The following was an email from Debra Estep a reader of this blog. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing so much. When we share like this we always help another reader heal.
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Hello Rebecca,
I was web searching on poetry and came to your site. Since you have asked for admissions, I thought I would send along something that I wrote back in 1994. It was right around the time that I decided to file for divorce. You have my permission as the author to use this in ANY way and to also use my name as the author. I married back in 1978. I was 20 years old. The verbal abuse started on the second day of our honeymoon while we were in the Virgin Islands. I was in absolute shock. I had never ever seen this side of him during the 2 years prior that we were dating and engaged. The pattern of verbal abuse continued nearly daily through the years. WHY STAY ???? For the first 4 years we had no children. It would have been easier to leave, but my parents had taken out a loan to pay for this huge wedding reception. My thinking was, ‘How could I even tell them or share what was going on, they were still paying on the reception’. The other thought that kept me there was my Catholic religion and the WHOLE until death do us part.
What drew me to know that I needed to end the marriage was my contemplation of not only my own death, but taking my 2 children with me, as I would never have left them alone with him.
It was the Spring of 1994 that the light bulb went off. I was teaching my 12 year old daughter that no matter what a man does, you stay. My then 10 year old son was actually becoming his Dad. He was starting to treat me in the very same manor as his father. The very good thing that came of ending the marriage was removing my children and breaking the cycle. I went on to marry in later 1995 and have been happily married. I went through therapy, as did my children. My ex went on to group therapy for abusive men, and also was in private therapy. He is not the person today that he was back then. The choice to end the marriage still was not easy. The children begged me not to break up the family, and my own father said to me….
“Debra, everyone deserves a second chance.” I remained VERY STRONG and said to my father……..’This is the first time in MY LIFE that I am choosing for myself, and HE had 16 years of second chances’. “The abuse chipped away parts of my heart and I have nothing left. I am DONE with him and I am choosing ME.” My father and mother quickly came around and were supportive.
It took me quite a long time to stop hearing his damaging voice in my head. It played over and over like a broken record. But eventually that old record was shattered as I became more and more aware of my own worth. I replaced the mean and hurtful things I heard from him with uplifting and encouraging messages to myself. I would even put index cards around the house, in my car, and at my place of work. It was like retraining my mind that I was okay, and that I was a worthwhile person and that I was loveable. If one person can see the hope in removing themselves and their children from an abusive environment than I have done the right thing in finding your site and sharing my thoughts and words.
XO XO
Debra Estep
Bath Time It was like all these years I brought in this huge tub, filled it with water, warmed just right.
I lit candles all around the dark room and I bathed and washed him. I cared for him, but his anger raged on and on. I became the object of his rage.
The limitations he found within his own being and the uselessness he felt towards himself intensified. He then directed his hostility towards me.
I in turn just kept heating more water to make sure the temperature was just right. Once I tried adding bubbles…. he did not want the bubbles, so I emptied the whole tub and started over.
Sometimes, but not very often, the bath was just right and he was satisfied.
All those years there was one thing I wanted….just once it would have been wonderful for him to have drawn one bath for me. It was the dream of a young woman. That dream was crushed early on.
But still I drew his bath. Until one day when all my life was about drained away,
I realized I no longer wanted to bathe him.
My mind cleared…. I became conscious of my own worth.
I choose not to identify me…… with him.
The Beginning
I wish I had found this site years ago when I was stuck in a verbally, mentally, and physically abusive relationship. This would have helped in all the times I was stuck in his house with no car keys, no purse, no clothes (he took them) and no friends I could call because I had pushed them all away because of him. I don’t know how I left, he had gotten me into drugs and them told me to never get it from anyone else because he said he was sure I’d sleep with the dealer like a cheap whore. So nearly 3 years later, he was my god, I was under his rule and even with my parents worrying, getting mad, taking my car keys away, I always went back to him, not because I wanted to but because I had no choice (or so I thought)
Anyways, to make the long story short, when I finally had had enough I got a restraining order on him and as tough as it was went through the whole procedure and never ever drove there again. It’s been nearly two years now, the first few month were horrible, I was confused, lonely, had to detox off of drugs myself because I was too ashamed to go find help, so I laid there sleeping, crying, shaking, and then one day I felt fine and my drug addiction was over, which meant his control over me was now over. After that the days felt wonderful, the air smells especially sweet, the grass was just that much greener and the sky that much bluer than I remembered. I felt empowered, I felt strong, I thought it was all over, and I could start living my own life again. But that wasn’t the case, one day, nearly a year after I had moved somewhere far and away so I didn’t have to always look behind me to see if he was still there. I got a call from a lawyer who said he represented a girl who was filing a charge for abuse and that he saw I had a restraining order on him and wanted me to help. I was so scared I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. That ordeal bought back a memory of the last day I was at his house, where he locked me up in his house for a whole weekend because he was sure I was cheating on him. When I was allowed to leave that Monday, I got pulled over a few blocks away from his house for apparently speeding down a residential. I was haggared, my clothes were torn and when the cop looked at me and asked why I was speeding I went blank. The ordeal never crossed my mind until 2 years later when one day it flashed in my head that that was a sign, for me to tell on him, and get him arrested so that he could never do that to anyone again. But I didn’t tell, I was a cowered and I just wanted to go home and hide. I feel utterly guilty about that now. And I cannot advance in my life, I have the most wonderful boyfriend who’s understanding, and cries with me whenever I get my flashbacks and need to talk about my horrible exprerience. He’s understanding and I fell it’s so unfair that I’m still mentally locked up in my ex’s room and living horrible flashback every week. I’m trying to take antideressants and it did help for the first few months, I had stopped taking it thinking I was fine but after a month I was crashing, and when I started back on the generic version of it, it didn’t seem to help. Well now I have no job, so I have no insurance, so i can change my medication and yesterday I sat at home alone, with the curtains drawn reading what others had to say in your site and I cried, and cried nearly all day. I felt like the old me had died back there, in my ex’s place and I don’t know how to live anymore. I use to be a very vibrant, social, talkative, opinionated (in a good way) person but now I hide, I’m scared (of what I don’t exactly know) but I’m STUCK, I don’t know what to do next. How can I have felt so strong, so empowered and 2 years later, when I’m suppose to have healed, I’m mentally crippled and find it so hard to move on. I’m sorry if I rambled so long, but it’s all coming out in one big rush, and I barely can type as fast as my mind is spitting this out. I’m at a dead end, no can do anything for me but me. But how can I do that when the alast of my motivation is gone.
thanks so much for having a site like this where we can talk freely and share our pain with you and others.
take care,
Jeanne
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I want to agree with Debra, this is really a wonderful web site. I appreciate the efforts you have made to lend support to others.
Kristal
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Hello Rebecca,
You have a wonderful web site. !!!
What you are sharing is a safe haven for people who might find
themselves at all stages of domestic abuse.
The support is the greatest thing. To share with one another in
this way, empowers everyone.
BREAK THE CYCLE and be the wonderful person you were
meant to be. BECAUSE YOU ARE WORTH IT !!!!!!!!
xo xo
Debra
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