My first marriage.. for the love of my girls

In October 1997 I met a guy, who I will call Mel since I do not know anyone with this name.  He was only 19 and I was 28 but we were engaged two weeks later and married at the beginning of December of that same year.  I have to admit that before I "walked down the aisle" at the county courthouse I had many doubts but chose to ignore them.  Had I told my mom what I was thinking I'm sure I would not have gone through with the marriage, but what was done was done and I had to live with it.

Mel and I had adopted our first cat at a local Humane Society the day before we were married, who I named Simon.  He was a 14 lb. tabby, but he was not fat in the least.  He was just big!  Simon had huge, almost tiger-like paws and would go completely limp in my arms so I would call him my Noodle, since he reminded me of a cooked spaghetti noodle.  We had also rented our first apartment, so we were ready to move in with our cat, even though pets were not allowed, so it was a challenge making sure our Simon didn't jump on the window sills.

Mommy and Simon

By February, just two months into our marriage, I experienced my first nervous breakdown.  I had been working full time while Mel worked only part time.  I did all the cooking and housekeeping.  Mel played video games.  I had MS.  Mel played video games.  I tried my best to save money.  Mel went out and bought more video games.  I was fighting a losing battle and he didn't even care.  I ended up as an in-patient at a facility for mental health for almost a week and when I returned home, nothing changed.  My so-called "home" was a living hell and I didn't know what I could do to make it better.

The only thing Mel and I seemed to have in common was our shared love for cats and in March of that year we adopted Emmi Sue, who is still me to this day.  But after adopting her, it became even more difficult to keep our cats out of the windows so we were asked to vacate our apartment.  Mel's parents lived in Alabama and this is where we decided to go, although I was hardly excited with this decision.  I had never met his parents, Alabama was hot (the worst thing for MS) and I would have no one to talk to.  I was not looking forward to the move.

Emmi Sue!

If I remember correctly, we were in Alabama for a total of a month and a half, give or take a few days.  After meeting his mother I could see why Mel was as irresponsible as he was since I refused to place the blame on his age alone.  His father was alright but he was a truck driver so he was mostly on the road which meant we were left with his bitch mother.  I don't remember his parents' story but I know they were not together their entire marriage and while they were separated, her way of taking care of responsibilities was to move to a new location to avoid paying for things, so Mel thought it was alright to do this.  How is the right thing to do.. ever?  That way of thinking was beyond me and I knew we had to get out of there before I lost my mind again.

When we moved back to my hometown we stayed with my parents until we found our own place, which was our first house.  Wow, it was beautiful!  It was a small house, but it was OURS.  My parents helped us by paying off the loan for the car we had just bought for him as long as we made payments to them each month, which we of course promised.  They ended up paying a total of $7,000 towards bills he had accumulated BEFORE he had met me (plus the car, which was $10,000) but being that he had just gotten a very good full time job that paid $11 per hour, we knew we'd be fine.

It was probably a week or so before we bought the house that we went to the same Humane Society where we had gotten Simon that we adopted Allie and Jinger, our sweet kittens.  Since we had nowhere to keep them at first, a close friend of mine kept them at her house until we were ready to move into our home.

Jinger and Allie when they were kittens.. now they would take up most of the sofa!

When Mel and I first moved into our house, I loved it.  I spent a lot of time decorating, especially the bathroom.  I wish I had taken pictures of it!  It had been a huge, plain white room but by the time I was finished with it.. ugh, you'd have to see it to believe what I did with that bathroom.  I was also obsessed with mopping the kitchen floor since that was the main entrance into the house (or at least the easiest way in) and Mel insisted on never wiping his muddy boots before entering.  The house was truly lovely.. at first.

It probably took me all of six months to teach the kittens what the word "no" meant so I could pull down the curtains from being pinned up and no longer worry about them jumping on counters or scratching the new furniture.  It annoyed, bothered and made me want to burst out in laughter when Mel would say what a great job he had done in "training" the cats when he had done nothing of the sort.  I had been the one to teach them the rules of the house but didn't need to be praised.  Even as babies, my girls listened to me, came to me and loved me while they mostly ignored him and he resented me for it.  Even Simon preferred me over him.

A terrible habit Mel got into was going to the kitchen, getting a can of Durkee French Fried Onions (which I needed for different recipes) and eating them straight out of the can.  Then he'd eat one onion and give one to Simon until the can was empty, even though I told him I had read that onions were toxic to cats.  But Mel never listened to anything I said.  At the beginning of November 1998, Simon died of almost complete liver failure and I attribute it to the damn fried onions Mel repeatedly fed him.

In 1999, I was hospitalized again for yet another mental breakdown.  Life with Mel was too difficult to put into words and I didn't even know what was happening to me at the time.  I was appalled that Mel had become like his mother in that he refused to pay one cent back to my parents for the loans they had paid for us to get the house loan, so I had to get to the bank account before he had the chance to drain it with purchasing more video games.  It was a monthly battle and it drove me insane.  But he told me one day that he never had the intention of repaying them and that response made me cringe.  Who had I married?  

One of the worst parts is that even though I had two very close girl friends, I didn't feel I could tell them what was going on in my life, so I suffered in silence.  His main priority was himself, his video games, role playing games, buying more games and them maybe me.  His games even came before buying my insulin, which is what led to the worst night of my life.

It was August 1999 when Mel called me from his work telling me had just spent $70 on some shirts since a shirt rep had gone to his job selling them.  It really wasn't a terrible buy, but I needed money for my insulin which he said I could get the following week.  The following week?  Are you kidding?  So I hung up on him.  He called me back and yelled that I wasn't allowed to hang up on him.  So I hung up again.  We did this for at least 10 minutes and I knew we would have a huge fight when he came home later that night.

Emmi Sue had a slight ear infection and we had to put a gel into her right ear each evening and he was the one who usually did this, but knowing he would come home very angry, I gave her the medication that night before he came home.  When he arrived he went straight to the medicine, grabbed Emmi Sue roughly and tried to apply the gel when she bit him.  His face turned red and he threw her across the room, where she landed flat on her back and stayed that way until I jumped up and picked her up and rocked her in my arms.  I couldn't believe he threw my baby!

He then turned his anger to me by spouting all sorts of ugly words until I got up and called the girls to go upstairs, which they did immediately.  Once I was in the bedroom, he followed me and it surprised me that my little, shy Allie stayed sitting on the bed next to me.  She had always been so afraid of Mel since he yelled at me any chance he got, but there she was, standing defiantly in front of him as if saying "you're not going to hurt my mommy!"  He picked her up, shook her and said something like "why can't you like me!"  Allie bit and scratched him simultaneously, which angered him even more, so he threw her very harshly on the bed.  I think he wanted her to hit the headboard but he missed, but her little body bounced off the mattress and hit the headboard but not as hard as he would have liked.  I swooped her up off the bed and kissed her as I said to her "good Allie.  You're such a good little baby."  Mel then hit me me in the face, as if to make sure I understood he was still in charge.  He stormed out of the room, but not before unplugging the phone.

When Mel came back upstairs, I was beginning to feel afraid for my life and the lives of my girls.  The biggest problem I was facing was that my MS was crippling me severely at that time.  I could not drive.  I could barely walk.  I could not get away.  What would I do?  For some idiot reason, I thought I could still beat him down the stairs to get to the kitchen phone.  Well, I got to the phone, but once I got to it (a cordless), he unplugged it and I knew that was it for me.  I turned to him and cried "I just wanted to call my dad!"  Out of frustration I threw the phone straight down to the floor but the back of it opened and the battery hit him in the leg, causing his rage to hit new heights.  He came to me at full speed.  I tried to get away as he shoved me so hard that my feet lost contact with the carpet and I flew across almost two rooms, finally landing with my face only inches from our coffee table.  As I lay on the floor, I will never forget his words.  He stood over me and laughed, saying "look at you.  You can't even get up."

Somehow, I managed to get up and get to the bedroom and wonder what else would happen that night.  I was so frightened.  So when Mel came to the room one more time, I did the only thing I knew I could still do, which was annoy the living hell out of him until he allowed me to use the phone to call home.  He forbade me from speaking in Spanish, which was fine with me, so I called my dad and told him what had happened.  I think it took my dad all of 5 minutes to arrive, when it should have taken at least 10.  Mel had also left the house and for this I'm very glad.  My dad would have killed him.  So with my dad's help, we packed up my girls and I said good-bye to a life I should have never lived in the first place.

I've learned that the abuse started long before he laid a hand on me.  When I returned to my house to get my things, when Mel wasn't there, I sighed as I looked at the odd places I had hung things on the walls.  He had the habit of pushing me against the wall and punching, just a few inches from my face, making holes in many walls.  I would hang pictures to cover the holes so I wouldn't have to explain the damage.  I never told anyone of this until years later.  For some reason, I was too ashamed for anyone to know of this until I allowed myself to really remember what it had been like.  I was always too afraid to admit to myself that I had been terrified of this guy nine years my junior.  The abuse had been mostly mental because they have to do that so you allow it to continue.  Had I been in my right mind, I would have divorced him before he ever laid a finger on me.

I could have gone into far more details and I may still do that someday, but for now, I'll leave the story as I wrote it.  I can honestly say I would do it all over again for one, and only one, reason.  My girls.  My girls have made everything worthwhile.  I would walk on hot coals for the love of my girls and for me, that marriage was worse than hot coals.  It was a living hell.

Mommy, Emmi Sue, Allie and Jinger (as it will always be!)