Dealing with Abuse

It was midnight and he was once again drunk. We are talking one beer after another until a whole thirty pack was gone. Then it seemed like no time had passed before a half bottle of Jim Beam was magically gone. Everything inside of me instantly tensed because I knew what happened when this man drank. There was usually a fifty/fifty chance that things would go south, as in he would have a freak-out moment where he would black out. Usually, he would turn into someone unrecognizable and he would hurt me… mentally as well as physically.

That night was no different. He dragged me by my hair, threw me down the stair, and repeatedly tossed me like a rag doll. At one point, I tried to flee from our apartment but he caught me and proceeded to slam the door closed on my bare foot, which resulted in three broken toes. By the end of the night, I managed to get away from him, leaving him for a week. The injuries sustained included several bruised ribs, three broken toes, several minor contusions, and several other scrapes/bruises/bumps all over my body.

I loved that man and even though this was repeat behavior I did what so many other women end up doing. I went back with just the promise from him that things would be different. All he needed to do was smile his special smile and once again my heart melted. I think that we as people get so used to the situations that we find ourselves in that the thought of change can be scary as well as overwhelming, which is what I believe happened to me in the end. After over three years and an engagement, I no longer felt the same love for him. It was so much easier to just walk away with very minimal heartbreak. I mean, yes, I was upset as well as lost. I didn’t really know where I was going to go or what I was going to do. But I didn’t feel the loss as heavily as I would have had things been different during the course of our relationship. There was one night I can still remember that I prayed for him to just kill me and get it over with.

There is a lesson to be learned from this experience. If you aren’t being treated with respect or like you deserve to then leave, because nobody deserves abuse, whether you are a women or a man. Yes, men get abused too, only men don’t report it that often because people are more likely to believe a woman, which I personally think is totally not okay. But I believe that we are all equal anyways; just what I believe. Hope no one takes it personally.

Anyways, that guy was not the first to hit me or bang me up. I currently suffer from PTSD, Depression, and Anxiety, which I’ll discuss in my next post….

I did everything for him, including cleaning, so he never had to lift a finger. I even took his boots off for him when he arrived home from work. I used to also pack his bag for work, which included making him a lunch. Oh, and I also always had dinner made for him when he arrived home... even at four in the morning because sometimes he would have to cover a shift. In return, I was called really degrading names as well as pushed around. And that stuff does stay with you, especially the mental things because you hear something so many times that eventually you start to believe it. We as a society need to step it up.

We need to come together and start valuing each other just a little bit more because life is too short to be so angry all the time like some people. When we see someone in need we need to lend a helping hand or even just an ear for them to vent to. Sometimes that is all it takes.