My ex.......my last entry was about him, this one ain't, but it sorta is.
When I was sixteen I was an idealist. I wanted college so I could support myself and never need any help, to me that's freedom. My train de-railed when I met Terry. I'd been a wallflower all my teen years because I wasn't the prettiest girl around and I didn't put out. I saw guys in school carrying a girl's books and walking her to class, then halfway down the hall he's yucking it up with is friends about having nailed her. I just didn't want to be locker room talk. Terry was five years older than me, in the military and fairly patient. I was exactly twenty five days from my seventeenth birthday before I gave in. By that time I'd gone from being a prude to smoking pot every chance I got and drinking if I felt like it. My attitude was who needed al-co-hall when you could have pot? (I have a code language stuck in my mind and that stuff gets you drunk. Drunk means you can't function conjunction junction and who needs that when pot only slows you down?)
Once Terry got me to making compromises there seemed to be no limit.
When you have a mom who goes through your things you don't want her to find birth control, so I didn't take it and had no one to take me to a clinic anyway. Terry wouldn't wear a condom so I assumed, since we were engaged, that children weren't out of the question, until I got pregnant, which he could have foreseen. Once I did he forcefully insisted on an abortion. He'd already been abusive, what was to stop him from really hitting me in the stomach and making me miscarry? What was to stop him from really abusing the baby if it was born? What kind of life would an unwanted child have? Like mine? I was told at six that if I didn't like the rules I should move out, I was told that more than once by a mom who had mental issues. I don't blame her, I don't blame him. I for sure didn't blame God. My parents told me not to date anyone over eighteen. Had I listened to them. My dad wondered what a twenty one year old man wanted with a sixteen year old kid. I was offended. I shouldn't have been, it was a legit question, it wasn't personal.
So here I was deciding the fate of my first child. I executed that baby.
For some reason I thought it was like putting an animal to sleep. I didn't have any counseling, I didn't have the procedure explained, I found out how violent it was on the table as it was happening. I was a monster killing someone I already loved. Three hundred dollars.
Terry, Jim and Jimmy had gone to pick up some Squire tickets and some booze for the ride home. It would be my first concert. They were waiting in the car when I came outside. Jimmy says to me, "Man, I thought you'd be crying and stuff......" They handed me a bottle of brass monkey and I was offended. My porch monkey was in some trash bin in the building I'd just exited and they wanted to hand me a bottle of brass monkey? Like it was some kind of joke? I drank it down that night to the last drop and I've never had it before or since.
I promised God two things on that table: I'd never have another abortion, and I'd never have children with Terry in any capacity for him to abuse them. I kept both of those promises.
Before the concert I tried to break up with Terry, I didn't love him anymore..........I didn't love me anymore either. He told me that wouldn't fly, told me that wherever I went, whoever I was with, whatever I did.........."I will be there."
Abuse comes in many forms and all of it tears down your spirit, your sense of self worth and your confidence. I was used to it in one form or another but I always reminded myself that others had it worse. I figured I'd go ahead and marry him like my mom wanted me to do and maybe in a year or two he'd hate me and move on to the next thing. I did some things to make him hate me and they were designed to make divorce his idea. We were together for nine years and then finally I was able to put a state line between us.
This was supposed to be the point in my life where I met mr. right and had the family I desired. Did I skip a lot? Yeah I have. You haven't met Larry or Gail..........I think..........hell, no one pays me to think.
