Domestic Violence Month: Janie’s Story Part 1

** names and some details have been changed to protect the victim.This is at the request of the person who gave us this story. Everything you’re about to read is true.

Janie has never known a relationship that is not abusive and/or controlling. She met her ex-husband when she was still too young to understand what a relationship was or what she was getting into. She spent the next ten years in a marriage that she had no idea was abusive until she was out of it. Her story may sound hard to believe, but for her – and thousands like her – it is all too familiar. She still suffers with guilt and the aftereffects of the abuse, things that she will probably deal with the rest of her life:

“I grew up in a fairly loving household. I loved my mom and she tried to do her best, but she was the child of generational abuse, so she was mentally and verbally abusive to me and it caused a lot of problems. She was a single mom and I didn’t want her life. I told myself growing up that I would never get married. I would never have kids because I didn’t want to treat them the way my mom treated me, and I didn’t want to end up like my mom. But if I did get married, I wasn’t going to get divorced, I would stick it out.

“I met my ex-husband when I was barely 17 and he was 20. In hindsight, he had no business dating me or pursuing me. We were only dating a few months before he asked me to marry him. I said yes enthusiastically, because I had found my Prince Charming, I just knew it was going to be different. We were going to live happily ever after and it would be great. Very quickly after we started dating and got engaged, I got pregnant, I graduated high school, my mom kicked me out, I turned eighteen, and I was married all in a span of three months.

“I was determined we were going to make it different. My husband and I will be together forever. We would not get divorced; no matter what happened, we would make it work. I think that’s what held me in my marriage for so long. Shortly after we got married, my ex-husband got addicted to pills. He hurt himself while doing some work, falling off a piece of equipment and needing surgery. Back in the early 2000s, they used to pass out pain pills like candy, so they gave him strong pain pills. Those flipped a switch in his brain, and he suddenly became a drug addict.

“Our daughter was born and her delivery was rough, so they gave me percocet after it. My ex-husband stole them and I was left without pain meds during my recovery. I found out and I told him he needed to stop, because I would not be married to a drug addict. He promised he would stop. He never did. He stayed on pills, cocaine, or meth during our entire marriage.

“When our daughter was barely four months old, I found out I was pregnant with our second child. Things were still fairly good at this point. I don’t know exactly when it turned from being good to abuse. But one of the fights that sticks in my mind as precursor was shortly after our second child was born, we had a fight about something. I don’t remember what it was. And I told him, ‘I’m leaving you.’ He said, ‘Okay,’ and he called my mother. He told my mother, ‘Your daughter’s trying to leave me and she wants to leave, that’s fine, but she’s not taking a damn thing with her. You can come and pick her up.’ My mother talked to me and told me to calm down and I needed to work on my marriage because I had two kids and I didn’t need to put them through that. She told me that everything could be fixed, so I did what I always did. I said yes, ma’am, and I stayed.

“I guess you could say I was luckier than most because my ex-husband only laid hands on me three times in our marriage. I remember every one of them vividly. The first time was when I was pregnant with our third child. I don’t remember what we were fighting about, but I walked into the room and he was laying on the floor. Our daughter was in there, and I said something to him and he kicked my legs out from under me. I fell and he walked out the house. I wish I could say that I remember how I felt at that moment, but I don’t. I think it’s a coping mechanism. I can tell you this – when I relive the moment I’m terrified.

“The second time he put his hands on me, he grabbed me and pushed me up against a wall. I hit him back. I’m not going to lie about that; I was defending myself. But the look on his face when I hit him back I will remember for the rest of my life. Because that look is the closest thing I have ever seen what evil looks like.

“I’d like to know what he was thinking at that moment, why he looked at me like that. Maybe he liked the fact I hit him back. Maybe he thought, ‘Next time it’s going to be worse.’ I don’t know. I just remember the look on his face.

“The third time he put his hands-on me was the scariest, it’s also the one that I have tried to convince myself that I remember it wrong. Many abuse victims will try to downplay the situation as a mechanism of survival as a way to cope. I don’t know why I try to convince myself, maybe it’s because the alternative is knowing that the man who I loved, the man who was the father of my children, could have killed me.

“We were fighting again. I don’t remember why, but he had grabbed me by my shoulders. and he was holding me and lightly shaking me. I was at the top of the stairs and he was in front of me on the landing. And he suddenly let go, and I fell down the stairs. I was in such shock.

“What I remember most are the first words out of his mouth: ‘What are you doing?’ He told me I had thrown myself down the stairs. To this day, that’s his version of the story. I found out many, many years later that our kids heard it, and our middle child is still haunted and traumatized by the sound of his mom hitting the bottom of the stairs.

“He used to put his hand on the back of my neck and squeeze if I was doing something wrong in public or use it to direct me, so I didn’t move away from him. Sometimes I can still feel his hands on the back of my neck, and it’s been over a decade since he’s touched me.

“Sometimes I wished that he had hit me more. I feel like that would have been easier to deal with than the mental, emotional, verbal, financial and sexual abuse that I suffered in our marriage. When dinner time came, we all had to sit around the table and he was served first, then the children, then finally me. If he wanted seconds, I had to stop eating to serve him or the children. I was there to wait on him hand and foot.

“The house was never clean enough. I could have cleaned from top to bottom and he’d be mad because there’d be a load of laundry left in the laundry or I didn’t fold the laundry or I didn’t mop. It was never good enough. If I wanted to spend money on something that was for me, for the children, or just a random purchase, I would have to call and get his permission. I would have to call and get his permission before I could go grocery shopping. He said he made the money so he got to decide what to do with it.

“I wanted to work and have a job outside the home but he didn’t like it. Every time I got a job, he would complain that I was never home or daycare cost too much or my place was at the house because I wasn’t cleaning enough. I went to college trying to pursue my nursing degree. I finished one semester and had to quit because he did not like the time it took away from the house and from him. If I got a hobby or joined a team or got new friends he would get mad, accuse me of cheating or not caring about him or the children. It would continue until I had no choice but to give up whatever was taking my time away from him and the house.

“He was really good at love bombing after a fight. After he spewed his hate and venom on me, he would show up with a lot of gifts. Towards the end of our marriage, I was getting a gift every single day. He cheated on me constantly and it was always ‘my fault’ because he wasn’t happy at home, I wasn’t doing my wifely duties.

“By this point I was so controlled, and so far into the abuse that I didn’t know what was right or wrong anymore. And my first thought was, ‘He’s my husband he’s allowed to do that.’

“He left me for another woman. He told me he loved her and he wanted to be with her. I still thought, ‘We’ll get divorced and we’ll all be friends and get along and it will be great’ because that’s what he wanted. He wanted to have this new woman and me, his punching bag.

“About a month after he left me for this other woman he came back. I had kicked him out several times, but would take him back every single time. They say it takes the average abuse victim seven times to leave their abuser. This time he stood there doing the same thing and begged and he pleaded and he cried, and I told him, ‘I was done.’ I had finally reached my breaking point, and I couldn’t do it anymore.

“I had no money – everything was his – but all I knew was I just couldn’t do it anymore. I wish I could say that afterwards I rebuilt my life and things got better, but it didn’t. Unfortunately, at this point we were living far away from any family, and I couldn’t just move home. So we stayed in the same house for a while as he paraded this new woman back-and-forth and treated me like I wasn’t there because I refused to take him back.

“Because I was so far away from home and completely isolated from everyone because of him, I was still very dependent on him. He knew this, so he began to control all of that even more and take away my independence. I had no choice but to be completely dependent on him.

“When I went home to visit my family, he sold my car and left me with no car. He stole money that I earned for babysitting, so that I didn’t have money. When I would ask, he would say, ‘I don’t know what happened to your money’ or ‘You must have spent it.’ I had to open my own bank account because he kicked me off ours without warning and cancelled my debit card while I was out of town.

“and He would give me $500 a month to buy things from me and the children, the rest of the money was his. He said $500 was fair, considering I didn’t do anything.

“He continued to mentally verbally, emotionally and financially abuse me for years after that. He moved away with the new woman and would not pay child support for our children. He used to threaten to take them away from me. He wouldn’t see them, he wouldn’t call them. I was completely alone and had nothing left. I had to rebuild from ashes.

**to be continued in next weeks issue.

Elizabeth Graves lives with way too many animals and not enough sanity. She is passionate about the arts, especially theatre.  And she enjoys any reason to dress in a costume.