Abuse is an Addiction

As a young adult I mixed myself up with the wrong people. It was one thing to party, but the situations I was in at the time are so insane that even now they feel like a far away dream, or nightmare. I try my hardest to pretend they don't exist, but on occassion my bubble gets popped and I am forced to face the reality I created. My oldest son JT saved my life. The day I found out I was pregnant with him I completely cleaned up. No more partying, I wanted to go back to school and work. I assumed his sperm donor would feel the same, but unfortunately I was wrong. To this day I cannot comprehend how someone can create a child and not immediately fall in love with the tiny bump under a belly button. Several months into my pregnancy Bobert * started getting incredibly aggressive with me. He was on meth and had a lot of hallucinations and ideas that were not based in reality. The first time he hit me I was driving us home from Taco Bell and refused to stop at his friends' house where I knew there would be drugs. He grabbed the wheel and made us swerve, so I quickly pulled over and took out the keys. He grabbed a burrito and with it in his hand slapped me across the mouth. The beans splattered allover my car and my face, and before anger could register he was twisting my keys out of my hands and screaming in my face "I'm robbing you bitch." He ran off with my purse and my keys, leaving me crying parked and abandoned on the side of the road.

Why didn't I leave then? Why didn't I call my parents and never look back? Abuse is an addiction, I can't explain it. I felt sorry for Bobert, as though society had somehow done this to him, and I was the only one who could fix him. He was a manic depressive and bi-polar, his mother bought drugs from him, his sister lived with a drug dealer and his brother in law was a crackhead. I don't know how I didn't see what was coming...

The violence escalated over the coming months. At one point during an argument he choked me with my purse strap, lifting my feet off the floor and dropping me down clutching my pregnant belly in a hysterical pile of tears. He would pinch me when we were in public and he was not happy. He pushed me into walls, twisted my hands and fingers, and everytime he would beg for forgiveness. I began waking up to a bunch of his friends in our living room smoking meth at 4 am, I would tell everyone to get the hell out, and they would laugh at me. Othertimes I would wake up and my car would be gone, I would have no idea where Bobert was or what he was doing in my car. My Father gave me the car and had made Bobert swear he wouldn't drive it, but he was so ridiculously selfish, and never kept a promise. I began sleeping with my keys in my hands, half sleeping really, terrified at any moment he would go into a fit and throw me or break something important to me. We were once driving to the store, he saw 2 of his friends walking along and pulled over for them. I didn't like these friends and asked him to keep driving, he opened the door and forcefully pushed me out, then drove around me in circles taunting me as I cried. I sat on a curb in my swap meet maternity clothes looking down at my worn down sandals and just watched my tears pool into a pathetic tiny river. A couple of weeks later I was laying down in our room and another one of his friends walked in. Knowing how incredibly jealous and possesive Bobert was I got up and tried to walk out, right then Bobert walked in. He pushed his friend out of the room and locked the door, then looked right at me. Fear seized my heart, the look on his face, I knew he was out of his mind. He ran at me and threw me into the wall, then onto the bed. He folded the mattress over me and got on top and was suffocating me with our mattress. It wasn't specifically painful and would never leave a bruise, but I couldn't breathe and started to hyperventilate, it was terrifying. I started screaming and crying, and suddenly another one of his friends busted the door in and pulled him off of me. When Bobert turned his head I grabbed my keys and ran as fast as I could out the door. He was right behind me and I still remember running as fast as I could, 7 months pregnant, down those steep concrete steps, tears blurring my vision as I prayed he wouldn't reach me in time to push me down and hurt my baby. My car was parked directly beneath us, I jumped in and locked the doors just as he tried to pull the handle. He was enraged, banging on the window and suddenly ripped my side view mirror clear off the car, tearing a gash in his hand. He flicked the blood at my car and laughed as I cried helplessly against the steering wheel. Another one of his friends kept begging me to come back, but I drove off, so afraid he would find a way to follow me. My heart beat in my throat as I drove around in circles and hours later I came back. By then he was calm as I knew he would be, and I calmly told him if this didn't stop, I would leave. It was the first sighting of my real self I had seen in a year. I was calm, and there were no tears. I simply told him... I am only with you because I want my son to have his Father, but he doesn't need violence in his life. If you don't stop, I will leave, do not doubt me. He told me if I left he would kill me. A week later while Bobert was at his Mom's I grabbed what I could and ran to my car, I knew if he came back while I was leaving there would be hell to pay. Miraculously there was no confrontation, he was out for several hours, and I remember to this day when I pulled onto the freeway entrance headed for my Dad's, I felt a new strength and resolve. I knew I would not go back this time, and I didn't.

... to be continued, this is getting too long but there is much more...

*Name changed for privacy.