Room 109

I had a series of roommates over the semesters, none of which would stay the whole time.  Daria tried twice, but never made it a full semester.  Her seizures were too severe.  She collapsed on campus twice and ended up being put in the hospital, waking up each time in the Psych. Ward.  The Doctors did not know what to do with her.  She would call her parents and they would come and get her out.  I had a roommate who was recovering from Anorexia and had a psycho boyfriend.  She didn’t last long either.  My last semester my assigned roommate didn’t show up, again.  So I lived most of my time in room 109 there by myself.

My first semester there, I had been there about two weeks, when the homesickness, the loneliness, and the feeling of being abandoned just became overwhelming.  I went to see my dorm mother.  She asked me a question I pondered for most of my college years.  She said, “Why are you here?”  I couldn’t answer her.  I didn’t know.  I went to college, because that is what I was told to do.  I had no idea what I wanted in life, and no idea what would happened to me after I graduated.  I fumbled around in the dark, and finally found my way.  After understand the rigors of a life in the food industry and that I didn’t want to run my own restaurant or become a chef, I fell in love with Sociology, mainly because of my professor Dr. Sarah.  When she came in one class dragging an imaginary pink elephant, she had me hooked.  The moral of that story is that even if it not real, and I think it is, it has an effect on all those that interact with me.

It took a while, but I began to make friends.  Many who’s pictures I have, and don’t remember their names, Meg Landry from Abbeville, the girl at the front desk of my dorm from Africa, Debra Fowler and her friend David, and the immortal Gamboa brothers from Paraguay. 

Life on the halls was interesting.  We would all sit in the floor and drink, smoke, eat, and play Skipbo till 2 in the morning.  My neighbors became my friends.  I met my first Jewish person, who lived down the hall.  She converted to Druidry, that was the first time I ever heard the word.  I had nothing to do with that.  Some of the ladies were afraid of bugs and would call me to kill them for them.

Bancroft dorm had a twin, which sat just a hundred feet from it.  It was called Denbo.  I got to know the girls on the first floor there.  Many of them were blind, and several had guide dogs.  I fell in with the ladies.  One lady, Alison and I became pretty close.  She was in my math class, which I was of course failing.  Trying to explain Algebraic equations to a blind person is very hard, worse when you make a mistake.  Many times, if Alison did not have her cane, I would guide her.  She would put her hand on her shoulder and we would walk.

I would read the blind ladies textbooks to them, until they arrived on tape.  One of the ladies had a guide dog.  She had lost her eyes as a child, and had glass eyes.  Every now and again she would look at me and say, “Hey are my eyes straight?”  If they were not, she would knock herself in the side of her head until her eyes were centered.  Weird, but it worked.  She was an awesome crocheter.  One year she gave me a cross bookmark she had crocheted.  I have long since rid myself of all Bibles and Christian things in my house.  But I kept that bookmark, as a reminder of a friend who’s name I don’t even remember. 

When I first went to live in South Louisiana it is a bit of a culture shock.  I had to convince most of the young ladies from South Louisiana, that I was from Louisiana as well, even thought I was not Catholic, did not speak French, and talked funny.  One told me, “Oh you are from up in the hills.”  It never occurred to me that North Louisiana was hilly compared to the flat lands of South Louisiana.  I kept a map in my room of Louisiana and a blown up sections of where I was from.  So I could show people.  Most of them did not consider Shreveport to be part of Louisiana.  

I have talked before about my love for Jeff Foxworthy, who was just making it big about that time.  Jeff, bless him, took the power out of the word Redneck, by helping people laugh at it, we reclaimed it as ours.  This word, that had been used as a slur when I was growing up, and was not said in polite company.  I decided to become the “Redneck Ambassador” to USL.  I even printed up a sign and put it on my dorm room door.  I educated others, on the differences between our two cultures.  It was all very tongue and cheek. 

Now everyone in South Louisiana is Catholic.  Even if you are not Catholic, you are Catholic.  You learn to do all the little idiosyncratic things that Catholics do, from years of training, without even knowing it.  I was riding on the USL bus one day, going to the sports complex.  We passed by church and suddenly everyone, without saying a word to each other, crossed themselves.  It was the weirdest thing.  I had to ask and was later told that yes everyone crossed themselves going past a church, because that is where the Eucharist was held.  The part that is not used, is place in an ornate box.  Because it has already been transformed into the body of Jesus, it is considered holy or sacred.  When people pass by the church, they make the sign of the cross, in acknowledgement of the sacredness of this. 

Other Catholic things crept into my life.  My blind girl-friends in Denbo, taught me to say the Rosary.  Some of them prayed to a particular Saint that their sight would be restored.  When Palm Sunday came, you took a palm home, and kept it as good luck.  I learned to cross myself when I passed the church, so no one would know I was not Catholic and look at me funny.  There is a lot of discrimination there, if you are not, just like I encountered in Ebarb, many years later.  You crossed yourself when a funeral went past.  You took a knee before you got in the church pew.  You celebrated Mardi Gras, whether you were Catholic or not.  Then you gave up something during lent, and ate fish on Fridays.  I never noticed till I came home that most small restaurants that serve lunches,  serve fried fish on Fridays, whether it is Lent or not. 

Most people spoke a little French or their grandparents did.  Their parents would speak in French when they didn’t want them to know what they were talking about.  I learned quickly about the language, although I can’t speak it, except for a few things.  I noticed everyone kept calling me “Chei,” and “Boo.”  I remember calling my Dad and saying, “I don’t know why but everyone keeps calling me Cher and saying Boo, and it’s not Halloween yet.”  My father explained that they were love names.

I learned about Catholicism.  I also learned about the food.  All food in South Louisiana is hot, a holdover from the Spanish, who got it from the tribes.  Hot food makes you sweat, when you sweat you are cooler.  Something you needed before AC was so prevalent.  Even the pizza sauce was hot.  And you never said something was hot, NOOOO!  You always said it was, “Well seasoned.”  I came home with an accent and a taste for hot food. 

Part of the reason I was at USL was I had two aunts who could watch over me.  One was a great Aunt, I think I saw her a few times I was down there.  The other was my Aunt Cathy and Uncle Cliff.  Now follow me on this one.  Uncle Cliff had been college roommates with my biological father, Beau.  We kept in touch with Aunt Cathy and them, after my parents divorced.  They were originally going to be my Godparents.  Aunt Cathy and Uncle Cliff have 4 daughters all with C names.  It was Aunt Cathy and her family that helped take care of me while I was at USL.  You know took me to the grocery store, called to check on me, let me do laundry at her house.

Aunt Cathy’s youngest daughters are identical twins, Cattie and Callie.  They were about 3 my first year in college.  Oh I loved both of them so much, and they loved me!  They were the light of my life!  One of the worst things about leaving USL was leaving them.  I loved going to the store and people thought they were mine.  I got to pretend for just a minute.  They even helped me pick out the fabric for the curtains in my dorm rom.  I was still hurting from things that had happened my senior year, the Brett Incident and my friends not talking to me.  I will always feel that the twins helped heal me, with the immense amount of joy they gave me. 

In the Fall of 1994 I was told my Wesley group would be taking a trip to Saint Louis for an Ecumenical Christian gathering the week after Christmas.  I was asked if I wanted to go.  It was a lot of money and I was not sure.  I was spending the weekend with Alison in her home in Crowley.  We had gone to mass and we were sitting in church.  Now Alison could see light and shadows but nothing else.  I told her I was looking for a sign, to decide if I should go or not.  She said she saw light come from where the Eucharist is kept and it touched me.  That for me was sign enough. 

I left after Christmas and rode with my minister, and 4 of college buddies.  I was the only woman in the group.  It took us 16 hours to reach St. Louis.  I had a wonderful time at the conference.  I even went to the top of the arch.  It was at this conference that I met Mike. 

I tried to balance my relationship with Mike with school.  I had been failing, long before I got involved with Mike, and not for lack of studying or trying.  Although I had graduated High School with honors, I was not prepared for USL.  I would not know for many years that NSU had originally offered me a full ride to school there.  Because I was so dead set on USL, my guidance councilor never told me about it.

There is one more story I want to tell you about USL.  Mike was a music major and told me that most colleges have a choir that members of the local community can sing in.  I joined.  I loved it.  I practiced all semester to sing in one of the local cathedrals.  I missed two classes and was told I had to make it up in a private session with my professor.  It was then he learned my secret.  I can’t read music.  Still can’t.  Years later I tried to have Mike teach me and that failed miserably. 

Twice, my professor told me to hit a specific note, and played it on the piano.  I couldn’t do it.  He told me that he had always heard me something strange coming out of my alto section, but couldn’t figure out what it was.  Turns out it was me.  I sing with others by listening to them, to know what note I should be singing.  He told me I had two choices.  I could quit or I could lip sync our concert at the cathedral.  I chose to lip sync.  I could not let all that work go to waste.  He told me something that has stayed with me.  He said, “All people can sing.  Some shouldn’t.  Your one of them.” 

I lip sang ¾ of the concert, and the last quarter I just sang my little heart out.  What was he going to do, flunk me.  I was already failing and leaving to go to NSU after that semester.  What could he possibly do to me!

I have always thought if I ever made an album I would call it, “Shouldn’t sing.”  I’ve got my music playing while I have been writing this, and another Jimmy Buffett just load up.  Think I will crank this one and sing myself out.  Oh it’s one of my favorites, Bob Robert’s Society Band.

A lady dressed in purple started dancing all alone,

Then she sauntered oh so gently to the vacant microphone.

She sounded like she’s someone who never missed a beat,

By the time the number ended they were dancing in the street.

 

Ilsa

 

 

 

The in between years

When I left Michael I was so unsure of the world around me and myself I often wondered if the floor under me would hold.  I wrote in the “Prodigal Daughter” years ago that, “In 1994 I was heralded out the front door amid pomp and circumstance.  Seven years later I was quietly sneaked into my community threw the back door.”  I was broken and half dead.  I had long ago surrendered my soul and any shred of decency to Michael and his addiction. 

I moved back into my old room with my parents, like so many of my generation.  I had nowhere else to go, and I am grateful that when I fell, they caught me.  My father, as always, was true to his word and paid for my divorce.  In Louisiana you must be granted separation prior to your divorce.  We filled the papers in or around July 4^th, 2001, my own personal independence day.  I loved what the lawyer told me.  I will never forget it.  “In six months, if you two are not found in bed together, you will be granted a divorce.”  And so it was.  In December of 2001 a motion for divorce was filed.  It was granted in March of 2002 just in time for my birthday.  We were granted what is called a “102 vanilla divorce,” meaning there was no property or children to argue over.  I never had to see Michael for the signing of any of the papers and we never had to appear in court.  Everything was handled in house.

I remember the joy and elation I felt of driving my own car, and going where I wanted, when I wanted.  Mike drove most of the time, and we only had the one car.  Mike must have told me I was stupid with directions or something, because I remember navigating to Liz’s office on my own one day and how excited I was when I got there, that I had done it by myself. 

Mike liked to control everything.  We were riding in his old Topaz one day and I wanted to change the radio station.  He pushed my hand away from the dial and said, “One day when you have your own car you can change the radio station.”  I cannot tell you what pleasure it gave me to give it back to him some years later.  We had just bought a new Saturn in my name.  He went to change the radio station and I pushed his hand away and said, “One day when you have your own car you can change the radio station.”  He looked so shocked!

Those early days were filled with wonderment and sadness for me.  Wonderment that I had somehow survived, I still don’t understand how.  The freedom of being able to watch what I wanted on TV and the ability to express some of my long held beliefs that I had to hide or squash around Mike.  I had changed myself into someone I didn’t recognize, to appease him, and try to keep him from having violent outbursts.  That was really sad for me.

I spent the next year and a half chasing boys, recovering and trying to figure out who I was. I remained in counseling with Liz even after I lost my job in the Summer of 2002. I feel now that if I had not done that foundational work in those early days, answering my life’s questions and healing I would never have found Jay, wanted him or much less kept him.  Somewhere in there I began going to Overeaters Anonymous and Ala-non.  Working the twelve steps became a major part of my life. I changed my eating habits, got into yoga and swimming, and for the first time began to lose weight.  Between graduating college and meeting Jay I lost almost 90lb. 

And yes there were boys, Charlie, Joe and finally Jay.  My mom set me up on a blind date with her 6’6” checker from Wal-Mart.  I chased Charlie for about a year.  We had a few dates and he began to take me to his Baptist church.  I converted not long after 9/11.  I was baptized a few months later.  I think part of it was to get Charlie, but I think I was also looking for forgiveness in the way I had treated Mike in the end.  I felt a lot of guilt about having been Buddhist.  I knew I would go to hell.  I think I also wanted help with the PTSD and the tapes of Mike abusing me continuingly playing in my head. 

But Charlie… Charlie was gorgeous, tall and red headed.  He was very timid.  I would come later to find out that he had OCD quite badly.  He would do things to me like make a date with me and not show up.  I would go to his house, see his car, climb the stairs to his house, and knock on his door.  I could hear the radio on inside, could hear him moving about and he would not answer, despite me banging on the door and calling his name.  He would not take my phone calls.  I feel I had a long and tumultuous relationship with his answering machine.  When we did make out on his 4 poster bed, he made me unscrews the posts so that they did not hit the wall and so his neighbors would not know we were making out.  I still never understood that one. When Charlie did not show for my baptism, which I had called and invited him too, I knew I was done with him.  He was such a sweet guy, that I believe he could not bring himself to tell me to go away, to tell me that he didn’t like me.  I was tired of chasing men what did not want me.

Joe showed back up in my life not long after I parted company with Charlie.  I had lost touch with Joe.  I emailed his sister, told her that I was now divorced and hoped Joe was well.  She emailed back with Joe’s new email address and told me that he would love to see me.  I nearly fainted.  Joe ever the gentleman, would not sleep with me until I was officially divorced.  He was also worried that he would get in trouble with the Army, for messing with a married woman. 

Now the sex with Joe was the best I had ever had, up until that point.  He was a kind, companionate, and responsive lover.  He wanted me and I wanted him, and he was not shy about it.  I had not seen that look in a man’s eyes in a long time. We had so many years of pent up desires for each other.  I was also the first time in a long time that I had sex without having pain.  Sex with Mike was frequently rough and hard, and I would often bleed and have pain afterwards.  Joe and I had one or two wonderful afternoon trysts and it was over.  Joe was moving to Georgia to his new assignment. 

I wanted to try the long distance thing.  I wrote and called him.  Finally the email came that he was, “actively involved in the dating scene in Georgia.”  I was so hurt!  I wrote him a nasty email.  I don’t think I have ever used fuck so many times in anything I have ever written.  So Joe and I parted ways.  Then the war started.  I became terrified he had been killed.  I listened to the news for his name and I Googled him frequently.  It was in one of those search engines, on Christmas Eve that I found him on MySpace.  My Gods he was alive!  I wept.  He had just returned from serving with the UN in Germany, with his then wife and baby boy.  He had never been sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.  I immediately contacted him and he came out not long after for a visit.  It was good to see him.  Joe and I remain in contact thru Facebook.  He is now remarried, to a wonderful woman that loves him and his son, and takes wonderful care of them.  I could not be happier for him.

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