He had a daughter and I started raising her full time and without any help from him in January of '09. She was not my biological child so of course I had 0 rights to her even though I was the one who fed her, clothed her, spent her every waking hour with her...I potty trained her, taught her her ABC's and her 123's, I read her stories and I encouraged her love of music...I was her mother. But my status as her mother depended on me being with her father because by the time he started behaving in a way that made me want to go I knew that he was spiteful enough to keep her from me because he could. And he did. By the time he put his hands on me for the first time the night before Thanksgiving of 2009 (a nice sound backhand to the face) I was in love with that little girl. The love of that child made me completely stupid. And I stayed. When he choked me out a month after the back hand and choked me again about a week after that (the first time because he knocked the hell out of his kid and I said something about it and the second time because I asked him about one of his whores he said he had deleted off facebook whose husband was sending me messages saying the two were meeting up and fucking) I stayed. A few months would go by and I would start to think that I had been crazy, that there was no way he had done such things. Then he would do something like get me and his child in the car and hold us hostage as he drove around telling me how he was going to kill me on a back road and he would be out of the county, maybe out of the state, before anyone realized what he had done. And I would lay awake at night beside of him thinking, 'I have to get the fuck away from him before he does kill me, before I end up a picture on the news'. And still...I stayed. His daughter's biological mother was a drug addict and she traded her kids for drugs, her whole family had beaten the kids, and he...well, you can see what kind of guy he is. I was all that little girl had. And when he left I tried first to get him back and then, when I realized that there was no way I could live like that ever again, I tried to get him to just let me have that child. He didn't want her. He could keep the check he got for her...whatever. Just let me have her. But he thought he had a pawn as long as he had her. So he kept her from me until I cut off contact. And with the exception of the e-mails he continues to send here and there that go unanswered, the phone calls from his mother that my family answer for me, and things like that, there has continued to be no contact and will never be any contact again. His daughter is now safe with his family and I am away from him. It was a win win for us both. I miss her and I will always love her. But I am alive. Another year with her father and I am not sure that would have been the case.
So why am I sharing this? Besides giving background on why I might be a little brighter in spirits today than usual, I hope someone might learn something from it. I was lucky. I was damn lucky! I have seen murderous rage in a man's eyes, a man that was far larger and more healthy than me, a man that could have killed me, and I'm still here to tell about it. If you are with someone and you find yourself laying awake at night thinking, 'I better leave before this fucker kills me' LEAVE. Whatever reason you think you have to stay, in the end will it be worth your life? He has been gone a year. I have not seen him at all in eight months. In early March he moved a thousand miles away. And I still find myself worrying sometimes that he'll come back and kill me and my family. My family doesn't know that I have that fear. They've never guessed at it as far as I know. But they've never seen that blank cold look in the bastard's eyes either. If they had, maybe they would share my fear.
The thing that pisses me off the most is that I not only stayed, I still loved him when he left. I did. I got over that. And you will too. I haven't let myself think about one happy time I shared with him since the end of August. If I think of him, it's the bad times only and who the hell wants to do that? So I don't think about him. It kills the love, that mindset. It helped that there were many many bad times and that I had thought often of leaving for a year and a half before he walked out. Reconnecting with the man I wish I had spent the last eleven and a half years of my life with helped too. Even though he and I are still not together, even though I am not sure if I will ever hear from him again, remembering what that once in a lifetime love felt like helped me get through getting over what I had with my ex-fiance. So if you feel trapped, find a way to go. If you are being abused, do what you have to do but get out. Because no one is worth losing your life. And if you have recently come out of a breakup, there are better times a head. I promise.
In honor of my freedom, my second chance, I am making these promises to myself. Some are old, some are new (I have none that are borrowed or blue...that I am aware of. :) ) but they are all relevant to my happiness in the future. No matter what life or my body throws at me, I will continue to do everything in my power to shape my future the way I want it be. If that means getting five hundred rejection letters from agents who do not feel my 'project' is right for them at the moment, if that means paying off student loans with my retirement fund, if that means spending the next five years or the next fifteen working my ass off to get my doctorates, that is what I will do. I will stay true to myself no matter what. If who I am doesn't jive with who someone wants me to be, tough shit. That fire never left me even at my lowest points and it won't leave me now. And I will never again settle for anything less than what I once felt in the arms of a man a hundred miles away who continues to haunt my dreams and my heart. I won't settle for less than true love. How could I when I know what it is like to fall in love at first sight? I let myself forget that once. Never again. And if I stay alone the rest of my life because of that commitment, so be it. I have people who love me. And whether we are together sometime in the future or whether I never see him again, my one big love loves me back. Perhaps he will see that I really am strong enough to weather the storms. Or maybe I will find another who makes me feel the way he made me feel. But I won't settle for less....never again. I would be a liar if I said that I will never take a single day for granted. I'm human. Some days suck. That is life. But I will continue to always try to see the bright light at the end of the tunnel, the silver lining to every cloud. I will continue to take the bullshit in life and try to get something positive from it, to learn my lessons, and to always move forward. It's a good plan, these promises to myself, and hopefully one day I'll look back at them and know I stuck to every one and it led me to my happiness. Have a beautiful week, guys, and remember always to smile. :)
And for the future?
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