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Transcript

From the Depths of Despair to the Heights of Hope · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi.
• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know who you are.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I don't have to use your name and 99% of the time I just refer to you as my ex-husband.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: It's October 2022.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I thought that I would write you this letter, not because I care about you or how you're doing, or that I hope you got your shit together and became a productive member of society.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: It together and became a productive member of society.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Look at this as the cliff note versions of the book that is my life and the chapters of it that you have missed.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: First, let me explain something to you.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I am not the same person I was.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I don't say your name because I'm afraid of you.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I just don't say your name because I don't care about you.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I simply don't care to mention your name.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Your name means nothing to me.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: The last time I saw you was in court, and the last thing I said to you as I was walking past you at the DA was to go to hell.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I do believe that you are already there.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: I don't mean that it was hell.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Living with me, your own personal hell, living with the consequences of your choices, of your lack of accountability, your lies and your narcissistic ways.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: That has got to be a living hell.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: When we got together, I would have never expected us to end the way we did.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I didn't expect for years I would be scared to go home, scared to be at home, scared to be at work worrying about what versions I would find of you when I got home or if you were even going to be there.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: There was always the constant exhaustion and worry of what drugs you were taking, how much you were drinking and who you were sleeping with.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't expect us to lose our son.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: I didn't expect to lose that part of my heart and soul and to have that loss and that pain be used as a weapon by someone who said they loved me, a weapon that would be used over and over a million different times and in a million different ways to hurt me.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: My son's father would be so low of a human being to use the pain of his death as an excuse to hit and abuse me, to drink and to use drugs, to use the pain of grief to build a hell full of hate and wrath.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: In life we have choices.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: One of your choices is to choose his death to hurt and defile life.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: You beat the soul of a person that you said you loved and you chose to use his death as an excuse for all the terrible choices and decisions in your life and for everything you do.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I see things differently.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I see 47 minutes 47 minutes of being held and loved by your parents and grandparents.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: 47 minutes where you experience nothing but unconditional love, warmth and peace.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: 47 minutes where he shared his little life, where I love yous were heard and where his little body was held by his mother in her arms.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Where his little body was held by his mother in her arms when I would sing to him the same song, I started to sing to him ever since I found out I was going to be a mom.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: 47 minutes where he was teaching us all in that room.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Did you hear what he was teaching us?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: The small teacher was there, teaching us without words.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: He taught us how fragile life is and how, in the scope of life, the greatest gift we can give people is love and time.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I will admit his death was horrible and it broke my heart into pieces, some so small that they are lost in the places and time and space and that they will never be found lost into the abyss and despair.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: That is only a mother's grief, I will admit, in the beginning I thought the only way to honor our son was to stay together, to work together, to heal together and to be together.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, that only works when people want the same thing.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I saw time, love and life, and you saw excuses, pain and a reason to keep doing what you were doing.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: I can't recall all the times that you put bruises on my body, pulled my hair, the times that you would yell and scream at me.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: The times that I was told I was never good enough, that I was nothing, or the times that you would be so jealous over the fact that I would get attention from friends and how angry you would be because they were paying attention to me and not you.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: The times you told me that it was my fault that you slept with countless women, or the times you tried to kill me.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Some of those times were just because you were so angry.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I was standing up to you.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I gave up so many things when I left you.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I had a purpose in charity work that we did with others to help families who had a loss like ours.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: I had to walk away from the group of amazing people that worked with us and amazing friends that we had.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I had to walk away from it because it was attached to you and both of us could not be a part of it, so I let it go.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I was not willing to put myself in situations to be around you.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I meant more to myself than that.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Some may call that selfish and honestly I just see it as the end of a chapter.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: You can't start a new chapter until you have finished writing the last sentence and turning the page, and that's honestly what I did.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I just wrote the last sentence and turned the page and started a new chapter.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: It sounds very cliche, and perhaps it is, but I would rather be someone who is brave enough to start a new chapter than continue to be with you.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: My new chapter was so unfamiliar, so new and odd and scary, but it was worth very much all of the fear and uncomfortableness.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: To be here, to be in a place where just being who I am is simply enough.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: To be in a place where people understand that time and love are so much more valuable than anything money can buy.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: To be with someone who loves me no matter what I have been through, and holds none of that against me.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: To be with someone who, when he tells me he loves me, I know that it's true.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Someone that fills the spaces in my heart that I didn't know I was missing until I met him.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Someone who makes our home feel safe and knows that our family is so much more than blood and that people who show respect and love are welcome in our home.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: If I had to go through what I did with you for five years to be beaten down so much that I forgot how to use my legs to stand, to go through such hell on a daily basis, to be in a place where I couldn't see the light in the darkness If I had to go through all of that just to get to where I am now in my life, a place where I can truly see the lessons that were being taught on that June morning in 2016, taught in 47 minutes by the most loving teacher I have ever had that privilege of a meeting then, yes, I would have gone through all the abusive, horrible chapters of my life with you to see what he was sent here to teach.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: I may be a slow learner, but I do learn.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Chapters are meant to be written and read by those who wrote them and those we choose to read them.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: You are no longer in the future chapters of my book.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: In every dark tunnel there's a glimmer of hope.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: In every painful moment there's a strength to heal.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: I don't understand why it was me.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I'll ever be the same.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Is the same what I want, anyway, what I thought I could never get me.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Mandy, thank you so much for being here.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: So, before we get started, tell us a little bit about yourself and where you are now.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: So I feel like I was in one abusive relationship after another, and now I am not with an abusive partner, and so that's very odd.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: It was a learning curve for both of us to know what I was doing, the way I was reacting to simple things.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I would apologize and do.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I always thought the house had to be perfect for him, and it doesn't.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: He doesn't expect that, and if it's not, he's not going to yell and scream at me, he's just like so what, there's two dishes in the sink, what's the big deal?
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: So that was very odd for me, and it was a little bit odd for him to not be with someone who micromanaged him, because I'm just like whatever, have fun, if it's not something I want to do, he's just like hey, I'm going to go do that, and I'm like peace out, yeah, like having trust, which one of you were used to.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: No, he was with someone that always had to have every second of his time, where his hobbies were sacrificed and time with friends or talking to other friends that lived out of state were sacrificed because this person had to have 100 percent of his time.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: And I'm not that person.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I'm like if you want to go to California and visit your friends, have a great time.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: If you want to go out and tinker in your shop and work on the dirt bikes, have a great time.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be in here, probably baking or sewing something or whatever.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: So there was probably a good like six to nine months and plus we moved in together during COVID.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: So there was that whole like weird world situation.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: It was a very odd situation but we obviously made it through and I told him I was like you have to talk to me, I don't know what I'm doing, how it's perceived, and so if it feels like I'm pushing you away, I'm probably not, it's probably a protection thing that I've developed and just let me know so I can change that behavior, because I was always in some kind of self protection mode how I can protect yourself, how you build up all these like little walls and I hate to sound like Shrek, but honestly there's like layers that you build on yourself to protect yourself from X, y and Z.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: That happens and so my last relationship it was with my ex-husband and he was really abusive.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: When I first reached out to you and I wrote just a brief history, I was like and reread it and I was like, holy crap, I have been through some shit and I didn't even realize it.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I've talked to you about.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's a typical abuse story and you've brought it up to me.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: No, abuse is typical.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: It's different people in abusive relationships and nothing is cookie cutter.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Nothing's like abuse.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: 101.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: It's not fair to you to compare.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: That doesn't help anything.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Your journey is yours.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: And I realized that after I talked to you and you explained that and obviously listening to your show too, because I always thought if you had a story to tell, then you would have written a book or you would have reached down and bet on Oprah.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: And I'm not that person.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: I reached out to you because I was like, hey, I like your podcast, I have a story.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: And you're like, you have a story, would you like to share it?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, sure, if you want to hear it.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So that was really different, because when I tried to leave my ex-husband, I didn't get that chance where I was supported, and what I mean by that was we got together in 2015 and we had a son who died shortly after he was born, and so we had our son in 2016 and in 2018, we got married and the abuse was like the whole time, and it was little things that build up, little name calling, a little bit of pushing you around, a little bit of anger, and it was always blamed on something else, always blamed on oh, I drank too much or I had a stressful night at work.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Mind you, he didn't really work.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I worked three jobs to support our home.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: He worked one part-time job and thought it was like the end of the world if he didn't come home to a clean house.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Mind you, I got off at 11 o'clock and my next job started at 5.30.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: So there was not a whole lot of time for me while he's getting high and getting drunk and just doing whatever the hell he wants.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: So we get married in 2018.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to get married.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: I remember the day we were getting married, I talked to one of my bridesmaids and I told her I don't want to.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: This feels wrong, I don't want to do this.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: And she's like it's just nerves, just knock it off.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: And I was like I don't want to.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: This is not going to solve any of our problems.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: He's not going to stop drinking.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: He's not going to stop using whatever he was using.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I knew he was using weed and he experimented with Molly every once in a while, but the times he wasn't at home, I can't account for what he did or didn't do.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: And she pretty much told me I was a bad friend if I decided to cancel because I had my best friend from Florida him and his girl, came out.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I had people from Washington come down.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: People were here for this event, this marriage.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: So they were like you're just going to disappoint everybody.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: People bought gifts and people have done things for your wedding and everybody traveled.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like it was a location wedding, but we did have it out of the town we currently lived in at the time.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: So people all including us had to travel to this destination, and so she gave me a lot of shit and said, hey, you should just really suck it up, it's going to be fine.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't fine.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: None of it was fine.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: The wedding was not going to fix the fact that he yelled and screamed at me and put me almost in the hospital.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: It wasn't going to change the fact that he was sleeping around.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: I stuck with it because, mainly also, he would use the death of our son against me.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: How could you leave your son's dad if you leave him this, that and the other and you deal with the loss of your child in different ways?
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Mind you, I've had two miscarriages up to that point.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: And then I had our son and he was born premature and we knew when he was born he was going to pass away because he was too little, and so he would use that whole scenario against you, and that's what abusers do.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: They use like the lowest low in your entire life they're going to use against you to make you stay or manipulate you in other ways to be there, either through financial you're never going to make it without me through emotional abuse.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: There's the sexual abuse that happens within married couples.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: That's a thing.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of things that abusers use and they don't always have to put their hands on you.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: He did all of those.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I lost our son and a month later I started hemorrhaging.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: You don't usually hemorrhage like that after having a miscarriage and it was because they didn't pursue it.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: They didn't do a DNC to make sure everything was out, and so my body thought I was still pregnant, so it was still building up a uterine wall and trying to protect the tissue that was still left in me, thinking it was a baby.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Your body still thought you were pregnant.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Right, because not all the placenta came out.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: I started randomly hemorrhaging and we're talking like pints of blood at a time and so I had to go into the hospital and get a DNC a month later to make sure everything's cleared out.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: While in the hospital, I got pneumonia, so I took quite a bit of time off work.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: So I had two months off, right, and so he would use that two months off.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I gave you two months off to grieve the loss of your son.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I worked, I supported our family.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: No, we went through the savings that I had saved for years, putting away $35, $45.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: That money is what we lived on because he was still going out drinking.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: My savings to get through those two months.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: When your body is in that crisis mode and your body is going through this medical stuff that is now life-threatening for yourself, are you truly able to mourn the loss of your child?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: like your body's.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: In that I'm gonna find a way to take care of myself.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: So right, I don't see how that was healing or a morning time that's what he said, though I but he would say I let you have that time.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I gave you that two months off.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: No, actually it was the doctors telling me I couldn't lift anything more than three pounds, that I could not go back to work my three jobs, mind you.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Go back to work to support our family.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: It was me that said that I can't and then I had to be put on antidepressants because your hormones are completely out of whack.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: At that point your body delivers a baby and then you have the whole postpartum stuff and then to find out, your body's trying to build the little quote unquote nest inside you to protect a baby when there's nothing in there.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: So I was like crying all the time, and just in the middle of the night, just because I wanted to be a mom.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: So I was like crying all the time and just in the middle of the night, just because I wanted to be a mom.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: So I had bought little things for him and talked to him and done all those things.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: So those are still around my house and so you'd see, like the blanket I planned to make him, or you'd see this other stuff and you would just break down.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: And then I'd break down and in front of him he would be like why are you such a pussy?
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Why can't you just get over this?
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: And then the next minute, when we're in public, oh yeah, it's so hard.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: We lost our son, all this stuff and I'm like you are two different people.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: You are so manipulative.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: I got to the point where I picked up and moved because he got in trouble a third time.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: And mind you, when I say he got in trouble, he physically hurt me.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: It was the second time, not the third time, sorry, but he physically hurt me to the point where the cops got called and he was intoxicated.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Part of the law and what he was charged with was he had to go to drug rehabilitation and alcohol counseling and that kind of stuff.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: And some of those programs work for some people and some people don't.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Some people just write them out and just do their time so they can get out and do whatever the hell they want.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: So the second time he got in trouble, a group of our friends that knew the first time he got in trouble because they met him.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: So what happened also was to help me get over this whole grieving thing.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: I found an organization, through the loss of our son, who made burial gowns for babies out of old wedding dresses, donated wedding dresses and I'm a seamstress, I can sew and I was like, cool, I will sew for these people.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: I cannot sew, because it was too emotional, it was too hard.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: They're a very small organization and there's lots of organizations that do that.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that this is the only one on the West Coast that does, but just the fact and anybody who a side note anybody that knows how to sew and thinks they would like to, they're always looking for volunteers to sew, always Because donated wedding dresses people donate them all the time but they don't have the people that sew them.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: So what we decided to do, and what I decided to do, is we were really big into cosplay and doing events for people, and so we would do events to promote that organization, get donations for them, but also let women know.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: It's not a taboo thing to let us know that you lost a baby.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: It is not something to be ashamed of.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: It is not something that be ashamed of.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: It is not something that you have to harbor and have a horrible, dark secret.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: It happens to one in four pregnancies in the US alone, and somebody that's had it, even if they don't tell you they've probably suffered that kind of loss, and so that was really important to me, that I let people know that this is an organization that needs your help, that helps women and families who lose infants and it's not just like our son was considered a micro preemie because he was so little, but all the way up to two or three years old who die of SIDS.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: They provide them free of care and so I helped get them into funeral homes.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: So funeral homes knew about them.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: So when they came, because not all babies die in hospitals, I reached out to like midwife centers and let them know, because not everybody dies.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: You can know you pass a baby at the most imprudent times when you have a miscarriage.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: It's not hey, I'm going to plan on having a miscarriage in 32 weeks.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: So, regardless of what kind of care you get, I reached out to those organizations to let them know that this was something that was free.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: So we did events and we did all sorts of stuff like that to help.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: So I met a lot of people that way, and my ex-husband was always the dutiful husband oh yeah, like we lost our son and I'm such a good dad and I'm doing this and so we reached out to a lot of people.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: So when he got in trouble the second time, those people knew what we did and what we stood for.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: And at the time he was sober because he was going through this court mandated stuff and they didn't know him drinking.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And so when he got in trouble the second time, it was like oh, it's because he lost his son.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: I lost my son too, and you don't see me drinking all the time, you don't see me hurting my husband son too, and you don't see me drinking all the time.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: You don't see me hurting my husband.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: So they use the excuse of, oh, he lost his son.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I get that.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: So they helped move us to a totally different location that I had been in for seven, eight years and I had to pick up and move.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And so we moved in with some friends so he could quote unquote get better and get the help he needed.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: And that was not a good situation.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: We ended up leaving our friend's house to be on our own and he just continued to get worse and worse.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: It got to a point where I decided that living in my car was going to be better than living with him because I couldn't.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: He would wake me up in the middle of the damn night and pin me to the bed and laugh in my face like the Joker, like he would sit there and just slap me until I would wake up because he was bored.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: He was just mean.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: So I decided I was done.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't go home one night so I slept in my car and I was like, okay, that wasn't terrible.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: And so I slept in my car for a week and when he was at work I would go and get my clothes or I would make sure he was at work first and then do laundry or whatever I need to do, and then be gone before he got home.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: I told my friends before we left our house there was an incident where he had hurt me again at her house and she's like I'm sure you guys will work it out, it's fine, it's not a big deal.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: They knew that he had strangled me.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Then that's what happened the second time was I was annoying him, so he put me in a chokehold and I blacked out and woke up on the floor and they knew that was part of his court case and they said that was okay.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: It was because he was upset with his losing his son that he did that, yeah.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: We're not taught as a society how to react to people in these nations, which is why I think a lot of them are from one extreme to the next.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it breaks my heart because I feel like in a lot of cases, people think they're being there for you and they think that they're providing you with what you need and want to hear, when they're really just making you realize how alone, or making you feel like you're even more alone than you thought, I think that you were right the first time that they definitely make you feel alone, cause when I made the decision to move into my car, mind you, it's freaking October and it's cold, but my car was a safer place and, mind you, I didn't know where I parked from one night to the next.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: it wasn't like there's like free camping for like runaway wives or anything, so you have to figure out where's a safe place to park, where's a safe place to be so.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: He was expecting you to come home one night and you just stopped, but obviously he could come home from work and see that you had been there.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: He didn't realize it, he didn't even realize you'd been there, okay.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Because he'd leave the door unlocked.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: So I'd leave the door unlocked.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like I locked the door and did the dishes and cleaned up after him.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: No, literally it was there to like maybe take a quick shower, take my towel with me.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I had a travel bag of stuff, so it was like I'm leaving with what I came with.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: He didn't care, and he was such a bad alcoholic that he would lose the remote for months at a time because in some drug-induced haze he didn't remember where he put it.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: He wouldn't have noticed if I was there or not, because the house was always a damn wreck and I was just done trying to clean it up.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: While I was making the decision to live in my car, I made a really hard choice, and that was to ask for help, and so I reached out to churches and I reached out to organizations.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I got those little cards that you get in the bathroom If you're being abused, please call us.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: I got those.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: I got as many resources as I could and every single one turned me down, every single one.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: The denominations I was not the right denomination.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I was not the right age.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: I did not have children.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: He didn't put me in the hospital enough.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: He put me in the hospital too much.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: He was too violent.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: He wasn't violent enough your car he could recognize your car if he drove by in another town to the safe house, and that's putting other women in risk.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: I reached out to people and I think when we first started talking, I let you know of an organization that in May of this year 2022, mind you I asked for help in 2019, the fall, so like October, november and they finally said we can look at your application because we think you might qualify.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Finally, and I said unfortunately, I don't need your help.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Thank you, but if I waited around for you to say it was okay for you to help me, I would have been dead by now.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: And they're like oh sorry, we can't help you now.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Mike's not a big deal, did it on my own, thanks, and that's what I did, was I did it all on my own.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: You get to this point where you think I'm not bad.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not that bad, I'm not going to call the women's shelter, I'm not going to call the crisis line, I'm not going to do that.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not that bad, I'm not that girl, I'm not that woman.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: And when you get to that point when you're like I think I am, I think I am that abused wife, I think I'm that abused person, I think that him hitting me all the time is wrong.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: And you reach out to people and they're like, yeah, we can't help you, he didn't put you in a hospital enough, he didn't hurt you enough, he hurt you too much.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Sorry, you believe in the wrong church.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Sorry, because he was a veteran.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Mind you, he was a veteran for five months, barely made it out of damn boot camp, but qualifies as a veteran Because he's a veteran.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: We would help him over, we would help you.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, cool, great, there's not.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I couldn't reach out to my family at the time because my mom was a master manipulator and master massive gaslighter, so going to her would not have been good for my mental health at all.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I wouldn't be hit, but I'd have like this whole, like mother, disappointed, bullshit, crap that I'd have to deal with, which is just another form of abuse, like I'm not going to change one or his two or three forms of abuse for another one.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a great situation.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: At least I won't be cold at night.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Nope, I'll run the heater in the car.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: It's fine.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: And so I had to make a decision what was worse?
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Was living with him worse?
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Or was living in my car?
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: And so I hadn't come home for probably almost a month, and people were reaching out to to me because he's like, oh my God, my wife ran away like blah, blah, blah, and I hadn't talked to them too.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: So finally I had enough people worried about me that they're like why don't you move into one of your spare bedrooms that has a lock and then live with him that way?
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: I was like, all right, whatever.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: So enough guilt trip and a lot of people slamming the door in my face.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: I went back and I did.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I locked myself in a room.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: I never really came out, and that was it.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: We.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I had to pick him up from work one time and, uh, cause, his ride canceled, it was raining, it was whatever.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: So I picked him up from work one time and, um, he decided that he didn't like the way I was driving, and so he decided, um, to grab the steering wheel and try to crash the car.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: And as we're driving down this road that's 40, 45 miles an hour, in the rain, in the dark he decides to just grab the wheel of my car and drive it up on a curb.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Mind you, coming towards us is an ambulance and two cop cars.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: So when I get control of the vehicle, I go around the corner.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Mind you, I'm shaking.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I'm like why the hell did you do that?
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: He's like you don't do what I say, I'm going to do it again and we're going to crash and die.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I'm going to fucking kill you.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: So keep up.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Your shit is what he told me.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: And so I drive around the corner and I am literally shaking and crying, and up to the car and my ex-husband was like tell him it was all your fault.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Tell him it was all your fault.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: And I was like I'm not telling him shit.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I was like get the fuck out.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: That's all I was saying, was get the fuck out of my car.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: And he gets out of the car and he's like it's not my fault, it's hers.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: You know what cops really have a hard time believing it's all your fault, it's all her fault and not yours, when that's the first thing that comes out of your mouth.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Don't believe her, she's a damn liar.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: So the cop comes up to me and I'm like shaking.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: I told him the whole incident.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I told him that I just want him to go away.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: They arrest him and they're gonna charge him with.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: I remember what he got charged with.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: What you get charged with and what you get sentenced with are two different things.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: And what they hold him for 42 hours.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: I reach out to to friends, tell them I'm in this situation.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: And they're like oh sorry, don't know what to do to help you.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: And I was like are you fucking kidding me?
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: And they're like, yeah, let him know that we'll help him when he gets out of jail.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: I'm like, are you kidding me?
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, cool, I know where I stand.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I absolutely know where I stand, no-transcript.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: And I told him.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: I said you do realize you're going to be, there's going to be.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: You have to go to arraignment and after that there's a 30 day, no contact order.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: And he's like, yeah, I go, we're done, we're done.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Get half your shit, get whatever you need and put it in the storage unit, we're done.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: And he's like, no, we're not done, trying to play the whole thing.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And in my head I was like what are you doing?
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: How can you do this?
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: What are you doing?
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Because it was scary.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: But the words that were coming out of my mouth were like we're over.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I want a divorce.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: We're done.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: I don't want to ever talk to you again.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: We're done.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: And in my head I'm freaking out.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: In my head he's going to beat the shit out of you again.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: He's going to fucking lose his mind.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: You're going to die.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Shut your mouth.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: And I just kept saying it, were you surprised by yourself of the reaction you were having of telling him that we're done.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: There was another part of you that was like what the hell are you doing?
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Telling?
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: him that we're done.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: There was another part of me that was like what the hell are you doing?
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Yes, Because you're so brainwashed in that situation that you go through this stuff for years and you make up excuses and you make up lame I shouldn't say lame stories, but you go and I should say you justify what they do and you, it's such a struggle to go day to day to just live and just make it through the next five hours when he's home until he finally passes asleep so you can go to work.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: There's those daily struggles that you live with.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Oh my God, if there's too much salt in dinner, he is going to throw it across the goddamn room and I'm going to have to clean up a mess.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: But you have those constant battles with your brain because you're in protection mode the whole time, which is completely stressful.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: And then you add in the fact that you're trying to in my situation, I'm trying to pretend that we're a happy couple and that we're doing these good things to support a good cause and to be with good people and to do all this stuff.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: And so there's this false sense of who I am and I have I lost who I was the whole time.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: And so when I lived in my car, being attacked by a stranger or having some stranger come up to my car which might never happened, but you worry about.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: That was way better than him.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: And so for that time that I was freezing in my car or I was crying in my car because what am I doing?
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Nobody wants to help me or I can't get help, or whatever I figured out I'm not putting up with this shit, I'm not doing this anymore.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: And so when I was in that situation of sitting there telling him we're done, I want a divorce, and him telling me, no, I'm like yeah.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: So I had that total battle in my head because it had gone against everything that I had done.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Everybody told me it was fine that I lived with an abuser.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Everybody told me it was okay, that it was because we lost our son, that he's like this Bullshit.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I lost our son too, and in fact I lost two before that.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Do you see me hitting him?
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Do you see me going off the damn handle?
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Do you see me drinking and doing drugs?
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Because I can't handle the grief?
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Do you see me doing that?
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: No, why?
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Because I'm not that person that's going to use every excuse in the book to go and do whatever the fuck I want.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go and hit my wife.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Because I'm going to blame it on my son.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do all sorts of shit and blame it on my son as an excuse and just never take responsibility for myself.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: And that's what he did.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: He took no responsibility.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: So when I sat there and told him we're done, you can go and put the stuff in the storage unit that you want.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: We'll go through our movies, we'll go through whatever we have, mind you, we didn't have a joint checking account.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: His name wasn't on anything that I had my name on.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: So there was like no financial anything, no debt.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Everything was his or mine.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: So thank goodness for that.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: But the monetary stuff I told him he had to have out by a certain time, leave the key.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: And he's like this is my apartment.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: I I was like the abuser has to leave, not be abused, according to the law, and he's oh, okay.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: And so we separated our stuff and he went and moved in with our friends that we had relocated at and they did everything for him, just everything I filed.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I had talked to the divorce judge in the county.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: I had told them the situation, that I wanted a divorce and that I was leaving.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: I didn't know where I was going, but I was getting the fuck away, I was done and he said, as long as he signed the papers, and didn't contest anything.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Mind you, it wasn't like I was asking for any kind of support, it was just I wanted it to be done, that he would sign it.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: I got all the paperwork filled out and I took it to them to have him sign and our friend let us know she's he's not going to sign it.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: I had proof that he had come back to the apartment during this 30 days.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: It was like day two.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: He showed up and I knew it and I took pictures of the evidence of why I knew he was there and I said you do I go.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: He has a choice.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: He can either sign these papers in the next 20 minutes or after 20 minutes I'm calling the police and it's going to make life real hard for him because he violated the 30 day protection order and it's going to get real complicated, real fucking quick.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Well, 10 minutes later she called me and told me I could pick up my divorce papers, that they were done.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: I was like great, we had to go to court for the whole thing.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: That happened in the car and I told the judge.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I read a victim impact statement saying he's going to blame everything on our son.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: He's never going to take responsibility for himself.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: I fear for the next girl that comes in contact with him, but that girl is not going to be me.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I go.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: I would ask for a restraining order, but he has proven time and time again that the laws don't matter to him.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: He's going to continue to do whatever the hell he wants and he's just going to do whatever I go.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: I have sold my car.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: I am moving to a different location, I'm going to not be with him and I don't want to be found by him.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: And afterwards the judge sentenced him for his whatever he did with the car.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: It was a vehicular incident with domestic violent tendencies or something weird.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: It was so weird I don't even know.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: But because he tried to and he told the cops I was just trying to hurt her, not anybody else.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: You're just trying to hurt her, not anybody else.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: You're just trying to hurt her with a car.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Are you freaking, kidding me?
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Good job, dude.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: He also put in like a three-year restraining order and he suggested to my ex-husband to never contact me.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: He's like she's doing everything she can to be away from you.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: I suggest you leave her the hell alone.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: The first two cases that involved domestic violence, I didn't read a victim impact statement because I was believing the whole like, oh, I'm so sorry, it was my fault, I lost our son.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry that you're right, I do talk too much.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Sorry, you had to strangle me to shut me up, like all that shit.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: And then the third time around I was like this is your fault, this is not my fault and everything up to this point was your fault.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: And the fact that I had to, like, get out of my own, like you asked for help, for Christ's sake.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: So we fund these organizations that help people and you don't meet their qualifications.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: You're asking, you're going to people to ask for help, and that's really hard for an abused person, mind you.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: One in four women in this country are abused and one in 10 men are abused in this country.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: And you go and you find these organizations and you ask for help and they turn you all away, every single one.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: And when the cop had arrested him the third time, he's like have you reached out to this?
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: And this?
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: I was like yep, I already have.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: They told me I don't qualify.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: He's like how can you not qualify?
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: I'm like.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: This one said I didn't get in the hospital enough.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: This one said that he's too dangerous.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: This one said that because I'm not Catholic, this one says because I'm not Baptist, I don't fit in.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: I didn't fit into the mold, no-transcript going to take and what you're not going to take.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: And so when I surprised my own self and said you're moving out and we're getting a divorce, yeah, inside I was like, oh my God, prepare for the worst and the worst didn't happen.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: He didn't hit me.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: He knew he would be so screwed if he hit me while this stuff was not.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: He hadn't even been to a rain yet.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Because why?
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: I asked for a divorce and told him we were over that I was done with his crap.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: He knew that he would.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: He was looking at serious jail time If he did that.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: When that he would.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: He was looking at serious jail time.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: If he did that.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: When do you remember the last contact with him then at the court, when I walked past him and I told him he could go?
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: to hell.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: That was the last thing I had to say to him.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: That was the last thing I said to him and I don't even think he realized like I said it to him, because they excused me out of the court with the district attorney and her people and she was ahead of me and there was a guy behind me and we had to walk past him and his attorney like their backs, like the back of the table, and I said you can go to hell.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: And that was the last thing I ever said to him.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: That was it.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: And he I was right.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: He used our son to get a lesser sentence.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: He used his veteran status to get a lesser sentence, all sorts of crap.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: And he plays these cards and to have institutions.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, we can help him because he's a veteran, but we can't help you because I don't think you qualify for enough abuse, right?
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: So what's enough abuse?
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: You have what is it?
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: You have financial abuse.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: You have what is it?
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: You have financial abuse.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: You have verbal abuse, you have psychological abuse and you have physical abuse.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: And he obviously couldn't help me, hurt me financially.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like I was dependent on his money.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: I worked three damn jobs for seven years.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: He couldn't hurt me that way, but every other way he did.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: And what's enough?
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Like, where do you qualify for that?
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: I just don't.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: I guess I didn't understand and I don't really want to understand because it just makes me so mad.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Before we met today I did a little research of just statistics of like I shouldn't say women, because men get abused as well Pop culture in those last year.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: We've realized that women make false accusations and men don't report it as much as women do, and women only reported half the time that it happens.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: The three times that the state that I live in says that this happened was probably I don't know, it probably happened more like 80%.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Those are the times it was just reported.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: It happened every freaking day in one form or another, but those were the three times that it was bad enough that the police did something about it.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: So before we have to close out, can?
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: You tell us a little bit about some of the statistics that you found.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: So this is the US Department of Justice said, and it's about 2019, one in all half of the incidents are actually reported.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: 52% of people actually reported.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Of people actually reported.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: 75% of women ages 18 to 34 are subjugated to intimate partner violence.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: 75% of women between 18 and 34, intimate partner violence.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence says 20 people a minute in the United States are being violently assaulted in one way or another 20 people a minute.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: More than half the female homicides that are committed in our country are committed by a current or former partner of that woman.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Half Half of them that woman, half half of them.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: And why they don't report what happened is basically it comes down to fear.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: It's fear from the abuser because what if he gets out?
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: What's he going to do?
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: That's why I never testified against him the first two times was because he was going to come home.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to say shit in court because it's going to make stuff worse.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: So you have that fear of your abuser.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: What's he going to do?
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Also, fear of the uncertainty, like I was talking about financial what if you leave your husband and he's the only source of income?
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do?
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: How are you going to make money?
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: How are you going to support your kids?
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I didn't have children, so I didn't have that worry of how I'm going to worry about my kids, and that's a huge worry for a lot of women.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: And then the fear of being believed from family, friends and authority.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: And I people knew about our situation, absolutely knew.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Tell us what was there in the courtroom at one point and thought his abuse was okay.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Point and thought his abuse was okay, thought it was okay that he strangled me to the point where I don't know how long I was passed out and that was okay.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: And then the fact that they went and they supported him and he spins these tales.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: I've heard rumors and I've heard people reach out to me like, hey, he's saying that you're not divorced anymore.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, do you want me to show you my divorce story?
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: Because I'll show it to you.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I paid for it.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're divorced.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: And he just, they just go and spin their own truth and they're so charismatic and they're so believable and they're so just, I don't know They're't look like someone that beats their wives and that's the shitty thing is.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Abusers come in all shapes and sizes.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: They're female as long as male, and they will not look like the person that beats the crap out of their wife or the person that beats the crap out of their kids or the person that makes their home an unsafe thing.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: If you come home and you are walking on eggshells the minute you pull into your driveway or your street and you get that feeling in your heart or in your stomach and you're like God, I just have to do one more day and then I can sleep six more hours and then he'll be asleep and then I can go to bed.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: I just have to get the laundry done and do all this stuff and be all this perfect person and it's not even perfection they're looking for, they're looking for control.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: And so you go through that and you're like how can I get out, sweetheart, get the fuck out.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Just get the fuck out.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: I had every damn door slammed in my face asking for help and I had to make the decision that I was worth it, that I knew I didn't need to be there.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: I actually told this story to a friend that didn't know it over the weekend and she was in tears.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: She's like why didn't you reach out to us?
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I was like everybody else was saying it was fine.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: How many more people did I need to tell?
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: I'm bearing my soul out, letting you know the most vulnerable parts of what's going on and you're telling me nothing's wrong.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: His sleeping with other people is okay, his all this other shit is fine.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: How many people do you have to bear your soul to to have it?
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do it anymore.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna tell anybody more of my story and it makes me sad, because what are those people that were telling you that?
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: What are they hiding?
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: yeah, oh, exactly yeah.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: And to think that kind of abuse is okay.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I had a couple of friends that were like you know what, he knows where we live, so you can stay like a day here.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: And I was like I'm not even going to try Because you're right he does, and like I'm not even gonna try because you're right he does.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: If he was, and, mind you, he didn't have a license and he didn't have a car, but that didn't mean he didn't have other girlfriends that would drive around obviously the law doesn't matter to him.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: You know, not at all.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: He didn't care.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: And so having friends tell me that's really shitty and helping, trying to help me with resources and having those resources say no, and they were like what do you mean?
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: They said no, and so you put your belief system in a whole, just ask for help.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: What if that help tells you no?
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Nobody tells you that shit.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Nobody tells you that, oh, if you go, if you're not Christian enough or if you're not the right to the nomination, or if you believe in a different Jesus or whatever thing, that you're qualified sorry, you just don't fit the bill.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, he only put you in the hospital three times.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Sorry, the lucky number's four.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, he only put bruises on you.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, we're looking for somebody that broke your nose.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: If he's hitting you or if you feel unsafe, just get the fuck out, sleep in your car, do whatever you can to get out and, even if you get the door slammed in your face 110 times, make your own door and get the hell out.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: It's so scary the fact that women have to die because all they want is to be with someone that loves them.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: Men die as well, but unfortunately, a lot of the statistics on men abuse and men homicides by women are not as much, obviously, but they go highly unreported because it's not a man thing, it's not something that happens to a guy.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: No, it happens to guys all the time.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: They just don't talk about it.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: There's some people that don't fit your mold and you're asking them to stay in an abusive situation If it is bad enough that they are asking for help not a restraining order, not for him to be arrested, but simply to be safe and you're turning them down.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I got turned down at the homeless shelter because I had a job and a car.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: I couldn't even stay at the homeless shelter.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: The question that I have for you before we end is I want to hear about that moment that you looked and said you know what?
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: I feel safe, I'm good.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: Do you remember that first moment you had that just sob relief?
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: I would love to hear about that moment.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: I think it was when I was with Scott, my husband, and our first date is going to sound super corny, but our first date I wasn't quite divorced yet, and when he found out I wasn't divorced he didn't want to date.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: He said we could be friends but we couldn't date.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: And so obviously I was like, hey, I'm going to believe me.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: This divorce is going to take like days, not weeks, not months, not years.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: Like it's going to take days.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: I've already talked to the judge like shit's already happened.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: And so when I went on my date with Scott, he was completely different.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: He was different from every guy that I'd ever met, and I know that sounds super corny, but we went, we met to go and get like coffee in the morning and we spent the whole day together.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: And, mind you, I had a migraine to the point where I was wanting to throw up the whole damn day.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: And I told him that I was like, just so you know, I don't know how long this day is going to last, I don't feel good, but I will meet you and I will, we'll meet.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: And then that meeting didn't want to leave.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to leave, and so he ended up at my apartment and we watched a movie and I fell asleep on his lap and I was like oh, my God, I'm so sorry.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: He's like why are you sorry?
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: and I realized I had finally felt safe I want to extend my deepest gratitude to our incredible guests for sharing their transformative journey with us today.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: Join us next week as we dive into the healing process and share more incredible stories of triumph and resilience.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: Outro Music.