How Abuse Became Just Another Day In My Life

For thirteen years we lived in Gwinnett County Georgia. It was thirteen years of hell. From the time we moved into our house, I learned how to know when he would go off the deep end and start the beatings. It was like an electricity in the air. I knew it days and weeks before it happened. Trying to avoid it was like trying to avoid a runaway train. It was impossible.

  As the days came and went and the tension built I would be able to time the beating to the exact hour. The headaches preceeded the beatings. I felt like a tightly wound spring and there was no place to go. I prepared for it by going someplace else in my mind. I turned into a robot and most times tried to have my children out of the house so they didn’t have to witness it yet one more time. I was not always successful.

  The anger this man had inside himself became so scary. His face became that of another person. He eyes became enraged – his blood pressure went so high that his face was blood red. His fists were the first thing to connect with my body, that is after he had thrown me either on the floor (more like body slammed me) or thrown me on the bed and then flipped my feet over my head cause whip lash. Thus the permanant damage to my neck.

         All I had to do to set him off was just exist. I didn’t even have to open my mouth, I just had to be in the same house.  If for some reason my children were at home, and he didn’t finish taking out all of his anger on me, they became the object of his abuse. They couldn’t get away either. They were called names that no child should ever be called. They were treated in ways t hat no child should ever be treated. 

   I found new and inventive ways to cover  the black eyes and the bruises. I became an expert in giving false answers when I was asked what had happened to my eye and face. In fact when on person jokingly said did he hit you- I was very quick to deny it.   I became adept at making excuses for not attending family functions, not going out with friends and finally becoming a recluse.

    When I turned thirty I finally had a break down. I couldn’t take anymore. I could not longer take the fact that he wouldn’t work, there was never enough money, bill collectors knocked on the door day and night, my children never knew if they would have Christmas or not. But yet the abuse continued. The beatings became more severe and more and more frequent.

        I knew that one of two things would happen, either he would kill me or I would kill myself.