This is my best friend's story. At the time of this relationship I was friends with her but not close friends. She emailed me this with permission to post. I love her, and she is one of my heroes and like a sister.
Lavender Skye
I met him in between my freshman and sophomore year of
college. He seemed to be everything I could possibly want in a guy. He was
sweet and kind and attentive. We started out just talking for the first month
of our relationship, trying to get to know one another better. By the end of
the first month I was head over heels for him, and we were having regular
make-out sessions. At the end of that first month he asked me out on our first
date. We were supposed to go hiking up to these falls. Instead the car died,
and a friend came and got us. She let us borrow her car so that we could still
go on a date. He took me to Wal-Mart first, I know, very romantic. There he
bought me a half a dozen orange roses because he saw me looking at them. Then
we went to the movies, where we didn't really watch the movie, but made out the
whole time. That was the first time he guilted me into doing something that I
didn't want to do. He made me feel that I had to give him a blow job in order
to prove that I had strong feelings for him. I felt that I had to, after all I
loved him, and I didn't want to lose him.
School started back less than a month after our first date.
He helped me move back into the dorms. My friend, Michael, came to help after
moving himself in. After a very short time Michael informed me that I obviously
didn't need his help and that he didn't feel welcome there. As soon as Michael
left Mark told me that he didn't really like him, and that he got a bad feeling
from him and he was glad that he left so that it could be just the two of us
again. Mark also said that he didn't think that Michael was the sort of friend
that I should have and maybe I could find friends that he actually liked. After
Mark left, Michael informed me that he didn't like Mark, and that I could do
better, but I just figured that it was jealousy on both of their parts because
Michael was my friend first, and because Mark was my boyfriend and would take
time away from Michael.
We talked every night, either on the phone or on messenger.
If we didn't talk he would get upset and say that I must not really love him
and want to be with him. I spent less and less time with my friends and more
and more time locked up in my dorm room. I wasn't sleeping at night, and so I
started not going to my classes so that I could get sleep. My grades started to
suffer.
By my birthday in October he was my everything. My world
revolved around him and our time together. On my birthday we finally made it
for our hike to the falls, where he proposed to me. He explained that he
couldn't afford a real engagement ring yet, and so we would have to use his
class ring. I didn't care; I was just so thrilled to be able to say that I was
going to be completely his for all time. That night we had sex because, as he
put it, it didn't matter if I was saving myself for marriage, after all I was
going to be marrying him, and in his heart we were already married, and didn't
I feel the same way? Didn't I love him enough to trust that God knew our hearts
and the vows that we made to each other? And who was more important, God or the
government? So I caved on one of the issues that I had held most dear, and did
with him what I had never done with another before.
By this time I was rarely going to church because it was one
of the few days he had off, and wasn't he more important than going to some
building to worship when I could just as easily worship on my own? After we got
engaged I did not step foot in my church until after my son was born. I was so
riddled with guilt and ashamed of myself for giving up what I believed was
right, but once I had started having sex with him I found that I couldn't stop,
even when I wanted to.
After we became engaged he became very critical of
everything I did or said. He said that he was trying to help me become a better
person by pointing out what needed to be worked on. He told me that the reason
that I was doing poorly in school had nothing to do with the fact that I wasn't
sleeping or couldn't concentrate or was unable to attend classes. The real
reason that I was doing poorly was because I was stupid and couldn't understand
the courses or the readings. He promised me he would never lie to me, so of
course he must be right. I must not have understood anything to this point. I
must actually be stupid, after all it made sense. Why else would I be failing
every single class, including choir? And as for my friends, they were
encouraging me to think more highly of myself than was possible. They didn't
really know me, only he really knew me. We tried to hang out with my friends a
few times, but it was always awkward, and afterward he would tell me which
friends I should try to look like, and did I think they might be willing to do
a three-way because they were much more sexy than me, and wouldn't I like that?
There were two friends in particular that he had a thing for, Diane, who was
one of my best friends up to that point, and Amber. He wanted me to look and
act like Diane because in his mind she was the sexiest person ever, and he
wanted me to dress like Amber, especially her shoes.
He also wanted to see how many places we could have sex on
campus without being caught. I wasn't comfortable with this but didn't really
see a way out of it. His favorite place to go was the music office. I later
found out that the reason for this was because whenever I would go to the
bathroom he would steal the money out of the money box. I didn't find out about
it until months later and still feel guilty about it.
By the end of that semester I had completely failed out of
college. I had struggled the previous year due to some choices that I had made
but had brought my grades up my second semester, but there was no coming back
after the last semester. By then I knew that what he was saying about me being
stupid must be true; after all how do you possibly fail out of every single
class, even choir?
I had tried to quit having sex with him several times at
this point, but every time I would try he would just make me saying that he
knew that I liked it, and why was I fighting it and him. Usually after a short
time in my body would betray me, and he was right, I did like it. I felt more
and more ashamed and less and less like being around the people who knew me
before Mark came into my life. I had no friends, at least that is how it felt.
I still had my family, kind of. I lived at home still, but on his days he
stayed with me and we never left my bedroom. On the days he worked I was stuck
at my house by myself, and at night I was expected to be home so that we could
talk on the phone.
After failing out of college I got a job waitressing at
night. On the nights that he didn't have to work the next day he would spend
the whole night at my job, glaring at anyone who seemed too friendly, but he
could be friendly and flirt with whoever he wanted to. Then he would take me
back to my house and we would be locked away in my room unless he wanted to go
to the movies or hiking or whatever he wanted to do. I was never out of his
sight on the days that he had off. I just thought that that was proof of how
much he loved me, after all he never wanted us to be parted. We coordinated our
days off so that they could be spent together. On the nights that I had to work
and he had to work the next day he would still expect me to be able to talk to
him the majority of the night, or he would stop by my work if I didn't answer
him like he thought he should to make sure I was there and that nothing funny
was going on.
By mid-March I no longer had a job, and even though he said
he was unhappy about it at first, he said that that just meant that we had more
time to be together. It also meant that I no longer had any money of my own and
was completely dependent on him for anything I might possibly want or need. If
he decided that I didn't really need something I didn't get it. By this time I
wasn't allowed to make any choices on my own, even when he would ask my opinion
on something as simple as a movie he would tell me whatever I chose was the
wrong choice and that I really wanted to watch something else. It got so that I
didn't have the confidence to even attempt to make my own decisions. I was
terrified of getting it wrong. I was terrified of life, and I was terrified of
losing him, because without him, how was I supposed to know what was right or
what to do?
Towards the end of May I got another job, this time as a
cook at a pizza place. Within two weeks of starting there I was really sick. I
couldn't hold any food down, and the smell of the pizza sauce would send me
running to the nearest garbage can. I found out two days before Mark's 21st
birthday that I was pregnant. He was furious. The first words out of his mouth
were “is it mine?” After me breaking down crying, he apologized and said that
he knew it was his and that anyone getting a shock like that would ask the same
question, after all I was on birth control. Then he started looking up
statistics on how likely it was that it was a false positive.
After I found out I was pregnant I informed my employer, who
decided I must have known before he hired me, and that I tricked him into
hiring me by not telling him. He cut back my hours until I was only working
eight hours a week and I put in my two weeks notice. So I was back to being
completely dependent on Mark, except this time I was pregnant.
Mark informed me shortly after I found out that I was
pregnant that he had never wanted children and that he had lied to me about us
having any. The money that he told me he was saving up for my engagement ring
was really to go over the border into Virginia and get a vasectomy because they
didn't have all the rules over there about who can and cannot get one. He was
then going to let me keep trying to get pregnant after we were married and let
me think that there just must be something wrong and that we couldn't have children.
He begged me on a daily basis to have an abortion. Once, after us fighting
about it, he tried to jump out of the car that I was driving in order to kill
himself because he said he'd rather be dead than have a child. My 17yr old
brother was in the car and was able to restrain him, but he kept trying anyway.
Once it was too late for an abortion he told me that I should give the baby up
to his sister, that way I could still be in his life as an aunt, and it
wouldn't ruin our relationship. I told him that I didn't want to be an aunt to
our son-- that he was my baby and I already loved him. He attempted suicide
again, but after that time promised he'd never try that again. He told me that
after the baby was born, though, that he would take him up to the mountains
sometime and then drive them both off a cliff in hopes that it would end both
of their lives.
Once he realized that I was not going to get rid of our
child no matter what things got worse. We would get into these horrible fights
where he would tell me that I was making a huge mistake, and that I couldn't
even take care of myself, how was I going to take care of a baby? He also said
that I was so stupid that I would probably end up killing the baby anyway since
I wouldn't know what to do.
When I was five months pregnant we flew to Orlando, FL. He
prayed the whole time that we would crash so that the baby would die. While we
were there he tried to get me to drink, in hopes that I would so that there
might be something wrong with the baby and I'd give him away. He told everyone
there that I was delusional and wasn't really pregnant and that if they saw me
taking any pills they should stop me because I was on drugs. In that way I couldn't
take my prenatal vitamins because no one believed that they were really
prenatals.
I had such severe morning sickness until I was almost seven
months pregnant that I couldn't even move without throwing up. It got so that I
didn't go anywhere or do anything unless Mark made me. He was also mad about
that. He believed that I was purposely getting sick to get out of doing
whatever it was that he wanted to do. I lost thirty pounds, so obviously I must
have been making myself sick. We had one fight where he grabbed my arm, shook
me, and then when I started crying and telling him that he was hurting me he
pushed me down. My brother witnessed the whole entire thing and said that he
didn't want to get in the middle of it and didn't know what to do. He did yell
at him though that he shouldn't treat me that way.
By this time Mark was staying out to all hours of the night
and had started drinking, which he said that he would never do. We were looking
for a place of our own so that we would have enough room for when the baby
came. Whenever I would ask him where he had been he would either say that he
had been out with the guys from work or that he was checking out apartments for
us. I never really questioned him further because the fact that it didn't add
up to me just proved how truly stupid I was; after all, he promised to never lie
to me, and I trusted him, right? It didn't matter that my old roommate from
college was dating one of his co-workers and that he said that they weren't all
going out, after all, who was I going to believe, some guy, or my beloved
fiance?
At six months pregnant I went to Jacksonville, FL for my
uncle's surprise fortieth birthday party. Mark was mad that I was going. I told
him that he was more than welcome to come too, after all he'd been invited to
go. He refused to go saying that he was my family and why did I need to go, after
all it was only my uncle. He wouldn't talk to me the whole time I was down
there. When I got back from Florida he said that we needed to talk. By this
time I was six and a half months pregnant. When he got to my house there was no
one else there. My brother was at school, my sister was at work, and my mom was
at the hospital with a friend who was in labor; she was her birthing coach. By
this time we had been engaged a little over a year. He told me that he thought
I should sit down, so I did. He then proceeded to tell me that I had chosen our
child over him, and that he couldn't take it anymore. That I wasn't the same
person he had started going out with because I was always too sick to do
anything fun. That he didn't want to be a dad, and as long as I didn't tell
anyone in his family that I was pregnant that he'd support us, but that if I
told anyone he would make my life hell. He told me that pregnancy was of the
devil, and that is why certain body parts changed color while pregnant, and so
I must be a satanist, which he had told me before, but this time he was
screaming it at me. He told me that there should be an exorcism performed on me
because I was possessed, and that the baby was really a demon in disguise. He
once again told me how much he did not want children and gave me one more
chance to agree to give him up, but this was one issue that I wouldn't budge
on. He then said that we were over and to never come near him again.
Three weeks later I went to his parent's house to give them
their invitation to the baby shower. He had just told his parents the week
before that we had broken up, and that I was a stalker, so they needed to be
careful if I came around, and might even want to call the police because I was
dangerous. He had never told them I was pregnant, and they didn't believe me
until I showed them the ultrasound picture. His mom started crying and said
that she didn't really believe him that I was dangerous, but he was so
insistent. His dad offered to make him marry me. I told them that it was going
to be okay and that I just wanted them to know that they were going to be
grandparents, and to please let the rest of the family know, especially his
sister. His mom, sister, and aunt all came to the baby shower, even though his
sister lived more than five hours away.
When my son, Nicholas, was first born he tried to get back
together. He asked me out on a date when my son was three days old. When I asked
what I was to do about Nicholas he went into a jealous rage, grabbed my arm, and
demanded to know who Nicholas was and how long I'd been seeing him. I started
crying and reminded him that Nicholas was our son and told him there was no way
I would go out with him, especially if he couldn't even remember that we had a
child. He apologized and begged me to reconsider, but I had had enough.
Once we were broken up I thought it would finally stop, but
it didn't. He tried to control me through my son once he was born. Anytime he
would want something he would threaten me with taking me to court and getting
custody. He actually tried to when my son was six months old but only got
limited supervised visitation. He was getting him eight hours a week due to the
fact that I was breastfeeding and the fact that he threatened to drive the both
of them over a cliff. Once I was no longer breastfeeding and he had proven that
he could be trusted with my son he started getting him more frequently, but
then the abuse shifted.
Instead of saying things directly to me, he started using my
son. My son had horrible night terrors where people were taking him away from
me because his daddy told him that he was going to take him away and never let
him see me again. Mark also would call me names in front of him, and Nicholas
would come home bawling his eyes out telling me that I was a stupid bitch or
that I was nothing but a whore. At the time of these my son was about 3yrs old.
My son is now eight, and Mark still somewhat has a hold over me. I still generally
give into what he wants because I'm terrified of him taking me to court and
getting custody or even joint custody. He has money for a lawyer, and I most
definitely do not. He has a “stable” two parent household; I'm a single mother.
His wife and he have excellent jobs that they make a lot of money at; I'm a
full time student. I know that these don't really make a big difference, but in
my mind I'm still inferior. I still struggle with believing that I'm good
enough and that the choices I make aren't constantly wrong. I still hear his
voice in my head shouting “WRONG! God you're so stupid! How have you managed to
live so long?!”
I'm stronger than I was, and I'm getting better every day,
but I've still got a long way to go. For those who don't think that emotional
abuse is abuse I'm here to tell you differently. It is just as damaging, if not
more so. The effects are long reaching. I'm only just starting to not be
terrified of life. Part of why I've come so far is because of my faith and my
church family who love me and have encouraged me to be better than I've thought
I am. Another part is having someone tell me on a nightly basis how truly
wonderful I am and that I am worthy of love, and one of the smartest people
they know. And the last, but not the least important, is my son. I want to be
better for him. He doesn't see me like Mark saw me so I know I must not really
be like that because he always sees the true person. I've recovered some of my
friendships from college. However, most of them will never be the same as they
were before, and I mourn the deaths of some of those friendships. I'm not the same
girl I was. I don't hug men or generally allow men to hug me, even the guy I'm
in a relationship with. I shy away from physical contact of any kind with
males, whereas before I wouldn't hesitate to give any of my guy friends shoulder
massages or touch their arm while talking. I'm also a lot more reserved and
have a hard time trusting others. I hope my story can possibly help someone
else out there going through something similar to this.
Emotional abuse is real. When you are in an emotionally
abusive relationship it is hard to see that that is what is going on. It is
only when you get out that you realize what has been happening. By then the
damage has been done. If you have ever been in an abusive relationship you know
what I'm writing to be true. Also you can't recover on your own. Seek out
friends, talk to your family. Church can be a wonderful place to find
supportive people who will love you regardless of what has happened and don't
be ashamed to admit that you need help and to seek it out.
I love you too!
ReplyDeleteI just read this for the first time and couldn't stop crying. I know I'm an emotional mess, but that's just the way I am.
ReplyDelete