Reader Responce

I want to talk to you a little bit this morning about the response I have had from a few of my readers.  As of this writing we have had over 150 views this week and over 340 since I started this blog.  While that may be a small number to some, to me it is incredible. 

I received an odd message the other day from an old friend.  It said, “We have lead parallel lives.”  I was a bit confused and I tried to contract her for a few days.  I was finally able to get a hold of her and talk to her about her comment.  We spent over an hour chatting online as she poured out her story.  How she has many of the same health concerns that I have, and that her husband had been just like Mike.  We had both lived thru the abuse and humiliation of a husband addicted to porn.  She then told me that she watched her husband turn into a predator, and begin to prey on her family members.  I wept behind my keyboard as I read what she wrote.  In all most 15 years of telling the story of my survival, I had never met another woman whose husband had been a porn addict. 

I was so angry over what I was reading.  Angry that he had done this to my friend, that he had hurt other members of her family, but I think I was most angry over the fact that I was not alone.  See when you’ve never meet anyone who has been through what you have.  You feel perhaps you are a fluke.  That somehow you are at fault. That somehow you caused this to happen, because surely no one else could have been through what you’ve been through.  You are bad and evil, and mistaken.  That somehow, perhaps you made it all up and it didn’t really happen at all.  And then you see it in someone else’s hand and you are like, “OMG! Maybe I didn’t make it up!?  Maybe I’m not alone.” 

It made me very sad to think of what my friend had gone through.  It made me even sadder and angrier to think that she and I must not be the only ones out there.  I am beginning to think I might put a Facebook group together for us survivors of this type of abuse, but as of yet I have no title for said group or how to even define its parameters.  What would we call ourselves?  Porn Widows?  Survivors of porn addicted partners?  I will keep you a breast of this situation.

These conversations also made me very, very angry.  We can have a national conversation about Viagra and erectile dysfunction.  We can talk about people surviving physical abuse, but when it comes to the sexual stuff, Oh NO! We shut down.  On TV, other than Law and Order: SVU I know of no other program that is currently discussing this subject.   Sex abuse gets so little national coverage.  We are such prudes when it comes to sex that people like me end up being embarrassed and humiliated over what happened to them.  We feel it is our fault.  There is also this prevailing standard that if your partner is using porn it must be because you are too ugly to fuck or you are frigid.  That needs to change.  Those of us who have been abused have got to come out of our hiding places and talk about this, if to no one else but each other. 

We teach kids about Stranger Danger, but what we should be teaching them is that danger may be closer to home.  A child is more likely to be abused by a family member then by someone they don’t know.  We need to teach kids, in schools, that their bodies are their own.  What is acceptable touching and what is not.  But if we can’t even teach sex education in school.  If we can’t even teach girls about their own periods and how their bodies work, because the Christian Right won’t let us, they will never let us teach this.  People will continue to suffer because somebody wants to take the moral high ground and say lets handle a subject at home, which has no morals at all. 

 I have talked to many women over the years.  The national average is that 1 in 4 women is sexual assaulted or molested at some point in her life.  Men are closer to 1 in 10.  Now those are based on reported numbers.  In my conversations with women the number is closer to 1 in 2.  I am to the point now that I assume the women I meet have been abused, unless I am told otherwise.  I can still count on one hand how many women I know that have never been sexual abused in any way shape or form. 

I want to say a little bit about porn here.  I am not anti-porn.  If couples want to get together and watch it, to learn new techniques, or to express a fetish together I think it can be just fine.  Many people use it recreationally. I think this may be fine too.  But when you get to the level of what we have been through. When you are denying your partner sex to gratify yourself with porn all the time, if your partner has to beg for sex or any kind of intimacy, you have a problem.  It’s kind of like alcohol.  You can use it responsibility to flavor cakes or enjoy a good time with friends, but when you are using it to cope you have a problem and need help. 

I have often told people that Mike was a sex addict.  They usually laugh and smile and say well that must have been wonderful for you.  I have to then stop and explain to them what that really means.  That porn addiction is classified under sex addiction.  I then explain that Mike was addicted to porn and did not want to have sex with me.  They then look embarrassed and say how horrible that must have been.  I think we either need a better word or a better understanding of the word.  Many people also believe that you can only be sexual abused as a child, and not as an adult, much less a sexually active adult.  That is just not true.

I have tried to be brave in all I have told you.  Apparently my attempt at bravery has inspired others.  My beloved friend Juno, has been so inspired by what I am writing, that she has begun her own blog to tell the truth of her abuse.  I think that is just wonderful.  Writing can be very cathartic.  Writing your own truth,  I think can be helpful to others.  I am writing mine, you should consider writing yours.

I have been telling Jay, that if I can help just one person, by telling my story than I will have done my job.  You know I have my bad days and I don’t understand what my mission on this earth is.  That I don’t understand why I have been through all that I have been through, and then these ladies talk to me.  And I think maybe I am alive, and been given the ability to write, so that I can help others who have been thru what I have through.  I am honored these ladies have come forward to tell me their stories.  I look forward to hearing more from y’all.

Ilsa

 

                                                                                                                                        

Surviving Mike

I am sorry to say that things continued to get worse in my life.  Our sex life had been bad for many years.  Mike like to role play Star Trek characters.  But in the last few months I was desperate.  I did what he asked.  I tried to invent new things.  I remember one night dressing as best as I could like a Geisha.  Oh went for that one.  His requests became strange.  He asked me to laugh like my mother and pretend to be her in bed.  He wanted us to be teenagers, like 14 and 15 year olds.  One night he decided to try to bite me all over my back.  Hey if it was good enough for Marv Albert, why not him. 

Mike began to express to me that he wanted to become swingers.  He told me, “I want to have sex with a blond, and a red head, and a black woman and an Asian woman.”  I told him that was fine but he could not have me and do those things.  I said, “If you can’t keep me satisfied, how do you expect to keep them satisfied.”  I’d really fuck with him and say, “I know you can’t wait to see me with another woman.”  Oh that got him hot.  “And I can’t wait to see you with another man,” I said.  Oh that shut him up.  “What its okay for you to want me to bisexual, but not you.” 

I have learned much about swinging and bisexuality since those days.  A lot of what I said to him was from misconceptions that I had about both communities.  Neither one goes hand in hand.  Just because you have sex with someone of the same sex does not make you bisexual.  I have been told by swingers in this community that Mike would not have been let into their groups without a partner.  When I asked my swinging friends if they knew Mike they said they did not.  I guess Mike never got his wish, poor boy.

The worst night came sometime in late June of 2001.  Mike was angry I was asking him for sex again.  I was lying in bed necked as usual.  All of a sudden he was on top of me.  I thought, oh this is different.  Then he pinned my arms above my head. He said, “You always want sex so much.  How about this!” and he entered me dry.  I screamed.  I began to try to fight, but he had my legs spread out so I could not kick him.  I screamed, “No!” at the top of my lungs, over and over again. I fought as long and as hard as I could. But I remember thinking I am being raped and there is nothing I can do about it.  I turned my head to the side and prayed for it to be over quickly.  When it was over I got up and showered.  I felt like I would never get clean.  I was terrified of him after that.  I could not even look him in the eye.  I was like a whipped dog.  I was broken.

The details around that time are a bit muddled in my brain, so forgive me if we go back and forth in a dance for a minute.  I don’t remember when I became suicidal again, if it was before or after the rape.  My plan was to jump from a local bridge.  I felt from the water I came, and to the water I would return.  I woke in the night to see my plan out and I felt something heavy push me back down on the bed.  I fell instantly back to sleep.

There was a computer at work that I had begun journaling on.  I did not know that it was company policy for the office managers to go around and check what was being done on all of them.  I had written a piece where I talked about wanting to kill Mike.  That even if I cut his head off, with his blood running down my arm, it would still not give me satisfaction enough for all he had done to me.  I was caught.  I was hauled into the office and given an ultimatum.  Either I begin counseling immediately, threw their Employee Assistance Program, or I would be fired.  I consented.  Although angry at first at what I saw was an invasion of my privacy, it was ultimately what saved my life.

Mike and I walked in to the councilor’s office a few days later.  My opening line, which I thought was funny was, “One of us is about to die and his odds are not looking to good.”  Very coolly the councilor, Liz, suggested we might try a trial separation.  We resisted the idea.  I began to see Liz every week.  Mike was to see a male councilor.  I believe he went once or perhaps twice.

Mike still would not work at this point.  He would not even look for work.  We were behind on my Methodist loan payments, of which my father was a co-signer.  My Dad called me one day at work and said, “I just called and paid $535 on your Methodist loan.  I told that husband of yours if he didn’t get a job I was going to come and get $535 out of his ass, move you home and pay for the divorce.”  I laughed and hung up with my dad.  I called him back an half an hour later and asked, “What time can you be here?”

My parents picked me up.  I went home and packed a bag.  I told Michael I would be back when he got a job.  I took the car, which was in my name, with me.  I think that was on a Thursday.  I went home to stay with my parents and I noticed how much better I felt.  Mike continued to call me and tell me to bring back the car.  How could he look for work, with no car?  I told him figure something out.  I was feeling stronger every day, just being away from him.  This is all I heard that weekend, bring my car back, bring my car back.  He called me on a Tuesday. 

“I’ve got a job.  Bring my car back,” he said.

I’ll never forget I was making copies, talking to him on a handset with a 25ft. cord.  “Wonderful!”  I said.  “I want a divorce.”  He heard me this time, after 6 months he finally heard me.

The other end of the phone was dead silent, “But I love you,” he said.

“Funny, that’s the first time you’ve said it since I left.  From now on if you want to talk to me, you will have to do it threw my attorney.” and I hung up on him.

I saw Mike a few more times after that.  We met at counseling so I could return my gold wedding band to him.  He had long ago made me pawn the little diamond that he had brought for me.  We got $100 for it.  I told him I released him from his vows.  I made him take off his ring and say the same thing to me.  I considered our marriage dissolved at that point. Somewhere in there we went to dinner so I could explain to him why I was leaving him.  He just didn’t get it.

When I left Mike I only took what was mine: my bookcase, my books, my clothes and accessories, my toiletries, my gumbo pot, my muffin pan, my big bottle of tobacco sauce and my car. I had wanted to make Mike hurt for a long time for what he had done to me.  My best revenge came the morning after I left.  He now had to figure out, for the first time in years, who was going to pay the rent, who was going to pay the bills, who would wash his clothes and clean up after him, how would he go anywhere, and who would pay to feed him.  For the first time in years, he had to be totally dependent on himself.  I hope it scared him to death!

One day after work, I went to get in my car.  Inside, I’ll never forget, was a potted African Violet.  He had been there.  I freaked.  I realized at that point, that Mike still had keys to my car.  I called him and told him to come to the dealership immediately and return my key.  When he showed up I was just coming down from inside the tower, where all the deals happen and the sales managers sit.  He walked up to my desk and said, “Hello Sultan Vial Betrayer.”  It was a line from Aladdin, one of his favorites.  I lost it.  He just had to have one more jab at me. I ran crying back into the tower.  I begged the new car sales manager to get the key from him and throw him off the lot. 

“Your husband?” he asked confused.

“My ex husband,” I informed him. 

He was great.  He took Mike by the shoulder and walked him outside.  I have no idea what he said to him.  He returned with my key and Mike has never tried to contact me since then.  And for that I am grateful.  We did try later on to establish nice relations, via chat, but that quickly disintegrated.  Liz told me, “You stay away from that psychopath,” and I have. 

I continued to see Liz every week for about a year.  Early on I told her, “I cannot get out of my head what he would say to me.  It keeps playing over and over again in my head.”  She told me to write some of it down and bring it in next time.  I did.  About half way through the first page she stopped me.  She said, “You do understand you have been abused?” 

“What?” I said.

“The things he said to you is verbal abuse.”  I was shocked.  I was too smart to be abused.  It just could not be.  Over the years I had counseled other women to leave abusive relationships. But it was true.  Mike’s abuse left me PTSD.  I had flashbacks for the first few years.  Although I have not seen him since that last day in the dealership, I remained terrified of him.  Afraid that he would somehow find me and convince me to go back with him.  The first few weeks I jumped at every sound.  I was so unsure of myself, that I was not even sure the ground would hold under my feet.  I slept with a loaded shot gun in my room for two years.  After that I kept a knife under my pillow or had to go to sleep with my hand on it.  I still keep a loaded gun in the head board, but that is more for scarring coyotes off than anything else.  For many years I refused to go on the side of town he had once lived on.  Terrified I would run into him.  I changed the spelling of my name and took back my maiden name.  I kept my profile on Facebook hidden, until just a few years ago. We have mutual friends on Facebook.  We have even commented on the same things, but he has never tried to contact me.  He is either to stupid or is being respectful.  I am grateful for whatever one it is.  For the last 14 years I have considered myself to be in hiding.  But with these articles and blog I feel I have finally come out of hiding and reclaimed part of my life.

And then there are my dreams.  In the 14 years since I left him, I continue to dream of him on a frequent, sometimes nightly basis.  For the first year after I left I blew him up, cut him up, hit him and killed him in every way possible each night in my dreams.  But every night he just came back.  I had not been dating Jay long when I woke up one night in his arms.  My face wet and Jay gently soothing me.  “It’s okay.  You’re safe.  You’re going to be okay.”

“What’s going on?” I said confused.

“You’ve been screaming in your sleep again.”  Jay answered. 

I have no idea how long I had been doing that.  It was a year and a half between leaving Mike and meeting Jay.  I am thankful to say that does not happen anymore.  Now most nights Mike is just a figure in the background and rarely tries to hurt me.  One of the affects of the Buspar is I have hardly dreamed of him, even in the background, since I began taking it.  Oh he’s reared his ugly head while I’ve been writing about him, but now that I am finishing telling you this story, I believe he will go away again.

I never talked about my abuse or my rape to the police.  I do not even know if marital rape is prosecutable in the state of Louisiana.  I washed away all evidence with my shower.  I knew who my assailant was.  Of course his DNA was going to be on me, he was my husband.  So it would have been a story of he said she said.  As for the abuse unless it is recorded in some way it is damn hard to prove in court.  By the time I understood I had been abused, it was already too late.  I escaped with my life and that was good enough for me. 

I fear now for Mike’s other victims.  I know there have been several women since me.  I know that he has since remarried and is living in the Houston area.  I also believe that she has children.  Now when I left Mike the pictures were getting younger and younger.  I saw young girls just starting to bud.  I don’t know what dark corners Mike’s predilections have taken him into. 

My thought in all of this is, if I can survive, you can too.  With good meds, good councilors and doctors you can get better!  Whatever you’re going through there is help out there.  Tell the people around you want is happening.  No matter how embarrassed you are.  Tell everyone until someone helps you.  Tell them even if you think they won’t care.  Watch how they treat animals. They will treat you the same way.  They keep them on a chain; they will keep you on an emotional one too.  If the animals don’t want your person around, RUN!  The animals know, they can sense these things.  No sex and no amount of money are worth your life.  If you want to leave, have a plan, keep a bag packed in the car.  Remember don’t go back for something you forgot.  Don’t take the animals with you, almost no abuse shelter allows you to have animals.  Abuse is wrong no matter what your religion or morals may teach you.  No one deserves to live in fear.  You did not cause this problem, no matter what they might tell you and I promise you, that no matter your intentions, you cannot change the abuser.  Only they can do that.  I tried.  You’ll get thru this.  What I learned from Mike was that I wanted to be loved at any cost, and it cost me my soul, my mental health, and almost my life.  Don’t be like me!

Mike taught me an important lesson.  If I had not had such a terrible husband I would not know what a good one looks like.  I was into bad boys.  I had it messed up in my mind that abuse, control and manipulations equaled love.  They do not.  I have often said if Mike had hit me I would have stayed forever, because in my brain that would have meant he loved me.  Leaving Mike made me get help for my depression and continue to seek counseling for the other issues in my life.  I do not regret being married to Mike.  I honestly believe if I have not survived what I did, did my work to get over it, that I would never have married Jay and have the successful marriage I have today.  People often tell me as a pagan that I am going to hell.  I respond with, “No Mam’ I’ve already been.  I spent 6 ½ years there.”  And any person who’s been in an abusive relationship knows that it is the truth. 

Ilsa

After College

In May of 2000 we moved into an apartment at the Foxborough Cove in his hometown of Shreveport.  I had sat reading him the names of the apartment complexes available, he had insisted on this one, as it had the same name as the stadium that his beloved Patriots played in.  Mike ate, slept and breathed sports, football in particular.  He often called it his religion.  He collected trading cards, of all things that he considered sports.  Some things he referred to as just games.  Mike was also obsessed with video games and toys.  He was obsessed with Pokémon.  He was very childlike. 

I have often wondered what his major malfunction was.  We went through several ideas during our marriage, from hypoglycemia, to him being possessed by a demon, whom we tried to expel.   My first councilor after I left him, Liz, believed him to be a psychopath.  I agree.  I wonder now if Mike was also bipolar like his mother was.  I have always wondered if he was abused by his parents.  He refused to discuss or even tell me one story of himself as a child.  Why I don’t know.  Whatever made him the way he was I will never know. 

At some point I lost the belief that I could change Mike, that I and love alone could make him get better.  That I could make him treat me better.  I wanted out.  I had known for about a year and half before I left him that I wanted to leave, I just had no idea how. Now I had threatened many times, that if he did not clean up his act and get help I was going to leave.   Mike had me believing my parents would never take me back.  About six months before I left I began telling him I wanted a divorce.  He would not listen.  He could not hear me.

When we arrived at the Cove we began to look for work.  We were surviving off a loan that he forced me to sign. In Northwest Louisiana no one wants to hire someone with a college degree and little work experience.  I got some temp work and eventually I began to sell cars at a local dealership.  I was terrible at it.  I can’t lie with a straight face, but I tried.  I think I sold a total of 3 by myself, and one was to my mom.  I quit selling cars in January of 2001.  I told them if they ever need a receptionist to call me.  A few weeks later they did.  I started working as a relief receptionist and later as file clerk at their Shreveport branch.  Mike eventually got a job working in the new sports radio station in town. 

I was now very Buddhist and defined myself as such.  My Christian husband could have cared less.  I remember being at times suicidal, even writing a note that Mike made me burn later.  He made me promise to never write one again.  I remember being very angry.  My Buddhist books helped me to realize that and to realize that I was very angry at Mike for the first time.  I became violent.  When we fought I threw dishes.  I remember one day asking him to come get his dishes out of the sink.  I began to count to ten.  When I got to ten I broke a dish.  I went through three dishes and throwing a canister at him before he finally got up from his video game to do what I had asked.  I just loved to hear them crash!  When I married Jay, I made sure my dishes were heavy enough that if I threw them at the wall they would not break.  I am thankful to say that I am no longer a dish thrower.  I haven’t needed to be.

Mike was fired from his position at the radio station in the Spring of 2001.  I still do not know why.  We had one car so Mike would take me to work.  He would be unshaven and unshowered at that point.  I would ask him if he was going to look for work that day.  He would say, “uhum,” while he continued to play Pokémon on his Gameboy.  When he would come back, he would look just the same.  I would ask if he had looked for work that day.  He would say, “ Yes.”  I began to believe he was lying to me.  So one day I preformed what I called the kiss test.  I had to wear makeup for my job.  One day as he pulled up to drop me off at work.  I put on a very bright red lipstick and as I prepared to leave I covered his whole face in kisses.  I asked him if he was going to look for work that day.  He responded in the affirmative.  He returned 8 hours later unshaven, unshowered and covered in my kisses.  Michael was lying to me. 

I confronted him and he blew up as usual.  I wondered where he was going while I was at work.  Now Michael was a book smart man, but he was stupid about covering up his tracks.  One day not long after, I was putting away his socks and discovered a receipt for Capri video.  He was in the shower.  I stole a look in the checkbook.  Remember I was allowed to deposit money in but I was never allowed to look in it or know how much money was in the check book.  Inside were more receipts for Capri video.  Now Capri video was a little hell hole where men could go and rent a little room for $25, watch pornos and jack off.  Mike got out of the shower.  I was furious.  We were living hand to mouth at that time, I was being lied to and I snapped.  I grabbed him and threw him down on the bed.  I choked him until he turned blue.  That was not the only time I was violent with him.  A few weeks before I picked up a large serrated bread knife and held it against his throat.  I told him, “I ought to kill you, but you’re not worth the prison time,” and I let him go.  I am still ashamed at what I did.  I hesitate to tell you these things, but I want you to understand that this man pushed me to places I never dreamed I could go.  I was becoming like him.

I made the decision to try to reestablish relations with my parents.  I remember sitting down with them in my living room.  I told them, we are broke, it looks like we are going to have to file bankruptcy, and I told them finally about his porn addiction.  It was the first time I had told the truth I a long time.  It felt good and I kept doing it.  It was the first time I had been open with them about my relationship with him.  They were shocked.

I wanted to leave and I just did not know how to do it.  In April of 2001 my mom did something very smart.  She began to take me to the movies once a week.  It was a glorious break of normalcy.  I remember getting in the car one Sunday afternoon after our movie and saying, “I just don’t want to go home.”  She chimed in with, “You don’t have too.”  I convinced myself that I did and I went home, but that…that was the seed that started it all. 

Ilsa

 

 

 

The Goings on of Apartment C

In August of 1997 as we prepared to spend another semester in different dorms.  When we received the good news that we had gotten into married student housing and that apartment C would soon be ours. Mike’s manipulation and control also began in earnest about this time.  I was told what I could watch on TV.  Anything that was empowering or liberal he told me I was not allowed to watch.  He really hated Oprah.   He began to turn me against my parents so that I felt I was backed into a corner, and had no one but him.  The porn got worse.  My attempts to stop it became more frequent.  When I tried to confront him about it he flew off the handle and blamed me that I was no open enough. 

I began to try to remove the temptation from him.  I remember one time filling up half of a large black garbage bag with magazines, video tapes, and cd’s that I had cooked in the microwave.  They sparkle and pop when you cook them.  I went through his disks and his browser history.  I remember one time going thru a stack of floppy disks to see how many had porn on them.  My stack was about a foot tall when I stopped.  I destroyed them all.  It got to the point that I could not even keep a clothing catalogue or magazine with a picture of a woman in it, because he would steal them, hide them and use them.  What’s worse is I had to pick up his crunchy socks in the morning, because he would never put them in the hamper. 

I still have no idea how much money he spent on porn.  He hid so much of it from me.  I made the money and was in charge of the bills when we first got married.  Until I bounced a few checks and he took the check book away from me.  I turned the bills over to him, like a good little Christian.  He was the man.  He was supposed to run the house.  I remember one day getting a $500 phone bill.  Turns out he had been calling 800 numbers, that would then route him to a 900 number, where he could have phone sex.  He was furious when I found out.  I had to put a 900 number block on our phone.

We were piss ass poor.  I was working as a lab monitor and it paid very little.  Mike, when he did work, was delivering pizzas.  I remember even scrubbing his shirts on a washboard at night so that he would have clean clothes.  I did all of the house work.  If I did ask him to help, he would just ignore me.

I tried to throw him out one night.  I packed his bag, his teddy bear included, and threw it out on the lawn along with all his porn. I locked the doors and would not let him back in the house.  He banged and screamed on the door and windows.  I made it 30 min. before I finally gave in.

I would often begged him to stop, to get help, but in the late ‘90s there was no help for sex addicts in our area.  And that’s what he had become, by the definition.  He would just become more enraged, and fly into a tantrum, hit the wall and terrify me.  Always blaming it on someone else, USL, Liberals, me.  It didn’t matter.  He never took responsibility for what he was doing. I always expected his next punch would be my face, but he never hit me.  He just verbally, emotional, mentally and financially abused me. 

As for me, he would not touch me.  It took weeks, often of begging on my hands and knees for him to touch me or have sex with me.  This man I loved, no longer wanted me and I became a prisoner in my own home.  I would go to bed, and he would masturbate by the computer in the other room until the wee hours of the morning.  I would try to go to the bathroom to pee and he would scream at me to get back to bed.  I developed bladder problems for holding it for so long.  I still think this is part of why I developed IC.

I was depressed and under so much stress I developed Shingles.  I reached 300lb. I was suicidal, and wrote several suicide notes.  I reached out for help several times, but to no avail.  How could I ever tell them what was going on?  How could I tell them I was not enough for my husband?  Joe and one other friend were the only ones who knew what I was going through.  I had to have someone to talk too, and it took years for me to get to that point with them.  But neither them nor the councilors had any real answers for me, or could help me understand what was going on.  I was too embarrassed to tell them what was really going on. I did not understand I had been abused until after I left him.  I remember one night even calling a local rehab center and telling them what was going on.  They told me they had no programs for porn addicts at the time.  All they wanted to know was whether he hit me or not.  Mike was furious when he found out I called them.

Oh and this was also one of his things.  I have told you I would often get Bronchitis.  When I would get sick he would tell me, “You just think you’re sick.  You’re not really sick.”  Mike played head games with me.  Every time I caught him in a lie he would say, “It’s not a lie.  It’s omission.”  Or my personal favorite, “I told you.  You just forgot.”  Now I have a memory like an elephant, I didn’t forget, his lying ass just didn’t tell me. 

We continued to play nice in public.  Few knew what was going on with us at home. In the darkness I reached out for anything.  I happened to find a book by his Holiness the Dali Lama, called The art of happiness.  I began to get very into Buddhism.  The first rule of Buddhism is that all life is suffering, and I was most definitely suffering.  The second rule is there is a cause for suffering.  The third is there is a way out of suffering.  I began to look for a way out of that suffering.   I started to study with a small Buddhist group in town, which kind of hid as a book club.  Buddhism helped give me a little light in an other wise dark life.

Then there was Joe.  He had stayed for a few semesters and then he left to join the Army.  He could not keep up with the break neck pace that his scholarships demanded.  He had also been in ROTC for a long time.  It was in Joe that I had hope that I had not lost all my sexiness, despite my weight and my current predicament so I tempted him.  I let him talk to me while I was in the tub.  I could see I was still attractive to someone.  Obviously the problem was not me.  Mike knew about this and was angry, but never tried to stop me.  He never tried to fight for me. 

Mike and I had changed his major, not long after we moved into apartment C.  As a Sociology major I had to chose a minor.  I started taking classes in Anthropology.  I fell even more in love with it then I had with Sociology.  In my senior year I changed my major to my minor.  By the time I graduated my GPA was 2.9, while still a C average, I had pulled it up a full point from the time I left USL.  Mike changed to journalism, just like his father before him.  In the Summer of 1999 Mike left me to do his internship at a news station in Shreveport.  We were elated he had got what we felt was a prestigious internship.  Mike received a D in the class.  Later I found out it was because he spent all his time downloading porn while he was at work. 

That summer I had to master 9 hours of French, or I would not graduate.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.  I was in class from 8 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon.  Then I went home to study until midnight or so.  Get up again about 5 a.m. to study and then do it all again, five days a week.  I passed by the skin of my teeth.  I don’t think I even remember how to say, “What is your name?” in French anymore.

It was during that summer that Joe and I became even closer.  I had not been away from Mike for many years.  Joe, Gods’ bless him, would drive up from Fort Polk every other Friday to take care of me.  We would go to put my check in the bank and buy groceries.  I didn’t see Mike for three months.  He could have cared less what happened to me.  While he was gone, Jim would sleep in the bed with me, while we both had our clothes on.  Hey it was better than him sleeping on the love seat.  I was scared to go to sleep on my own back then.  I remember the first few weeks that summer going to sleep with one of Mike’s lightsabers in my hands.  I didn’t have any other weapons.

I was still not sure what I was going to do with my life after I graduated college.  I began looking at attending graduate school.  I had thought about becoming a professor.  You really cannot work in the field of Anthology without a Doctorate.  We made a trip to the University of Alabama at Birmingham for me to look at the college.  I liked it and hoped to enroll.  My GRE, the test to get into a master’s program, was to be paid for by NSU.  Mike comes to me one night and says that we can’t go to graduate school just yet.  He says we need to take a year off and pay some of our bills.  I am devastated.  But he is my husband and he knows best.  We graduate in May of 2000, literally one behind the other.  The next day we pack up and move back to Shreveport. 

Ilsa

Marrying Mike

We made plans that fall to marry during the winter break of 1996.  I had no idea that we would marry on what would later become a sacred day to me, December 21^st, Winter Solstice, one of Holda’s most holy days.  It just happened to be on a Saturday.  My dress was a simple white dress my mother had bought from Catherine’s for me. We got the license and I had called around that week to Justice of the Peace’s in the area to see who had an opening.  We were married in the back yard gazebo of Tom Carlton.  Who was at the time the Chancellor for Bossier Parish Community College. 

It was me, Mike, my parents, his parents, Nicholas and Mr. Carlton.  My mother walks me down the aisle and whispers in my ear, “You can still get out of this if you want to.  It’s harder to get into a marriage then it is to get out of one.”  It just strengthened my determination that I was going to fix Mike and prove her wrong.  The service begins and we are not passed the “Dearly Beloved,” when my mom begins to speak up behind me.  I am terrified of what she has to say.  God she’s going to ruin my wedding!   Is she going to protest our union?  Nope.  She says to Mr. Carlton. “I know you!  I’ve seen you on the cover of the National Inquirer.” 

“Well yes Mam, you have,” he says.  Now I’m thinking oh god what have I gotten myself into and are there aliens involved in all this.  No mom, ever the lover of animals has seen an article on Mr. Carlton who was forced to give up his pet alligator.  See he had raised him since he was a baby, but once his insurance company found out about said alligator they make him give it away.  All this while I am trying to get married.  After all that explanation we take our vows and the ceremony is complete.  No reception we just went back to Mike’s dad’s office.

Mike’s father ran what he called a Media Marketing company.  He made junk mail. We often spent time stuffing envelopes for him.  His office was in an old house in Broadmoor.  The houses along this one street had been originally been residential and then eventually zoned as commercial.  Two rooms were used to make mail, but there was still a shared living room where we stuffed mail, a bathroom, a kitchen, a bedroom and other room that had junk in it.  So our first night as a married couple was spent in that house.  We had come there right after school ended and we had been living together about two weeks before we got married, I think.  Mike’s father was such a pack rat, and so nasty it took me almost a week to carve out enough space to live in.  We won’t even talk about the horrors of the shower that was black and piled high with boxes.  It took me more than a week of steady cleaning, but I made it as comfy as I could.  I even put up a Christmas tree in the big bay window up front.  We passed our first Christmas in that house as man and wife.

In the Spring of 1997 we returned to school.  We put our name on the list for married student housing, but we were told there was a year wait.  So the first six months of our marriage we spent living in different dorms.  From my dorm room window I could see the lights of Mike’s room, and at night it would give me comfort.  I wasn’t alone and I loved him so much.  Some nights I would just stare at his light.  He no longer had the money to live in an apartment as he had done before he left for USL.  In fact I don’t know how he had paid for that apartment unless his parents had paid for it.  And I don’t remember if the idea of us getting a place together ever came up.  I don’t know that Mike was working at that time or not.

The Summer of 1997 found us living in an upstairs apartment that Mike’s father owned, next to his office building.  Downstairs was my kitchen and dining room; upstairs were our living room, bedroom, bath, and a small room that served as my closet. 

In going back and rereading my stuff I had written from the days of the “Prodigal Daughter.”  I found a painful memory I had forgotten.  It is of one of the first times he had emotionally abused me. We were living in the upstairs apartment.  It was rather late and I had tried to convince Mike to come to bed, to no avail.  I lay in the dark room wondering what my new husband was doing.  One minute I would hear the TV and the next I would not.  After a few minutes, I got up to see what was going on.  There in the blue light of the television sat Mike masturbating to a porno.  His pants unzipped with penis openly exposed and a sock to catch whatever evidence remained.  I was shocked.  I did not understand.  My calculations and analysis could not come up with the right answer.  I had believed once we were married and living together that this behavior would stop.

“Michael, what’s going on here?”  I asked in a timid voice.

      
He turned to me, his eyes filled with rage, “What are you doing up! Go back to bed! Why are you not in bed?!  Go away and leave me alone!”

“Michael if you want sex why don’t you just come to bed?!  I don’t understand?  What are you doing?  Why are you doing this?”

He became enraged, screaming at me, “It is all your fault!  If it wasn’t for your backwoods Victorian morals, you would not have a problem with this!  It is all your fault!  Get back in there and go to bed!” 

I do not remember the rest, only that this was the beginning.  I felt as if he had ripped my heart out, and deep down I knew that it was true. I had caused this.  I was fat. I was ugly, I was naïve and out of work.  I became suicidal the next day.  I hid in a closet until I was found, I ran into the park, close to our apartment, with our BB gun to kill myself.  Whatever insecurities I had about myself were confirmed on a daily basis with him.  The next day I became terrified of him.  I was so afraid.  I did not understand what I had done wrong.  I had had no other lovers but Michael.  I must be doing something wrong.  He was right I knew nothing of sex other then with him, so I began to verse myself in the sexual arts.

There was no internet where we lived.  Most information was still in books.  So every time we went to the book store I would hide myself in the sex section.  I read as much as I possibly could on the subject.  I was determined to please my husband.

 

Despite what I learned, it was not enough.  My nightmare had begun and there was no escape for me.  I was too ashamed to tell my parents what was going on.   That my husband preferred to gratify himself rather than touch me.  My parents did not know until right before I left him that Mike had a sex problem and what he had put me through in that department.  I was so embarrassed.  Only Joe and another friend ever knew what was really going on in my home. 

Ilsa

Becoming His

In the fall of 1995 I returned to USL in Lafayette, more than 4 hours away from where Mike was at NSU.  He called me not long before I was to leave and go back to school to tell me Charlie had broke up with him.  He could not understand why. 

When I returned to USL I began to write him letters again, many of them erotic.  It was not long before we became a couple.  What he did not share with me, until our wedding day, was that he had slept with another girl, between Charlie and me.  Some girl he had met at his apartment complex pool.  I still don’t know how many times.

Mike called me one night after receiving one of my letters and asked me to marry him.  I gladly accepted.  We began to make plans soon for him to come down, so that we might have sex for the first time.  I even brought special purple lingerie and white thigh highs.  He arrives and we go to make love, he never says anything about how nice I look in my new lingerie.  I lay on the bed, him on top and he enters.  It is over in 30 seconds.  He shivers and collapses on top of me. 

I pat his shoulder and say, “what the hell was that?”

He says, “Oh you didn’t have an orgasm too?” 

“Um, No.  Was I supposed to?” I ask.

He does spend the next 2 hours making it up to me, but he knew it was my first time.  You never get to make that back up, you know.  This was not his first time.  He knew what he was doing. Most you remember your first time, and I hope it was a good experience and not what happened to me.  This man should come with a warning label I swear!  I wish there was somewhere I could register him as a sex addict, abuser and a bad lover so other women would know to stir clear of him.

We continue hot and heavy for that semester.  As I had no car, and I still think that is part of why I married him so I could have a car, he had to come down and visit me.  I could not drive to NSU to see him.  He did take me back with him one weekend and I got to meet his friends and go to the Wesley up there.  We spent most of that time shacked up in a hotel room though.

That semester Mike’s grandmother died and left him some money.  He bought a new car, a new computer, some inline skates, and an engagement ring for me.  He just showed up with it one day.  It was gold with a 1/8^th of a caret diamond in it.  Yeh, I hated it, but I accepted it. I was never asked what I wanted, and if he had ever bothered to listen to me, he would have known I don’t like gold and I don’t like diamonds.  I find them pretentions, everyone has them. 

Now my parents did not like Mike from the very beginning.  Hell my dog Sissy did not like him either.  Every time he tried to touch her she screamed and ran away.  She would not let him touch her.  She never did this with anyone else.  Remember what I said about animals always know, if we only listen.  I should have listened.  After a summer spent messing around in my parents’ house, behind closed doors, they were not thrilled with me either.  And why would they like him.  He was a music major, had basically had an affair with me while still dating Charlie, and had not worked meaningfully since the time they knew of him.  They saw no potential in him, and now their only daughter was having sex outside of wedlock.  This could only lead to no good. 

Mike decides in the Spring of 1996 to transfer and be at USL with me.  He says he needs a change.  For the rest of our marriage Mike would go into a screaming fits and often rage about how USL ruined everything in his life.  While we were happy to be together, stealing in each other’s dorms when we could.  Hell I practically lived I his dorm for days in a row until we almost got caught and we decided it was not worth getting kicked out of school over. 

While we were still hot and heavy for each other, the porn continued.  It just never went away.  I kept explaining to myself that it would get better, once we were married.  Mike worked very little other than being a monitor at the Wesley, which paid less than $100 a month, and stuffing envelopes occasionally for his dad, he had no steady employment or real skills. I am always lending him money, which he never paid back.

Mike claimed to be a music major, with his concentration in voice.  Mike never sang.  He never practiced.  He never studied.  I still don’t know how he passed his classes.  I have a memory of walking to his dorm on my birthday.  He didn’t get me a present, get me a card or even make me one. I innocently asked him to sing me “Happy Birthday.”  Just to have something from him on my birthday.  He refused.  He suddenly claimed to be getting a sore throat.  In fact, he never sang to me. The only time I ever heard him sing was during one of his finals at NSU.  I was waiting for him outside the door, and I leaned my ear to the door to hear what he sounded like.  He sounded good, accept he kept saying “wait”, as if to get what he was doing correct, every few seconds.  They flunked him.  That was the only time I ever heard him sing. 

Why Mike was at USL, my father insisted that I stop paying for things for him and he get a job.  What money his grandmother had left him, was long since gone. Mike walked around the corner from the Wesley and got a job delivering pizzas.  A profession he is still in to this day.  Delivering pizzas got us through most of our college years. 

At some point in the Spring of ’96 it was decided that I would transfer to NSU in the fall.  I missed my family terribly.  I was 6 hours away from them. I saw them maybe once or twice a semester if I was lucky.

When I began to apply to schools I was told by my father that they had to be within driving distance of home, so that limited me to Louisiana.  I had applied at several universities in Louisiana and got into all of them, even LSU.  I had wanted to go to LA Tech like my father.  When the letter came that I was accepted into LA Tech I was so excited.  My father then looked at me and said, “That’s great.  Now you can choose.  You can go to NSU where your mom can watch over you.  Or you can go to USL where you aunt can watch over you.”  I was crestfallen.  I was a daddy’s girl.  I wanted to do what daddy did.  As I had and still have a very difficult relationship with my mother, and I knew many of those who attended my high school were attending NSU, I chose USL.  It was only years later that I learned NSU had wanted to give me a full ride.  By the time I got there, those offers were long gone.

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  My father said, you’re going to college, so I went.  I did as I was told in those days.  I had thought for some years that I might want to be a chef and USL had a good culinary program.  So that’s what I had come for.  But as they laid out the realities of the cooking industry and what it took to run your own restaurant, I decided it was not for me. When I heard that even with a degree I would start as a dishwasher, I decided to switch majors. 

Hell I was failing anyways.  Two years into college and I had a 1.9 major and not for lack of trying.  I had taken remedial math twice and failed.  It would take me 3 more times at NSU before I passed. I often tell a joke where I say, “It took me 5 times to pass math in college,” and only holdup 4 fingers.  I still hate math and are amazed by those that can do it well.

Somewhere along the line I had to take a Sociology course, and I fell in love with it.  I had the most awesome teacher who has spent many years working with people who had AIDS and in the LGBT community.  Don’t ask me to spell her name I never could get it right.  So in the Fall of 1996 I would transfer to NSU as a Sociology major.

Ilsa

Summer of 1995

In the Spring of 1995 the first letter from Mike arrived.  I did not even read it.  I tore it up and threw it across the lawn of the USL Presidents house.  It happened to be on the way between the post office and the Wesley United Methodist Campus Ministry.  Sorry I littered!  I was even stronger in my resolve that what I had done with him and being involved with him was wrong.  But the letters kept coming.  I finally gave in and began to read them and then to write him back. 

By the summer of 1995 I was very much in love with Michael. So much so that I proposed to him twice, and both times he turned me down. I did not want to be in love with him, because he was still with Charlie, his girlfriend.  It was a very mixed emotional and difficult time for me.  I in no way wanted to hurt her.  I never believed I would ever fall in love, marry, or have children.  I had been told all my life I was too fat and too ugly for such a thing to happen to me.  So the idea that Michael wanted me was just overwhelming.  I soaked it up like a sponge.  Every moment of attention I hid in my heart.  What we were doing was wrong, but I could not bring myself to stop.  Mike’s hold on me, as threw out most of our relationship was hypnotic.

That Summer of 1995 Charlie was in Baton Rouge, Mike was in Shreveport and I was in Keatchie.  I was an hour away, compared to her 6 hours away.  Mike and I spent every moment we could together, locked in each other’s arms, and each other’s bedrooms.  The rule was no clothes off.  Everything else was fair game.  We kissed, groped, dry humped all to the point of orgasm.  But no we never had sex, just everything but.  I never realized until now maybe he just wanted me for the thrill of the affair.  Maybe he was using me ever then. Who knows?

Now I knew about the porn.  I found the tape in his player.  His magazines while putting up his socks and making his bed.  I knew about the ones under his bed and in his night stand.  I explained it way.  He misses Charlie.  He’s not getting sex on a regular basis.  I think that summer he only made one trip to Baton Rouge to see her.  Course then money was tight and neither one of us was working at the time.  I figured the porn would go away once we got together and he got sex regularly.  That he would grow out of it.  He never did and it only got worse.

In August of 1995 Mike went back to NSU and I went back to USL.  With heavy hearts we parted ways.  Mike reported for band camp, a few weeks before Charlie was to report for school.  A few days after he arrived she called to break up with him.  They remained friendly threw out our marriage.  Charlie would confide in me years later that she had broke up with him over the phone because she was terrified he would hit her. 

Mike had a violent streak, although he never hit me, he hit everything else.  The walls in our home had holes in them.  I learned early on not to keep glass in frames, because when he would beat the walls, our pictures would fly off and the glass would break.  I kept boxes of telephones on hand, usually three at a time, because he would break the phones so often. He had road rage and would beat the steering wheel so bad it had no cover left on it.  This was pre airbag days.  The cover came off and for years he beat the part where the metal part for the horn was, until it had a dent in it.  He would throw temper tantrums if he did not get his way.  He would bang his fists against his leg, gnash his teeth, and stomp his foot.  And he did this in public with me many times.  I always feared I would be next.  And he had no remorse for any of it. None of these things he showed until after we officially became a couple. 

Where there warning signs?  Yes there were warning signs.  Experts have come out in the last few years and told women not to date men with holes punched in their walls, because one day it will be your face.  The first time I walked into Mike’s family home I was shocked to see this nice suburban home so destroyed.  There were holes in the walls and holes in the doors.  Nicholas, Michael’s younger brother had no door.  It had been destroyed. 

Mike and Nicholas were violent towards each other.  Always yelling and screaming.  I’ve seen then try to kill each other with baseball bats.  Their mom was no better, constantly screaming at them.  Mike’s father, a former news editor, had long ago checked out.  Yet I believed I could be a positive influence on the situation and I could fix Mike and his family, with love and understanding. 

Ilsa