Saturday, June 23, 2012

Abuse: Its not an accident.



There are things about me that a lot of people don't know. Even my own family I never told them but they may have figured it out on their own. When I was in my senior year of high school I met a guy online. I guess you could say I was desperate to be loved. He left the town he was staying and moved to Evansville. I later found out almost everything he had told me was a lie. He had not been going to school in Lafayette but had been in truth living in the homeless shelter there. But still I stayed, when I think back I'm not 100% sure why I ever chose to stay in that situation. Before then I had only dated 2 others, The first was a guy I met at 14 and was constantly abusing me not physically but mentally by constantly cheating on me and dumping me and then begging me to come back by saying he was wrong and that he did indeed did love me I went through this cycle all through high school. The second was nothing serious with someone I had gone to school with.



Then a few weeks into being with the guy from the internet, who I will leave unnamed in this post, he hit me. Immediately said it was an accident I don't remember what it was that I was thinking or why I didn't call out to my mother to kick him out. The next time it happened I was alone with him and we were talking about something and I said something that made him angry and he punched me. He said it was my fault that I shouldn't have made him angry. I remember the pain I remember being panicked, but I don't remember much else. I was 17 and he told me I wasn't worth anything and after hearing it from so many others in my life time I believed him. I thought I deserved the pain and the torment.


Cps caught on that he was staying with us and because of his age said he couldn't stay there. So I found him a place to stay with a friend of mine, but things didn't change there either. When I would stay the night I usually got hit. I still remember my first black eye, it was caused on such a night that I stayed and she was at work. I used my dark eye shadow to cover it and no one even suspected anything until it was almost gone. I made an excuse and said it was something else which amazingly was accepted. He would stay in the lobby while I was at work and start a fight because I wouldn't give him free food. One day at the complex where he was staying with my friend we were walking there from my job and he few into a rage. I remember the look on his face his scrunched up face and those evil eyes. He clenched and un-clenched his hand and then punched me in the face. The whole thing was witnessed by a maintenance man, and instead of calling the cops or chasing him away from me til the cops could get there he yelled for both of us to leave. Later on my friend told me he couldn't stay there anymore and that the apartment complex said we were not allowed back on the property.

So he went to stay at a homeless shelter downtown. After a few months he said he couldn't take it anymore and wanted to go back to Lafayette because of the limitations of the shelter and how crazy religious they were. If you ate there you had to listen to their church service which in one they said if you didn't believe in god in the exact way they they said you should go shoot yourself. I should have left him to rot in that place he deserved everything they did to him for what he did to me.

I should have known that he wouldn't change. He told me that I was the only other person he had hit besides his mother, who had left him at 16 or 17 one day when she said she was going to work. He claimed he didn't know why she left but now I know, she was tired of the abuse. I told my mom and she found a church that would provide a greyhound ticket for him to go back to Lafayette. He left and I began to walk to the library to get on aol messenger to talk to him every day that it was open. Even then over online he continues the abuse but this time was mentally, he would snap on me and say that he was logging off and never going to get back on. I still don't know why I kept up with the whole thing I could have easily logged off and said fuck him, But I cried and begged for him to not leave me. 

When I was about to turn 18 I began to make arrangements for him to come back I sent him the money via western union to get his ticket to come back. He started again saying he was not going to come back and that he was going to spend the money on junk food and cds.If only I was so lucky that he had spent the money and not come back, but on my 18th birthday I didn't go to school and I picked him up at the bus station. He came to stay with us again as now that I was 18 cps no longer had a say. A few days in and the abuse started again.

Things at home were getting worse and I knew I had to get out, and he was my ticket til I could support myself. I know it sounds so crazy but if you have been in this situation you know the internal struggle I was fighting. I hated him but at the same time I thought I loved him. I helped him get his ssi and he got a nice fat back check for $1400. My mom and them new the check was coming and when It did we cashed it. We knew my mother might try something so we stashed the money with us and told them we left it in the bank. I was woken the next day by my mother putting a baseball bat through my bedroom door. She went off because I lied and the money was not in the bank. When I asked how she knew she threw my bank card at me that must have arrived in the mail that day with my faked signature on the back. She kept calling me a fucking liar and wanted to know where the money was, I told her it was put up safe because I thought she would try something. I packed my shit and he did his and we tried to leave she ripped the duffle bag off my shoulder and ripped off the strap she yelled at me I was her property and that I couldn't leave. I shoved her off me and ran out the door she yelled over the balcony that she was going to call the police. She tried to tell the police that I tried to throw her over the balcony and tried to make them make me stay. They told her that she had no control over me as I was 18 and basically knew she was a drama queen and that they don't believe her.




The only person I had told about him abusing me was someone I went to high school with that I didn't know personally. I guess I wanted to tell someone about what I was going through. That night when we fled from my mother we took a bus to north high school and walked down diamond to fairs. On the way the one person I had told saw us and asked if he was the punk that had hit me. My night took another turn, he was pissed I had told anyone and I told the guy I didn't know what he was talking about and kept walking. That night was one of the worse ever and once he was done I cried til morning. What my mother didn't know but I had been planning our escape once the approval letter was sent. I had already been in talks with an apartment complex and had arrangements made but was waiting til we had the money. I told them we had the cash and they said it would be a few days for the apartment would be ready.


We moved into the apartments about a week later, but because it was a holiday weekend they said it would be about 5 days before the power was on. That of course was my fault according to him . I lived with him like that til after my mother died April of 2007. I kicked him out and he moved into another apartment, and my first boyfriend moved in with me. He transferred to the Walmart by our apartment and after about a month he cheated on me just like he had in the past. One day I came home and she (the girl he had cheated on me with.) was laying on my couch. When I asked her what the fuck she was doing in my apartment she told me he said it was ok and she had moved all her stuff in too. She began to down some pills she brought with her and washed it down with wine coolers and began to cut herself with a kitchen knife. I called him and told him to get this crazy bitch out of my house.

Later I moved out and went back to my tormentor because I had no where else to go. I finally got some good news and got a job that paid 10.35 and hour. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel my chance to support myself and get out of hell. Once I had the job I had to find a way to escape without him knowing what I was planning. One day he had me backed into a corner hitting me and then it crossed my mind "why am I putting up with this." I grew up with my mom having abusive boyfriends and that moment I said I don't want to be like her I don't deserve this! So I punched him in the stomach and walked out the door. The cheating ex and his girl had been trying to talk me into coming and staying with them and on that day I took them up on that offer. They said I could stay there until I found my own apartment. While searching they decided they didn't want to stay in savannah gardens anymore and since I hadn't found anything I wanted in apartments I agreed to let them sign it back over to me. I got away from the violence, I escaped my tormentor but not everyone is so lucky.

When you look at me now you don't see the scars that I bear because they are inside. Sometimes I think the scars run deeper then any caused by a physical blade. If you are going through abuse please seek help, find a way out life is better than that and you DESERVE it.



Grab a button and spread the word. ABUSE IS NOT OK:
Abuse is never ok
Abuse is never ok
Abuse is never ok
Abuse is never ok
Abuse is never ok

19 comments:

  1. Oh Ruby, I had no idea! I am so glad that you got out of that horrible situation. I'm really not sure what it is but a lot of women stay in abusive relationships for far too long. I'm glad that you're putting this out there because you could save someone's life by posting your story and explaining how you got out.

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    1. I figured it was time to let the word out and that it might help others going through similar situations. I was just tired of holding it in.

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  2. Ruby, My heart breaks hearing this story. I pray that life gets better for you. Thank you for sharing your story, with the hopes that it will help others find their way out of that dark relationship! May God always be with you my blogging sister xo

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    1. I am doing good now. I still work for the same place that freed me from my captor. I am doing much better now and have a home that I am buying so life has completely turned around for me. I used the dark times to make me stronger.

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  3. Hopefully between my post and your post people will realize abuse is never okay and that abuse is all types of forms. I'm sorry you went through everything and I'm sorry for anyone else that has gone through these things like us. It takes a lot of strength to leave.

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    1. I hope so also that people find strength from this story to escape the darkness. Id like to link you in this post can you send me the link to yours?

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  4. I agree with Taryn, it takes a lot of strength to leave! Have seen what abusive relationships are like, and it's so easy for people on the outside to say just leave. It's a lot harder than just walking out a door. Glad you are free from your abuser!!! (btw... so weird to read about all these places I have been to, and roads I drive on almost everyday... makes me wonder how many others are so close but without support or the help they need)

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    1. Yeah even I sometimes forget how it is. The heart is a crazy thing and doesn't always feel in the way it should. I knew so many times I should just leave but the fear of no home and no where to go kept me where I was. But I planned and I plotted til I could get away.

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    2. Yes you never know who around you might need help. I kept it secret because I was afraid what he would do.

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  5. (hugs) Thank you for sharing your personal story. I know it must have been difficult to put this into words. I pray this brings courage to all those who need it, to realize no one deserves to be treated that way!

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  6. I've never been abused by a boyfriend by I spent my childhood and the better part of my teen years being abused mentally and physically. It wasn't until I met Brian and moved out that the physical abuse stopped I was almost 18. As much as I loved Brian every day he found a way to make me feel like I was nothing. And after the years of abuse its taken its toll on me. I'm not exactly happy but then again what else is out there for me. I've crashed and burned so many times I'm sick of trying

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    1. Don't give up life does get better even when it seems like it won't. We only have one life to live and we deserve happiness.

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  7. You've always been such a kind person, despite all of the negative things that have happened to you in your life. I'm glad you removed yourself from that situation. You deserve so much more, someone who sees that you are an intelligent, lovely, hard-working, kind person. Some of the prettiest flowers get trampled on, but with enough work they can grow back into something even more beautiful.

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    1. I have used those as examples of the type of person that I never want to be. I wish my mother hadn't been the way she was but I know that I may have been a completely different person. She was the one I learned by watching on what not to do. We are as a phoenix from the ashes we are reborn.

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  8. Ruby, I have been there and done that and more. I have always says what doesn't kill us makes us stronger! The cycle of abuse is hard to break but once it is broken then the healing begins. I am now 40 years old and the memory will always be there but the pain does lessen over time.
    There are things you will never forget. Glad you are moving on. Counseling did help me deal with the inward scars. I am a strong woman now! God help any man who ever touch my children. Having been there and done that gives me the smarts not to take an excuse and to try helping the ones that are being abused. I am very sorry to here about your mother. It sounds like that was not a good relationship. I did have a mother her has been loving and ready to help me anytime I had trouble. I cannot imagine having that relationship with her.

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  9. Hugs to you for sharing your story. I went through this as well with my exhusband. It haunts me everyday of my life. It is hard to have other relationships because I am scared it will be the same. LOve is blind in so many ways.

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  10. This story is so inspiring to me on another level... I have been struggling with writing my own story of my pill addiction. I've been sober for 2 years now... Still going to out patient treatment center once a week and NA meetings 2 to 3 times a month. Only my close family and friends now about my problem but I've been wanting to kind of "announce" it on my 2 year anniversary (July 7th) So I'm trying to get up the courage to write my story for my blog! Thank you so much for inspiring me by sharing such a personal story!

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  11. Ruby, I just want you to know you are not alone in this fight. I was with a very abusive man for almost 5 years of my life and ended up having a child with him. He not only abused me physically but emotionally, mentally and financially. Although I am in a healthy relationship now and married, I still find myself fighting those same demons that this person put in my head. My husband helped get me out of the abusive relationship but he still has to deal with the insecure part of me. I'm slowly learning to love myself again but it's hard. Everyone thinks it's just easy to "get out". It's not. I had people telling me for years that I deserved better and what kind of person this guy was. I was so far gone in the head with this guy that I almost literally drank myself to death. I almost drowned in the tub one night because I was so drunk. That was my wake up call and 5 months later I kicked that SOB to the curb. If you ever need someone to talk to who can relate, I am here. Just message me on Facebook. As I already said before, you are not alone. <3

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