Atonement

My heart is pounding. It's now or never. Fuck. He's right up to me now.  He's laughing at me.  I tell him I'm sick of living like this.  I have zero confidence and my lip is quivering.  Fear sets in.  Am I daring to stand up to him?  "Living like what?" He mocks me.  Still smiling.  "Like this!  Drugs, fighting, all of it!" He raises an eyebrow and looks very amused.   He tells me that the only reason he does drugs is because I make him and we fight all the time because I push him. He puts his hands on my shoulders and tells me to stop and come back in the house.  I said NO!  I DON'T WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE.  His demeanor immidiately changes.  "We fight because you always do shit like this you crazy bitch!".  I shrug his hands off my shoulders.  I am sobbing but not because I am sad.....I am so angry and so sick of everything....I can't take any more.  I cannot take anymore.   I tell him I want to separate.  (Good old southern comfort giving me false bad assness) "Oh you do, huh?!" Head butt.  Hard.  Stars.  Ass on the ground. I'm gonna do it.  I can do it.  Self defense.  I get myself to a squatting position, pull out my knife, try to stand up and swing it forward at the same time.  His hand is immidiatly around my hand holding the knife.  "I was trying to have a good fucking night!  And see what you're doing?!  You ALWAYS ruin everything!!! You're the reason we fight!!! Youre a crazy fucking bitch!" He pulls me up against him....back towards his stomach and puts me in a choke hold with the knife at my throat.  "You think you can fucking kill me?!  You think you can fucking LEAVE me?! I thought you were stupid before! You're the dumbest bitch I've ever fucking met! YOU WANT TO DO THIS?! YOU WANT TO FUCKING DO THIS?! ILL SLIT YOUR FUCKING THROAT RIGHT NOW YOU STUPID CUNT!! You think anyone else is gonna want your skinny ugly ass?! NO!! You're lucky I put up with your shit....I don't know why I do! You're TRASH!  THATS ALL YOU ARE!!! FUCKING TRASH!!!" As he's screaming all of this right in my ear making me go deaf he keeps squeezing my body as he emphasizes the words "fucking" and "bitch", "cunt", and "trash".   I fell silent a long time ago.   Not crying....not fighting....limp. He tells me to stand the fuck up...stop falling...tells me how pathetic and dramatic I am.   He says "In fact that's where you belong....in the fucking trash".   He drags me all the way to the back porch and literally picks me up over his shoulders and throws me into the trash.  Garbage bags that were set out on the porch.  I lay there, now crying.  He gets down in my face and says "Don't you dare get up...you lay there in the trash like you are." And he walks in the house. I did just that.  I layed in the trash.  It was so humiliating, I didn't even want to get up.  I didn't want to do anything.  I didn't want to live.  I heard him get into his truck and leave.  After I felt I could, I got up and showered.  He still wasn't back.  I got a little hopeful that maybe he left for good.   I crawled in bed with my girls and held them tight.  I was out of ideas. I failed.  Again.  Like always.  Later that night I was woken up by something hitting my leg.   I saw his figure standing beside the bed.  He had thrown something on it.  He smiled at me and turned and walked away.  I sat up to see what it was.  It was my knife.  With no blade.  He had taken it and ground the blade completely down to where it was just a handle.  I layed there the rest of the night in tears.   I didn't know what to do anymore.  I feel like I gave up that night.  This was my life. This is what I deserve.  Maybe it is me.  Maybe I am the one who made him this way. Maybe it is all my fault.  Fuck man.  What is wrong with me?   No seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me?  Why was I such an awful person that I made him actually want to kill me and hurt me constantly. What could I do to be a better person? I knew he was right that no one else would ever want me.  That I was trash.  And though I fully believed that to be true, I always had the lingering question in my mind...why do I feel like I'm so nice if I'm really not?  All I have ever tried to do is love him.....and my girls, and my friends and family. I started questioning my reality. Maybe I'm not at all what I think I am.

Nothing changed over the course of the next few months.  Life went on as it had been.   I tried to take care of my girls and hold down my job and keep Damion happy.  I was failing miserably at all of them.
Days and weeks went by with nothing changing.   The girls and I walked on eggshells for a living.  We were always quiet.  They were young, energetic, beautiful little girls that had to suppress their true selves in order to not set him off and then have me pay for it.  They were protecting me in the only way they knew how.  By being perfect. Orderly.  Never arguing or causing a scene.
One day Damion and I drove to the next town over to get a bag.  We got the bag and were getting onto the freeway to go do something.....I don't know what...and all of a sudden we saw cop lights flashing behind us.  He is driving his truck and he slides me the bag which I quickly put in my panties.  He pulls over and the officer comes up to his driver side door. Asks him for his licence and registration.   Then immidiately asks him to step out of the car.  My heart is pounding.  I have drugs in my panties and I'm thinking that no matter what this is about....I'm going to be the one he takes his anger out on.  So what's happening?  They have him put his hands on the truck and spread his legs and pat him down.  Oh fuck oh fuck.  I'm next and I'm going to get caught with the bag.  The officer is calling for back up.  Oh fuck.  Back up arrives and I'm still sitting in the truck. The officer hasn't even looked in my direction but they were keeping Damion at a distance from me.  The second officer gets out of his car and walks up to Damion and the first officer.  "Put your hands behind your back.......you have the right to remain silent .....".   I heard them say they had a warrant out for his arrest.   They put him in the back of the police car and then the officer came and spoke to me.  Heart still pounding.   I felt like it was pounding hard enough that it was visible.  The officer asked me if I was okay.  Umm......yes?   He said the reason Damion is going to jail is because of an assault charge against me. Oh my God!!! The one at my work!    But.......but I dropped those charges.  The officer explained to me that charges like this are often times picked up by the state when the victim calls and trys to drop them.  We spoke for a while and I was handed the keys and told to go home.  Oh my God!!!!  I'm free!!  I'm free!!! Am I free?????? I drove home in shock.  Damion was going to jail.  My girls were visiting their dad......my heart broke at that realization.    This would be such a great night for us!   Then my thoughts quickly changed.  When he gets out....I am dead.   Fuck.  But I'm free right now!!!!! I went home and did the whole bag to myself.  I sat on the porch swing and just....sat there.   Am I happy or sad or scared or what the fuck am I? I pondered life for a long time on that porch swing.  Should I get out?  Should I keep trying?  I hate him and I love him. Would I be able to leave and be safe?  Am I safe staying?  Though I know all the answers, I can't get to that real place in my brain.  Then the phone rang.   "Hi sweetheart".  Chills went up and down my spine. Calling from jail, dear?  Nope. Fuck. Mommy bailed him out.  I......am.....dead.
He didn't come home that night.  He was picked up by his parents and taken to their house.   They knew just as much as my parents knew how toxic this relationship was.   My guess is they bailed him out with the agreement for him to stay away from me.  If that was the case, the agreement was broken the next day.  I had to drive his truck out to him.   And truthfully, a night away from my knight in shining armor had me missing him.  Back then that's what I thought, anyway.  I know now that my "missing him" was my being sick.  Over the next few weeks there was a distance building in us.  Maybe he was realizing that this was toxic, himself?  I didn't know.  But the distance was from him.  The rejection was painful for me. How dare he treat me so horribly for so many years and then decide to leave.   The power and control he had over my mind was unreal. I couldn't handle it.  I started cutting again.  No one wanted me. Not even Damion. He had been right all along. I was unlovable.  It was me. It was all me.   Instead of realizing this gift of freedom I fell into a deep depression.  I hated myself. I wasn't even worthy of being wanted by a psychopath.
My grandma's health was going downhill pretty rapidly and my sister was taking care of her.  I couldn't continue this lifestyle at her house. It wasn't right. My sister and grandma had had things of value go missing here and there.  Damion had destroyed some of my sisters expensive belongings. He hated my family.  My sister was always encouraging me to leave him and he knew it.  I had quit using here and there and was trying to go without for longer periods of time.  Meth didn't have a physical or painful withdraw so it was mind over matter.   I liked it because it gave me that false sense of security in myself.   It gave me confidence.  (Which I severely lacked)  With the help of my mom I found an apartment for me and the girls.  It was a one bedroom.  A cute little apartment.  I gave the girls the bedroom and we decorated it and made it really nice and comfortable for them.  I slept on the couch and was okay with that. I was still working at the optometrist office.   Life started feeling normal in a sense.   I still spoke with Damion but we weren't intensely together 24/7.   He wasn't allowed to live in this apartment.  His name was not on it and my mom's friend owned them.  This was supposed to be my safe house. My neighbor had a son who was around the girls ages.  They started playing together and I met his parents.   After knowing them for a while the subject of meth was brought up.  She was an every day user and got really good stuff from a few cities away.  Damn it.  I was off and running again.  Being alone I got in deep.   I enjoyed it so much more. I could do more without someone to share it with. And she was right....it was very good shit.
Damion left the state for a while.  I was in to drugs more deeply than I had ever been in my life.   I was doing so much every day.  Still maintaining.   My neighbor worked at a medical office as well and was a user like my x-husband and I had been. She used every day and slept every night and ate.  A "functional user".  Until she got sick.  She ended up in a hospital hours away from us with a horrible infection.   I didn't know it at the time but now looking back I believe it was from shooting up.  I had never done that before.   She was gone for weeks.  She nearly died.   I stopped using because I couldn't get any.  When she finally came back she told me no more.   She was done. She almost died and left her young son behind and she was ready to grow up.   Wow.  That really hit me.   I had never considered quitting for good.....?  I liked getting high.  I still had my girls....my job...my home....no harm done right?  I just liked the feeling of confidence the stuff gave me.  Well, damn it....okay.   guess I'll stop too.
After a few sober weeks Damion returned. Sobriety out the window.  He told me while gone he realized that I was the only woman for him.  Though I instantly had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I had been very lonely and had missed him too.  I hadn't been abused for quite a while so it must have slipped my mind to turn him down. I was very quickly reminded.  For those of you who have been in an abusive relationship, if you separate for a while and then end up going back to your abuser the abuse gets worse each time you go back. Much worse.
I lost my job. I had started going to work with bruises and was getting too high....they noticed.   They had to let me go. Damion and I got into some pretty bad fights and one time I ran across the apartment complex to the neighbors house to call the cops. He was chasing me.  That didn't go over well with the owner and I was told to find a new place to live.  Just a couple weeks of Damion being back in my life and I lost my job and my home.  I had been on a waiting list for these new condos that were being built since I had lived at my grandma's house.    I finally got a call that mine was ready (just in time) and we moved. Damion had his own apartment in another town about a half hour away. The girls and I moved into the new condo. It was beautiful.  Damion would stay with me and I would stay with him. The abuse was so bad.   So bad that one morning my neighbor who constantly beat his wife actually called the cops on Damion for doing the same thing.  No one got arrested.  The cops came and I told them nothing happened blah blah blah.  Lies lies lies.  I had been choke slammed up against the wall and knocked to the ground.  While Damion was on top of me choking me and slamming my head into the slate tiled floor repeatedly I was kicking the adjoined wall to the wife beater next door. I kicked it so hard so many times that everything fell off the wall and broke and my foot actually went through the sheet rock. I had been living like this for nearly 5 years at this point.  I was sick of myself.  I couldn't walk away.   I wanted to be loved so badly.    The times Damion showed me love were what I clung too.  It wasn't often but I was starved for it.   It was the ONLY love and affection I got besides from my girls.   For some reason I needed it from a man.  Being alone was not for me.  I loved sleeping alone and not being forced to have sex but I for some reason needed to know that I had someone. I was nothing on my own, I felt.   I loved playing house with me and the girls.  They had lots of little friends they had met at the condos and played on the playground outside our back door often.   Everything was good except for me getting my ass beat constantly.  And my crazy need to have a man in my life.  Even when that man was Damion.  When we had gotten back together this last time it was not the same as before.  There were nights we didn't stay together.  He was working and living his own life. Out of the blue one day he called me and told me that he had moved. Out of state.  Had left the night before and was far away allready. I was devestated. Completely. The games being played we're killing me.  Whether we were together or not or in the same state or not he still controlled my life.   This time, however, I didn't take me long to start enjoying the freedom and realizing that life was good.  I got a grip.   I was clean.  The girls were having a good life.   I was taking them to school every morning and getting back involved as a mother should.    Our home was home.    We loved it. I started looking for work again and three interviews later at the same office I was hired as a medical assistant.  I was so happy.  I could take myself off of the low income agreement and start paying rent.   I bought a cute little Honda for me and the girls.    I loved my job.   I was sober and being a single mom and rocking it.  I got to wear scrubs to work and I felt proud. This was an actual Dr office where we did procedures and in office surgeries.  The Dr trained me on everything.  I loved the medical field.  I actually started feeling smart. I was getting close with my family again.  They would come to my house and visit and life was just good.
I got a phone call one day and it was Damion.  He asked me to come to where he was and drive him back home. He was coming back. I didn't even hesitate. I told my work I was taking a week off and I went to him. He lived in a very rough area in a very scary apartment complex.   We're talking bullet holes in the doors and gangs walking around the streets outside.   The first night I'm there he takes me outside and we stand on the side walk.  A couple of Mexican men walk by and open their jackets.  Damion says "coca?  Coca?" .  One of the men says "c" ...gets something out of his inside pocket and exchanges it with Damion for money.  We go back up to the apartment and Damion rails out two huge lines of cocaine.  I had done cocaine before but he assures me that no, I have not done cocaine like this.  He was correct.   Mouth, nose, face, neck, numb, my head rolls back.....mmmmm.......that's so nice.  We spend the week doing "coca" and having sex.  One week and I didn't get my ass beat.  Weird.  We fought.  But not physically.  The plans had changed from before. I ended up flying there and back. Damion was going to come home a few weeks later.   And he did.  He came to my house the next day after he had arrived.  My girls were home and had some friends over.  He seemed agitated.  He shoved me into the bathroom...pushed me up against the wall and very violently fucked me. I started crying.  WTF was that?  He was mean. He hurt me.  We hadn't even spoken. He told me he went three weeks without sex and he needed it.  Then he told me he decided we shouldn't be together anymore after three weeks of calling me and telling me how much he missed me and couldn't wait to come home to be with me.  He left.  And I didn't see him again.
I carried on through all my fucked up emotions. Thankful for my job that I loved so much.  A few months later I started noticing some weight gain.  My boobs had gotten huge.  I hadn't been using since he left.  A few months.  So it was probably the lack of methenfedimines in my system.   Shrugged it off.  My co-workers worker looked at me one morning and said ,"girl....you're Prego".  I said no I'm not.....then I ran and puked three times.  No no no no NO!  GOD NOOOOOOO!  Dollar tree store on our lunch break to grab three pregnancy tests.   We run into the bathroom at work together and yes, I am indeed pregnant.
I am keeping this baby.  I will never go through what I went through before.  Ever.  I won't use.  I will keep working.  I am keeping this baby. Maybe this will  work.  I drove to Damions work and told him.  He gave me a hug and told me we were going to make this work. I truly thought that the abuse would stop here....that we could start over and be a happy couple. The girls were excited.  Everyone was.  I didn't touch drugs from that moment on.  Not one. I worked through out my pregnancy.  Damion and I got into a town house together with the girls. Life was going to be great. No more messing around.
Ya fucking right.  I don't know why I was shocked the first time he attacked me when I was pregnant, but I was.  It wasn't as severe as the past episodes....maybe because of the baby, I don't know.  But it wasn't good.   My heart hurt more deeply than it ever had from any other times he had hurt me.  I was visibly pregnant and still being pushed down, knocked around, and choked.  Okay. My concern for the child inside of me was tremendous.   Was she going to make it 9 months in there with what my body had to endure?  To that point in time Damion had still never attacked me directly in front of my girls.  They knew it was happening. They heard it all the time.  They had walked in a handful of times to Damion pathetically trying to make it look like we were wrestling or who knows what the fuck.  But in my sick manipulated mind I somehow took comfort in the fact that he would never hurt my girls.   He had never once layed a hand on them.  The verbal and mental abuse they went through was more than enough to make up for the lack of physical.
I somehow made it through my pregnancy without any significant trauma. My Dr was aware of the abusive relationship as I often had bruises on my inner thighs from sex and on my arms and neck.  I would always tell her I'm fine.  One evening late July Damion and I were at a softball picnic with the girls.   We were celebrating Holly's softball teams season.  It was a fun night. The girls were playing with their friends and all felt normal and good. Thats the thing with abusive relationships. As horrific as it is behind closed doors it can appear equally as normal outside of the door.  We stayed til dusk and then headed home. Holly had received metals and certificates for doing a great job that season. (She was a little bad ass by the way) We got home and were talking and congratulating Holly and I stepped into the bathroom.  I stood in front of the mirror to look at my huge belly.  I am a very small person so 9 months pregnant on me looks like I literally have a huge watermelon shoved in my shirt that my tiny frame can barely handle. I hear something that sounds like someone poured a cup of water onto the floor.  But I'm in the bathroom alone.  I look at the floor and there is a significant amount of water on the ground underneath me. It took me a moment to register.  My water had broke!   (In my other two labors this had never happened. ). I yelled "my water just broke!". I felt dizzy and everything turned black and I hit the floor. I remember waking up and Damion had my head in his lap and was yelling for the girls to get there overnight bags to go to Grandma's.  He helped me up and out to the car and ......blackness and nothing.  Out again.   I woke up and we were on the freeway half way there.  He was slapping my face and yelling "wake up!!!!". I had no idea what was happening.   I was sitting in warm water.  Oh my God!   I'm in labor!  I had no pain. Just tons and tons of water seeping out still.   I could barely keep my composure.  My head kept rolling back....everything was a blur.    Next thing I knew I was in a wheel chair being wheeled into a room.  Again, sitting in a puddle of warm water.  I notice I'm making a trail on the floor.  I remember thinking "is this normal?  What the hell?".  It must have been because a couple hours later I was holding my sweet, tiny, 6 lb baby girl in my arms.   My Poppy.  She was absolutely beautiful and she , even as a newborn less than a day old, seemed to have this peace about her.  She looked right into my eyes.   My daughter.  My daughter, Poppy.
Collette and Holly were so happy.  I was so happy.  Finally some joy brought into our lives.  A little tiny soul to make us smile....someone to love and to love us back. Surely this will soften Damions heart. How could it not?  She was perfect. And so innocent.
****Talking with my counselor about all of this literally had me sick.  To go over several years in such a small amount of time really put things into perspective for me.  I needed men.  Why? I was severely co-dependant. My self worth depended on men.  At that point in the story I had been with Damion for 6 years.   I left and went back, he left and came back so many times in those 6 years. I was so ashamed telling my counselor about this horrific relationship. Rehab was exhausting.  I knew we were coming to a peak. I had processed so much in the few months I had been there. I couldn't live there forever, all though I was starting to feel that it was the only safe place for me in the world. If I were to leave, could I even trust myself? I mean, listen to my life!!!! Look at the choices I had made. I was held accountable in there. I was starting to feel terrible anxiety and dread about leaving. (Even though it had not even been brought up yet) I knew it would come sooner or later. I had a long way to go before I would feel confident in myself.  So I'm processing and learning and continuing down my path of ultimate healing and the question is asked.  "Are you ready to go visit Poppy's grave?"