Almost Unforgiveable

I've been procrastinating writing this post. I want to tell my side of the event, my view of it, but I also want to be fair and it can be hard to walk that tightrope. I will do my best and ask for grace along the way.

My husband and I had been married 11 years. I was mother to 2 amazing, beautiful boys. My mother's life had started to settle down and for that I was grateful. I had no relationship with my biological father and limited contact with my stepfather. I was beginning to find some strength inside myself, but it would only last a short time and then my past beliefs would kick back in and I'd feel overwhelmed and lost.

As I worked to figure out how to be in my life and not be in so much pain, the arguments with my husband continued. As the arguments continued, I moved from "how can I fix this" to "I'm not sure I can survive this". I didn't want a divorce. I didn't want to leave my life. I didn't want it for me or my kids, not after everything I had been through as a child. I wanted desperately to give them an intact family. But I was starting to believe I would not make it if it kept going the way it was and I couldn't see it ever changing.

Slowly, I could feel a shift inside of me, but I couldn't label what was happening yet. I started to be able to stay in my own body during the arguments with my husband. Instead of crumbling into tiny little pieces and begging for forgiveness and promising to do better, I could calmly apologize to get out of the argument and move on. I felt like a little bit of power was growing in me and I could see that I could survive the verbal attacks and not completely lose myself. Little by little, I felt confidence inside me grow. My husband was also noticing it and it was causing more escalation in our arguments. He didn't appreciate my growing strength and I could see his displeasure and frustration growing too. I was vacillating between standing my ground and trying to please him. One incident that helped me see this was "the sandwich missile day".

During the summer months, my husband would take a lunch to work as he would spend most days on the tractor. He had his standard sandwiches and had complained that I didn't make him different ones. I totally understood that it would be hard to eat the same lunches day in and day out, so i traveled to Logan to go to the bigger grocery store and buy some better options for his lunch. I purchased the expensive lunch meat, better cheese and a few upgraded sides. I even purchased hoagie rolls instead of the basic white bread to elevate things even more. It was a hit to the grocery budget, but he was worth it. I didn't tell him about it, as I thought it would be a great surprise! Lunch time rolled around and I received a call from my mother in law that my husband needed to see me and told me that I needed to run out to the field he was working in. It was a Friday and I was excited because I thought maybe he wanted to go out for a date night and he was going to tell me to get a baby sitter. After all, I had made him a beautiful lunch and he was likely super appreciative of it. So I hopped in the car and ran over to the field. He stopped the tractor when he saw me arrive and I walked over to see him. When I got close to him and the tractor, he got out and took the sandwich from his lunch box and threw it at me. He yelled at me "what are you trying to do, kill me with this shit?!" I was stunned. I replied "no, I thought you would like it". He told me he didn't, that he worked too long to not eat decent food and I needed to get him something he could actually eat. I apologized and ran to our small town store, purchased regular white bread and some basic bologna and made him a new sandwich and took it back to him. I apologized to him again and left him mad as hell at me.

I too, was extremely angry and needed to talk through what had just happened. I drove to my friends home and described the recent events. When I told her that I made him a new sandwich, she was appalled. "What do you mean you made him a new sandwich?!" "are you kidding me?" She grabbed my hand and led me down to the shop that sat on her property where her husband was working on his diesel truck. "Tell him the story" she instructed me. Her husband was a friend of my husband's and I was a little bit nervous to tell him the story. The truth was that I was embarrassed that I hadn't been able to make my husband happy and wondered if he would judge me as harshly as my husband had. But since my friend, his wife, was adamant that I tell him, I proceeded in spite of my fear. When I got to the part of the story where I started to explain how I went to the local store, he stopped me and said "if you are going to tell me you made him a new sandwich, you deserve what you got". I stopped and said of course I made him a new lunch, he was going to be hungry as his other sandwich was on the ground. They both shook their heads in disapproval and attempted to help me see how I was rewarding bad behavior and that I needed to stop doing that. I have to be honest and tell you it took me a while to accept what they were trying to get me to see. I might have agreed with them in the moment, but deep down, I wasn't sure they were right. I wasn't sure because I was more afraid of what would come next, if I didn't comply with his wishes. I needed to stop being afraid and start standing in my own self. This wasn't the only teaching moment, there were many. Little by little I started to see that my life wasn't the way it should be, that my marriage wasn't what it should be and that there was a different way to be. I just needed to figure out what that was.

As I started to stand in my own self, I started to see how angry it made him. We would go back and forth and it wasn't good. I knew it wasn't good for me, but mostly I knew it wasn't good for my young boys. I finally took a couple of days and went for the weekend to my mother's home. Now that she was remarried and in a more stable place herself, I had somewhere to go to rest, relax and try to think. When it came time for me to go home, I didn't want to. I looked for reasons why we couldn't go home. I was too tired to drive, the boys wanted to stay an extra day, but my husband wanted us home so we loaded up and started the 2 hour drive home.

The entire drive I thought about the relationship and how horrible I felt in it. I couldn't imagine staying in it any longer, but I couldn't imagine leaving either. I didn't have any answers and as I drove home, I just wanted it all to stop. The arguing, the fear, the pain. We arrived home and I got the kids to bed. Once they were in bed, we started to discuss things and it started to get volatile. But this time, I didn't escalate with him. I got a diet Pepsi with ice in my glass and stayed calm. The calmer I stayed, the angrier he got. I don't remember all that we discussed. I remember sitting on the couch, holding my position (whatever it was) and watching him sitting in the chair on the opposite side of the room. At some point, I said some like "I can't do this any more" and things went into slow motion. He made his way over to me. I was struck in the head, above my eye. I went to grab the phone to call someone, who - I don't know. He ripped the phone out of the wall and as he did, I went out the front door and ran across the street to the neighbors house and pounded on their door. I'm not sure how late it was, but after midnight I'm sure. They came to the door and I asked them if I could use their phone. They let me in and led me to their phone. I dialed my mother's home and when she answered and I heard her voice, I fell on the ground and started to cry. "He hit me. He hit me" I repeated it and as I said it my mother told her husband to get on the other phone. I heard him join the call and he told me to call the police and that they were on their way. They told me they loved me and that everything would be ok. I hung up and asked the neighbor woman if she would go sit with my boys while I called the police. She walked over and my husband left the house. I called the police from their home and they told me to wait there. I did as I was told.

It didn't take long before the police arrived and took my statement. They informed me that they would take his statement and have him stay somewhere else for the night. I was given ice for my goose egg and instructions on what to do the next morning to file an order of protection and they left. I walked back to my house and sat in silence. The glass that contained my diet Pepsi had been thrown towards the TV and there was a chip out of the TV. The phone cord was ripped and the phone was still lying on the ground. I cleaned everything up and sat in disbelief. It didn't seem very long before my mother and her husband were at my door. They sat with me, hugged me and encouraged me to get some sleep and that we would make decisions in the morning. I walked back to my bedroom for what would be the very last time.

Morning came and I went into a mode I would stay in for months. I was focused on all the tasks in front of me. There was no inward reflection, only the next step in front of me. I was leaving. I packed a bag for myself and for my kids. I gathered their favorite toys and necessities for all 3 of us. There were a few bills that needed to be paid, so I wrote the checks for them and left them on the counter. We loaded my car and headed to the county court house to file the required documents to obtain the order of protection. I went to the bank and drew out $400 cash. That was 1/2 the money left in our bank account. Me, 2 boys, a red Chevrolet Barretta car and a few suitcases was what I left with. I was 29 years old, but I felt like I was 80. I was exhausted, but I was done being afraid. I was done being bullied. I was done trying to please a man. I couldn't muster 1 more day, 1 more effort to please him or make it all "OK". Throughout all those years of watching my mother being brutalized by my stepfather, I had made a vow. There would never be a day that I was hit and stay. Never. I had been hit. I would not stay. It was easier to keep that commitment that I had made to myself than I had imagined. It wasn't easy to get divorced. It wasn't easy to handle the emotions of "breaking up my family" that I would carry for years as my children became another divorce statistic. It wasn't easy to find a way to earn money as a stay at home mother from small town Utah. It wasn't easy to decipher what was mine to own and what was his. None of it was easy, except for the 1 decision to leave. He hit me and I was done.

There was an argument about that sentence "he hit me". To be fair, his story was that he grabbed my diet pepsi glass and threw it at the TV and that is what hit me, not his fist. If it was an accident, then it was forgivable and I needed to come home and work it out with him. If it wasn't an accident, then my leaving was justified. During the next few weeks, the only truth I would accept was that he hit me. Any suggestion of it being an accident was swiftly rejected. I wouldn't allow it. Then one day, his father called me. He wanted to help me come to my senses. As he spoke to me, I considered the idea that maybe it had been accidental. But a larger truth also found it's way into my consciousness and I asked him a question - "have you ever been so angry with your wife that you accidentally hit her in the head?" He answered no and I told him that his son had hurt his wife and that I would never be able to be in a relationship with him where I felt safe. I found my way to get done with the conversation and hung up the phone. I remember the room in my mother's house I was staying in clearly and I remember sitting on the bed while I processed that realization. It didn't matter if it was an accident or intentional. He had hurt me with his anger. He had reacted to me in a way that caused an injury. The man that was supposed to love me, keep me safe and be my most intimate partner, was not safe and I knew I would never feel safe with him ever again. There was no turning back. There was only forward for me, for him and for our boys.

Forward was hard, painful and my boys lives were rocked. They wanted desperately to be back home, on their farm, in their own beds. They wanted their normal back. They expressed their desires and their faces showed it to me daily. For the next 30 days, there was a no contact order in place and the relief I felt by not having to be confronted by my husband was huge. I needed time to breathe, to be without the fear of his anger, his feelings, his wants. I just needed to be with my own self and find safety.

I found an attorney and started divorce proceedings. I started to consider what type of work I could do. I called the local family services office to ask about financial help and they told me that whatever they gave me would be paid back with whatever child support I received. I had always thought of this type of help as something to be avoided. I didn't like the feeling of someone having control over my life, my income and potentially my children. That was what I was trying to get out of. I felt overwhelmed and angry and wanted nothing to do with what I considered "the system". I would find a way to support myself, but had no idea what that even meant. I had watched my mother survive on nothing and prayed that I could make a better life for myself and my boys. I didn't want them to feel what I had felt as a child, the fear of being without food, without transportation, without coal to heat our home.

In the next 60 days, I found a job at the mall, got divorced and started a new life. In those 60 days, I had to make one of the most impactful decision of my life: where the boys would live. The conflict of what to do for them was the center of all my inner thoughts. The life on the farm for 2 boys was wonderful and I knew that. I knew that bringing them into the city and giving them the life that a single mother scraping her way to survive could construct was not at all what I wanted for them. But their father was not an engage dad and I knew they would be lonely and emotionally on their own if they lived with him. There was no way I could stay in our home town and try to start my new life there. My soon to be ex husband would have complete control over me if I stayed there and I would have very few options for work. But mostly, I knew myself enough to know that staying there would mean I wouldn't stay brave and strong and I needed to be brave and strong to forge my new life. It would have been easier for the boys if I had been able to stay in our home, get divorced and let them have their mom, their dad, their hometown and the farm. It would have been better for everyone, except me. I couldn't do that "easier" thing for them, so I had to make the next best decision. I did some research, prayed, cried and then made my decision: the boys would go live with their dad while I got my feet underneath me. I figured it would take a year and then the boys would come back home with me. They could do the first year with their dad, get used to the new life and then I'd wrap them up and bring them home, what ever that was to become. I knew my mother in law would keep them under her wing and make sure they felt loved. I knew that they would be sad and worried, but safe and that was more important that any of the other factors.

I can still feel every emotion from this day. It was my youngest son's baptism. They had moved back to their dads and the tension of all the relationships had began. The pain overwhelmed the joy and while we all tried to muster smiles, our hearts were weeping. It still brings tears to my eyes as my heart has never let go completely. My sweet boys and my relationships were changed and that changed everything.

I was extremely naïve. I was extremely ignorant. I had no clue of the impact of that decision on all of our lives. The boys father had never been actively engaged in raising the boys, that had always been my job. I just knew he would see it the way I saw it. How stupid that thinking was! I had no understanding of the tendencies that divorced parents followed. I had no concept of the ways "custody" was used to punish the other spouse for perceived wrong doings. I had no thoughts of how remarriage by one of the parents could impact the family dynamic. None of these things came to my mind. I thought that by giving my boys the farm while I got settled, I was doing the best thing for them. I thought I was being a good mom, like choosing vegetables over junk food for dinner. I thought everyone would see that it was best for a short time, but in the long term, the best thing for them was to be connected to their mother. After all, I had been the only parent actively parenting them. Their father never engaged in the raising of the boys. He worked hard and provided a living, yes. But in my mind, he had no long term desire to be the main parent and my belief that everyone would see it the same way was truly the worst calculation of my life. The idea that the boys would be able to come home in the year was insane. My ex husband would never let those boys go without a fight. He would be remarried within the year and they would start what my oldest called "the Brady Bunch" syndrome. I would have to fight to be involved, fight to know what was happening, fight to even talk to them consistently. The decision I made to allow the boys to go to their dads was the worst decision of my life. The guilt smothered me for decades and remnants of that guilt still sits inside my heart. If I had known what it would truly be like, I would have found a way to have my boys with me. If I had been stronger, I would have been able to make different choices. But I wasn't and finding forgiveness for myself has been almost impossible. Almost.