How Things Went From Wonderful to Terrifying...
A Domestic Violence Story...Part 3
In October of 2014 my daughter was born and Wade immediately took over as her father. My ex husband was sort of in and out of his son's life at first and it took the first couple of years after the divorce for him to really get it together so to speak and establish a solid routine with his son. By this time, Wade and myself had married and he had well established himself as my daughter Rayne's father. To back up a little, we married in April of 2015 just 8 short months after initially starting to date. There was pressure from Wade to marry and my family as my family is very conservative Christians and thought it best if we were to live together we needed to be married. In all honesty, I was not ready and I knew then that I was not ready for another marriage but with the pressure from my family and Wade who would even say things along the lines of "Baby, you better put a ring on it." making a reference to the song Single Ladies by Beyoncé. He was joking when he said it but he was also not joking and you could tell that. He proposed to me in November of 2014 which also incidentally was the same month in which my wedding anniversary had been with my first husband. He did so in my grandma's kitchen in front of my grandma so I felt pressured to say yes. I felt I had no choice to take things slow, it was either marry him or lose my house and him. I didn't like either of those choices really but I chose the one that seemed less scary at the time. I knew that I wanted to marry Wade probably, one day, I just wasn't quite ready then but what was the difference between then and a few months and/or a year down the road right? By the time we wed there were already cracks in our foundation but I chose not to see them. He constantly was jealous and told me that I brought up my past too much with my ex husband and that he was afraid I'd never love him as much as I'd loved my ex. Because of this jealousy which I didn't even realize was full on jealousy at the time, I soon became not allowed to speak of my ex in his presence. If I did, it was met with a death glare and very judging eyes. I would be told that I compared everything he did to my ex and that that was not fair to him. I'm not saying that this didn't occur on occasion I'm just simply stating what I lived through all the time, no matter the situation. Also, he did speak of his ex and brought things he'd lived through with her into our relationship frequently. There are certain things I cannot remember and certain things I can and there are things that no longer have a timeline in my mind's eye but simply a tainted memory of things lived through and things learned so I apologize if this comes as a bit scattered at times. I remember when we first got together and started fighting although it did take a few weeks for this to happen that I would have to go to the bathroom to get away from him. I remember I told my co-worker Sue this and she asked if I was okay? I remember thinking "Well, yeah, why wouldn't I be? Wait, should I be worried?". I told her I was fine that he just got a little insistent when arguing and didn't like to let things go so I had to separate myself. Also, there was the other time a local customer who knew of Wade warned me that he had a "temper" and to "be careful". I chalked it up to him just being nosey and it being a small town. I do remember bringing this incident with the customer up to Wade though and I asked Wade what the customer could have meant by that and Wade turned the question around on me by asking me "Well, what do you think he meant?" We then just laughed it off as a nosey customer. Speaking on the jealousy again, I remember one time I was texting back and forth between my granny and my daddy and I had left my phone on the charger on the seat of his truck to go inside for a minute and there was one or two things that they had said which he glanced at my phone and thought he saw, I honestly can't even remember what it was but it got Wade to thinking I was cheating on him and demanded I let him see my phone when I got back outside. I did but he thought I had deleted the message by then and didn't believe me. Also, once, we had just gotten through making love and I noticed that I had a text from a male customer of mine that had been trying to help me get a job. I went to see what the text was and to text him back and Wade went crazy on me saying that I was being disrespectful to him since we had just made love and I tried to explain that it was job related but he wouldn't hear it. To him, I was texting a potential lover right after making love to him and it was a slap in the face he said. So, hopefully all this gives you some context and I'll try to get back to the storyline now. Wade had a problem with addiction to cover up what had happened in his childhood. He used work as a coverup as he was and is still I'm sure a workaholic, he drank too much, he used pills and other substances. When we first got together, Wade told me that he had had a horrible car accident in his early 20's which caused him to have severe back troubles and shortly after that he got hooked on prescription pain medication. He told me that he was off those finally from his own free will because he looked at his boys one day and realized he wanted better for them. So, he told me that's why he drank some to help ebb that addiction. I thought that was so amazing that he could just stop the pills cold turkey like that for his boys. I truly admired him for that. What it took me a few years to realize was that he still was battling addiction just using a different poison....
About the Creator
Lindsey Altom
For me, writing runs in the blood. I've written songs, poems and short stories ever since I was a little girl. I mostly like to write about my life experiences mixed with a little fiction or just things that come off the top of my head!

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