There was more than one victim

Pissed because I was too sick to make your lunch, that is all you cared about. I made your lunch every day, before I was sick; I filled it with good food, my amazing cooking leftovers and those damn notes you always wanted. How many different ways can you tell someone he’s better than everyone else and some sort of Adonis, which in short is what you wanted everyone to see in you.

 I was burning up with a fever of 103-104 off and on for two weeks, throwing up with severe morning sickness and so weak I was barely able to lift my head off the pillow from the bed. I’d spend my nights up every hour almost either peeing or throwing up, and sometimes at the same time.  You told me to clean the place up, do the laundry, and most of all make your lunch. That morning when I told you from the couch with tears running down my face that I couldn’t make your lunch because I could barely stand up, you told me you’d “drop you off at your parents on the way to work, maybe they can take you to a doctor.” You stopped the truck in front of my parent’s house, I got out. No walking me to the door, nothing, and you just drove off.

I knocked on my parent’s front door, my dad looked at me, yelled for my mom to get dressed and we were in the car driving to the hospital in less than 10 minutes. I was admitted within minutes of arriving. I was delirious from the fever, laying on the gurney I could hear my parents talking to the doctors; they told them and me later, that if I hadn’t gotten there within the next couple of hours, I would have died. I’m not even being dramatic, I would have DIED.

I was pregnant, with a kidney infection, dehydrated, and had pneumonia. An ultrasound revealed that my daughter had already gotten into the downward position, but I was only 21 weeks…this was very, very bad.  Coward came once to see me, before I went into premature labor, and lost her. I was in the hospital two days, when my water broke and I went into labor. My parents hated you, I should clarify that they still hate you, and they were beyond angry that you let me get this ill without getting me help.  I remember being so angry at my mother for at least six months for her not calling you when I went into labor and delivered the baby. The hospital called my parents when I went into labor because they were there ones who admitted me and filled out the paperwork, so they were my emergency contact. My mother didn’t think you deserved to be with me, to see the baby you cared nothing about. The one that you kicked while in the womb, (but she didn’t know that then) she just knew you were didn’t do anything to help me, and that I almost died.  It took me awhile to understand why my parents didn’t call you, it’s because they loved me and you were a monster to me.  It was pretty simple logic, actually; but I couldn’t’ see it then. You kept pointing out how much they hurt you, and how you were the victim.  Still I made excuses for your behavior that day; I made excuses for years about your behavior.

I was in the hospital for two and a half weeks after losing her; you know who stays in hospitals for 2 ½ weeks? VERY, VERY sick people! So to get back at my parents for not calling you while I was in labor, you banned them from the funeral of our daughter, their first grandchild.  It was just you, me, the funeral director and the men who carried her little coffin. I remember the kind funeral director asking where everyone else was with great concern in his eyes. It’s not that they didn’t want to be there, they just weren’t allowed.

 For the first time since I moved in with you, I was now at my parent’s house.  When I got discharged from the hospital and still very weak, you told me that they (my parents) should probably take you back to their home. You didn’t even make the offer to pick me up from the hospital, my parents did it. I mean they brought me there, so obviously they’d take me home too. I know my parents thought, this is it…we have her back and away from him FINALLY.  They’d been hoping that since the day when I was 16, a couple of months shy of 17 and a junior in high school, and you were 21. I was so hopped up on raging teen hormones and you seducing me that I couldn’t see the light of day. But just like you did when I was the high school girl and you first met me, you started: sending me flowers, calling me, sweet talking me and offering me things my parents couldn’t; and so, I left to move back in with you. You had me right where you wanted me, under your control. I know that this wasn’t a conscious action, most of your abuse towards me wasn’t.  Nonetheless conscious or not, it was abuse.  I offered you something you wanted. I was caring, loving, motherly, youthful, attractive, well liked, and had a close loving family, It’s where I would stay for almost 10 years. Ten years. A decade of physical & emotional abuse at your hands; ten years of abuse is hard to forget.