Personal Struggle — Part 11

I’ve been really struggling with finishing my personal story about my experience with emotional and physical abuse. When I first sat down to write that Part One on Medium, I really thought that it was going to be a single blog entry that I was putting out there for myself. As I started to write about what I lived through, I realized that I had to tell much more than what was going to fit on a single page. With every new entry, I think that I will be done.

I’m ready to move on and start writing on other topics. There’s so much other stuff that I’ve been wanting to talk about, but I feel like I can’t until I finish this one. After all, this experience really shaped my life and who I am today. I feel like the more y’all know about me, the better you’ll be able to understand everything else that I want to share with you.

I was sure that Part 10 was going to be the last one, but here I am on Part 11. It took me almost 20 years to be able to tell the world that my ex is a monster who deserves to be put behind bars. What Megan Twohey,  Jodi Kantor, and all of the brave people who spoke out against their abusers and paved the way for the #MeToo movement did for the rest of us is truly invaluable (BTW, She Said is a great movie that I highly recommend). I want to thank all these heroes for creating a change in our collective consciousness that enables us speak out today. It also enables us be heard. There’s nothing worse than not being heard.

Part 11:

My ex would often say to me: “Nobody has ever left me.” It always sounded way more like a serious threat than some sort of self-praise. Despite the fact that he himself was already prepping for a divorce for months (if not years), when I served him the papers, he went ballistic.

As I told you before, my ex was a skillful manipulator and a grandmaster in chess. He was making plans for his future without me from day one. He was creating elaborate exit strategies that he could set in motion the moment he would use me up to the fullest and kick to the curb.

Maybe about half a year before I filed for divorce, I started to realize that he was scheming something behind my back. Not to mention that he forced me to sign a postnup to relinquish my rights to a company he co-founded with a friend. I was extremely upset, but there was nothing I could do at that time. I was too depressed and depleted to fight back. The most I could do was hire that PI, pull some double accounting evidence from his office computer, and file my papers first.

I’m guessing that I beat him only by about 4 - 6 months before he was going to get rid of me himself. I thought that I was winning because I caught him off guard. I should have realized that I had already lost. I lost the battle because the damage that he did to me by then was already irreparable.

He did everything he could to make me completely disregarded and insignificant. It didn’t matter what I thought, what I felt, and what I said. Nobody listened to me. Nobody heard me. Nobody believed me. Nobody cared.

It was very easy for him to do. One of the biggest tragedies of my life (if not the biggest) is that my parents let him do it. They let him do whatever he wanted. I’ve always been too insignificant, too paltry in their eyes. They never wanted to listen to me. Were they to listen to me even a little bit, they would have had to take some action. They would have had to do something. They would not be able to go about their lives unencumbered. If my parents were to realize even an iota of what their daughter was going through, that would have dampened their moods and taken out the joy from their endless partying.

They didn’t think much of me to begin with and when my ex spent hours on the phone telling them about how much he struggled to make this marriage work because their daughter was so difficult, so stupid, so lazy, so immature, so psychotic, etc., his words fell on fertile ground. Besides, he was a master manipulator who knew exactly what each of them wanted to hear. He quickly realized that their biggest desire was to be left unbothered. He also discovered that they were willing to pay any money to avoid having to deal with unpleasant issues and public embarrassment.

Yes, my mom was outraged for a few days when she saw the sex tape starring my ex-husband and that other woman. However, all it took was a few phone calls between my ex and my dad, for my mom to quickly change her tune and start pressuring me into getting back together with him. My parents chose to side with my ex. They listened to him. They bought all of his excuses and all of his lies about me. Besides, occasional indiscretions and infidelities were never considered a big deal in my family.

Another very important factor was that my ex tirelessly convinced my parents and everyone else that my son was autistic and in need of numerous therapies and treatments. They all believed that my ex was his only savior. And who was I? I was a nobody. I was a pathetic loser who flunked a bunch of semesters and didn’t graduate college. I was a lazy brat with a shopping addiction who didn’t want to work. I was a mentally unstable individual with a history of clinical depression and attempted suicide. I was an unfit mother who was incapable of taking care of her son.

My ex managed to get everyone I knew to rally against me. All of a sudden, he was the biggest victim in town and everyone supported him. Nobody listened to me. Nobody believed me. Everyone turned against me. I was shamed by everyone for leaving such an amazing husband. There was only this one guy with whom I got romantically involved with immediately after I filed for divorce. He was a big user and a terrible person (I’m not proud of this relationship and that’s for another blog series), but this guy was the only person who did not fall under my ex’s spell. He was the only person who saw right through all of the bullshit and the only person who helped me retain some remnants of sanity when my whole world came crushing down.

If I weren’t seeing this guy at the time, I don’t know for how long I would have lasted. I don’t know if I would be able to stand by my decision to go through with the divorce and to withstand the pressure coming from everywhere including my family to back down from it. I embarked on a long journey (that ended up lasting for 16 years) where I fought a mortal kombat and went against all odds. It’s a miracle that I made it through.

The first few months were the most difficult. My ex was seemingly adamant about getting back together with me. After all, I did catch him off guard and he did not want to split any assets with me. I hired a notoriously aggressive lawyer (which actually didn’t turn out to be the smartest move on my part) and my ex got progressively more and more vexed in court.

One night, he came for a visit to spend some time with our son. We weren’t on speaking terms already and I was doing my best to avoid any contact with him. I was up in my bedroom waiting for the babysitter to walk him out after he put the baby to sleep. I thought to myself that he was taking longer than usual to bathe him as I was hearing the distant sounds of splashing water through my closed door across the hall.

Suddenly, my ex entered the bedroom and shut the door behind him. He jumped right at me and toppled me to the ground. As we wrestled on the floor, I screamed for help in hopes that the babysitter would hear and rush to the room. At first, I thought that he was going to rape me, but as he grabbed a hold of my neck and started to choke me, I realized that he was there to kill me.

This was one of the scariest moments in my life. It’s hard to write about it and it’s hard to describe the spine-chilling terror I felt when I looked into his eyes. Those were the eyes of a psychopath and a serial killer who wouldn’t stop until he finished his victim off. Those were the eyes of someone who was killing in cold blood. Premeditated. Carefully planned.

I fought with all my strength, but I knew that it was just a matter of time. A matter of a few more minutes until my strength would give out and I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I cried: “help!” for the very last time...

To be continued ….