Personal Struggle — Part 10

This personal narrative is meant to be read in chronological order starting with Part I.

It’s been a while since I last posted. My son asked me to respect his privacy and not tell anymore details about his experience to the public. I will now focus back on my own story and finish telling you about how my ex almost killed me and walked away unpunished.

I have also decided to move to my own website to be more anonymous as my Medium account started to appear right under my professional LinkedIn page on most search engines. 

Part 10: 

I let my ex get away with attempted murder. He tried to kill me. I survived. I suffered for many years. He didn’t. He’s been living with zero consequences… 

I’m going to go back in time and pick up where I left off in Part 4. My ex very skillfully gaslighted me and pushed me to commit suicide. Those pills that he left around everywhere were practically crying out to me all the time: “Take me, take me!” It was just a matter of time…

Somehow, I was able to experience a moment of clarity in that state of drug infused delirium, which I sunk into when I took all those pills. As I was lying on our bed waiting to fall asleep and to never wake up again, I realized that I did not want to die. I got up and I walked to the other end of our small SoMa apartment to tell my ex: “I just did something very stupid. You need to call 911.” 

I remember how he hesitated. How he was analyzing and calculating all his options. I could see it on his face. Should he let me pass out and wait? Did I take enough pills for this to be fatal? Was it too early to get rid of me? How would he handle it? Would it look too suspicious? Could he get in trouble? It took him a while to make that decision. Eventually, he either gave in to the fear of it all looking too suspicious or he decided that he didn’t enrich himself through me enough and it was too early for me to go. He finally dialed 911. 

By the time the first responders arrived I was already slipping in and out of consciousness. Luckily for me, my ex was not allowed to ride in the ambulance. That ride to the hospital changed my life. That ride saved my life. I wish I could thank that young paramedic who saved my life. I wish I knew his name. I wish I could find him and tell him how much he did to me during that short ride to CPMC. 

He looked like he was in his early 20s. He held my hand and he talked to me the whole time. He was trying to keep me awake as he was also pumping drugs and activated charcoal. I couldn’t fully comprehend what he was telling me and it didn’t matter anyways. He was telling me something very reassuring and encouraging. In a short span of maybe 10 to 15 minutes, this total stranger gave me more love and positive energy than anyone ever did and I will always cherish this memory. He was an angel. He was my angel. Whoever you are, I will always remember you and I’m forever grateful. 

After that short high, which I experienced on the way to hospital, I fell into the deepest abyss when they rolled me into the ER. I felt like I already died and landed in hell. Everything felt very surreal. I felt like I was having this total out of body experience and at the same time I was feeling intense physical pain. Two huge male nurses were pinning me down to the bed as the third one was shoving a huge gastric lavage tube down my throat. I was uncontrollably gagging and tears were spraying out of my eyes. 

Those 6'3" 200 lb nurses looked like demons to me. It felt like time was standing still as they were pumping my stomach. It seemed this hell would never end. I heard this deep, loud, and clear voice in my head that was telling me: “Is this what you really want? ‘Cause this is what you’re going to get.” That experience really freaked me out. It’s been more than 20 years now and I still remember that voice. I was very scared for a while to even try to attempt to take my own life again. I knew that I would fail and that I would just be in a lot of physical pain.

The tragic reality of domestic abuse is that gaslighting and psychological abuse is completely overlooked by the system. Unless you’ve got visible traces of physical harm (bruising, etc) nobody is going to care and nobody is going to do anything about it. Actually, even when someone is physically injured, I don’t think that they get any more adequate support and protection.

During my relatively brief stay at the hospital, a few therapists and social workers were summoned there to talk to me about what had happened. They all asked me the same superficial questions about whether or not I was threatened or abused by my husband. What kind of answers were they expecting from a completely downtrodden and emotionally abused twenty year old?

At that time and in that condition, I wasn’t even aware that I was being abused, dehumanized, and completely destroyed every single day. I wasn’t aware that I was being raped every time we had sex. Instead, I was filled with classic straight out the textbook victim’s guilt, complete lack of self worth, and extreme anxiety from anticipated embarrassment for what I had done. I was also terrified of being perceived as crazy and psychotic.

I told the therapists that my ex was an amazing and loving husband, that it was all my fault, that I just wanted attention, and that I wasn’t really serious. I was scared to say anything negative about him. Can you believe it? What’s even more disturbing, is that my answers were completely satisfactory and nobody probed any further. I wasn’t offered any kind of therapy support. They closed their eyes and they let me go.

I was discharged into the hands of that monster who right away told me that I was lucky he was still putting up with my shit. Oh well…

Needless to say, I was crushed to the ground. Below ground, actually. And that’s where I stayed for many years.

The abuse continued. I got pregnant and had my son at 21. Despite being totally immature and unprepared for motherhood, the experience of becoming a mother was the best thing that could happen to me. I was now responsible for another life and this sense of responsibility gave me the strength and motivation to start fighting. In the miserable state that I was in, I would never have done it for myself. I could only do it for my child.

After only about a month after giving birth, I knew that I was going to leave my ex and it took me two and a half years to be able to do that. Two and a half years was a very long and miserable time. It took me this long to be able to stand up for myself. It took me this long to realize that the problem was not in me. He was the problem.

At some point, my ex became very indiscrete about his infidelities. I was so destroyed as a woman and as a human being that for the longest time I couldn’t even gather enough mental strength and emotional capacity to confront him about it. Every time I brought up the conversation about wanting to separate, he completely dismissed everything that I said and pretended that those conversations never even happened.

We would fight, I would kick him out of the bedroom and tell him that I want a divorce, he would spend the night in the guest bedroom downstairs and then he would come back the next day after work and act as if nothing happened. He would pretend that the fight never happened and that he didn’t know what I was talking about. I would feel totally helpless, hopeless, and crazy every time he did that.

After a few months of failed attempts to kick him out of the house, I had to go to drastic measures. I had to hire a private investigator to follow my ex to Sacramento and film him having sex with some local ho. When the PI brought me that video tape, I was already past the stage of being devastated that he was cheating on me. I was exhilarated that I finally had some hard evidence that I wasn’t crazy and that I finally had a “legit” reason to kick him out of the house.

Luckily for me, we were temporarily living with my parents because the property that they bought for us when I got pregnant was being remodeled. My mom was there with me when my ex came home. I turned on the TV and I played the video tape. He still had the nerve to argue with me and to tell me that I had nothing to be upset about because this woman was over 40. As if that was supposed to make me feel better at 23. I was speechless. At that point, my mom had to tell him: “Get out of my house!”

The next morning, I changed the locks to the house and filed for divorce. I knew that I had very little time and a very small window of opportunity to get it done. I knew that he would be furious. I knew that he would do everything in his power to “punish” me for leaving him. Still, I underestimated this monster and the extent of the nightmare I was about to experience.

To be continued …