do and I refused. He verbally abused me and so I did what I didn’t want to do. When I hadn’t done a satisfactory job because I was crying too much, he proceeded to beat me with a billy club. In case you don’t know what that is, it’s a police baton. He beat me so bad that I had serious bruising all over my back and head. I nearly lost consciousness at one point, but had to force myself to stay together because I knew if I lost consciousness that would piss him off even more. He eventually threw up and passed out and I left immediately.
The next day he asked how I got all of those bruises. I was honest.
I think because of this beating that some damage was done to me that still to this day causes me problems now, ten years later.
***
Usually whenever he beat me it was over some stupid reason, like the time we were at Best Buy and I had to pay for his stuff because he didn’t get his credit card out of the bag I told him it was in the night before. (He was drunk). When we got in the car, he grabbed my arm and when I showed fear, he backhanded me across the face. My lip started bleeding and on the way home he told me to stop crying or he’d do it again. So I sucked it up.
Another incident that was pretty severe was right before I was leaving for work, he was mad about something and threw my boots at me. He then came over and pinned me on the couch by sitting on my lap. He cursed and spit in my face as he yelled at me. He clenched his hands around my throat and started pounding me against the couch. He became so enraged that he then bit my nose and I swore I thought he was going to bite it off. He then threw me onto the floor where he continued to choke me and slammed me against the floor. He finally stopped and I left for work. My boss noticed my wounds and just had this astonished look on his face. He asked about them, but I denied any problems.
Most of the time whenever people saw Andrew abusing me, they turned the other cheek and didn’t get involved. I guess they were afraid of what he’d do to them.
I finally escaped from Andrew one day when he was at work. I wrote a Dear John letter and left it in his recliner. I then went into hiding for a few months. I quit my job and didn’t work. The first time I tried to stay with my mother, I had made the decision at about 10pm or so. As I was driving close to her street, I saw Andrew going in and out of roads trying to figure out where she lived. (My parents had divorced and bought new places and he didn’t know where. He had an idea of where my mother had lived.)
I turned my car around and went back to my dad’s place. I needed a job, so I went to work at another location. He found out. So I had to let him back into my life because I was found. I did whatever it took to appease him and to keep things peaceful. I continued to do this for another year plus. I didn’t move back into his house and it was making him anxious and he kept asking me when I was going to.
In the meantime, when I’d leave his house to go home and sleep, I was actually sneaking out and going to clubs with friends and co-workers. I was having fun.
Before my 23rd birthday, I finally made the decision to leave him for good. It was with the help of two of my co-workers that I managed to do so. I called him right then and there and told him I was tired of it all and that I wanted to leave him. He agreed that things between us weren’t working out (pfft) and we parted ways. This was a suprise to me how well he handled it.
I no longer called him. I did go into hiding and I stayed with my co-worker briefly. I lived with my mother, but I constantly stayed out at night just to avoid being at home in case he came looking for me. I continued to live in fear, but it eventually subsided, especially after I moved to another city.
***
I now live with my husband and two-year-old boy, the loves of my life. I no longer have fear. I wish ill-harm upon him anytime I think of him, but I know what goes around comes around and eventually he will get what’s coming to him. These incidents aren’t all I went through in the five years plus that I was with him, but it’s enough for me to remember how I never want to stay in a situation where I’m involved in domestic violence again. I know I had part in this by not taking care of myself sooner, but I can now recognize the signs of someone who is likely to be abusive.
I am now a counselor of teenage girls at a well renowned treatment center. I am able to help others who went through what I went through. It’s the greatest gift I can give.
One thing I want to ask of people is whenever they suspect abuse, please try to help any way you can. Don’t ignore it thinking that the abused will deal with it on their own because most are too paralyzed by fear to do so. All victims want out, most just feel hopeless and helpless and like they have nowhere to go and no one to turn to.
***
Wendy blogs at A Jill of All Trades.
Stacy Lannert (special report)
Today’s story is a bit different. It’s brought to you by Nicole, a former journalist, who blogs at This D*mn House.
***
I’ve never met Stacey Lannert but I feel like I know her at least a little bit.
Stacey, 36, was recently released from prison. She was sentenced to life without parole for killing her father in 1990. Former Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt changed that by pardoning her in one of his final acts of office. Blunt said that he thought Stacey had “suffered extensive abuse” at the hands of her father whom she claims had begun molesting her at age 8.
I couldn’t agree more.
During my newspaper days, I interviewed a relative of Stacey’s. The relative lived in one of the communities my paper served so it was a great opportunity to get a local tie to a big murder case. That’s what my reporter’s mind said. But deep into the story, it wasn’t my reporter’s ears that were hearing Stacey’s plight play out. The relative gave me a back story about how both the relative and Stacey’s mother had been abused by a family member. The anger. The resentment. The pain. The shame.
I felt all of it acutely. It went against a reporter’s objectivity, but let’s be honest for just a minute. We’re human. We’re all the products of our respective pasts whether we choose to accept it or not. And Stacey’s story struck a chord in mine.
To be clear, I’ve never suffered sexual abuse. I was never physically abused on a regular basis. I got my share, but mostly while trying to intervene during the all-too-regular beatings my mother got. I promised myself at a very early age that no one would ever do that to me. (While there’s been a man or two that may have wanted to, no man who was not a blood relative ever has. )
But the emotional abuse? Oh, that went on for decades. I so understood the place where Stacey was coming from. I knew that anger. I knew that desire to protect someone else. (For Stacey, it was her younger sister. For me, it was my mom.) You see, in my house, an aluminum ball bat wasn’t just for softball. Sometimes, it was a way of literally breaking things up. It was a peacemaker more than once.
I knew the longing to just make it all stop. The everyday waiting to see what little things would set it off. The fights. The broken promises that that was all over.
Finally, Stacey had enough. She asked other people to kill her father. She even thought of hiring someone for the job. In the end, she took matters into her own hands and did it herself.
Was it the right thing to do? No. Even she will tell you that. At the time though, it probably felt like the only option she had. Today, she hopes to help others in situations like hers, ideally sparing them her fate.
Domestic violence leaves scars you can’t see. It makes us perpetuate the chaos in our adult lives whether we recognize it or not.
I came close to repeating my childhood in my first relationship – without ever being struck. Years later, I left a much briefer relationship when a man who drank too much flew into a rage. While it wasn’t directed at me, it was the wake-up call I needed.
“I would never hit you,” he would tell me later. And you never will, I thought. But he didn’t see himself that night. And he could not see what it triggered inside me. Nor did he want to. I walked.
The experiences we have. The choices we make. These are the things that make us products of our pasts. That’s what makes us all Stacey Lannert, at least a little bit.
We don’t, however, have to be victims of our pasts. There are ways to get out and go on with life. Maybe that shows the Stacey in us all, too.
Anonymous blogger
Booze. Broads. Bullshit. That’s what we used to say made my father’s world go ’round.
One of my earliest childhood memories has my parents squaring off for a physical confrontation, like two prize fighters walking into the ring. These battles got worse with every new mistress and most, at least on my father’s part, were alcohol-fueled. Knockdown drag-outs were the norm.
To her credit, my mother tried to leave several times. Trapped between religious vows, my father’s continuous threats, and the vicious cycle that domestic violence is, she always went back.
During one of these great escapes, we moved into the upstairs of a small, one-bedroom duplex close to my grandparents. I started first grade. Not far into the school year, I fell and seriously fractured my left elbow. I had a cast that stopped short of my shoulder.
Meanwhile, my dad wanted my mom to reconcile yet again. She resisted.
The day after I got my cast off, he came to our apartment. I remember being glad to see him when I got there. He had been drinking and was already riled after being rebuffed yet again by my mother. With the ever hopeful naiveté of a 6-year-old, I thought I knew a way to get him to stay and play with me.
I went into “my little room”, which was really a tiny, misshapen closet in the apartment’s only bedroom. My mom transformed it into a little playroom for me with blow-up furniture, a wooden child-sized table and chairs and even a fuzzy white rug shaped like a foot. (It was the ’70s.) I loved that place – until that day.
I emerged from my space with my penny pig which I took to my dad. “You can buy some beer and we can play a game,” I said hopefully though he was already at the door. He ignored me, so I yanked at the hem of his jacket, preparing to repeat my offer.
My fingers hadn’t completely released his jacket when he lashed out at me. He grabbed my left shoulder – where just a day before my cast had stopped – and hefted me into the landing. I hit the wall and rolled halfway downstairs, coming to rest on my still healing elbow. The pain was excruciating and I started to cry, setting off a horribly violent battle. My mother attacked him like a riled mama grizzly and yelled for me to go hide.
I didn’t hesitate. I probably should have stayed and tried to break it up. (It was one of the few times that I didn’t.) Instead, I ran to my little room and barricaded myself inside. I pushed all the little furniture in front of the door even throwing the foot rug on top, as if that would help. I don’t know how long I was there before I heard voices calling me.
I think it was the police, but I wouldn’t answer them. Finally, my grandmother came, carefully removed the furniture from the doorway and pulled me out. I gave her a fright, because when she did, she grabbed my still throbbing arm. I screamed.
But that was nothing compared to what my mom got.
Their fight had gone out the front door, down the street and up the next, ending in the public school parking lot. The police broke it up. My mother went to the hospital. She had a few broken ribs, two blacked eyes, bruises all over her throat and up and down her arms and legs … it was awful. This was in the days before domestic abuse laws, so my father was driven to the border of the next town and released.
About a week later, my father returned. As usual, a fight broke out. Only this time, my mother shot him.
I wasn’t there. I’ve heard multiple accounts. One version has them fighting over the gun and it went off – accidentally. (This was my father’s story to the police when he declined to press charges.) Thankfully, this ended police involvement. He came there to kill her. It wouldn’t be the last time he tried.
My mother could have gone to jail – or the morgue. My mother kept leaving. After nearly two decades of trying, she succeeded: she got a divorce.
We were lucky. Every day, other women – and some men, too – are not. If you are in a violent relationship, please get help. There are hundreds of organizations and services to help you. They don’t judge. Like you, they just want your nightmare to stop.
Pick one. Please. Now.
won
Whack!
Across my face it swept. Didn’t see it coming. But then I rarely did. It was as if there were a draft in the room. Cold air seeping. Energy being sucked out. That is how I remember the bloody wound on my young face. I knew going to look in a mirror was out of the question. I brought my hand up to my face to examine it that way. When I pulled my hand down toward my belly, my eyes focused on the red, oozing blood spattered across my hand.
In her hand, half of the wooden pizza board remained. The other half (minus a few bits still embedded in my face), on the floor in shards. She looked surprised before walking away. When she came back she handed me a cold, wet cloth-instructing me to put it on the bridge of my nose where the majority of the blood was coming from. I tried to listen to her. I always tried to listen to her.
But I could not feel my face where the whack had just landed. The impact had left me numb. I did not manage to place the cloth on the specific spot spewing blood quickly enough for her.
No matter how much I wanted to be a good girl, no matter how I strove for her approval… this time would be no different. I wouldn’t have it, never could. Not even as I sat there in that chair wounded. But what she did next surprised even me.
She walked away and I sat there in terror. When she returned, she had a roll of duct tape and scissors. I remember the panic; I knew this could get real scary real fast. Frantically, I searched her face for a clue and all I saw was the all too familiar furrowed brow and angry eyes of this cold woman. She unrolled a fair sized piece of tape before cutting it. She then told me to put the cloth back up to my nose. She had little patience for my fumbling as she guided my hand to the spot before plastering the duct tape horizontally across my face and hair. Now the cloth was where she intended it to be, and it would remain there. It was at that moment my sister came home.
I thought now this might end. She might feel accountable to someone. My sister might question her. Instead, my sister questioned me. Her questions were not ones of my welfare. Her questions were ones of “why is my shirt on you? Did I say you could wear it — I don’t think so!”
“Mom…” she whined next.
And this woman who may have been her mother and may have birthed me, but certainly was not my mother, told her to “go ahead… let me have it.” All because I had picked her shirt up and had the audacity to put it on my body that they wanted me to believe was unlovable and unworthy. And with that, I felt another thud.
*
There were many moments before, and many after. This one stands out for me. It felt more like a “two against one” war, crossing the threshold of being an angry mother in an out of control moment. And it was a damn pizza board, you know? Those things don’t just break across someone’s face without an extra helping of rage and anger. She no remorse. If she had done it and immediately thought a human, motherly thought like “Oh my God, what have I done here?” I would never have had to tell you about the duct tape and my sister. I would never have memories of her beating my head against the wall, or pulling handfuls of my hair out. I would not fight the verbal assaults echoing inside with her comments of ”shit for brains, that’s all you’ll ever have” or similarly degrading comments of “you will never amount to anything!” or the other memories that I just know are there, but in a self protective mode my mind won’t even allow me to recall.
That moment I sat there duct taped and bleeding was the moment I began to feel less than. This was the moment she clearly announced to me, to herself and my sister that I was not worthy nor was I lovable. And I struggled with that for many years. Still do. An abuser need only hit you once to leave impressions that last a lifetime. Every time you see or hear something, or connect with the powerful memory stimulator of smell, you can be taken back to the darkness in an instant.
*
I haven’t yet mentioned her husband. The moments he bonded with me the most (in his eyes at least), happened in front of only his eyes. I always kept mine shut, pretending to still be sleeping. That way I did not have to face it, literally speaking of course. I’d always have to face it — silently, alone and in the darkness that made it hard to breathe. I’d cringe as his hands explored my body in ways that are vilely etched in my memory.
What gives one human being the right to inflict their own selfish fetishes or rage against another? It is my body, my space, my place. There is a boundary. There is a limit.
Violence: abusive or unjust exercise of power.
*
Every time her skin violently attacked mine, his skin violently touched mine, her words violently echoed, I reminded myself it was not me who had the problem. It was them. I tried like hell to keep the messages from encroaching upon my soul. Intellectually, I knew better. But in matters such as these, logic becomes secondary and try as I may some of it gets past the filter, past the barrier I’d built to remain strong. On some level I began to believe them, that I was less than.
In moments of clarity, I knew. I knew it was their problem and theirs alone. I reminded myself that whatever they did, I would just do the opposite when I had children one day. Hell yes! I would break this cycle of abuse and insanity. Nobody should have to live like this. Nobody.
I don’t think I ever fully got mad until I gave birth. As I watched my newborn daughter lay there helplessly, I began to feel the full gamut of it. How could anyone hurt their own child? Oh I was even more pissed at her then. How could she do the things to me she did? How could she not have protected me?!
I knew two things: if ever someone hurt my child, I would hurt them first and ask questions later. Also, I knew what love was, for the first time ever… as a single mother.
Finally, I knew love.
*
Little did I know in the cruelest blow ever felt in my life, that love would be cut short. As my daughter later lay dying, she mirrored back the love I had given her for the previous 11 years and 49 weeks. She would tell me “Don’t worry momma, it’ll be okay. Just breathe in the light, and blow out the darkness.” The cancer had invaded her brain, but her heart was far too big for it to even try. Her heart, full of love and purity.
As I said about smells and memories, this is one of the reasons I keep breathing. In and out, like my daughter told me. It keeps the smells constantly changing. One memory will not linger too long. Some days, that’s all I can do. And some days, that is all I need to do. In and out… slowly, and with intent. In doing so, I stay alive.
I haven’t spoken to either one of my abusers in many a years. People ask if it’s hard not speaking to them. The answer to that is no. It was hard sticking around, hoping they’d change and allowing them to continue inflicting pain in the process. What happens now is predictable for the most part. Now I have a simple appreciation for the predictability in my day, and that is a blessing.
***
Won blogs at Single, Bereaved, Broken and Tenacious.
