Today is an anniversary. It's one that is very emotional for me from both positive and negative sides. I try to stay focused on the positive aspects, but that isn't always easy. I figured the best way to handle it was to get it out of my head and onto my blog since that really is why I started this whole thing anyway.
May 4, 2015 started out like most any other day with an alarm clock going off at 5:00 am. I rushed out of bed and scrambled to pack a lunch made up of a sandwich on home baked bread, chips, Powerade, and a cupcake. I then quickly heated a sub par breakfast of a frozen croissant sandwich and had everything sitting on the table by 5:15 am. I walked into the living room and booted up my laptop, make sure his work bags were packed and sitting by the door then returned to the bedroom to make the bed. He gave me instructions on what work I needed to get done before he arrived at work and walked out the door.
The morning was so ordinary. Like a million that had come before and what I fully feared would be a million more to follow. By 5:30 am he was on the phone with me asking constant updates on where I was with the grade book. See, I may not have had a "real job" but everything that was done outside of the confines of the classroom were my responsibility. It was my job to make him look good, competent, and exceedingly well prepared at all times. I did my job and I did it well.
Throughout the day, as always there were constant emails and check ins. God forbid I not answer my phone or respond to a text or email within about a minute. I also had housework to do, 10 kids to homeschool, and this year, I had been sneaking around and gotten a work from home job so I could make some money he didn't know about. He had found out once that I had money hidden away and told me to quit immediately. I also had to surrender the money tucked away in the work account. He was very forceful in his request. I'll leave that there and not go into detail. Anyway, I was still sneaking and still working. So, I had a deadline of my own to meet. A post that needed to be up because it was May 4th, Star Wars Day.
Flash forward to the end of a very long day. 12 hours after I got up and at a full run all day. My post is still not up. In fact, I'm still working on it and he walks in the door. Busted. This lead to yelling, screaming, crying. Him telling the kids how negligent and worthless I was before taking them outside with him. In that moment something snapped. I realized I was more afraid of him coming back into the house, of confining me in the bedroom, of what would follow than I was of dying.
I walked back into the bedroom and wrote out a detailed note. It is amazing how calm and unemotional the whole thing was for me. I talked about how much I loved the kids and how much I would miss them but mostly it was all business. Passwords, websites, and due dates for bills so that it wouldn't be too hard to keep the house running without me. I then took about 2 weeks worth of medicine in the space of 2 minutes or less. I won't go into detail on what I took but I will say that I had done my research and this was no cry for attention. All my research had shown this was a no fail method. For a few minutes I just sat there. Then, I was washed over with fear. Not about what would happen to the kids without me there so much as what would happen if one of the kids found me and they were all alone for the day. I couldn't bear the thought of that.
I walked out onto the porch in the back and told him what I had done. It was all so calm. Then I walked back into the house and climbed back into the middle of the bed to wait since I wasn't sure how long the medicine would take to work or what would happen when it did. He started calling people. The first call wasn't to 911 but to some people from church. One must appear properly concerned after all. As the children came in trying to figure out what was going on, I told them how much I loved them and said my goodbyes. I refused to leave the bed. I didn't see any reason why I should. Eventually, someone from church with medical training convinced him that because I was refusing to get off the bed and into the car, he had to call 911. In a different situation he may have well tried to force me to comply but with an audience, as always he was the picture of care and concern.
Police and EMTs finally arrived. EMTs checked my blood sugar, heart rate, etc and found me to be in no immediate medical danger and therefore had to walk out the door because I was refusing medical treatment. The police were a whole different story. With the note and no denial of what I had done, they could take me into protective custody as it were and insist on medical treatment at the local ER. I continued to refuse. At that point I was told that if I didn't get up and walk out with them, I would be cuffed or tied and physically removed from the house and forced into the police car. The thing that the officer said that got me to move is that he was sure I didn't want the kids to see me dragged out of the house in cuffs. He was right, I didn't want that to be their last memory of me.
I walked out of the house with officer on either side fully expecting never to walk in again. Once I was out of the house, I had no intention of being compliant and besides, my research had indicated that even with going to the hospital, there was little to nothing doctors could do to keep me alive once the medicine started working. During the ER time, a police officer sat with me constantly and they wouldn't let him come back. When the doctor and nurses wanted to do labs and other assessments, initially I refused. The officer made it clear that I would be restrained and the hospital staff would be allowed to do what they thought was best regardless. Some of the woman I was before the years of abuse popped up likely because at that point I felt I had nothing to lose anyway. I literally told the officer I had never worn handcuffs when it wasn't for fun and hated to break my streak now.
Shortly after, a most unexpected thing happened. I threw up in a major way. That isn't all that unexpected but the fact that all the pills I had swallowed were still completely whole all that time later was. Over the course of the entire event, I was never in any danger although they did keep me overnight and monitored my blood sugar very closely. I was moved from the ER to a regular room, still with police supervision and the next day I was transferred to a Crisis Center on a minimum of a 72 hour hold. Before the police car left, I handed my wedding rings to him and told him I was done. In that moment, I knew I couldn't survive any more of his abuse. In that moment, I was confident I meant it.
I look back now and wonder if the next couple of days had gone differently if I would have been able to stick to what I was saying and feeling right then. I was one in the past who was often too quick to judge others who were in an abusive relationship and didn't leave. Or worse, those who left one and then came back to it again and again. I didn't understand the power the abuser held, how they lived in your head even when they weren't there, until I was fighting it myself.
But, instead, God or the Force or whatever you believe in did for me and the kids what I don't know I could have done for myself or them at that time. May 4, 2015 became a day that changed my life for the better. Yes, it could and should have ended very differently than it did but it still freed me and the kids from him. I think I will wait and go into more details on that in a couple of days but for now, I am feeling less emotionally raw and more in control of myself so this seems to be a very good place to stop for now.
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