THE LAST YEAR AND A HALF

This was the worse of times.... We were living in Elba at the beginning of the time frame..I was so unhappy. I went from working at a day care to an Attorney's office, ho was horrible to me, to getting a job at the nursing home... My seizures were coming closer and closer together. They were bad ones too..I was able to find out that they were caused by an old left lobe temporal injury (remember the concussion)...The time in Elba was extremely hard, our finances were spiraling out of control.. Bobby had a friend that was a pharmacist and he had been going to him for years to get Lortab, without a prescription,,, this guy was arrested a couple years back and put on probation..then had served that time and was back into a drug store, so Bobby was getting all the drugs he wanted, well I should say to last until he could get back..he was driving about 90 miles three times a week to get more. When he couldn't get them we all paid for it. He was throwing things, turning furniture over tearing my house apart when he couldn't find where he left his keys or maybe his cigarette lighter...There was no hope keeping the house clean. He had managed to bring a couple of cats into the house, and we were not supposed to have pets, as we were renting and this was against our lease. You couldn't tell him that, those cats were staying. He didn't empty the litter box like he should and I couldn't and the cats weren't really that well trained. He would stay up to all hours of the night, cooking and then eating in the living room and making a complete mess. My house was constantly in shambles. Of course if we had company which wasn't often if was my fault because I was the wife. People had no idea of the hell we were all living in. I was so in the middle of it I couldn't even see it. I was depressed and had gained so much weight I could not sleep in the bed, it just hurt my back too back, so I slept in the recliner. One day Bobby was in a rage, we had company too, by the way and he couldn't' find his patrol car keys, he went inside and pulled the mattress off the bed, like they would be under there...left it laying in the middle of the room. All couch cushions were pulled out, coffee table turned over, chest of drawers emptied on the floor. It was horrible, he finally found them and left for work, high as a kite. I went in the house to attempt to put things back together and found dozens of letters between the mattress and box springs. I pulled them out and started reading them, to my horror they were letters written to playboy and forum and any other one he could find, letters about me. The only one I am willing to share is the one about us going to the beach and he described what I was wearing...I don't even own a black shirt ...geesh... and how he supposedly sat in the corner and watched me sit at the bar and drink and dance with several men. Then how I asked one back to our motel room where he hid in the closet and described what I did with this stranger. I couldn't breathe. There lying in my bedroom floor, dozens of these types of letters, dozens of books, full of pornography. I couldn't believe my eyes, I felt so used. I placed them all in a bag and took them to a burn barrel and set them on fire. Little did I know there were more under the bed, till I was doing spring cleaning later and found those. Bobby was in a downhill plunge, his blood sugar was out of control, he was coming in so high he could barely talk or walk, once running into Paula's boyfriends truck, with the police car and messing the whole side up. He was getting lost on his way home, and taking hours sometimes to get there, calling me on the phone and my steering him in the right direction...why didn't I run him into a pond or something. The rapes were more and more frequent.. You may say a husband can't rape his wife. Well I disagree with you. He would come in a night, kids in the room, and would demand I go to the room to "talk" to him. I knew what was coming, but to keep Lee from killing him, and the fighting down, I would go. The kids were old enough to know what we were going to do. So I would lay with my face in a pillow and cry as he helped himself, always insisting on using that same phrase that my Uncle used the day he raped me...telling me I'm not him. I would bed him not to say that to me. He forced his way so many times, it just became a chore like cutting my toenails or something. I endured it. I cried. I wondered would I ever be normal. Could I ever get to the place where I truly wanted a man, and could enjoy it. Things were sooo bad that Paula's boyfriend would come over after work and go into her room with her and they would lock the door, and he refused to leave until Bobby came home and settled down, which usually didn't happen until after my crying in the pillow. Bobby was working at Kinston Police Department, because he got fired at Elba Police Department, I didn't find that out until after our separation. Paula decided to move in with Brent's (her husband now) family. They made a room for her and she moved out. Bobby, Lee and I then moved to Kinston..Oh my Lord that How was awful, rent was cheap and we needed a place to live.

We worked for a couple of weeks trying to paint this ole house up and clean it us as best as we could, and even with my pretty things there was not much help. There were holes in the old wooden floor big enough to see the ground. How could a man move his family into something so shabby? Being in the country, Bobby decided we needed more cats and a bull dog. Yep you guessed it they all moved inside with us.. I pitched a fit but it did no good.

Paula got married On October 11, and I couldn't' afford to give her the wedding she deserved.. Bobby's mother bought her wedding dress and sent me $200.00 to buy flowers to make all the bouquets. I sat in the floor and make all her flowers and if I do say so myself they were beautiful. My aunt who used to own a flower shop had some left over things, and she helped me with the church and reception. My brother's wife made the cakes and they were beautiful... Everyone just brought food and it turned out beautiful. When I saw Her I knew I would never see anything that beautiful again. Of all the beauty contest she had entered and won, she had never been that pretty. As she walked down the aisle on her daddy's arm, I turned and looked up at Lee, realizing he was 18 now, and seeing her coming down that aisle, I cried, and I cried because I knew I never had to take it anymore. The next time he showed out I was gone, outta there, it was over. Lee and I spent the next couple months sitting at a local convenience store that had a deli in it, we had them believe that we would take the leftover scraps home to our dog..."don't throw those out, I'll take em and feed our dog", yeah right, that is what we ate. I was so numb...I don't remember much from Paula's wedding until December 2nd. That day I will never forget. That is the day I left....that is the day I received my freedom, my strength, but most importantly my deliverance... December 2nd deserves it's own blog entry... I will need to pray more about that one...give me a day or too...