In the middle

My body was determined to keep playing mean tricks on me. In 1985 I hadn't had my period for at least 5 months and suddenly I start bleeding like there's no tomorrow. It frightened me since the blood looked fresh, not like the usual discharge. So I went to the ER to make sure everything was ok. After doing a urine test, blood tests, etc.. the doctor tells me I'm having what's known as a hysterical pregnancy. Great.. So he prescribes pain killers since I'm getting insane cramping. In my head I decide I will not take the pain killers and perform a take over of my brain instead. So the prescription gets tossed, I go home and suffer in silence.

A month later, I'm sitting on the couch with my 3 year old daughter next to me. She lays her head on my belly which still looks pregnant haha and suddenly raises her head and looks at me and says, Mommy, there's a baby in there!... 0_o huh??? She lays her head on my belly again and starts whispering to 'the baby'. I tell her there's no way I'm pregnant but she insists that I have a baby in my tummy. So I make an appointment to see my doctor the following week. I walk into his office and he looks up and says, you're pregnant. I'm looking at him like he's lost his mind and remind him that i had come in a month earlier suffering from a hysterical pregnancy. Since when do those turn into real babies?!

He orders blood drawn and a urine sample. I'm left in the waiting room to hear the test results which have been  requested post haste. After an hour he calls me back in and he says all the tests say it's negative. I agree since of course I was having a hysterical pregnancy! right? So just to make doubly sure, he sends me upstairs to the neonatal unit so they can strap a monitor to my belly. The nurse turns it on, does a few adjustments and there, going like a little drum is another heartbeat syncopated with mine. WTF!!! The nurse picks up the phone and tells my doctor there's a definite second heartbeat. She listens for a few and hangs up. I ask her if it's all done now and she says I have to wait a few minutes so they can record the heartbeat. yaeh, sure... my doctor walks in a few minutes later, comes over and starts listening with his stethoscope over various areas of my belly all the while I'm listening to that wee heartbeat on the monitor. Tears are leaving trails down my cheeks as I'm thinking of what would have happened to this wee heartbeat if I had taken those prescription pain killers. The doctor ordered an ultrasound to be performed asap to determine what stage the baby is in. That was never figured out by the way.

He was born December 27 1985, severely underweight, the bones of his skull undeveloped, nothing to hinge his jaw into, and no way to control his body temperature. I saw him, grey, lifeless, arms flopped on each side as the doctor quickly moved him to a table across the room. Another doctor, my neighbor, had joined him somewhere along the way and he also attended to the baby. He never cried after he was born and it took another event to fill me in on the details. What I didn't learn until 6 years later is that they had to reanimate him twice. He was put in an incubator and whisked away before I actually got to meet him.

We took him home after a week in the hospital. He was not doing well, not feeding well because of the lack of a hinge for his jaw, he was weakening day by day and I felt helpless watching my son slowly leaving us again. I begged the doctor to let me bring him home for the weekend and he finally agreed with the promise that I'd have him back to his office on Monday morning. That weekend, my son spent his time sleeping and eating. I made a soft kangaroo type pouch with shoulder straps that doubled back in front so they could be adjusted and I looked like I was still pregnant when I wore a big sweater over both myself and my son. He only came out of the pouch to eat and get a diaper change. Otherwise he lived in the pouch. It was the closest to a controlled environment I could think of to keep him warm since the farmhouse we lived in was heated with a wood stove that would go out in the wee hours of the morning and the house would grow frigid. Not a good place for a premature baby. But when I brought him back to the doctor on Monday, he was amazed that he had gained 4 ounces! and looked healthier and more relaxed than he'd looked the Friday before. So he gave me the go ahead to bring him home for good, but we had to come in every week to have his head examined, measured for growth or swelling, etc.. I was terrified of his little head getting hit since I could see the veins pulsing in his brain through the translucent skin. I kept a cap on his head all the time for the first few months until the cartilage grew and eventually turned to bones. He finally had a normal newborn's head at 9 months. He didn't sit up on his own until he was 1. The doctor kept telling me this was normal that he would be a tad behind because of his premature birth but that he would catch up and to give him time. By the time he was 2, he could barely stand, could not crawl or walk, and had trouble getting himself to a seated position. By then we had also noticed something was wrong with one of his eyes. After seeing a specialist, we were told he was born with a severe strabismus which because of the newest technology could be fixed quite successfully. He had laser surgery done on both of his eyes since the strabismus was occuring on both. He was alternating eyes so fast that you couldn't really see it. The surgery was quite successful, he still has a strabismus but it's not as severe as it would have been if he'd not had the surgery. A few years ago, he was diagnosed with the same condition I have and in his case, they are fighting each other which means he cannot be treated by wearing lenses for either condition.

Throughout those years, pain was my constant companion. Lower back pain so bad that I had to roll out of bed every morning as actually sitting up in bed would have seen me screaming. So roll out I did. I always felt stiff when I woke up, muscles not wanting to work. I was also plagued by headaches in the early years and eventually I started getting migraines. When I say migraines, I'm talking about debilitating. My husband cared so much about me that he left me for 3 days curled up in a fetal position in our bedroom banging my head against the wall because that felt better than the other pain eating away at my head. He finally took me to ER when his mother who was living with us by then told him he had to do something about the banging. The doctor asked him why he didn't bring me in sooner. By then I had a bruised forehead and sported freezer burn on the left side of my face where I'd been applying ice packs directly without a cloth wrap. He shrugged his shoulders and said I had a high pain tolerance and just sat there. He certainly knew how much pain I could handle....  They gave me a shot of something which to me felt like it did nothing but later was told that it knocked me out for 10 minutes at a time until another wave of the migraine overstepped it. I was still holding an ice pack to my face and rocking with pain on the gurney. After several hours, they finally gave me something else and it knocked me out cold. It was 1994 and that was my first migraine but not the last of many more to come. 

1995 found me finally having surgery for a single cell tumor in my left hand. This was a recurring tumor since I'd already had it removed twice over the past 17 years. So when it came back after the 2nd surgery, I just decided to ignore the bloody thing which apparently was not a danger to my health. Well, time went by, the darn thing kept growing larger with each passing year until it actually started impeding movement in my left hand. So it was surgically removed, the skin was reattached properly to my hand and thank goodness, it never came back. This was also the year that I broke my right leg just above the ankle. I was doing chores by myself as my husband didn't bother to get out of bed that morning, as usual. I had to let the does out of the stalls, chase them into the milking parlour, then after I was done milking them, chase them back out of the parlour and into their pen before I opened the next pen. On the way out to get the second group I had to dodge sideways to stop a doe from running back into the parlour and my right foot hooked into something on the ground and down I went on top of my right foot. I heard a snapping sound and then the pain hit. I saw starts and fuzzy dots like tinker bell floating in front of my eyes. I had to hold on to the pen next to me to keep myself from fainting. Then I saw the does were trying to get back in the parlour so I pushed myself up and used a pitchfork as a crutch to get them back to their pen. On the way by I finally saw what I had hooked my foot into, it was a piece of the large grade grid we used to make pens. One had been knocked to the ground and covered with hay from the does passing over it. I managed to finish milking and headed back to the house to get the kids off to school. My husband finally came downstairs when he heard the bus leaving. I was sitting at the table carefully taking my boot off because my right ankle hurt like an angry nest of wasps. (I had put a plastic bag over the boot since I didn't want to take it off before the kids left for school) I've always had issues with my right ankle in the past. I've stopped counting how many times I've turned or sprained that ankle so I treated this like any other time I'd sprained my ankle. He asked me what happened, so I told him what happened. He shrugged his shoulders and went out to the barn. I finally got my boot off, took a look at my ankle and winced. I was bruising rapidly and the swelling was growing by the second. I hobbled over to the bathroom and got 2 ace bandages out and bandaged my ankle as tightly as I could stand to keep the swelling down. I put my sock back on and my boot and went back out to the barn since there wasn't much I could do for a sprain. I figured after chores were done I  could put my ankle up and put some ice on it. I did and the bruising was climbing up towards my knee. I figured to myself I had given it a really bad sprain and since I'd always been told that sprains hurt more than breaks I figured it was ok. Let's just say I was far from it. A week went by, the swelling started going down again, the bruising was quite the technicolor show and every step I took I could hear a distinct click coming from my ankle. I shrugged it off and kept on working. My mother in law who is disabled had a doctor's appointment the following week. I always took her in since she could not get up the steps, I'd carry her up and bring her wheelchair up after. When I walked in carrying her, the waiting room was empty and it was deathly quiet, you could have heard a pin drop. So my click sounded like  a shotgun every time I took a step. I put my mother in law on a chair, went back out to get her wheelchair and came in just as the doctor came out. I opened up the wheelchair, put her in it and pushed her into the office. The doctor walking in behind me. I excused myself, went back out to wait in the waiting room and hoped my bandage was tight enough to keep the throbbing pain down. 10 minutes went by, the angry wasps are finally going to sleep again and my mother in law comes out. The doctor behind her, looks at me and says I think you need to come in here. So in I went. He came in behind me, closed the door and asked me what was wrong with my ankle. I explained I'd given it a really bad sprain and that it was taking longer to heal because I couldn't stay off of it considering the nature of my work. While we're talking he's got my foot up on the examining table and slowly undoes the laces and takes it off. I turn white but keep a straight face. I pull up the leg of my jeans to my knee since the bruising has crept all the way up there and he whistles. Ok, so it may be a really really bad sprain? I slip my sock off and he starts taking the bandage off slowly and carefully. I think he already that what I've been calling a sprain is actually a break. He gets all the bandages off and then starts on the tape. I had resorted to using medical tape wrapped and criss crossed as a support for my foot to keep it from moving too much. Once the tape is off he starts feeling my ankle and my leg and asks me to lay my leg out straight on the examining table. I carefully move my leg into a stretched out position, the wasps are coming back... he grabs my foot by the ankle and the top of it and gently pulls until he hears a very distinct click sound. He gently lets go and says he wants me to go get x-rays of my leg. So I drive my mother in law home and drive back to the hospital for x-rays. Of course, they show a nice break just above the ankle. The clicking was the bones sliding past each other on the way up and hitting each other on the way down. He put my foot and leg in a walking cast for 10 weeks which by the time the 10 weeks are up has very little left of it around the foot. He said I had to stay off of it for at least a day which never happened. I was also supposed to have someone drive me home, yeah.. like that's going to happen. I drove myself home using my left foot for the gas and brake. My right leg was extended into the passenger's foot well. The next morning I was back out at the barn since my husband had not bothered to even open an eye when the alarm went off. And life went on, albeit at a much slower pace for me but chores still had to be done and animals fed. After a couple of weeks, my husband was sitting at the table when I came back in from the barn one morning. I always came in around 7 to get the kids up and ready for school and this was like any other morning except that he was sitting at the table. I tried to make conversation as if this was a normal morning all the while preparing breakfast, lunches and limping along on my cast. The kids were about to leave for school when he stood up and screamed at me, demanding to know if I expected a fucking medal or what?!! Both kids fled and I closed the door behind them. He threw his coffee cup across the kitchen and it landed hard against his mother's bedroom door. She screamed and he fled out the back door. I went over and told her it was ok, and picked up the broken pieces of the mug. Right up to the bitter end his mother refused to accept that her son was a violent man. Even when she saw the remnants of his outbursts, even when the police came because neighbours had called out of worry for the kids and myself, even when I showed her the bruises on my body, she stood fast in her belief.

That same year I lost hair by the handful. I have very long hair, over 3 feet in length which I usually keep in a braid or two or wound up into a bun and clipped to the back of my head. When braided, each braid would be the thickness  of 3 thumbs put together. Now, just one braid doesn't even reach the thickness of a thumb. It never grew back.

1996 came around and I had dropped a lot of weight to which I attributed to the fact that I was working 16 hour days non stop. The joys of farming ... But one morning while feeding the baby goats, I found a lump in my left breast. I didn't actually go looking for it, I had my arms all the way forward and felt something hard against my left arm. Reached in thinking it was a halls losenge or a pen that was sticking through my shirt but nope, this was in my breast. I broke out in a cold sweat (in march) because I knew what finding a lump meant. I'd already lost my maternal grandmother to cancer and seen 2 of my father's sisters fighting breast cancer as well. Never mind the fact that 5 years later it would strike my sister as well. I finished my chores and headed in. Took a shower, all the while my head is turning and I'm feeling nauseous. I check again while in the shower and sure enough, there's the one, but I also feel 7 more!! I almost fainted at that point, the blood simply drained out of my head and joined my heart and stomach on the floor of the shower. I dressed and told my mother in law i had to go pick up supplies in town. Drove directly to my doctor and thank goodness for small town practices (back then) I walked in the office and just said to the receptionist that I'd found a lump. She put me through within minutes. He examined me, agreed that there were 8 lumps in my left breast but none in the right. The right breast had gravel only. I've always had gravelly breasts, painful and not fun. And thank goodness for small towns again, got me to get a breast x-ray done that morning and the results sent to the surgeon the same day. I was then given an appointment to meet with the surgeon for the next day. I went home and told my mother in law and my husband what had been found. My mother in law asked when the next appointment was, I told her and she asked if I was going alone or was my husband coming along. Since he was sitting in the room when she asked, I thought he would answer. All he said as he was getting up to leave was that he had no time to waste on that and walked out. Thanks a lot dude... Anyway, my sister in law (she married my husband's brother) came with me to the surgeon. He tried to biopsy the lumps several times which hurt like hell btw! with no success. He scheduled me for a lumpectomy the following Monday. During the surgery, he found another tumour growing on my ribs under my breast which he scraped off. In total he removed 7 lumps and the one on my ribs. I didn't realise this until weeks later when I could finally touch my left breast without experiencing new heights in pain and found the original lump was still there! His response, If it grows, come back and see me. yaeh.. sure buddy... he's retired now. Thank goodness. But yes, that last tumour is still there, not growing (knocks loudly on wood) and serves to remind me to do regular breast exams.

As usual pain, and abuse both physical, emotional and by then sexual were my constant companions. Things were not going well on the farm, the animals milk production was dropping off, we were losing animals left right and center from infections and we had no clue why. My husband's rages were getting progressively worse as well. The days where the milking and chores went without a blow up were fast becoming a thing of the past. We invested in some equipment so my husband could work off the farm which helped but wasn't enough to keep up with the crippling mortgage. On more and more mornings I was the only one out at the barn doing the milking and chores, my husband wasn't getting out of bed anymore. He'd given up on everything. In a way, it was ok since it meant I could do the chores and milking in peace and the animals always milked better when he wasn't around. But the other mornings when he did come out were not fun. Most of those I'd end up finishing up the milking by myself after I'd reassembled all the milking equipment he'd throw all over the parlour, and calmed the animals down enough to be milked. All this was causing the farm to spiral deeper and deeper into debt with no respite in the foreseable future since grain prices were rising each season, then a drought caused hay prices to rise higher than ever. Being a fledgling farm, we couldn't weather those rising costs and we eventually lost the farm to the bank in 1999.

By then my husband's rages and destructive behaviour had gradually worsened. The previous 2 years had seen a rise in violent outbursts, which ended up with me getting punched and elbowed so hard in the kidneys that I peed blood for a week. I had contusions, bruises all over from being slammed into walls. And my throat was raw from crying and also having a rubber hose wrapped around it from behind while I grappled with my hands to get some air in. Everything crashed down in 1998 when he tried to first kill me by hitting me with the truck which sent me flying backwards into the 800 litre milk bulk tank, your head and body doesn't stand much of a chance when it first goes through a door and then meets solid stainless steel. I went to the doctor the following day to find out how my husband was doing since he'd called the police telling them he'd killed the bitch and they had taken him to the local hospital for supervised detention.  The doctor asked me how I was doing. I had some cuts from the broken glass, a whopping lump on my forehead (it's now a shallow ditch) from where my head had hit the bulk tank and bruises scattered here and there. I've had worse so this was a normal day for me. The doctor started asking me questions about my husband's outbursts and I started telling him a bit of what was going on. I left a lot out since I kept thinking I was the cause of it. By the time my visit was done, he told me I was suffering from post traumatic syndrome. The years of abuse were taking a toll on my body and my nervous system. I asked him if he had any pills for whatever that was and he said no, and to try and get away as much as I could when my husband had outbursts. He was also going to order a series of tests to be done on my husband since he thought there might be an underlying problem. That part at least had a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

He followed trying to kill me by trying to kill himself a month later. Just as chores were starting he blew up, by then I'd given up trying to figure out the why of it. He was outside in front of the barn, the tractor was parked but revving by the side. I heard screaming outside and went out to see what the problem was. The sight that met my eyes as I walked out the door just about stopped my heart. I see my husband laying in front of the tractor wheels on the ground, my son is sitting in the driver's seat, the tractor is revved up full, exhaust streaming out and the only thing holding it there is my son's feet on the break and clutch. I scream are you nuts at my husband as I run over to the tractor to grab the keys out of it and shut it down. My son is crying, terrified. What he had been screaming at my son was 'take your foot off the pedals! come on you little bastard, you know you want to!' I could see my son's legs shaking violently because he didn't want to do that. Once I'd shut off the tractor, taken my son out of the driver's seat and put him down telling him to run and hide, my husband was yelling at him that he was a useless piece of shit and that he was better off dead. I felt like jumping on him at that point and just tearing him piece by piece until he stopped screaming obscenities. But instead I tried my best to look calm and walked back into the barn. My daughter was keeping a lookout from the hay mow where her little brother had joined her and she came down saying that her dad was walking down the road towards the lake.He walked as far as the highway and laid down in the middle of the road. When I drove up, he got up and started walking. He tried to walk out in front of a semi. I managed to jump out of the car quickly and push him out of the way just as the police came driving up with sirens blasting. It took 3 of them to subdue him to the ground. He told them to shoot him. He went catatonic and he was transported to the nearest psychiatric hospital for his own protection. He stayed in a psych ward for 10 weeks. He came out claiming he was healed. By then, I was exhausted. I had tried to keep the farm running by myself and had failed. About a week after he came out of the hospital, I hit a low and just refused to come upstairs from the den. I didn't want to see anyone, hear anyone, eat with the family, etc... I would come up at night after everyone else was gone to bed and have some peanut butter sandwiches and even those tasted like cardboard. I didn't know what day of the week it was or even if it was still the same month. I had cut myself off from society and I felt safe down there in my den.

A therapist was coming to our home twice a week to do some training with my son and she noticed I was not around. My son told her what was going on and she spoke to another therapist who came to visit one day. I think if she had approached me any other way, I would have sent her packing. What she did differently is that she asked me from the top of the stairs after introducing herself if I would allow her to come and visit with me.  I told her she could come down if she wanted to but not to expect anything from me. I had reached a state of mind where I didn't really care anymore what happened to me. So down she came and sat on the only chair available since the only other piece of furniture was the sofa bed which I was on. She just sat there and looked at me. She smiled and waited... and waited.... and I finally asked her what she wanted. She kept on smiling and said, whenever you're ready I'm here to listen. She tricked me! I replied that no one wanted to listen to me, that I wasn't worth anyone's time, the whole mess came pouring out. Then I started crying and more mess came out. I laid my life bare to her, I opened my heart and let her look inside. I was afraid of what she'd say. I was convinced I was the root of all evils, that everything my husband had said to me about me in the last 18 years of marriage was right. And since the nurse who had headed my husband's recovery team at the psych ward had told me it was my fault my husband had tried to kill himself and that I enabled him... I had no clue what she meant by that and when I'd asked, she had given me a long convoluted explanation that made no sense at the time. I'm not an idiot, I'm fairly well read, I'm always searching for information about anything and everything and she made no sense. And all the therapist did was nod and kept on smiling and handing me tissues. I think she'd brought her own box since I had been using tp to wipe my nose. When I had finally run out of steam and just sat there hiccuping and waiting for her to tell me he was right, she looked at me, I mean really looked at me and said "None of this is your fault". That blew my mind. That simple answer literally sent me reeling backwards. What did she mean by None of this is your fault!!! I guess my face must have been an open book because she started speaking again and said let me explain.

She then explained that life is made up of crossroads and that when you reach a crossroad, a decision has to be made. Which way will I take, etc... and that I will not be able to move forward in my life until I make a decision. She explained that many people reach a crossroad and get stuck there. They can't or won't make a decision and until they do, their life is on standby. She then told me I had reached one of those crossroads in my life and that before I continued on, I would have to decide which route I would go. That it might take me a while to figure out which way to take, that the answer wasn't always obvious and that there is no time limit on the choosing, but the longer I take the less life I have to live. That to me was one of the best explanations I'd ever been given for how life proceeds. Twelve years have gone by since that conversation, I've never forgotten because this was the conversation that made the biggest impact on my life, on my decisions. It was like a light bulb was turned on in the closet where I was hiding and I finally saw my life and saw that I could do something better with it. Reality has a way to shove it's nose in where it doesn't belong mind you and that decision took another 2 years before I took a step on one of those roads at the crossroad that I had stopped at 2 years before. The end result of this conversation is that I came out of the basement the next day and didn't go back in. That in my mind I had started to make preparations for the day that would come that I would gain my freedom from the abuse. It was also the day I realised I was no longer in love with him and hadn't been for the previous 5 years at least.

My husband's high lasted 5 months until one day all hell broke loose. It was raining, we were heading over to the recycling yard to pick up building supplies and a wiper stopped working. He pulled over and was trying to fix the wiper which ended up snapping off in his hands and that was the straw that broke the camels back so to speak. I just sat in my corner not daring to make eye contact. He got back in the truck, slammed it into first gear and took off like the devil was after us, the whole time screaming at the truck, at me, slamming the brakes on repeatedly which would send me flying against the door, no shoulder belt. That's when I knew that his stay in the psyche ward was only a vacation for the underlying problems he was suffering from and that I would never be safe with him.

I know this all sounds insane, that I should have left. Why I didn't leave... good question.

First, a disabled male child, is not welcome in a woman's shelter.

Second, your 16 year old daugther is not welcome in a woman's shelter if she's not being beaten.

Third, I would have to give up my son to children's aid services if I went to a shelter.

So in sum total, I was not leaving my daughter behind nor was I abandoning my son to CAS. It took another 2 years for the planets to align themselves and all pieces to fall into place for a chance at stopping the insanity.

In 1998 I worked as a chicken catcher. I was in a crew with a dozen or so young men, which was a tad uncomfortable since I could have been mother to most of them. We would go out each night to a different farm where we'd catch the chickens in vast batteries and load them into trucks to be taken to the slaughterhouse for processing. I lasted 3 weeks. I woke up one afternoon with both hands frozen in a clawlike shape. and when I tried to move them, pain would speed it's way up and down my arms and into my hands. The wrists were swollen. I couldn't even hold a glass. I went to ER and the doctor there said it was carpal tunnel. He prescribed pain relievers and something to bring the swelling down. It took 2 months for me to regain the use of my hands with physiotherapy and ultransound treaments and they still gave me problems every winter for the following 4 years. Oh and the total amount I had made for those 3 weeks of hell? 132$

After I recovered from the carpal tunnel enough to be able to type, I went to work as a telemarketer to bring in money for the farm. I was putting in 12 hour shifts as often as I could to at least pay some of the bills that were piling up higher every month. My husband was supposed to be caring for our disabled son. I finally found out what was going on when I received a call from CAS advising me that if things did not change for my son that they would be forced to remove him from home care. Turns out my husband was spending all day playing games on the computer, and my daugther was cooking meals and my son was fending for himself. Since my shifts usually went from 11 am to at least midnight most days, I was going home, eating whatever I could find in the fridge and falling asleep only to get up and go to work again. I quit my job to save my son and told my husband that he had to find work, or retrain, make a career change. He just sat there and asked me what he should do. I asked him what he'd enjoyed doing the most in the past 20 years and he answered trucking. So he went off to trucking school and all looked to be going well.This was one of the few moments in 19 years of marriage where he actually asked me for input and followed it.

He graduated with high marks in his class and it didn't take long for him to land a good driving job with a local flatbed company. When he was on the road, everything was great, when he came home, all hell would break loose. It didn't matter what I did, what I said, it was never good enough. One night he came home directly from a long haul. I would usually pick him up at the yard. He was ranting and raving about one thing and another and I was keeping my distance knowing that he could turn violent at any minute. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, my son had sneaked his way up the stairs from the basement den and was watching his Dad. My instant of inattention was also not missed by my husband. He darted forward quickly and grabbed the front of my t-shirt. I jerked back in surprise and fear and my shirt ripped off with my bra which he'd also grabbed. In that millisecond I watched my son go nuts. He came screaming out of the hallway and jumped at his father, beating on him with his fists, kicking him and screaming to leave his mom alone. I realised then that I had to do something, sooner than later and started watching for my chance to get out with the least amount of trouble for my children.

The later part of 1999 and early part of 2000 were filled with fear, abuse, self loathing for being a coward. I was contemplating death again. I felt like I had failed everyone, my children, myself. I was getting very little support from anyone when I would bring up marital problems. Everyone knew my husband as this great guy, helpful, generous, undertanding, etc etc etc... I should have had a camera running at home. They would have seen the real deal then not the sham that he put on in public.

The occasion finally presented itself when we moved out of the farm we'd lost to the bank and into an apartment in a small town. The day of the move was horrific, he threw boxes onto the truck and off the truck and into the apartment like they were filled with wood, never mind the china, framed photographs, and other precious breakables. He managed to smash about half of the breakables we owned at the time. Some where irreplaceable mementos from my grandmother and some from his mother. He didn't care. He left the next day for a week long haul and I started unpacking our things. By the end of the week, I had most boxes unpacked and several boxes filled with broken things that couldn't be repaired ready for trash day. Some of the things that were broken that week broke my heart as well, but let's move on. Two weekends went by, he came home, as usual screaming, ranting, raving and I hit bottom. I sat on the couch and quietly told him to get out, leave, go away, it's over.  That was on June 27th. It took 6 hours before he left, during his ranting and raving and throwing things around, I fell asleep. I know that sounds funny but I was exhausted. I'd reached a point where I didn't care what he did anymore, I just wanted him gone.