And come to your mother, saying " Momma, I'm sick and tired of Daddy threatening me physically, I know he's never hit me but one of these days when he says "If you don't knock it off I'm going to smack you" I'm going to force him to". For years, Yancey used threats as THE way to parent his children. IF they didn't do what he wanted, he threatened violence of some sort, and yet, he never aside from the occasional spanking, went after his children. Things were coming to a head. I'd been smacked upside the head, taken a fist to the eye, and back of my head (to this day anyone comes up behind me to stand for longer than I think is necessary, I panic and am waiting to be hit). I'd been pushed, shoved, bent to pick something up off the ground and the item kicked out of my hands. Once he was mad the dog was swimming in the plastic pool in the summer and tossed her over the deck, injuring her and frightening the poor soul. When driving, he would drive at unsafe speeds and act like a crazy man when we fought in order to control me. It worked.
He'd threaten suicide on occasion when things did not go his way. I had never dealt with this before in my life, so I did not know what to do. Counselor after counselor never discussed with him the depression or chalked it up to 'situational' because I was talking about divorce. Whenever I brought up that word or the abuse, he would freak out, and in dramatic gesticulation put out his hands as if an officer was going to cuff him and scream at me "do it, call the cops, do it I dare you, put me in jail, I'll dig ditches the rest of my life instead of work for the government". Always a manipulative act to prevent me from protecting myself and the children.
One particularly awful evening, he gifted me with a black eye, then went and got his pistol, sat on our couch and put the gun in his mouth in a dramatic show of force. It shut me up, stopped me from talking divorce, and all I could think about was two precious girls waking up the next morning to carnage. When I verbalized this, he put the gun away, but the carnage was going to come anyway years later. I went to a neighbors who promptly freaked out that I didn't want a gun in the house and could they take it. I forced him to get rid of all guns in the house after I left him if I was going to return to (in the words of Hinder "Give this trains wreck one more try").
I thought we were safe. He went to "Promise Keepers" and had everyone convinced he was changing. He called me, begging me to come home and have another baby.
I did, we got pregnant. When I was six months pregnant, he attacked me again, pulling me off the bed by my thighs, onto the floor, beating me in the back of the head and another black eye.
When Jared was 9, I finally tuned in to my intuition and began making some serious decisions. My decision to leave and separate and divorce came when he began talking about retirement and spending the next 20 years together. Nothing had changed the first 18, and they were only getting worse, I found myself in horror thinking about staying around to endure another 20 years of abuse.
....*That* Day....following
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Unstable rages
I used to be a person who looked at the glass as half full, never close to being empty. But the rages were breaking me down. He consistently did two things that drove me farther and farther away, verbally lash out with the ugliest words when he got angry, and demand constant attention. I was called 'cunt' 'whore', consistently told I would never make it in life without him. If we were both in separate rooms anywhere in the house doing anything, he would make as much noise as possible to alert me to his disgust over whatever issue he was focused on at the moment. If I did not answer him immediately, and run to 'find out' what was wrong, I got attacked with the verbal crap. Years later, when I had my son, I finally got a taste from his mother, why this was the case. "Oh, you will do with Jared what I did with my son, it never mattered what he said or how long he took to say it or what he wanted to express or explain to me, I just sat there like a good mother does and listened and nodded my head in approval".
"Oh my blankety blank blank God" I thought. This explained so much!
It took me forever to learn that my 'husband' did not want a wife to partner with, he wanted a Mommy to care for him and dote on every word. I was getting so very tired of the attention getting behavior. I made a mental note to stop responding all together when he would raise his voice in another room, the usual signal for me to come running and listen or get lectured, and this simply ramped up the abuse. He would come find me. He would follow me around the house lecturing me, berating me, and start to push me and shove me. Still I stayed. I was trying. He could be so utterly charming and disarm me in a moment's notice, and the good girl at the time I was (yes, you read that right, I have rebelled, I am no longer a good girl and for good reasons) kept me hanging on. He will grow up, he will change, it will get better.
The rages were awful. He would just go off and least when expected. I would be forced to listen to the screaming and yelling and then came the unbearable lectures for hours. It was A) always my fault, B) what I needed to do to change it, C) what was wrong with me was.....fill in the blank.
A person gets worn down, and begins to believe all these lies. They begin to feel worthless, invaluable and the gas lighting undermines your belief in all you know and have done. He excelled in this.
More to come....
"Oh my blankety blank blank God" I thought. This explained so much!
It took me forever to learn that my 'husband' did not want a wife to partner with, he wanted a Mommy to care for him and dote on every word. I was getting so very tired of the attention getting behavior. I made a mental note to stop responding all together when he would raise his voice in another room, the usual signal for me to come running and listen or get lectured, and this simply ramped up the abuse. He would come find me. He would follow me around the house lecturing me, berating me, and start to push me and shove me. Still I stayed. I was trying. He could be so utterly charming and disarm me in a moment's notice, and the good girl at the time I was (yes, you read that right, I have rebelled, I am no longer a good girl and for good reasons) kept me hanging on. He will grow up, he will change, it will get better.
The rages were awful. He would just go off and least when expected. I would be forced to listen to the screaming and yelling and then came the unbearable lectures for hours. It was A) always my fault, B) what I needed to do to change it, C) what was wrong with me was.....fill in the blank.
A person gets worn down, and begins to believe all these lies. They begin to feel worthless, invaluable and the gas lighting undermines your belief in all you know and have done. He excelled in this.
More to come....
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Realty Check Present Day
So, I began this blog and intend to finish it but am taking some time to reflect. Reader's would have learned quickly that my mother in law, decided to estrange herself from her flesh and blood grandchildren to punish us for whatever reasons over her son's death.
It is January 10th 2012 and I just got an email from friends in TN who kept in touch, saying they just found out she died January 1st. I have mixed feelings, sadness that it didn't have to be this way, confused at times over just how deep into the rabbit hole her relationship went with her son, and relief.
I am sitting here drinking a glass of wine. Recalling a horrific letter I got in the mail from her about 6 years or so ago, where she detailed every horrible thing about me, and seemed to be hell bent on avenging her son's suicide. Oh, I saved it and showed sheriff who at the time happened to live next door, and he read it and said he'd be highly concerned that she'd broken with reality. In it, she stated biblical verses saying "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord" while suggesting she was the one God may have chosen to mete out the vengeance.
So before I go back to my continuance, I'm going to take some time to reflect on another ending that was out there with unknowns until today.
It is January 10th 2012 and I just got an email from friends in TN who kept in touch, saying they just found out she died January 1st. I have mixed feelings, sadness that it didn't have to be this way, confused at times over just how deep into the rabbit hole her relationship went with her son, and relief.
I am sitting here drinking a glass of wine. Recalling a horrific letter I got in the mail from her about 6 years or so ago, where she detailed every horrible thing about me, and seemed to be hell bent on avenging her son's suicide. Oh, I saved it and showed sheriff who at the time happened to live next door, and he read it and said he'd be highly concerned that she'd broken with reality. In it, she stated biblical verses saying "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord" while suggesting she was the one God may have chosen to mete out the vengeance.
So before I go back to my continuance, I'm going to take some time to reflect on another ending that was out there with unknowns until today.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Chocolate Pudding and a fountain
When we first married, we moved shortly from an apartment to a mobile home in Lathrop, a small town near Manteca, CA. Yancey commuted to Livermore to work for Sandia National Labs. About two years into the marriage I was expecting, and we had a baby girl, Megan. She arrived a bit on the early side, and settled in well.
Below the surface I was struggling intensely with his mother issues.
Once, when she was spending a week with us in from TN, we had neighbors come over from the home across from us, she was an RN, and we had both had babies around the same time. Chloe and Megan played together when they were little and I was trying to find my way as a new Mother. Yancey's mother "Ruby", sat next to him and I was freaking out watching the way she was looking at him. She would scoot close, and take her fingers and begin stroking his leg back and forth while he sat cross legged on the couch. She would bat her eyelashes at him, as if coming on to him but I was SO naive back then, I figured it was simply an 'only child, mother/son' thing I didn't understand yet.
It was at this perplexing moment that Barb took me aside (the RN) and said "Don't you see what's going on here??" "Um, no" "His mother is totally and completely inappropriate with her grown son, you need to watch that and find out what's going on". I blew it off, I didn't KNOW what she meant. Now, almost 28 years later and one massively botched security clearance later, I get it.
This made me think about our sex life, as well. It was becoming a consistent thing, especially after we had Megan, each and everytime we had sex, what I considered 'normal' missionary sex, within a few minutes to a few hours after this, when I'm thinking we had connected decently, he would fly into these 'coming at you from left field' rages. He always acted as if he did something 'wrong' by having sex with me. It took me 20+ years to figure out the puzzle pieces.
One day, when Meggy was about 18 months, the main water line to our mobile began leaking, Yancey went out to fix it, and instead, managed to break the main completely and we had a good 15 foot fountain pouring straight up into the sky. He went ballistic, as if this were my fault, ranting, raving, screaming at Megan and I. I had just finished making chocolate pudding and had it in a bowl, when he came storming into the house, screaming over his terrible life, took a grocery bag and put it over Megan's head, grabbed my bowl of pudding, and threw it with all his might into the kitchen window over the sink, splattering chocolate pudding everywhere, when I reacted asking what the hell was wrong with him, he pinned me to the ground, and put his hands around my throat as if he were going to choke me.
I was terrified, and realized something was very broken, very wrong. When someone tries to choke you, they don't like you. He was obsessing over the water main break and finally got it to stop working and then the cycle began.
Megan was OK, she was fine, but I never knew why he put the bag over her head and then lifted it off again quickly, and after that he never went after the kids save for yelling.
I didn't know it was a cycle then, though. "I'm so sorry" as he adopted the most charming attitude ever. Using intellectual words to explain himself away, and "I"ll never do it again' placating me as much as he possibly could early on. And I bought it. Hook, line. Sunk.
I cleaned up the pudding mess, while he finally was able to control the water main, and left him to consider a divorce. He showed up at my parent's home raging over the wedding ring that was his mother's that he wanted back. Whatever.
I went back, like I always did, for 18 long, tortuous years.
Back then I was ashamed. Ashamed of the abuse, and all the lies he was telling all his friends. He painted the worst picture possible about me, while I was simply attempting to survive the rages out of left field, the OCD over money and washing his hands incessantly. So I stayed. What else was I supposed to do back then? My line of thinking was "if anyone ever found out" it would be soo embarrassing and he's so sorry I know he's trying to do better. At least that's what he was trying to convince me of.
One especially hot summer evening, a blaze of blue lights and several loud pops exploded right near our mobile and Yancey screamed at me at the top of his lungs "GET DOWN!!!! GET DOWN NOW!!!, HIT THE FLOOR!!!" and I did so, but I figured he had lost his mind at that very moment. He had a security clearance with Sandia, so I didn't or wasn't allowed to know much of what he did, but later he expressed to me and continued to do so for years, that someday, when he was old and gray, he would tell me all the secret things he was not allowed to tell me now.
I began to wonder how stable he was. But then in the latter years that line got really interesting. I'll write more on that later.
I thought he had really lost his marbles with the entire get down on the floor its raining gun fire episode... and yet, I stayed. Trying to trust the un-trustable.
When Megan turned three, we found out a family member was molesting other family members, and at that critical life change, he got a job offer to move to SC to work for Westinghouse SRS in Aiken. We took the offer, for us I wanted to get out of California back then and all the negative family gossip. It was horrific and I had to talk to detectives, and police, and so on and so forth. I was devastated, and Yancey?? The day I found out, he refused to be of comfort and refused to take off work, we had also had Morgan then, who was just about to turn 15 months or so.
Yancey would not talk about it, he would not listen. He would ignore what happened, and absolutely refused to be a part of the process to heal.
His mother called incessantly. She called him at work, she called him and together, they would get on the phone and she would tell him how suicidal she was over him leaving TN - getting his own life together was not an option.
His father had died in 1981, and apparently Yancey was supposed to take over and stay in TN. They both continued to discuss my failings and shortcomings. We were invited to a party once, when she was visiting, and a friend came up to me asking if I was 'alright, because she had to get away from Ruby who was ranting and raging over the FAQ her son 'left her'. She was up to her nose in the middle of our lives when she should be been busy getting on with hers.
They discussed him never having clean laundry, I was nursing a toddler and raising a three year old day in and day out, he had all weekend to toss a load in, but instead, sat in front of Star Trek eating Oreo cookies and doing nothing.
He would wake up in the mornings sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands in dramatic prose waiting for me to respond or give him attention and I began to learn that he wanted a mother, not a wife who was an equal. He wanted someone to take care of him the way his Mama did, he didn't want someone with an opinion he wanted someone who would nod and agree with everything he did and said no matter what.
He turned people at work against me. When they gave him a 'going away' party, before we moved to SC, I was told by one co worker "You know, you better treat him right or..." was that a threat? What in the world was he saying to these co workers?? At the same time, I discovered notes in his briefcase from another woman.
He was playing with fire while I was raising kids, then decided to tell me about "Glenda". IN fact, when I was rushing myself to the hospital to have Morgan, and called him to tell him, he told me had to 'work' that day and could not come for the birth...WHAT???? It was then I found out about "Glenda Gentry Mathes". He sat me down when we moved to SC and that's when the real hitting began.
I was forced to listen to him go on and on about how "no one will ever love him or be in love with him" and he began to explain to me the importance of Glenda's responses to him vs. mine. Yeah, they met in a hotel and supposedly all they did was 'kiss'. There were letters to him from Glenda in his briefcase that were entirely too personal and evident there was more to the story. I confronted her and she had the audacity to say "well those were not meant for you to read" hell fucking no. Yeah, they were. He was my husband at the moment, NOT hers.
I found a picture of her the other day, old, ugly and lots of gray hair. Must be guilt that brought on the white hair, you witch.
W.T.F.
I'll tell you right now why I didn't and couldn't 'respond' to him. A), I was being verbally abused, B) I was being physically abused, C) he did NOT know how to keep clean in the private areas of his body, and I mean, I had to wash towels AFTER every shower and I was disgusted. SEX was disgusting because HE SMELLED and there is NOTHING more demotivating about having sex with someone IF they smell!!! D) I was getting nailed with rages that left me bewildered coming out of nowhere after I DID try to have sex with him. So there you have it, Glenda Gentry Mathes, I hope your daughter finds out what you really were back in your Sandia days - You should be so lucky that you NEVER got involved with Yancey long term, probably saved your LIFE you idiot, selfish, stupid bitch.
And E) IF I EVER tried to calmly discuss these issues, I would have to do so if I were dropping and rolling through the house while ducking and covering so I would NOT get hit.
Yes, I'm mad, yes this particular post is harsh, but oh yes, I'm finally GETTING IT OUT!!!!!
Stay tuned.... for....SC's 'slut en de barge'.
Below the surface I was struggling intensely with his mother issues.
Once, when she was spending a week with us in from TN, we had neighbors come over from the home across from us, she was an RN, and we had both had babies around the same time. Chloe and Megan played together when they were little and I was trying to find my way as a new Mother. Yancey's mother "Ruby", sat next to him and I was freaking out watching the way she was looking at him. She would scoot close, and take her fingers and begin stroking his leg back and forth while he sat cross legged on the couch. She would bat her eyelashes at him, as if coming on to him but I was SO naive back then, I figured it was simply an 'only child, mother/son' thing I didn't understand yet.
It was at this perplexing moment that Barb took me aside (the RN) and said "Don't you see what's going on here??" "Um, no" "His mother is totally and completely inappropriate with her grown son, you need to watch that and find out what's going on". I blew it off, I didn't KNOW what she meant. Now, almost 28 years later and one massively botched security clearance later, I get it.
This made me think about our sex life, as well. It was becoming a consistent thing, especially after we had Megan, each and everytime we had sex, what I considered 'normal' missionary sex, within a few minutes to a few hours after this, when I'm thinking we had connected decently, he would fly into these 'coming at you from left field' rages. He always acted as if he did something 'wrong' by having sex with me. It took me 20+ years to figure out the puzzle pieces.
One day, when Meggy was about 18 months, the main water line to our mobile began leaking, Yancey went out to fix it, and instead, managed to break the main completely and we had a good 15 foot fountain pouring straight up into the sky. He went ballistic, as if this were my fault, ranting, raving, screaming at Megan and I. I had just finished making chocolate pudding and had it in a bowl, when he came storming into the house, screaming over his terrible life, took a grocery bag and put it over Megan's head, grabbed my bowl of pudding, and threw it with all his might into the kitchen window over the sink, splattering chocolate pudding everywhere, when I reacted asking what the hell was wrong with him, he pinned me to the ground, and put his hands around my throat as if he were going to choke me.
I was terrified, and realized something was very broken, very wrong. When someone tries to choke you, they don't like you. He was obsessing over the water main break and finally got it to stop working and then the cycle began.
Megan was OK, she was fine, but I never knew why he put the bag over her head and then lifted it off again quickly, and after that he never went after the kids save for yelling.
I didn't know it was a cycle then, though. "I'm so sorry" as he adopted the most charming attitude ever. Using intellectual words to explain himself away, and "I"ll never do it again' placating me as much as he possibly could early on. And I bought it. Hook, line. Sunk.
I cleaned up the pudding mess, while he finally was able to control the water main, and left him to consider a divorce. He showed up at my parent's home raging over the wedding ring that was his mother's that he wanted back. Whatever.
I went back, like I always did, for 18 long, tortuous years.
Back then I was ashamed. Ashamed of the abuse, and all the lies he was telling all his friends. He painted the worst picture possible about me, while I was simply attempting to survive the rages out of left field, the OCD over money and washing his hands incessantly. So I stayed. What else was I supposed to do back then? My line of thinking was "if anyone ever found out" it would be soo embarrassing and he's so sorry I know he's trying to do better. At least that's what he was trying to convince me of.
One especially hot summer evening, a blaze of blue lights and several loud pops exploded right near our mobile and Yancey screamed at me at the top of his lungs "GET DOWN!!!! GET DOWN NOW!!!, HIT THE FLOOR!!!" and I did so, but I figured he had lost his mind at that very moment. He had a security clearance with Sandia, so I didn't or wasn't allowed to know much of what he did, but later he expressed to me and continued to do so for years, that someday, when he was old and gray, he would tell me all the secret things he was not allowed to tell me now.
I began to wonder how stable he was. But then in the latter years that line got really interesting. I'll write more on that later.
I thought he had really lost his marbles with the entire get down on the floor its raining gun fire episode... and yet, I stayed. Trying to trust the un-trustable.
When Megan turned three, we found out a family member was molesting other family members, and at that critical life change, he got a job offer to move to SC to work for Westinghouse SRS in Aiken. We took the offer, for us I wanted to get out of California back then and all the negative family gossip. It was horrific and I had to talk to detectives, and police, and so on and so forth. I was devastated, and Yancey?? The day I found out, he refused to be of comfort and refused to take off work, we had also had Morgan then, who was just about to turn 15 months or so.
Yancey would not talk about it, he would not listen. He would ignore what happened, and absolutely refused to be a part of the process to heal.
His mother called incessantly. She called him at work, she called him and together, they would get on the phone and she would tell him how suicidal she was over him leaving TN - getting his own life together was not an option.
His father had died in 1981, and apparently Yancey was supposed to take over and stay in TN. They both continued to discuss my failings and shortcomings. We were invited to a party once, when she was visiting, and a friend came up to me asking if I was 'alright, because she had to get away from Ruby who was ranting and raging over the FAQ her son 'left her'. She was up to her nose in the middle of our lives when she should be been busy getting on with hers.
They discussed him never having clean laundry, I was nursing a toddler and raising a three year old day in and day out, he had all weekend to toss a load in, but instead, sat in front of Star Trek eating Oreo cookies and doing nothing.
He would wake up in the mornings sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands in dramatic prose waiting for me to respond or give him attention and I began to learn that he wanted a mother, not a wife who was an equal. He wanted someone to take care of him the way his Mama did, he didn't want someone with an opinion he wanted someone who would nod and agree with everything he did and said no matter what.
He turned people at work against me. When they gave him a 'going away' party, before we moved to SC, I was told by one co worker "You know, you better treat him right or..." was that a threat? What in the world was he saying to these co workers?? At the same time, I discovered notes in his briefcase from another woman.
He was playing with fire while I was raising kids, then decided to tell me about "Glenda". IN fact, when I was rushing myself to the hospital to have Morgan, and called him to tell him, he told me had to 'work' that day and could not come for the birth...WHAT???? It was then I found out about "Glenda Gentry Mathes". He sat me down when we moved to SC and that's when the real hitting began.
I was forced to listen to him go on and on about how "no one will ever love him or be in love with him" and he began to explain to me the importance of Glenda's responses to him vs. mine. Yeah, they met in a hotel and supposedly all they did was 'kiss'. There were letters to him from Glenda in his briefcase that were entirely too personal and evident there was more to the story. I confronted her and she had the audacity to say "well those were not meant for you to read" hell fucking no. Yeah, they were. He was my husband at the moment, NOT hers.
I found a picture of her the other day, old, ugly and lots of gray hair. Must be guilt that brought on the white hair, you witch.
W.T.F.
I'll tell you right now why I didn't and couldn't 'respond' to him. A), I was being verbally abused, B) I was being physically abused, C) he did NOT know how to keep clean in the private areas of his body, and I mean, I had to wash towels AFTER every shower and I was disgusted. SEX was disgusting because HE SMELLED and there is NOTHING more demotivating about having sex with someone IF they smell!!! D) I was getting nailed with rages that left me bewildered coming out of nowhere after I DID try to have sex with him. So there you have it, Glenda Gentry Mathes, I hope your daughter finds out what you really were back in your Sandia days - You should be so lucky that you NEVER got involved with Yancey long term, probably saved your LIFE you idiot, selfish, stupid bitch.
And E) IF I EVER tried to calmly discuss these issues, I would have to do so if I were dropping and rolling through the house while ducking and covering so I would NOT get hit.
Yes, I'm mad, yes this particular post is harsh, but oh yes, I'm finally GETTING IT OUT!!!!!
Stay tuned.... for....SC's 'slut en de barge'.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
The beginning...
1983. At church on a Sunday night. Some idiot guy at our casual church dressed up in a suit. So I think its a visiting pastor and go introduce myself.
Charmer. Great big smile, 6' 4" to mine 5' barely 2". But something about him draws me in. He's got that southern charm down. Nice voice, with an accent of course, huge hands (later that were used to beat me), and all about his Momma.
I thought that part was quaint, "Oh, he loves his Momma" but it went beyond that. There was a sickness there, and being an only child didn't register the future problems to come.
Church going Mrs. Swanson down the street and around the corner takes me aside to lecture me. "Now, have you prayed about this man, are you sure he's the right one to marry" I blow her off. Had I listened to Mrs. Swanson all those years ago, I might never had gone through the tragedy and moved on to someone safer. But I was not listening then. Nor did I for years to come.
Cut to dating...I don't understand why this man, my fiance is giving his mother details about my body or our sex life. That doesn't register as normal to me whatsoever.
Cut to night before the wedding. The Iversen's let us borrow their van to pick up his best men and mother at the airport. I know the Iversen's, they've been close family friends for years. Jonnelle is best friends with my Mother and I am best friends with Lezley, their oldest. Yancey is OCD'ing, which I've never seen before over borrowing someone else's van. He drives a funky little red ford fiesta.
Okay so the parking garage at our Livermore apartment complex is made more complex by carefully placed metal poles between parking slots. Yancey lightly taps one with the bumper of the van and explodes all over me. Screaming at me, he orders me out of the van, he will take HIS car to pick up his mother and friends, I will sit at home and wait for their arrival. No damage done to the van, but a hint of the damage to come. I utterly and completely ignore my intuition screaming inside "Get out NOW, run like HELL, this could happen again" nope, it was a one time thing, he won't ever do this again and he'll apologize, too. Wrong on both accounts.
His mother shows up, and is a royal piece of work. I never KNEW what snake in the grass truly meant until I met that woman. She would talk for hours on the phone in whispers, with furtive glances toward you in case you overheard. Southern, disgusting Tennessee charm straight from the Bible Belt which had my stomach lurching everytime she opened her mouth. She believed in hit men, and in wives taking over the mother's role.
Once she called me yelling at me "My son is NOT happy, I know he's not happy and YOU are trying to keep him from me, its got to be the SEX that keeps him there" What???
I was so incensed I quickly yelled back "Why don't you give the sex a shot then" Wrong. Thing. To. Say. How was I supposed to know later Yancey would tell me about inappropriate touching that went on in his room as a high school student. After his death, of course we suspected worse, so much made sense.
Yeah. We got married. And then the abuse began....and the control. The affairs, the visits to lingerie clubs and luncheons he never told me about.
The startling note found in his Westinghouse SRS briefcase "You wan a slut in de barge" "Yeah, sure, why not" to which his face paled to white when confronted. But never told me exactly what it meant.
The run in at the local grocery store with a tall woman, who approached him in a drugged stupor "Hey, aren't you..." "No", but wait, "haven't I met you.." Yancey, "No, no, I don't think we have". Right. Something was going on at Westinghouse that had me furious and suspicious.
This was after our move from CA to SC, when the abuse really heated up. He would shove me, hit me, push me, scream in my face, threaten me, drive wildly and at fast speeds while screaming at me if he was pissed over something or I wasn't doing what he wanted.
And then the phone calls from his Momma. They were in place from the beginning. She would call him and tell her how depressed and suicidal SHE was that her grown son had left home, and he would fall right into the pits of despair with her, and they would both analyze what my problems were with laundry, clean underwear not being at the ready for him every morning like a good southern mommy is supposed to do for her son, and food - where was dinner every night?
Sorry but I was busy raising babies, and nursing them, I did not always have time for his laundry and nothing was keeping him from doing his own damn laundry. Oh right, nothing but hours of television and sitting on his butt eating sweets. Oreos and milk. Oreos and milk.
The abuses, attacks and rages...later
Charmer. Great big smile, 6' 4" to mine 5' barely 2". But something about him draws me in. He's got that southern charm down. Nice voice, with an accent of course, huge hands (later that were used to beat me), and all about his Momma.
I thought that part was quaint, "Oh, he loves his Momma" but it went beyond that. There was a sickness there, and being an only child didn't register the future problems to come.
Church going Mrs. Swanson down the street and around the corner takes me aside to lecture me. "Now, have you prayed about this man, are you sure he's the right one to marry" I blow her off. Had I listened to Mrs. Swanson all those years ago, I might never had gone through the tragedy and moved on to someone safer. But I was not listening then. Nor did I for years to come.
Cut to dating...I don't understand why this man, my fiance is giving his mother details about my body or our sex life. That doesn't register as normal to me whatsoever.
Cut to night before the wedding. The Iversen's let us borrow their van to pick up his best men and mother at the airport. I know the Iversen's, they've been close family friends for years. Jonnelle is best friends with my Mother and I am best friends with Lezley, their oldest. Yancey is OCD'ing, which I've never seen before over borrowing someone else's van. He drives a funky little red ford fiesta.
Okay so the parking garage at our Livermore apartment complex is made more complex by carefully placed metal poles between parking slots. Yancey lightly taps one with the bumper of the van and explodes all over me. Screaming at me, he orders me out of the van, he will take HIS car to pick up his mother and friends, I will sit at home and wait for their arrival. No damage done to the van, but a hint of the damage to come. I utterly and completely ignore my intuition screaming inside "Get out NOW, run like HELL, this could happen again" nope, it was a one time thing, he won't ever do this again and he'll apologize, too. Wrong on both accounts.
His mother shows up, and is a royal piece of work. I never KNEW what snake in the grass truly meant until I met that woman. She would talk for hours on the phone in whispers, with furtive glances toward you in case you overheard. Southern, disgusting Tennessee charm straight from the Bible Belt which had my stomach lurching everytime she opened her mouth. She believed in hit men, and in wives taking over the mother's role.
Once she called me yelling at me "My son is NOT happy, I know he's not happy and YOU are trying to keep him from me, its got to be the SEX that keeps him there" What???
I was so incensed I quickly yelled back "Why don't you give the sex a shot then" Wrong. Thing. To. Say. How was I supposed to know later Yancey would tell me about inappropriate touching that went on in his room as a high school student. After his death, of course we suspected worse, so much made sense.
Yeah. We got married. And then the abuse began....and the control. The affairs, the visits to lingerie clubs and luncheons he never told me about.
The startling note found in his Westinghouse SRS briefcase "You wan a slut in de barge" "Yeah, sure, why not" to which his face paled to white when confronted. But never told me exactly what it meant.
The run in at the local grocery store with a tall woman, who approached him in a drugged stupor "Hey, aren't you..." "No", but wait, "haven't I met you.." Yancey, "No, no, I don't think we have". Right. Something was going on at Westinghouse that had me furious and suspicious.
This was after our move from CA to SC, when the abuse really heated up. He would shove me, hit me, push me, scream in my face, threaten me, drive wildly and at fast speeds while screaming at me if he was pissed over something or I wasn't doing what he wanted.
And then the phone calls from his Momma. They were in place from the beginning. She would call him and tell her how depressed and suicidal SHE was that her grown son had left home, and he would fall right into the pits of despair with her, and they would both analyze what my problems were with laundry, clean underwear not being at the ready for him every morning like a good southern mommy is supposed to do for her son, and food - where was dinner every night?
Sorry but I was busy raising babies, and nursing them, I did not always have time for his laundry and nothing was keeping him from doing his own damn laundry. Oh right, nothing but hours of television and sitting on his butt eating sweets. Oreos and milk. Oreos and milk.
The abuses, attacks and rages...later
Someone suggested...
That I blog. Today I learned that no matter how long its been since a person's been subjected to trauma, those scars can innocently get bumped, and re-open at the random-est of moments. 10 years ago this March 31st, 2012, which happened to fall on an Easter Sunday, my then husband, Yancey of 18 years ended his life by putting a bullet in his brain.
The coroner called it 'self-murder' because when she got him, she repeatedly referred to how violent he was and she never knew him. She called me that first week, almost every day checking in on me and our children, imploring me not to accept the shame or guilt for this. When I finally viewed my husband's body, specifically his face, I could see right away the disgust within plastered in death on his face, so when she got him, I know she saw the violence there. I just could not understand until I pieced phone calls together why she called it self murder and why she kept calling me. Coroner's are busy people and they don't often call a widower repeatedly to offer solace. She did.
It took me years, until two years ago, to discover I suffered from what the doctors call "delayed onset PTSD" and once this was mapped out and explained to me, I understood my triggers and how to navigate them.
You see, Yancey didn't just kill himself, he terrorized us and held us hostage in our own home for at least an hour, then proceeded to attack and beat up his then 16 year old daughter, while my son played innocently outside at a neighbor's and my middle daughter lay in terror in her room wondering why Daddy was going off the deep end.
I've learned the hard way, abuse never, ever ought to be a considered a "private" family matter. And the anger I have towards a neighbor that day who if he had done what I asked, my husband might have still be alive.
Allowing oneself to stay with someone who is abusive, verbal or physical, is the wrong path to stay on. But stayed I did. I stayed because of the church I was in, and what people would 'think' if I left the marriage. I stayed because every time I tried to leave, he would turn on the charm full force but no one back then told me about the cycle of abuse.
The only counselors worth their salt for me were the ones who labeled it for what it was. I had to switch counselors because he kept on taking me to ones whose sole purpose was to treat me in how to stay in an abusive relationship. I could not breathe. I could not live. I was not free.
God, how he had everyone but me convinced he was Mr. Innocent. He wormed and bull shitted and charmed his way into the outside's public view. He lied, he cheated, he did whatever HE wanted to do, but was the task master at home. If I went grocery shopping, I always bought too much and the wrong items. If I knew the kids needed clothing, he wanted to go through every piece of clothing and try it on the kids before admitting they had grown out. If I wanted a piece of furniture a certain way he would battle for control over its final resting place.
It has taken me years to heal and process this violence. The sadness was overwhelming and I learned that grief is so physical at times it takes your breath away. I think the first year I cried every day for the entire year.
I found hidden emails and letters referencing a very inappropriate relationship with his mother, and even had a nurse who used to live across from us in our early years take me aside and ask me why I wasn't seeing how sick it was the way his mother was looking at him, not like she loved her son, but as if she were IN love with her son. I didn't get it back then. I do today. I do now. I was told by a friend of mine, a PhD, that whatever she did to her son, damaged him so badly that he could not live with himself and viewed himself as a 'monster' so of course he eventually killed himself. His mother? Told everyone in her town her son died of heart attack. That speaks volumes.
During all this in the early years, I acted out and fell off the planet, okay not literally but abandoned many friends who cared because I was running from the pain of it all. I was trying to fill the void left on the heel of the devil's wing when he left this world..but then the metaphysical and God intervened.
I have to go back in time, to the beginning to give you the idea of how abuse takes shape and form, and what I dealt with up to the day of carnage, we like to call it.
Its important because you see, how abuse grows and snowballs and hurts others when you enable it. Or when his JOB enables it, more on that later. I was expecting a stand off with the police but in the end that did not occur and myself and the children were safe.
As soon as his sick mother found out about it, the first thing she said to me?
"Soo....if you had not called the police my SON would stilllll be alive...."
Yeah. right. Okay then, moving on you sick twisted..... No wonder why he was a mess. Apparently killing me and his three children were preferable to me calling the police for protection on this rampage to death.
The coroner called it 'self-murder' because when she got him, she repeatedly referred to how violent he was and she never knew him. She called me that first week, almost every day checking in on me and our children, imploring me not to accept the shame or guilt for this. When I finally viewed my husband's body, specifically his face, I could see right away the disgust within plastered in death on his face, so when she got him, I know she saw the violence there. I just could not understand until I pieced phone calls together why she called it self murder and why she kept calling me. Coroner's are busy people and they don't often call a widower repeatedly to offer solace. She did.
It took me years, until two years ago, to discover I suffered from what the doctors call "delayed onset PTSD" and once this was mapped out and explained to me, I understood my triggers and how to navigate them.
You see, Yancey didn't just kill himself, he terrorized us and held us hostage in our own home for at least an hour, then proceeded to attack and beat up his then 16 year old daughter, while my son played innocently outside at a neighbor's and my middle daughter lay in terror in her room wondering why Daddy was going off the deep end.
I've learned the hard way, abuse never, ever ought to be a considered a "private" family matter. And the anger I have towards a neighbor that day who if he had done what I asked, my husband might have still be alive.
Allowing oneself to stay with someone who is abusive, verbal or physical, is the wrong path to stay on. But stayed I did. I stayed because of the church I was in, and what people would 'think' if I left the marriage. I stayed because every time I tried to leave, he would turn on the charm full force but no one back then told me about the cycle of abuse.
The only counselors worth their salt for me were the ones who labeled it for what it was. I had to switch counselors because he kept on taking me to ones whose sole purpose was to treat me in how to stay in an abusive relationship. I could not breathe. I could not live. I was not free.
God, how he had everyone but me convinced he was Mr. Innocent. He wormed and bull shitted and charmed his way into the outside's public view. He lied, he cheated, he did whatever HE wanted to do, but was the task master at home. If I went grocery shopping, I always bought too much and the wrong items. If I knew the kids needed clothing, he wanted to go through every piece of clothing and try it on the kids before admitting they had grown out. If I wanted a piece of furniture a certain way he would battle for control over its final resting place.
It has taken me years to heal and process this violence. The sadness was overwhelming and I learned that grief is so physical at times it takes your breath away. I think the first year I cried every day for the entire year.
I found hidden emails and letters referencing a very inappropriate relationship with his mother, and even had a nurse who used to live across from us in our early years take me aside and ask me why I wasn't seeing how sick it was the way his mother was looking at him, not like she loved her son, but as if she were IN love with her son. I didn't get it back then. I do today. I do now. I was told by a friend of mine, a PhD, that whatever she did to her son, damaged him so badly that he could not live with himself and viewed himself as a 'monster' so of course he eventually killed himself. His mother? Told everyone in her town her son died of heart attack. That speaks volumes.
During all this in the early years, I acted out and fell off the planet, okay not literally but abandoned many friends who cared because I was running from the pain of it all. I was trying to fill the void left on the heel of the devil's wing when he left this world..but then the metaphysical and God intervened.
I have to go back in time, to the beginning to give you the idea of how abuse takes shape and form, and what I dealt with up to the day of carnage, we like to call it.
Its important because you see, how abuse grows and snowballs and hurts others when you enable it. Or when his JOB enables it, more on that later. I was expecting a stand off with the police but in the end that did not occur and myself and the children were safe.
As soon as his sick mother found out about it, the first thing she said to me?
"Soo....if you had not called the police my SON would stilllll be alive...."
Yeah. right. Okay then, moving on you sick twisted..... No wonder why he was a mess. Apparently killing me and his three children were preferable to me calling the police for protection on this rampage to death.
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