How Things Went From Wonderful to Terrifying...

There is something you should know especially if you are reading this and questioning yourself and your relationship....it wasn't always awful and terrifying with Wade. As a matter of fact, most of the time I thought I was the most blessed girl in the world. I mean we did have quite a lot in common although not quite as much as I had originally been told, he did tell me he loved me and that I was beautiful every day, we also had similar ideas when it came to dates and what was fun as we would ride down the backroads with the windows down, hair blowing in the wind, hands and arms stuck out the window as if we could fly. We would spend hours upon hours talking about our dreams and wants and our goals in life. Wade had a way of making me feel as if I was his whole world and that was all I had ever wanted and those dark times? Well, that was my fault partly right? I mean I was a lot to handle and I knew that. It took a long time for me to realize that the give and take, tug and pull he was giving me was highly toxic and forming a deadly bond. Wade was keeping me sick, sick for him and I couldn't even see it. Even though I more than once begged Wade to just stab me already, I told him if that would make the abuse stop(the verbal, mental and emotional abuse) and it would get his anger out to just do it already! He just gave me a sickly smile as he said he would never do such a thing. I also once told Wade that I felt when I spoke to him that I was walking on eggshells and he turned it around on me by telling me that because I was such an emotional person and cried over most everything he said he felt the same way. Words...they were such fragile tangible things now...much like glass and if I didn't handle it with the utmost care the words would surely slip and cut me. Shortly after we got back together and even dismissed our divorce Wade decided upon the advisement of my pastor and numerous conversations between the both of us that it would be best if he quit his current job as it was a very toxic environment and not conducive to his trying to quit the alcohol/drug addiction he was trying to beat. So, after a very dramatic ending Wade left that job and decided to go to school for something he'd wanted to do for a long time which was gunsmithing. I was fully supportive of this and excited for him to start this new chapter. However, Wade would have to find a way to support us all while he went to school as my job paid most of the bills but not all and certainly could not support a family of 6. This is a conversation that Wade and I would end up having on several different occasions. Wade began to expect me to take care of everything financially and school became his top priority. I would tell him that I didn't have the funds to pay a certain bill or buy groceries and his response would be either, "Don't worry. I'll take care of it." (but that never happened), if brought up more than once it was "Well, what the fudge(to put it nicely) do you expect me to do about it?!" or "There's food in there. Just go look." but there was little more than enough to make a peanut butter sandwich and certainly not enough to feed a family of 6. I once stood in front of Wade in our carport and told him after I'd already had a long day at work, "No, I can't go buy you cigarettes' because I have to use this money to buy supper for us." Suddenly, he leapt from his chair and his anger filled the entirety of the space around us as he yelled and berated me I knew I'd do anything he wanted just to get out of there. I quickly got back into my car and went to get the cigarettes. He told me later that night that what had set him off was that I had told him No and that I should've known better and to word it differently next time. Wade did keep a variety of jobs throughout this time but he job hopped so frequently that I often lost track of what job he was at at that present time. At first, he wanted to be a security guard but then that ended because his truck started having mechanical issues and instead of trying to find a solution he quit the job, then it was a variety of gas station jobs and perhaps a couple of other things mixed in too. All of these jobs were fine but Wade found a reason to quit every single one of them and every time without a two week notice which would leave us without a paycheck from him for weeks at a time. He put us all in a very tight predicament financially and expected me to pick up the slack. This was very triggering for me as my ex husband had done the same thing to me at one point and although I tried to explain this to Wade and make a better financial game plan he just seemed indifferent and honestly seemed to care less. I even offered to get a 2nd job to help get us through "these hard times". I put it as non judgmental as possible and I was greeted with a "No woman of mine will have 2 darn jobs!" At that point, I started Doordashing and using the Uber app to make some money despite what Wade said so we could eat supper and so I could get gas money to go back and forth to work. If I could feed all of the children then I did but if I couldn't then I just fed myself and my two birth children. I wanted to be able to feed all 4 children but I often times couldn't afford it. Wade started to pull away and it began to be clear that the beginning of the end had started. The abuse picked up....My son was in band at that point and had started marching band and it was football season so often times myself and Aliza would wait in various places in town if Doordash wasn't busy for hours just sitting in the car because we were both too scared to go home. I would wait until I could pick my son up then we would go home. I would tell the children to lock their bedroom doors. When we had come back from my father's my son's bedroom had been ransacked and things had been stolen. It had been blamed on one of LJ's friends and later LJ took responsibility but he wasn't punished because "he was just getting his anger out". He had also destroyed a picture of myself and my two best friends "sisters" from our vacation earlier that year by ripping my face out of the picture. It was one of those old timey pictures you get dressed up for and cost an arm and a leg. Again, he was "just angry." I can't tell you how many nights I had to tell Aliza to grab some toys really fast so we could go because I knew Wade was about to explode and I didn't want to be around or for her to be around for it. Eventually, I hit my breaking point. On the night of September 1, 2022 Wade was raging about how I'd pushed and pushed and pushed, how I just wouldn't quit and now I get this side of him. How I've made this side of him come out because I decided I wanted this to happen...all whilst he was slamming things and shaking furniture in our bedroom. I was sitting on our bed petrified but this time I thought, "I'm recording this, at least the sound, so others can hear it and I can know for sure I'm not crazy and I can know that this is for sure abuse." So, quietly, meekly, I slipped my phone under the covers and pressed record. In total, I got 9 minutes of verbal, emotional and mental abuse recorded that night. At that point, LJ had moved back in with his mother and Wade blamed me. He had me read a text that was from NJ that said that he too was wanting to move out. Wade explained that he wasn't letting me read this to "start anything" but then proceeded to tell me that I had already pushed one of his children out and was about to push another. He then told me that he was going to tell me what I was, that I was "bipolar as fudge, today happy and cool and the next day your sarcastic and being an butthole, your sarcastic, your demeaning, your condescending, you are the worst of the worst, you are like my mom for God's sakes...make me think you love me then you play head games with everyone of us...." He constantly said that I didn't give NJ and LJ enough attention and love even though I tried so hard to be there for them. I probably was grouchy sometimes because the boys after a time never gave me any respect. They broke anything nice that I ever brought into the house, they argued with me constantly and Wade never once backed me up.

Once, NJ was supposed to be getting up and getting ready for school but several days he had been giving me trouble with this and this morning he had gotten up too late to take the shower that he claimed he could only take in the mornings and he was claiming that he would now have to skip school that day because he didn't have any clean clothes which was his responsibility because he was a teenager at this point. Considering he was giving me such a fuss, I made him call Wade and all Wade had to say was "And why are you calling me at work about this?" To which NJ replied, "Because she told me to." I just walked out the door.

So, back to that night...the comment about his mother was an insult in the highest because I knew how he felt about his mother. He felt that she was one of the most toxic people on earth as well as my mother which he also told me later that I was worse than my mother and his combined. He also insinuated that I was feeding Rayne hate for him which I just said "Okay" to because there was no arguing with him. What he couldn't see was his anger was causing Rayne to have PTSD and that is why she was so cautious around him. That was why she was scared of him. She saw how he treated her mommy and had for years and it terrified her. Wade proceeded to tell me that I was coddled and had a silver spoon life. Why? Because my father loved me and my grandmother loved me? I had family that cared. That didn't mean I hadn't struggled. He told me that I never showed him gratitude, that he had put himself through more hell than I could ever imagine and working the night shifts he worked were all for our family(even though he chose the night shifts). Wade said that he was no longer doing the housework either because there were children that could help me with that and I just needed to "shut my darn mouth", he said when he would tell me certain things that he could do sometimes I just took them too literal and I was so pathetic for that and basically I needed to just fudge off! As he threw his temper tantrum around me by shaking things, slamming doors, yelling, getting in my face, belittling me, etc. I cried yes I did but I found it was for a different reason then it had been in the past. Did his words hurt? Of course but that wasn't the main reason I was crying now...it was because I knew now with a certainty I hadn't known before that I couldn't stay. I wouldn't stay. The next day I called an attorney to file for divorce for the second time that year.