Leaving a Monster

I crouched in the corner with fear as I held my trembling hands up in a failed attempt to protect myself. He swiftly swooped down and pulled me up by a handful of my long hair. His breath reeked of beer. His twisted mouth spat on my face. Pure evil occupied his dark eyes; they lost their color and narrowed with fury. With my weak knees barely holding me up, I inched away from our daughter’s room, hoping to not expose her tenderness to the violence. As if he knew what I was doing, he dragged me into her room, held the back of my head with a fistful of my hair, and violently thrust my face into the crib where our precious, porcelain-skinned daughter slept. I closed my eyes, only finding solace that she didn’t wake.

He leaned in close and threateningly whispered in my ear, “Get your fat ass back into the bed.”

I clutched my five-month pregnant belly and stumbled my way to the bedroom. I crawled into the bed, shakily fumbled for the covers, and moved myself to the very edge of the queen-sized mattress, forcing my back to his side of the bed. Wishing I could just fall asleep and put the terror-filled night behind me, I just couldn’t quiet my thoughts or my sobs. I didn’t hear him come into the room and lumber into bed and my body stiffened as I felt the mattress move under his weight and he inched his way toward my body.

“I hope it was worth it,” he hissed.

Suddenly, I felt a hard and forceful blow to the middle of my back, I lost my breath. I hit the ground, using my left arm to brace the fall. Slowly processing that he had just shoved his foot into my back to kick me out of the bed, I realized he was not done with me, the night was not over. I sat up, still on the ground and grasped at a pillow for protection. He reached over from the bed, tore my wrist from the pillow and forced me to hit myself in the lower lip. I cried out but not from pain. Terror infiltrated my thoughts and soared through my body, what will he do next? With blood trickling down my chin, I staggered to the couch in the living room and prayed to a god I wasn’t sure even existed.

A few minutes of sitting in the darkness lingered past, with only the light from the moon filling the room with a soft glow. Deciding to sleep there, I curled into the fetal position on the couch. And yet, the night still wasn’t over. He yelled at me from the bedroom to come back. When I didn’t, he came storming at me, yelling and cursing, and even angrier that I disobeyed him. Not sure what to do, I looked at him, afraid to cry, move, breathe or even blink. There was a baby inside me and I didn’t know what he would do to me next. I stood up from the couch and backed in to the wall, cradling my belly with both hands. Sensing my fear and asserting his power, he slammed his fist into the wall next to my head, laughing as I inevitably winced.

He turned away, an evil chuckle escaped his lips, and he reminded me of past threats of breaking my valuables if I ever disobeyed him or arrived home from work a few minutes late. He then snatched up a small, wooden bat, the souvenir kind from baseball games, and demolished the glass coffee tables, watching my reaction after each swing. He then took the bat and raised it to my face, holding it as if he would do to my face as he just did to the glass tables.

“Tell me you love me,” he demanded. And, even with the bat suspended in front of my face, I couldn’t bring myself to say those three meager words. His lips curled with anger and his eyes grew dark and malicious. He went to my collection of finely painted porcelain masks and put the bat down. He balled his fist with delight and punched the first mask. My initial reaction was to beg him to stop, but instead I yelled back at him through streaming tears that he was psycho and demanded that he stop. His fury intensified and he ordered me to admit that I was stupid. Out loud, he wanted me to say, “I am stupid.” I refused, and his repugnant grin curled even more as he punched the next mask. Blood oozed from his hand from punching the masks. Two of these priceless, precious masks that had been gifts from around the world remained waiting for his blows when I finally gave in and cried out, “Okay, okay, I’m stupid.” And then I muttered, just low enough so he could hear, that I was only stupid for ever going back to him.

He turned and gave me a look which made my stomach drop. My heart raced with tremendous fear as he ambled toward me. My husband snapped up some scissors from the kitchen counter and gripped them in a way that told me he would stab me and the child inside me. I started pleading him to stop coming toward me and telling him that I was sorry. But he wouldn’t listen. He grabbed me by my throat with his free hand and proceeded to lift me up to the top of my toes. He told me he wanted an answer about whether or not I loved him. Sobbing through escaped breaths of air, I blubbered out the “yes” that he wanted. He took his free hand and arched it back ready to thrust the scissors into something, anything. I closed my eyes, bracing myself for what was next. When I re-opened my eyes, he plunged the scissors into the wall next to my head and then dropped me to the floor. He turned and left me there without a word and went to bed. I crawled back onto the couch and wept. I wept because I really was stupid; I wept because I despised him, not loved him; I wept because I knew I did this to myself the day I went back to him. And, I wept because my daughter was just a room away and I was bringing another child into this misery.

I fell into a stereotype: the stereotype when women don’t leave abusive men. My friends told me I would never leave him and shook their heads at me, some even stopped talking to me. Growing up as foster child in an abusive home, I didn’t have any support. Sexually abused for 14 years, I left that home to marry my physically and verbally abusive husband. Abuse is what I knew.

Abuse was a miserable and uncomfortable, comfort zone. Abuse was the life I deserved, or so I was told. I was done being abused. I was done with other people deciding for me what my life would be. And so I planned an escape.

To be continued...