1. Do/Did you love this person? Why?
I was younger I thought I knew what love was and I clearly didn’t know what love was.
2. When did abuse start?
It started off with name calling and emotional abuse after being with him for a year.
3. Did you suspect something like this from this person?
You never really expect someone that claims to love you of hurting you.
4. What happened?
Well most people think that the other person just wakes up and starts beating on the other and that is not the case usually especially not if it is a long-term relationship. First it was the Your fat, you’re ugly which turns into No one will ever love you like I do or Only me wants to be with you. It’s a mental break first then its turns into slap across the face a punch in the back of the head. I finally had enough of the lies the cheating and decided I was going to leave, I was punched, had a table flipped on my knee, he almost broke my arm, he threatened that the only way I was leaving him was over his dead body.
5. What physical harm was caused?
Bruises in different places
6. Did you call the police?
No
7. We’re children involved? How?
No, I don’t have any children
8. What made/makes you stay?
I was young and thought this type of love was love. He would always apologize and tell me how sorry he was and would blame his mother’s passing for the reason he acted that way.
9. Do/Did you think it would happen again? Did it?
No, I thought he would stop but it always happened again
10. Were you actively intimate during the timeframe of abuse? Was it forced?
I’m a bit confused as to how this question is worded so I am going to answer it the way I interpreted it. I was intimate with this person because we were together. The first time the physical abuse happened, I felt forced to be intimate with him.
11. Do/Did you fear for your life?
Yes, it was crazy how little things would set him off, it was like I was constantly walking on egg shells.
12. Have you ever considered retaliation?
No
13. Have you ever considered suicide?
Yes, along with depression and anxiety.
14. Do/Did you feel trapped? Why?
In my situation I very much felt trapped, no one knew about the abuse and I didn’t feel like I could tell anyone about it because I was made to feel like it was my fault. I would hide the bruises and he was a completely different person when we were in public. I remember one time we were out eating dinner with his father, sister, and his son and I was in a daze staring in the direction of a lady with a baby but there was a waiter standing near and he grabbed my thigh and squeezed it so hard that it left a bruise the size of a softball for weeks and whispered in my ear do you want to go over there with him you can because you can’t seem to take your fu$*ing eyes off him. His dad could tell that something was wrong, and he asked him what was wrong, and I started to tell him what happened and the guy I was with kept saying that it was not an appropriate conversation for dinner. I ended up blurting out that he thought I was staring at the waiter and that he has trust issues his dad was surprised and said to his son she was staring at the baby for the love of God.
15. How would you rate your self-esteem on a scale of 1-10?
In that relationship it was -10, if I had to rate it now I would say that it is about a 5 on my low days and a 9 on a great day. I was in a long term abusive relationship and building up my self-esteem after years of being belittled and mental and emotionally abused takes a toll on you. I felt that no one would ever love a damaged person abused and a wounded soul like myself.
16. Did you speak to anyone about your situation?
No not until after the fact when I told my best friend years later. I knew that my best friend would have hurt him.
17. How do your family/friends feel about it?
My best friend wished that I would have felt confident enough to let him know what was going on.
18. Do you think you can ever love anyone else?
I have faith that I will love someone but in the mean time I am in a continuous fight to love myself and forgive and pray for him. I am in no rush to jump into a relationship with anyone. I’m not saying that at times I don’t long to spend my life with someone that will love me as much as I love them, but I don’t want to rush things. I am enjoying learning what makes me happy again like writing my blog called my surviving life, learning to scuba dive and traveling to foreign countries.
19. What advice will you give to others who are in a domestic violence relationship?
Get out ASAP, most of the time IT WILL NOT GET BETTER it only gets worst. It’s hard and there are people out there that will go above and beyond to help you.
20. What advice will you give to the friends and family of the victims?
Leaving is the hardest thing and usually the most difficult and deadly times when it comes to domestic violence. Be supportive and don’t judge. Be encouraging and be there for them as much as you can. Become aware of the signs of possible domestic violence. I take part of an organization called One Love and it stems from relationship violence AKA Domestic violence.
21. Anything else you would like to share?
It starts slow with it then slowly escalating into physical.
22. If chosen… would you like your name shared along with your story?
Sure, I don’t see why not since I am posting this on my blog since sharing my domestic violence story is on my bucket list.
If you would like your complete story shared in its entirety. Walk me through the worst day of abuse as vividly as you can. This is your story. Tell it however you choose.
My worst day in a domestic violence relationship happened to be a month before we were to get married. His phone kept beeping and beeping through the night, midnight, 1am, 2am it seemed like his phone would not stop with the beeping every few seconds. Around 3am in the morning I leaned over and reach out for his phone to turn the damn beeping off. The message that was displayed on the phone screen was from his female “gay best friend” saying that she can’t wait from him to be inside her again. I unlocked the phone as it was my birthday and proceed to in horror read similar messages from different females. With tears streaming down my face, I turned the light on in the bedroom and grabbed his foot and woke him up and told him to get the f**k out of my house and I threw his phone at the headboard and it broke. He proceeds to get out of the bed and I turned to moved out the way, with my back turn toward him and bending over to pick up my things off the floor he punched me in the nape of my neck, my face hit the carpeted concrete floor and it felt like an eternity that I was laying on the floor with this ringing in my ears. At that moment I thought that he was going to kill me and that this would be the last remaining moments of my life. A moment in sheer fear feeling unloved and abandoned by all including the God that I prayed to many nights to give me the strength to endure, and to be the woman that this man wanted, needed me to be. There was a deafening ringing that would not stop, I reached out and grabbed the closest thing to me which happened to be his car keys and I held the key in between my pointer finger and middle finger and made a fist and as he tried to get on top of me and swung as hard as I could at his head with the key and hit him hard. I felt something warm fall down my arm and realized that he was bleeding and it was his blood dripping on me. I scrambled to get away from him but didn’t get far before he flipped the living room coffee table over and the corner of it hit me right in the knee and I fell to the floor in extreme pain. I thought at that moment that I was dead at the hands of someone that claimed to love me so much. I crawled, crying in pain and managed to wobble to the back room of the house where a huge picture of us hung and he grabbed me by my neck with one hand and smashed my hand into the picture hard, breaking the glass sending bits of glass into my hand. I remember that I couldn’t breath and was gasping for air. I don’t know how but I managed to get loose and grabbed my phone and limbed into the spare bathroom locking the door behind me and locking the second door on the opposite side. I just remember calling my coworker Kimmy and telling her that he is going to kill me over and over and yelled to him that I was calling the cops but never did. I called his grandmother and told her to come get him and I never wanted to see him again. I laid on the cold ground of that bathroom floor sobbing uncontrollable for what seemed like hours and when his grandmother finally got there he finally left, and she knocked on the bathroom door and I came out the bathroom she looks me in the eyes and tells me, please never take him back please for your sake please never bring him back into your life. He isn’t going to change. Thus, I began the process of rebuilding my life from scratch, without him. I haven’t seen him in about 6 or 7 years and still on occasion I will see someone that resembles him, and I get a tense feeling in my chest and panic for a moment until I realize that it’s not him. I run into mutual friends and they always till me that I look amazing and they usually bring him up and tell him that he is not really in good shape.
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