To Understand You Must Endure

It was the evening of February 2, 2001, or maybe early morning of the third, I can’t be sure. I had just laid my eight month old daughter in the safety of her crib for the night. I yawned, stretched, and gently slipped into bed next to my snoring husband. Snuggling into bed I closed my eyes for a night of … the baby crying. I leaped from the bed to get the baby and lay her next to me to nurse without disturbing my husband. Too late, he was awake and he was angry. As I lay back down with the baby between us he began berating me for bringing the baby into our bed. (This is something I had done since we first brought her home. It was the only way that I could get any sleep.) He yelled about everything he could think of until I covered my naked body with my bathrobe and began to exit the room, baby in my arms. As I reached for the door I heard a shuffle behind me and I was yanked back into bed by the collar of my robe. “Don’t you ever walk away from me when I’m talking to you,” he yelled. “I … I’m so sorry, I was just trying to let you get back to sleep, I wasn’t ignoring you, I swear!” Tears seeped between my eyelids. I was expecting him to understand, but he never understood, and the middle of the night was no time to ask him to. Instead, I felt his fist land upon the back of my head. Turning over I placed the baby on the bed and tried to fight back in a mama bear protecting her young fashion, but he just sat on me and punched my back and head. In a maddening attempt to keep him from injuring our child I squirmed so that I was now on my back and he was still sitting on me. Now he was pounding on my lactating breasts as I screamed in pain. “Stop! It hurts, please just stop.” And so he did, he actually stopped beating me, he let me get up from the bed, but this was just a pause. He grabbed me by my throat and slammed my limp body against the bedroom door. My feet dangling in the air, the only air my body had, because he was clamping my airway shut with both hands. I knew I was going to die. This was the day, the night that I said goodbye to my children … and his children too. The pain ceased, I no longer felt the death grip he had on my throat. Instead, I was sitting on top of the dresser watching him continue to beat my physical body as my spirit watched in dismay. A being of light joined me, and together we watched my body waiting for him to let go of it. The being said, “You have to fight back, you can’t let him win.” I ignored her and instead I went to the children’s rooms and wished them all goodbye and kissed each of the six children on their cheeks. Then I returned to my room, where my body lay crumpled on the floor. I knew I was dead, I knew it was time to move on, but he wasn’t done. I watched as he stretched his leg back into a kicking motion. He kicked my lifeless body and I felt his foot pull way, I was no longer two, I was one again and I felt every ache and pain he had inflicted upon me. I may have been one again, but I was broken … it would take three weeks and another beating before I had the courage to have him arrested for his abuse. This wasn’t the first beating or the tenth, in fact I had lost count, but this is the one that had me fearing for my life.