I Fell in Love with Myself

When I watch the sunset now that I am free, it seems as though the glow is brighter, like the world is different. There was a time, only two short years ago, when watching the sunset almost depressed me. I longed to watch it with someone who truly cared, out in the open, breathing in fresh mountain air. But instead, I watched it from a prison where I spent my days pretending to be the happy wife and mother. For sixteen years I lived in this prison. For sixteen years I ached for more.

I thought that he loved me. I thought since he didn’t physically put his hands on me, the way he treated me was okay and just normal. I didn’t feel as though any of our problems were different from other married couples, so I just kept going. For all of those years I heard how retarded I am, how fat I am, how lazy I am. For all of those years I heard how nobody else would ever want me after having three kids and how blessed I should feel the HE still wanted me. For all of those years I heard what a terrible mother I am, what a crazy woman I am. For all those years I heard how much he loved me and how he’d never do it again once I reached a point where I was ready to leave because I couldn’t handle it anymore. For all of those years I watched him drink himself into a trance, into a state of mind where his soul ceased to exist and his eyes went black, and the man I loved disappeared and the monster appeared.

Eventually, his behavior escalated into violence. He pulled a loaded gun on me threatening that if I left he would kill me. He smacked me in my head on a regular basis and told me I was stupid and to stop talking. He shot himself in the head in front of me—surviving the shotgun blast with very minor injuries—because I “didn’t love him.” He never thought about our children, or me. He only thought about himself and how he didn’t want to lose what he had control over. He never thought about how emotionally scarred and completely damaged I’d end up, or our children would end up. And by the past day I spent as his wife, he almost took my life with his bare hands, without even a twinkle of himself in his eyes—only the monster.

That moment was finally enough for me to walk away forever. I’d be damned if I was going to let him take my life from my children. Only God will take my life, not the monster I saw in front of me that night. I filed for divorce only three days later. The battle was not one worth fighting, so I gave him everything except my clothes and pictures. He kept the house, the furniture, the kids’ stuff, everything. I took what was left of my pride and a tiny bit of my power back. And I never looked back.

We spent almost a year alternating our children every other week. The schedule was hard for me because being away from my children was extremely difficult for me, as I had spent every day with them for all of their lives. But eventually I started spending that time by myself learning who I was, what I wanted, who I wanted to be. I learned to practice self-care, the most important kind of care. Because of all of the self work, I learned to be the best mom I could be, and I learned that it was okay to continue to grow as a mother—that nobody is perfect at parenting, and I learned to give myself a break. I spent more time with friends, I attended AA so I could learn what his disease was and why he acted certain ways, and I learned how to cope with my codependency I had developed over the years. I did so much self work that I actually started to heal. I started to see the light. I started to.... LIVE.

Around ten months into being divorced, my children disclosed that he was abusing them, that they were going without food sometimes, that they were absolutely miserable in his care. I filed for a protection order immediately, and my life took a life-altering step backwards and it went careening into a downward spiral. I spent so many hours in court that I had to quit my job. That resulted in me losing my car and my home because I had no income. The kids and I began to couch surf. I found myself extremely depressed, constantly feeling like I was failing as a mom, like my children were missing out. Three or four months into this, and by then I had found a new job as a bartender—which I had never done before—I spent some time with their counselor and I completely fell apart. I cried so hard I could not form words, but she understood. She gently said to me, “stop beating yourself up, you have given your children everything, and something most parents never do nowadays. You stopped focusing on giving them physical things and you have them everything, you gave them all of you”...that was it. That was the moment where I regained every ounce of my power back from him. That was the moment when I knew I was doing everything right. That was the moment I started fighting harder, and I slowly but surely put our lives back together. I got an apartment, furnished it, bought a car, found a more steady and regular job that pays well, and gave them an amazing Thanksgiving and an incredible Christmas.

At the beginning of November, 2017, I fell in love with my best friend. We quickly blended our families, and life truly began for all of us. We live a life now that is peaceful, full of love, full of laughter and fun and adventure. We have five amazing children between us, and my heart feels full every single day. Without having done the self work that I did, I would not be able to give to him or to our family the way that I do now. I would still be depressed and scared. I would still be the mom who does nothing but yell, and the partner who is always developing crazy thoughts about what he may be doing behind my back.

I still live with scars, and I still struggle from time to time. I still guard my heart more than I once did. I still flash back to certain times in my life that were very chaotic and dysfunctional. But mostly, I just thank God that I am living my best life. I thank God that he led me to the people that he did, and that he helped me educate myself about what I had gone through, and that he provided me the strength to grow from what I went through rather than giving up. I thank the people that I love and that love me for being strong when I wasn’t able to be. I thank my children for believing in me and for trusting that I was only doing what was best for them. I thank the readers of my Facebook posts and my blog who encourage and tell me I’ve changed their lives by sharing my story, and I thank myself for digging deep and falling in love with myself first and foremost so I could love others the way that they deserve.

There is a life after abuse. Go out there and find it.