Deprivation

I was deprived of the most basic human needs during my four years with him.

Food.  Sleep.  Warmth.  Regular contact with the outside world ~ particularly my family.

He monitored my food intake ~ especially in public.

I walked past Marianne's Ice Cream the other day and flashed back to a visit we took there after his A.A. or N.A. meeting in Santa Cruz.  Everyone in the small group that joined us after the meeting was ordering either double scoops or sundaes.  But he made sure I only had one scoop.  And so I finished mine first and watched the others happily enjoying their dessert.  He made sure I knew his limit for me was because I was already fat ~ which I wasn't ~ but in his eyes, I should look like the scrawny, cocaine-addicted girlfriends of his past.  His exact reference.

Many nights I would be kept awake with all of his crazymaking.  The lengthy verbal confrontations of the most ugliest of kind.  Vulgar words.  Rehashing the past over and over again.  Making demands.  Over and over again.  All through the night.  Until nothing made sense anymore.  And until I was simply too tired to even care.

He made sure I was cold at night.  He would never let me sleep in anything warm.  I had to sleep in the way he saw fit.  And some nights in the Santa Cruz Mountains were very cold even with a little warmth from the wood stove.

He made sure I rarely saw my family.  Time spent with my family is a blur of sorts ~ with many holidays in the beginning only being spent with him.  I remember he chaired a Thursday evening A.A. meeting held at the youth center, and he came up with a "Just Desserts" theme for the meeting that fell on Thanksgiving night.

He was so happy to come up with this theme that he made posters to try to get more people to attend.  His young son and I followed him around Safeway on Thanksgiving Eve as he joyfully picked out dessert after dessert for the lavish spread.  The tears were trickling down my cheeks as I walked behind him knowing I would not see my family the next day.  I felt like I was in a trance following him around the bakery, quickly wiping away my tears in order to not get caught. 

I should be happy, I told myself, helping him prepare for this special meeting.  But even though his A.A. and N.A. meetings were my only consistent contact with the outside world ~ other than work ~ I was not a member, having never touched drugs or alcohol in my life ~ I was just a tag-along ~ only spending time in his world tucked away in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

But mostly I wanted my family in that moment.  I wanted my mother to be alive and for all of us to be younger again and celebrating Thanksgiving together at Nanny's ~ long before my life had become this nightmare.  Before I become so terribly isolated from the people who actually cared about me.  I wanted to turn back the clock to what seemed to me then as simpler times.

As I watched him putting pies, cakes, and cookies into the cart, I envisioned his reprimand when I reached for a treat tomorrow.

I could hear him scolding me, always using the word "fat" followed by the "b" word, the "c" word, or the "w" word.

Because abuse never took a holiday.

Deja vu and Comfort Food

"This feels like deja vu," Dad remarked as we sat in the Stanford Medical Center waiting room while Rhonda was meeting with the surgeon.

"I remember reading that deja vu means you might be uncomfortable in a situation and so you feel as if you have experienced something already as a way to feel more at ease," I rattled on as I studied the Better Homes and Garden design of this rich, long hallway full of separate waiting areas for each office.

"Everytime I am in a hospital, it always feels like deja vu," he added. 

Seems like our lives have been spent a lot in hospitals these past two decades.  From Mom's Cancer Year, to his step-father's ongoing battle with prostate cancer, to his mother's stroke, to losing first great-grandchild JaRon prematurely, to his heart problem last November, and now to his wife's chronic heart issues ~ hospital waiting rooms have become like a family room to us.

But this time it was different.  This time it was Rhonda.  His sweet first born.  My older sister.  My surrogate mother in many ways since Mom's death.

This time it was Rhonda who has never had surgery in her life.  This time we knew it really could not be cancer, but could it?  Could she be one of the 2.5 in a million persons whose growth inside her leg was really cancer?  I refused to even go there, but hearing that she had to have a 14 1/2" incision just to clear out this large growth was still alarming.

I know my sister is scared.  Scared to go under the knife.  Scared of the pain during a four week recovery.  Scared of something going wrong.

There are no magazines in this sterile yet so richly decorated waiting area.  And so you just keep talking during the wait.

We talked about how close in age Rhonda and I are now to Mom's age when she died.  We talked about our fears for Rhonda and her kids.  I saw how I was possibly in denial that Rhonda could have cancer, but that Dad clearly envisioned the possibilty of losing his eldest daughter.

We talked about where we were going to eat afterward for lunch.  How he had given her two choices ~ The Cheesecake Factory or Harry's Hofbrau ~ as a way to have something to look forward to after the appointment.  Two restaurants that we rarely have to chance to visit.

Doctor said he was 99.9% certain that it's not cancer.  Just by the look on the cat scan.  Now we prepare for her surgery and recovery in two months. 

She gets to celebrate her 50th birthday next month without being on crutches.  Her youngest son and his fiance get to still take her to Cache Creek for a soul concert in early October.  And, oh, yes, she can cover up her gray hair once more before the big day.

But first it was off to Harry's.  For once good dose of comfort food.  Turkey and gravy, pastrami, potato salad, macaroni salad, pickles, and apple pie.

"We can order one turkey and one pastrami sandwich, Rhonda, and then we can each have a half of each, and Robin, I'll order you the senior turkey dinner which comes with two sides and a jello!" Dad described so joyfully during the car ride, making our mouths water with each mention of comfort food.

"Your mom always used to order the potato salad, and I would get the macaroni salad at Sam's Hof Brau in Sacramento," Dad remembered on the way over there,"so let's get one of each, too."

And in that moment, I remembered the woman who left us so long ago ~ who was once young and vibrant as my sister is today.  

I felt her presence in that fancy Stanford waiting room during Dad's deja vu moment, and I felt her presence now as we headed off to Harry's Hofbrau to be comforted by food and by memories of our family ~ with the man who has kept the family together for so many years ~ throughout so many hospital visits ~ and so many losses along the way.

And then I knew that deja vu was just another way of Mama saying "Hello from The Big Sky" ~ that "I am still here with you ~ through each of these hospital visits ~ with every bite of comfort food ~ with every struggle you are facing today ~ yes, I am still here as I have always been ~ loving you ~ comforting you ~"

Futile Attempt

There was only one moment.

My only attempt.

To break free.

The only moment came during a fit of rage.  Rage that went on for hours and hours.  To this day, I do not remember if the abuse had turned physical yet as it had as I entered my second year with him.

But the rage was there all four years.  Verbal abuse of the most vulgar kind.  Words that slammed me just as viciously as his fists.  Words that degraded me, humiliated me, stomped away any shred of me ~ those words I listened to every day for four years.

"Shut the f up!"

then

"Shut the f up you f-in ________________ (insert b word, c word, or w word)!"

then

"Shut the f up you fat, f-in  ________________  (insert b word, c word, or w word)!"

I can't really write those words down today without hearing his voice all over again shouting them directly to my face like a drill sergeant.

But in that moment ~ of fitful rage ~ I found the courage to run from him and try to leave with the clothes on my back just like I had heard other women having to do.

But I needed to take more than just me and the clothes on my back.

I need to get Lil' Red, my beloved orange marmalade tabby cat who had been with me for nearly 12 years now.  There was no way he would be left behind. 

He had his own room ~ a tiny sunroom with a sliding door to the main house that I would close abruptly each time the abuse started to drown out the drama as best as I could.  I would close the curtains and pray that Lil' Red would stay sleeping and not wake up during my ordeal.

This time I ran to Red's room, flung open the door, grabbed the cat carrier, scooped up my baby, and quickly pushed him inside his sanctuary from the chaos of this moment.

I fumbled for my purse and my car keys and headed toward the back door to the alley.

But suddenly there was the man ~ with his giant fists ~ grabbing the cat carrier away from my grip ~ and while yelling and screaming his vulgar words ~ he shook the carrier back and forth ~ not too hard at first ~ but threatening to shake harder and harder.

Shake, Shake, Shake!!!

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!  Give me back my baby! Let us go! Don't hurt my baby, please!!!" I pleaded with the man who would not stop yelling and shaking my baby's carrier back and forth.

I  knew what I had to do in that moment to protect my baby.

I bowed down ~ with my words ~ I gave in to the abuser and the abuse.

"Okay, I will not leave!  I'm not leaving!  I'm sorry!  Please don't hurt Lil' Red!"

He gave me back the carrier.  And left the sunroom.

I stayed with Lil' Red.  Took him out of the carrier.  Held him tight.  Told him I was so sorry. 

"I'm so sorry Lil' Red, my precious boy.  Mama's so sorry."

I slept in Lil' Red's sunroom that night.  Spooned with my boy.  Comforted my wonderful companion of nearly 12 years.  Told him I would try harder next time.  I would try to figure out another way to get us out of here.  I gave him my promise. 

On that night, the sunroom became our sanctuary, and I would retreat there for long nights after other episodes of abuse.

Three years later, I remembered my promise to my precious boy as I put him in his carrier, loaded him into my Toyota, looked over my shoulder as I backed up the car down the alley, and never looked back.

Prisoner

I always felt like a prisoner in my abusive relationship, starting from the moment I found it impossible to break free after everything changed on the ninth day of our being together.

Two years had now passed, and my head had been bashed into the wall only a week earlier.  Here I was back with him even though we now technically lived apart.  I did not recognize my own self then and how I could remain with the man who had so violently hurt me just seven days earlier.  My life was surreal ~ the abuse was surreal ~ and the ability to break free seemed infinitely out of reach.

It suddenly hit me ~ how much I was truly a prisoner of my own life with him ~ as we headed toward a shady park one late summer night ~ with our junk food from Jack in the Box, his new puppy Jack, and his now nearly 15-year-old son in tow.  The evening was abuse-free ~ but as I entered that dimly lit park after hours ~ planted myself at a picnic table ~ watched Little Jack run playfully through the grass ~ as I started to eat my greasy tacos, I suddenly felt like Elizabeth Smart with the ability to physically run away from her captor but without the mindset to even try. 

The park was scary at night, and I remember seeing evidence of homeless living in the bushes.  The park was next to an apartment housing complex known for drug dealing.   I was more scared of the park than of him in that moment.  Why did he bring us here this late summer night?  Could we have not just eaten in the restaurant or even in the car?  Why had we driven 7 miles from Felton in the first place just for fast food?

Over and over in my head, I kept remembering young kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart going from park to park with her captors ~ shrouded under a veil ~ only mine was imaginary ~ my veil was my ability to be a good actress in public ~ to keep my secret hidden ~ so the abuse stayed hidden from family and from strangers.

I wanted to leave in that moment ~ knowing how viciously this man had attacked me just seven days earlier ~ how I had just spent three days recovering in a motel in Watsonville ~ how he chose where to move me down the alley to Bob's house ~ just so he could know where I lived ~ and still have his way with me ~ all while seemingly following "the rules" of the restraining order put on him by the sheriff ~as we began our journey together to get the case dropped.

Where was the little girl who ran for school president? Who sang in the choir? Who starred in the school play? Where was the little girl who dreamed of becoming a writer just like Jo did in "Little Women"?  Where did she go?

Why was she here in this park late at night with her captor and his son? Watching the most beautiful minature dachshund prance around so happily.  She could not find happiness in that moment because any shred of happiness was destroyed with every bashing to her head just seven days earlier.

She was lost along the way, but no one knew she was missing.

The Eleventh Hour

My last day of work is Monday.  And all along I keep thinking they are going to save me at the eleventh hour ~ just like they did for the other lady in my department whose layoff end date was June 30th.

But as I pack up my desk and download my files, I realize that it's really over.  It's over and done with ~ my time spent here ~ it's finally over ~ the two month limbo has come to an end ~ and I really have to leave.

But just now I realized that I have been saved in a different way at the eleventh hour.  I had a fleeting scare last night that I might be next on my ex's list of whom to stalk.  The fleeting scare kept me up half the night with insomnia.  Realizing I was farther up the food chain of his most recent exes, I suddenly realized that there will never be a threat of him contacting me at work anymore.  I never gave him my personal line at this office, and although he once admitted to calling the front desk and talking to my colleague about some random university subject when I was not the one to answer the main line.  But in the back of my head, I wondered if he could walk in the door one day or follow me home after work.

Now I am gone, and he will never know where I work or where I live.  How freeing.

The first thing everyone said to me when I got laid off is now I should become a writer.  My writing has been put on hold this spring and summer with this layoff ordeal.  But halfway through the ordeal, I kept envisioning myself reading my stories to other women in need.  To help them see that it is possible to finally get free.  It may take months and even years, but freedom is within reach.

I see myself reading to another type of audience who can also donate money to help victims and survivors of domestic violence.  I want the benefactors to see the face of a woman who succeeded after utilizing the services of the Walnut Ave Women's Center.  That I got out and that enough time has passed that I can finally share my story in the way my sister once did to help the Center.  I envision a fundraiser with me as the guest speaker.

I see myself standing at the podium.  I hear my voice reading "August 22, 2003" and "Yes, Sir" and trying not to break down from tears from reliving the darkest days of my life.

The Eleventh Hour will come on Monday, and my job will not be saved. 
 
But I will be saved in ways I never imagined were possible. 

Uncensored

Double take

A familiar look, hand gesture, the same full head of gray hair ~ even the same style of shirt he wore.  Seeing a man of the same age from the back of his head ~ in the distance ~ and doing a double take to see if it is really him.  Could it really be him?

Creeping by slowly, studying every mannerism, every voice inflection as I inspect the man in the distance ~ now getting closer ~ as I approach from the side.

Waving his hands, he rants and raves at the other guy in the parking lot of my local donut shop.

Yes, it could be him, I think.  That is how he used to wave his hands to make a point ~ to be dramatic ~ to be important ~ to seem smarter than other people.

But this guy seems drunk or on drugs, and I am hoping my ex is still clean and sober after being released from jail nearly four months ago.

Why would my ex being sitting on the parking chock in the parking space ~ waving his hands dramatically ~ not really making any sense to me ~ as I approach?

I squint through my eight-year-old prescription on my beat-up eyeglasses and keep thinking it could really be him.  It has finally happened, I think.  I will finally come fact-to-face with my abuser after years, or will I simply bolt away to my destination of a greasy meal at Denny's?

I would like to come face-to-face with my abuser and ask him point-blank for the $5000 he extorted from me back in 2003.  I could really use that money now ~ now that I have been laid off from my job.

But I will never see that money for as long as I live, and that money is living proof that I survived four years of abuse.  That money is a symbol of my strength to survive.  So, no, I do not really need that money that bad if it meant coming face-to-face with the man who abused me for four years.

I creep slowly past, listening to every deranged word from the gray-haired man's mouth and finally realize it is not him like I thought it could be. 

Just another drunk to dodge on my way to Denny's.

Tsunami Warning

There was a time when I began to hide my whole world from my father when it came to the abuse I was experiencing.

Dad stood by when I moved out of my tiny cabin-style studio in Ben Lomond ~ in my first attempt to end my destructive relationship ~ a mere nine months before I ended up moving in with my abuser.  I had to get out of the Santa Cruz Mountains in order to break free from the man who had begun to destroy my life in a short six months.

So the day after my 37th birthday, he stood watch in the van while I packed up the rest of my stuff.  My nephew Cameron and his friend Nick had already came for the furniture days before my final visit. 

I had not even really been living in the mountain studio for a couple of months having already rented another studio near the university the previous November shortly after I drove myself to the E.R. on Halloween night.  Looking back, this was my first attempt at some sort of safety plan ~ securing some secret housing that would wait for me until I could sneak away completely.

But The Bad Man soon found out where I lived, and he began to come by at all hours of the night, tapping on my windows with his motorcycle keys, calling out my name, begging me to let him in ~ just this once, he would plead.

And sometimes I did let him in just to not wake the landlords in the house next door.  Other times, I would stay as quiet as I could behind those four walls ~ like Anne Frank in the Attic Apartment ~ waiting for him to finally leave ~ and then I would call the police to make an incident report.

He wore me down after four months of stalking turned to wooing, and then he began another four months of fighting with me about his wanting me to move in with him and my wanting to remain alone.  I remember Karen at Walnut Ave Women's Center telling me that once I did move in with him it would be very hard to leave. 

But I gave in to stop the fighting ~ the main topic of our arguments ~ that I did not want to live with him.  I gave in, and I did not want to tell my father.

And so I called Quicksilver.  A local voicemail service where I could set up a Santa Cruz phone number so my dad could stay in touch with me and never find out that I moved back to the Santa Cruz Mountains.  Three more years of secrets began on the day I acquired my secret voicemail number that I still have to this day.

Dad would leave me messages about family get-togethers.  And I would call him back from work.  He would send me cards to the old apartment, and I would get them a week later with the yellow forwarding address sticker on them.  I did not think ahead to how I would handle the situation with the mail once the year ran out for forwarding.

The secret voicemail then became the only weapon I had against my abuser from finding other ways to contact me once we finally broke up three years later.

I had changed my home phone number multiple times during our on-and-off relationship that I was not about to give him my phone number once I was finally free.  So I kept paying the $45 quarterly bill to give him only one way to contact me.  He would leave me long, lengthy messages at times ~ always wanting to see me again ~ using the animals as ways to get me to miss the dogs and cats ~ telling me they missed me and did not understand why I did not visit.  I made a copy of each of the messages, especially if they were abusive ~ always with the notion that one day I may need to finally file my own restraining order on him ~ and not just one that cops had automatically placed on him the night he bashed my head into the wall.

Last summer, the voice mails stopped.  And I started having nightly dreams and daily flashbacks about him.  I instinctively knew that something was wrong.  I emailed his sponser and found out my ex was finally in jail but not for any charges of domestic violence.  The whole idea of him finally being in jail really caused me to tap into those horrible four years I spent with him and to all the heartbreaking years of verbal abuse that escalated into physical violence ~ so much of which I had blocked out simply to get through another day.

For six months, I processed those flashbacks.  By the third month, I knew I had to continue writing about my experience.  The blog I had started to honor my mother at Christmas immediately transitioned to include stories of domestic violence.  All the titles in my head from all those years together were typed up and out in a frenzy of writing for four months all with the idea that he would be locked up for 2 years.  When I heard his release date had been bumped up to February and that his sentence was reduced to six months, I began counting down to that day in February and wondering just how long it would take him to contact me.  Maybe I should have had Vegas take bets.

"You have one unheard message," informed the familar voice to my voicemail service of 9 years.  And there he was on the other line ~ same as he ever was ~ as if another marriage and domestic violence and being locked up for drugs had not even happened since his last message to me ~

There he was warning me about the tsunami.  Asking me to check on his grown son who was staying in the old house in Felton.

I felt nothing inside at the sound of his familiar voice. 

There was no pain.  No sadness.  No fear. 

  

Uncensored