9 March 2000

 Heidi  2000

I write for Women.

I write for Victims.

I write to create understanding.

I write for change.

The first time my (ex) husband hurt me was a couple of weeks after we were married.   I was 20.  I don’t remember what angered him, nearly everything made him jealous and mad.  

After being shoved into a wall I sobbed,   “you hit me, I can’t believe you hit me”.    

  

My words only served to angered him more. He began beating the walls with his fists, 

“This is a hit.  This is what it looks like to hit something”,  he shouted 

Then showing me closely  his clenched, white knuckled fist  he shouted again

 “I didn’t HIT you”.  

Hours later,  after he calmed himself.  He softly told me that  he would never hit me.

That experience impacted my brain in a way that altered my thinking for many years.  Naive, 20 year old Heidi now believed that if there was no hitting involved then perhaps it wasn’t that bad.  Abuse means hitting.  I hadn’t been hit.  I looked at the walls torn up with holes,  the walls had been abused.  But I was just fine.  Heidi was just fine.

March 1997,  more than 2 years later and even more entrenched in his gaslighting,  a friend gifted me two lift tickets to Pebble Creek, a local ski resort.  I was ecstatic.  As a struggling college student it had been a few seasons since I hit the slopes.  I LOVED skiing.  

My partner, wasn’t a skier, but I invited him nonetheless.  His insecurity surfaced.  I don’t know if he was jealous of my opportunity or ability,  or perhaps just angry that he didn’t  ski.  

He didn’t want me to go and he was good at manipulating situations to get what he wanted.  I wanted so badly to take advantage of the ski passes. I was kind but firm.  I wasn’t letting him manipulate me into giving up a day of skiing.  

Then he lost control.  In his anger he began destroying things in our little apartment.  I was so frustrated at the damage he caused. It was not new.  It was a tool he often used to manipulate me.  And if it didn’t have the effect he wanted he upped the ante.   

This March day, he wrapped his hands around my head, one hand over each ear looking right into my face.  I saw his head pull back.

You know that kind of fear when your heart is pounding in your throat, you can’t swallow?  Tears were pouring down my cheeks.  The fear, I feel it again as I write.  

He launched his forehead into the bridge of my nose.  Blood began pouring out of my face as I sobbed.  My face hurt,  but worse were my feelings of humiliation, helplessness.  On the ground I lay bloody and sobbing.   I was defeated.

Still,  he had not hit me (no fists were involved)  therefore it was not abuse.   Or so I had come to believe.

Much happened over the next few years.  My beliefs, societal expectations, continued manipulation, fear, financial need kept me in the marriage.

March 9, 2000 was a remarkable day.  My independance day.  20 years ago today I freed myself.

So many synchronicities occurred that day and the days leading up to it.  People who supported me became aware of my situation, breakthroughs in counseling helped me see more clearly, I began placing confidence back into myself.  

Although I woke up that morning with no intention of leaving him, I came home from a day full of mind opening events that changed me somehow.

I walked into our little trailer on the outskirts of town as the sun was setting with its last rays of light shining through the windows.  I asked him, 

“Do you love me?”  

His answer was simple, yet so profound.

“You should know that by now”.

He had never been more right.  And then I knew.

I packed my things and left that night.  

I never returned.