"I was needy and didn't think I deserved him."
I was widowed suddenly when my husband had a heart attack. He was the first man I had ever been on a date with, so I had no idea how to date. I was set up with a man who was what every girl wants -- a doctor, well educated, a very nice man. I thought he would be an excellent father for my children.
I was very needy, and I didn't think that I deserved to be married to someone who had the prominence that this person had. He was my knight in shining armor, but I thought that I was this undeserving person who had these two teenage kids. I married him knowing that something was not right.
"I started noticing problems between him and my children."
As time went on he ignored my children and insisted that I pay for things like the television because my children were using it. He kept his food separate in the refrigerator. I was responsible for myself and my children. As a family we never went to dinner, and he never bought so much as a soda or an ice cream cone for my children. I thought if I tried harder each year and was a better wife, entertained more, if I didn't ask him for any money, things would get better and he would feel better about my children. I was always thinking we weren't enough.
"The first time he hit me, I was hysterical. Another time he hit me I was bed-ridden for three months."
Once I asked him to call an ambulance and he said, "What can they do for you that I can't do for you? I would be in the emergency room, so I will take care of you right here. I am the doctor, you can't call an ambulance." He rarely hit me, but eventually, he pushed me to the ground and I got six fractured discs and a concussion.
"I did everything he told me to."
If he did not want me to go out, I didn't go out. I didn't talk on the telephone, and if I was on the phone, he would pick it and say, "Hang up, don't talk to her." After awhile, I didn't have a voice. I felt like I was talking, but no one was listening to me. It was so bad at one point, a client that I had sent me a card with the name of a therapist that she had been going to. I made an appointment, and when I was leaving the house to go, he jumped on the hood of the car trying to stop me.
I went, and she said, "You know you are abused." I said, "How can I be abused? I have a beautiful country house, I drive a fancy car, I am married to a surgeon. How can you say I am abused? Abused is for women who live on the other side of the city and have husbands that beat them every day or are alcoholics."
"This is no way to live. I can't live like this another day."
He scared me. He was so overpowering, and there wasn't anything that I could do to please him. I ran into another room and closed the door when I got home from the therapist. When he came in the house, I was so terrified that I took my clothes and threw them in a trash bag and left. I lived in hotel rooms, always moving so that he would not find me. I fell apart, I was a total mess.
"I saw an article in the paper announcing a meeting for women who were domestically abused."
That meeting is where I discovered all these other women with totally different life situations, but the exact same story as me. We were all women who felt very low self esteem, felt that we had no choice. I don't care what color, size or shape you are, we are all the same and have the same basic issues. That group gave me the courage to start Women on Watch, to help families going through what I went through. We find people places to stay, find lawyers, get them medical help, connect them to an investigator and the district attorney's office.
"I can't believe that I have a voice and that people listen."
I can't believe that the city has asked Women on Watch to sit on the domestic violence task force for the city, that the head of the judge for the city has asked us for a meeting this week because he is interested in helping us find a building for our justice center.
I thought I was this person who had lost my voice. Now I am astounded. I feel that I am speaking for all abused women, not just for myself.
