Survivor

How am I a survivor? I survived an abusive relationship. He destroyed me mentally, then started to physically. When we first started dating I was 19. I felt so crazy about him but I could not tell you why. It wasn’t long before i got pregnant. I was scared and didn’t know what to expect. Things were fine up until later in the pregnancy. I was about 7 months pregnant when he started to break me down mentally. He made me distance myself from all my family and friends…made me think my mom didn’t give a shit about me…made me feel truly alone. He would constantly get drunk and force himself on me. I didn’t want to…he just disgusted me. The night I thought I was going into labor, he almost wrecked the car on the way to the hospital because he was too drunk… Stuff calmed down for a while until I had the baby. He started leaving me and the baby home all the time…never home…drinking again. He got so drunk one night, a month and a half after the baby came, and he pushed me through our screen door. I wouldn’t really talk to him for days after that and he didn’t drink for months. He did everything he could to fix things. Then he started drinking again and was usually gone. It was like that for months on end… my 21st birthday I go through his phone, because I was trying to get ahold of his friend, and found out he was cheating with “women” from craigslist. I felt at an all time low and didn’t have anyone. I let him destroy me to the point I couldn’t call my mom when I needed her the most. He was looking up “man for man” on craigslist a lot. I told him he needed to stop. He didn’t, then he started snorting meth with his friend and he started choking me. I wanted to experiment with cocaine, he claims to have gotten some. I’ve never done coke and wanted to try it. It was a free night no responsibilities. He lied and told me it was coke and it was truly meth. I felt like I was dying and I felt so helpless. Once I sobered up I chewed his ass out for everything it was worth and told him he needed to quit, but he didn’t and he started pushing me off of our porch. He would leave bruises on my arms and marks on my back. He always did it in front of the baby and I never felt more ashamed and weak. That’s my baby and I don’t believe he needed to see that and think it’s okay for them to do to someone. Toward the end of the relationship he never came home. He would only come home when he decided it was okay for him to be home. The final night of the relationship we were drinking and relaxing by the little pool we got for my son. We were watching the child play in the water, and he and his friend take off, I assume to go get meth, and was gone for hours. He started accusing me of cheating even though I didn’t. His friend made all these accusations and he believed him. He came home and jumped on me, choking me in front of our kid. I ran to the room with the kid and lock the door hoping he’d go away in his meth/drunken rage. But he didn’t he broke thru the door and jumped on me again, broke my phone, and threatened to kill me if I didn’t stop trying to hit him off of me. My child alone that night was witness to seeing me being choked over 6 times. He snatched my baby up, punched and smacked him while I was trying to get him back. He took off with my child, no clothes but some shorts and a diaper on, no diaper bag, no car seat, no food, no cup… It was a chilly April night. I panicked and freaked because I couldn’t get my child back and my ex and his friend had threatened to kill me if I called the cops… It has been almost 2 years since the attack and I still have moments where I have flashbacks and get scared and tense up… I still have horrible nightmares that make me ache really bad in the morning. I still can’t really wear necklaces, because if it accidentally chokes me I panic.. I love my child and they come first…and that very moment I knew that wasn’t the life I wanted to keep living or want to keep going through I found my way out and I got the hell out of dodge. I still take it day by day with my healing process. But it still sometimes affects me…

I want to thank you for reading this, and I’d like to thank complete choas for editing this article.