My husband basically gouged my eyes during an argument, and now I’m left feeling emotionally numb on my birthday

Today is my birthday and I’m sitting here writing this on my couch instead of celebrating. Today has been shitty to say the least. The events of this all happened last night and it’s taken me some time to process it all. My husband, C (22 M) and I (25 F) have been together for almost 4 years, married for 2.5 we have two children, my eldest (7 M) is his stepson and our youngest (10 months M) is ours together. Lately I feel like our relationship has been crumbling. Last night was truly a nightmare. It started off great, we went to a restaurant and got my favorite food for dinner. C held the baby so I could actually enjoy eating my dinner and I got to have a small drink (I exclusively breastfeed so this is rare). When we went home the car was a bit tense because my 7yo made a bit of a scene in the restaurant, he’s a very strong willed, rebellious boy that can argue with a wall. But whenever we got home everyone was tired and we got things ready for our son’s first day of school in the morning. We put him to bed first while our baby was still asleep in the car seat (don’t worry we always keep a close eye on him and don’t let him sleep in it for long once it is out of the car).

After that, I came in still into our family from where C and the baby were, C told me to go change so I can be comfy while we watch a bit of tv. When I came back, he was asleep on the couch. Here is where things go down hill. I was gone for no more than 5 minutes. C is notorious for sleeping like the dead, once he goes to sleep he’s extremely difficult to wake, and when he finally rouses he’s a complete asshole. He’s mean and stubborn. This has been a point of contention in our marriage. He always says that I’m not patient or I’m not kind enough when I wake him up, but he doesn’t see the effort that goes into waking him in the first place. I understand why he’s tired, he has a high stress job where he always has to be available and near his phone because someone from work could need him anytime. I mean anytime, he’s taken calls at 2am before, he tends to nosebleed a lot, and he has bad knees, one of which has had 2 surgeries (he used to play semipro soccer in Spain).

I try gently tapping him, petting his hair, bringing him water or a snack (I didn’t this time), but it usually ends in me having to shake him. I know what you’ll say, just leave him on the couch, the thing is, we live in an apartment and have 2 dogs. We have to walk them AT LEAST 3 times a day and we always walk them before bed. I didn’t want to go walk them while our baby was still in the car seat and my husband unconscious on the couch. I needed him to be awake with the baby. I’m terrified that something will happen if he’s not awake and I didn’t want to take the baby with me at night because we live in a large complex close to a major highway and I just don’t want to be more vulnerable than necessary while out at night. At this point it was about 10pm.

Instead of being nice, I just woke him up, but I was upset/ I had a bit of a huffy attitude, which I’ll admit wasn’t helping the situation, and the next thing I know he’s going of about how ungrateful I am. He brought me flowers and a cake for my birthday when he got home from work, and he took me out to a nice dinner and spent $100 (which is a lot for us right now). My husband makes a great living, enough for me to be able to stay home with our boys, so we are a single income family. Anyways, I got defensive, I told him I was disappointed because I wanted to spend some time with him before we go to bed and he said I should just be grateful for what I already got and that I shouldn’t be so selfish/ self centered. This just doused gasoline on the flames. I’m not sure how we got here but he started going off about double standards, raised his voice at me and yanked me off the couch I kicked at him to get away and said “leave me alone,” this woke our baby. I was already crying when I started taking him out of the seat. I told C to leave me alone that it was stupid to fight about this the night before my birthday and our son’s first day of school. I tried to walk out of the room with our baby in my arms when he blocked me in. I tried to step around but he put a vice grip on my forearm. I twisted and pulled and shoved but he just squeezed tighter and shoved me back. I hate, I mean HATE feeling like a caged animal in arguments like this. I’m the kind of person that needs to walk away and cool off whereas he needs to resolve things in the moment, so 9/10 times he won’t let me leave the argument. This was one of those times. Fight or flight always kicks in and makes my heart race and my palms sweat. Here’s some context, I have diagnosed BPD, bipolar disorder, and ADHD to top it all off. Mental health issues run in my family and I was not fortunate enough to miss the crazy train. I struggle with confrontation and conflict, and I tend to be a bit socially awkward. It takes a lot of time for me to process my emotions because I’ve been an emotional chameleon my whole life. I tend to mirror the emotions of people around me and meltdown when I get overly upset. My husband has a tendency to physically restrain me when we have large arguments. I’ll admit, I “pick fights” a lot but I’m not intentionally trying to do it. I just get my feelings hurt easily.

In the past when C has tried to restrain me, I sort of got feral, I’ve bit, clawed, slapped and spit at this man, but last night all I did was try to walk away. He demanded that I stop talking to a male friend of mine because I didn’t like one of his female friends and he ghosted her “because of me” (she told him we should break up, why the f would I like her?) she lived across the world so I know she didn’t want him for herself. Well, he wanted tit for tat even though that friendship was lost years ago. I tried to quickly walk to our bedroom and lock him out when he was looking for my phone, to forcibly block my friend, when I said I wouldn’t cut them off. As a SAHM, I have little contact with people, which means my friend pool has dwindled down significantly and cutting this person off would greatly impact my social life. When I tried to close the door he shouldered it before it would latch and pushed so hard against me the door started making cracking sounds. When I let go I went back to the family room away from our sleeping 7yo (we share a room with him) because I knew the fight wasn’t over. When we got to the room he started spitting venom at me and all I could say back was “leave me alone” while I tried to breastfeed our baby. I refused to look at him when he was talking. I didn’t want to look at him. I was hurt physically and emotionally. He kept grabbing my chin and making me face him, but I refused to open my eyes, eventually he got so enraged he attempted to force my eyes open with his thumbs resulting in him basically gouging my eyes. I yelped in pain and our baby looked shocked and hurt because he was in my lap this whole time. Now my eyes are flooding tears and pounding and all I could say is “I want a divorce” because I’m wondering how far he’ll go for “respect.”

He snapped it out of it like a light finally came on in his eyes yet it physically hurt to open mine. He immediately apologized and cried and said he was so sorry and what he did was so fucked up and he was doing to me what his mom did to him, but I just felt numb in the moment. I felt no love for him at that moment. And now 12 hours later I’m left feeling confused. I don’t know how to feel. He woke me up with a birthday cake and candles this morning but I couldn’t feel happy at all. I had to fake surprise and glee for my 7yo boy’s sake. He was so excited to surprise me this morning I couldn’t bear to let him down. When I looked in the mirror my eyes were so puffy they were halfway shut.

I don’t know what to do. I’m heartbroken and numb at the same time. The worst of it is, I can’t tell anyone about it, I can’t confide in friends or family because I don’t want to break up my home that I’ve worked so hard for. So I’m left feeling so alone. I just wanted to let this out.

Sorry for the length, brevity is not my strong suit.

TLDR: my husband basically gouged my eyes during an argument, and now I’m left feeling emotionally numb on my not-so-happy birthday.