Domestic Abuse, PTSD and How I Can Help
If you haven't read the previous parts of my story, you can read them here and here. Forewarning: The second link is a very emotional article and may contain triggers. This is going to be a very long and volatile article as well. Please do NOT continue if you are easily triggered.
My life didn't seem that hard to me until I actually looked back on it. I felt like I had a decent childhood, even if my parents did get divorced and I did live in the middle of nowhere. But I got to have horses and I spent 10 years in 4-H with my horses and my dogs with my mom and my grandparents. They supported me 150% through those 10 years. But then when I stop to look at individual experiences, I realize that I lived through hell. And I struggle admitting that, because I was always of the mindset that “Someone else has it worse.” But something that I have learned over the years is that while, yes, there will always be someone who has it worse than you, that does not invalidate your feelings/experience.
I hope that by telling my story, that I can help someone that has been through experiences like this or someone who is currently dealing with it or keep someone from having to deal with it. I hope that I can shine a light on the very dark dangerous things that go on in this world and possibly save someone in the process. So here we go.
I was raped at 13 and then again at 15 by the same man who was 3 years older than me. We had dated for 3 months before the first incident. I was young and naive and thought he really meant it when he said that he loved me. So I gave in when he wanted to have sex while we were dating. I dealt with him and his jealous, controlling, scary behavior for 3 months before I called it quits. This was before the times of texting and email, so I had to break up with him face to face. I didn’t want to be alone, so I went to his grandmother’s house to break-up with him. His response was to lock me in a room and rape me because I refused to sleep with him “just one more time.” When I told my mom, I was called everything but a white girl and got informed that if I hadn’t given it to him while we were dating that he wouldn’t have felt entitled to it after we broke up.
When I was 15, he transferred to my high school. I saw him hold one of my friends against her locker, by her throat. Her feet weren’t touching the floor. When he realized I was there, he dropped her and walked away. A few weeks later, I missed the bus home and he happened to be around. He offered me a ride home, knowing how mad my mother would be if she had to leave work to come to get me. I told him that I would accept on one condition: That he kept his hands to himself. He agreed and I was stupid enough to believe him. We were one mile from my house when he pulled over on a backroad. (Side note, we lived so far out of town that all the roads are backroads. So there was no one nearby.) He locked the doors and when I tried to unlock mine, I realized that he had child locks on the car. Which meant the only way to unlock the passenger doors was via the driver side control panel. I’m not sure why he had the child locks on this car, but I have my suspicions. He proceeded to climb over the center console and rape me twice. When he was finished, he climbed back to the driver side and drove me home with the doors still locked. As I finally managed to escape the car, he told me that he hoped we could still be friends.
A few weeks later, a detective approached me. He told me that there was a group of girls pursuing a class action rape case against my rapist and asked if I would testify against him. My friend that he had damn near strangled had come forward and named me as a victim as well. He walked on that class action rape case because of a technicality. 9 teenage girls had come forward to testify and they released him. I was told that they threw it out because I couldn’t remember the exact date and time that he raped me. I felt like screaming at the detective. It wasn't like I went home and wrote it on the damn calendar. I went home and tried to forget it happened.
I’m sure there are more girls out there that he has molested and raped and abused. And I’m sure the majority of them never came forward. The only sense of satisfaction that I can get out of it, is that about 4 years later when he was 23, he got caught kissing a 14-year-old girl and earned himself a 'sexual misconduct with a minor' charge. I’m glad for the girl that he got caught just kissing her, and not doing anything more. And I pray that he never got a chance to do more to her. My mother still allows him on our property. He has tried 3 more times to rape me again. Thankfully, I have managed to escape. Once, my grandpa saw his car in front of our house and came to check on me. I am so glad that he had the presence of mind to grab the shotgun first. He caught him just as he pinned me on the bed, after forcing his way inside the house. Now, I make sure that I am not home when I know that he is coming over to see my mom. And if I can’t leave, then I hide inside away from him, with a weapon nearby. He sent me a Facebook message last year, apologizing for “whatever he had done” and asking if we could still be friends. Trust and believe that I didn’t respond.
I was with a man shortly after I turned 18 that beat me for 2 years. He was so charming and sweet, to begin with, that 3 months after meeting him, I moved from Indiana to Oklahoma with him. To a town where he knew everyone and I didn't know anyone other than him. And he used it to his advantage. I remember one occasion where he strangled me while repeatedly hitting my head off of the floor. I swear we had concrete floors. They were so hard. He continued until I was seeing stars and finally passed out. Before this incident, I could sing soprano (the highest notes in the choir), but now I am lucky to be able to sing at all. My voice is different and it actually hurts to use it for extended periods. (Even now, 9 years later, it hurts.) I’m pretty sure he damaged my vocal chords when he strangled me, but I've never gotten them checked. I just deal with it.
He beat me so bad that I should have been hospitalized on 3 separate occasions. To the point that I couldn't move or speak for days. And during that time, I wished for something to take me away. I was exposed to meth, but I never used it. I was scared that if I grasped onto that escape that he would kill me because I wouldn't be coherent enough to fight back. My 19th birthday was spent being hit and kicked and screamed at in the pouring rain, in the mud, in the middle of the road in front of his grandmother's house. At some point, I remember arguing with him and getting backhanded so hard that I fell onto the mattress on the floor, where he proceeded to kick me in the face with his steel-toed boots. My left eye socket is permanently chipped from that night. (And even now, if I sleep incorrectly or my sinuses swell, I will develop a black eye without anyone having to touch me.) During one of the short periods that I got away from him a few weeks later, I got introduced to Kentucky Deluxe whiskey. And I started drinking 2 pints a day at 19 years old to just be able to function. (My struggle with alcoholism extends all the way to today, even though I am at almost 4 years sober.)
The next time we tried to be together, he sold me to an old man as payment for a four-wheeler. And before you judge me for going with him, I need you to know that this man had a 15-month-old Bengal tiger in his backyard. And they threatened to feed me to this tiger if I didn’t comply. (I did manage to escape, thankfully, or I wouldn’t be here to write this post. And as terrifying as the situation was, I got something beautiful out of it. I got to spend an afternoon with the hugest lap cat ever! He was so playful and his fur was so soft! It is an experience that I will never have again and one that I would never have had if not for the bad. How many people can say that they have spent an afternoon with a Bengal Tiger?!?)
It was a year later when I finally got home. And I was pregnant within a month after coming home. He was a good man and I really hurt him, because I was not whole or healed. Thankfully, 8 years later, we are friends again. And our daughter is this amazing creature that reminds me so much of the person that existed before I met men. I hope that I can keep her from the evil that is men, but I know that is most likely not going to happen in today’s world.
The next 2 relationships I was in, I destroyed as well. Between the pregnancy with my oldest and the flashbacks from the abuse I had suffered up to that point, I got overwhelmed with life. I attempted to commit suicide at 7 months pregnant. I tried again at 7 months postpartum. The second attempt landed me in a rather sticky situation. I went to my doctor, explained that I had put my daughter to bed, kised her goodbye and walked outside to get a .38 Special from my mother's truck to kill myself. I explained that when I put the barrel to my temple, that the metal got so cold that my hand felt like it was burning and I dropped the gun. And I explained all this to him without batting an eye. All I wanted was a prescription for some kind of medication to make it all go away. My doctor told me that I had 2 options: I could walk to the local treatment center for outpatient treatment, or he would call and have me committed. Of course, I chose to walk the 4 or 5 blocks to the treatment center. I got diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Reoccurring Depression, Postpartum Depression and Major Anxiety. I got put on medication, and into weekly therapy. I started to get back on my feet. Sorta. It didn’t last long.
The following 4 relationships were a variety of different abuses, including being gang-raped by 3 men. (I am still unsure if they drugged me or if I just drank way too much.) A couple of months later, I re-met my now ex-husband while I was at work. We had grown up together but lost touch after we both left 4-H. We got married, both of us continued to have outside relations and he left 3 months into the marriage, about 2 weeks after we found out I was pregnant. I knew that the baby was his, he denied it. (Continued to deny it for almost 3 years, even after the DNA test came back positive!!) The courts made us wait to divorce until after our son was born. I got with someone about 2 months after my husband walked out on me. This man was absolutely amazing and caring. But he was a meth addict and a dealer and a manufacturer. He taught me the business and he introduced me to an escape that stopped the flashbacks to Oklahoma. He introduced me to a demon that took my hand and led me to a safe place. He gave me the means to escape. And I ran with that demon until I couldn't run anymore. For 2 years I used religiously. And it made me so I didn't care when that same man strangled me and punched me in front of my newborn son. I didn't care because I was high within the hour after it happened. This was 2013.
After he and I broke up, I got with another childhood friend in February of 2014. When the relationship ended a couple months later, he strangled me to the point of passing out in front of my children and then when I came to, he was aiming a shotgun at my oldest 2 children. My son was less than 18 months old at the time. That day was the last time I held a gun. I had the barrel pressed to his temple when the man from the last paragraph showed up and saved us all from the situation turning fatal. That is about the only redeeming action I can say about him, although he did not ever physically hurt me past that one time.
He got me out, and I ran back to my ex-husband. He was never physically abusive, but he was extremely manipulative. And I excused it because he didn’t hit me. By fall of that year, I was pregnant with my youngest son. I was a dancer in a bar. Still using meth daily. Multiple times a day. Once again, as soon as the test popped positive, my ex-husband ran. So I was 5 weeks pregnant and met a really nice guy at the bar I worked at. But never judge a book by its cover. Because underneath that nice exterior, this guy was a pill addict. And addicts do crazy things. I know from my own personal crazy decisions. I got clean and sober on August 26, 2014. I met him about 5 weeks later and I didn't realize he had a problem at first. But it soon became apparent and we struggled with finding a balance through my entire pregnancy. Halloween 2015, my youngest son was just shy of 7 months old. This man was on a high and strangled me in my living room because I asked him to leave and not be around the baby high. He then proceeded to call the cops on himself! They asked him to leave, escorted him from the property and informed me that they could take my children from me because the man that attacked me had gotten a bruise in the process of me trying to get loose. (I'm still trying to figure this one out!)
After that, I didn’t speak to him for almost 4 months. But then the constant messages started. He missed me, he missed his son (he had signed the birth certificate, knowing the baby was not his), he was sorry, he wanted his life back, he had given up the drugs, yadda yadda. He knew I was into chickens and he knew that I had been searching for some really good bloodlines to add to my flock. He offered to buy me a couple roosters that would do just that. And so, on my 26th birthday, we got in a car for a 5-hour car ride…. (Yeah. I know. I’m an idiot.) We got roughly 20 minutes into that car ride and a male friend messaged me to say “Happy Birthday”. Apparently, it is illegal to have guy friends wish you a happy birthday because we spent the rest of the car ride fighting over it. The time we spent at the breeders, he was loving and attentive and put on an amazing show for the lady. We didn’t get out of her driveway before he started in again. It was a 2.5-hour drive back home. 30 minutes out of our hometown, he snapped because the baby had been crying for over an hour because we were yelling and screaming. So he turned around and hit my 11-month-old son in the mouth. Then he proceeded to call me a whore. And I snapped. I was like, oh hell no. You did not just hit my child and then call me a whore. I backhanded him so hard I thought I broke his nose. Unfortunately, it was just his sunglasses. Then I pushed him out of the car and left him standing on the side of the road.
I stayed single after that for a year and a half. I was through with men. I was through with the abuse and the drugs and the hell. And then I met my baby's father. He rescued me from a stupid situation I shouldn't have been in, to begin with, and kept me from being raped by 2 men with a gun. And I suppose that positioned him like a white knight in shining armor in my mind. When I met him, I had just purchased a car, I was working full time, was rebuilding my credit from having to file bankruptcy from my marriage, and I was getting my life together. I had money in my bank account, not a lot, but enough. And I was happy. He was 13 years older than me, working at the same festival I was, and even though he told me that he was a convicted felon (like 95% of my exes), I thought that he was better than the other guys I had been with. He seemed to really have his life together. The first 2 or 3 months were great (like they always are) but the next year was spent getting my phone confiscated constantly because he wanted to see what I was sending and who I was talking to. He threatened multiple co-workers because he swore I was sleeping with them. He withheld money for bills and rent. Demanded to be in charge of grocery shopping. I was not allowed to leave unless he was with me or unless I checked in with him every 15 minutes or so. Even when I was home, he was messaging me every 20 minutes or so from work asking what I was doing and who was there. When I got put on bedrest with the baby, it took me falling down the basement stairs twice before he started helping around the house. He brought drugs into the house. He beat his brother on my front porch in front of my boys. He yelled and screamed a lot and threw things. Left repeatedly and threatened to not come back.
The relationship ended in November 2017... We had signed my car into his name and bought me a Durango to fit all the kids because I was pregnant again. When he left, he had already wrecked the car and sold it, then stole my Durango as his getaway vehicle. He came home the day before I went into labor and left the day after she was born. In my Durango. With my debit card. And my kids' Christmas presents. It was Christmas Eve. I am now over $20k in debt, without the ability to work outside the home because I can't afford childcare for 3 children too young to attend school, I can't get housing assistance because of the $1k owed on the house we had together (which the landlord had removed his name from so I could get one month of rent assistance, and therefore he has no liability), and I am borrowing a vehicle from my grandparents. And I justified it all because "he didn't hit me". I am still very much in love with this man. Or rather, the man I believed him to be. I found out last month that he had been seeing someone else since before the baby was born. That he also was waiting for my grandparents to die so he could get their money. And that he robbed their house 4 days before he left and stole 12 antique, irreplaceable guns.
Somehow, I am not completely insane. I get up every day and I pour myself into my children and my business. I was diagnosed last year with PTSD and the diagnosis was confirmed when I started working wiht my new therapist this past spring. I am absolutely terrified of men. I am terrified of what they can do in every form, physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, mentally. I will never go back to being who I was. But that's okay. Because who I am now is one strong woman and I'll be damned if I let anyone hurt me or my kids again. I will walk away at the slightest red flag. And I want to shine a light on the darkness that is abuse. It is never okay. Even if "s/he doesn't hit me". And to help me do that, I have just recently launched a new Motivational Mindset Coaching Program called The Fae Project (the baby’s middle name is Fae and that’s what I call her, so I thought it was fitting to name this after her.)
Through my jewelry business, The Fae Imagination, I have met SO MANY WOMEN that come from backgrounds similar to mine. The abuse, the drugs, the alcohol, the failed relationship after failed relationship. And two things the majority of these women have in common is that 1) they are still in the same mindset that led them to these problems to begin with and 2) they have really negative coping methods. So I developed The Fae Project based off of my own experiences, tips, and tricks I have learned over the last year from coaches and therapists and business mentors, and off the basics of the 12 step programs from AA/NA. And what I have come up with is a combination 1:1 and group program to help women from abusive and additive backgrounds to overcome the negativity and limiting beliefs that they have held onto to help them to become their best self and to truly overcome the issues that led to them being in these situations, to begin with.
The Fae Project will consist of live 1:1 and group coaching in the exclusive Facebook group for paying members. I will host workshops and webinars as well as the workbook that I am currently in the process of creating. There will be daily motivational posts, journal challenges, and many more amazing benefits for just $35/month!! I will also be opening up a limited number of private 1:1 coaching spots for $75/month. There are discounts for bulk payments as well. For more information, or to sign up for our weekly newsletter, click here!
Until next time, feel free to let me know your thoughts and feelings in the comments below or you can private message me! Love you all! Smile bright and stay creative!
I hope that by telling my story, that I can help someone that has been through experiences like this or someone who is currently dealing with it or keep someone from having to deal with it. I hope that I can shine a light on the very dark dangerous things that go on in this world and possibly save someone in the process. So here we go.
I was raped at 13 and then again at 15 by the same man who was 3 years older than me. We had dated for 3 months before the first incident. I was young and naive and thought he really meant it when he said that he loved me. So I gave in when he wanted to have sex while we were dating. I dealt with him and his jealous, controlling, scary behavior for 3 months before I called it quits. This was before the times of texting and email, so I had to break up with him face to face. I didn’t want to be alone, so I went to his grandmother’s house to break-up with him. His response was to lock me in a room and rape me because I refused to sleep with him “just one more time.” When I told my mom, I was called everything but a white girl and got informed that if I hadn’t given it to him while we were dating that he wouldn’t have felt entitled to it after we broke up.
When I was 15, he transferred to my high school. I saw him hold one of my friends against her locker, by her throat. Her feet weren’t touching the floor. When he realized I was there, he dropped her and walked away. A few weeks later, I missed the bus home and he happened to be around. He offered me a ride home, knowing how mad my mother would be if she had to leave work to come to get me. I told him that I would accept on one condition: That he kept his hands to himself. He agreed and I was stupid enough to believe him. We were one mile from my house when he pulled over on a backroad. (Side note, we lived so far out of town that all the roads are backroads. So there was no one nearby.) He locked the doors and when I tried to unlock mine, I realized that he had child locks on the car. Which meant the only way to unlock the passenger doors was via the driver side control panel. I’m not sure why he had the child locks on this car, but I have my suspicions. He proceeded to climb over the center console and rape me twice. When he was finished, he climbed back to the driver side and drove me home with the doors still locked. As I finally managed to escape the car, he told me that he hoped we could still be friends.
A few weeks later, a detective approached me. He told me that there was a group of girls pursuing a class action rape case against my rapist and asked if I would testify against him. My friend that he had damn near strangled had come forward and named me as a victim as well. He walked on that class action rape case because of a technicality. 9 teenage girls had come forward to testify and they released him. I was told that they threw it out because I couldn’t remember the exact date and time that he raped me. I felt like screaming at the detective. It wasn't like I went home and wrote it on the damn calendar. I went home and tried to forget it happened.
I’m sure there are more girls out there that he has molested and raped and abused. And I’m sure the majority of them never came forward. The only sense of satisfaction that I can get out of it, is that about 4 years later when he was 23, he got caught kissing a 14-year-old girl and earned himself a 'sexual misconduct with a minor' charge. I’m glad for the girl that he got caught just kissing her, and not doing anything more. And I pray that he never got a chance to do more to her. My mother still allows him on our property. He has tried 3 more times to rape me again. Thankfully, I have managed to escape. Once, my grandpa saw his car in front of our house and came to check on me. I am so glad that he had the presence of mind to grab the shotgun first. He caught him just as he pinned me on the bed, after forcing his way inside the house. Now, I make sure that I am not home when I know that he is coming over to see my mom. And if I can’t leave, then I hide inside away from him, with a weapon nearby. He sent me a Facebook message last year, apologizing for “whatever he had done” and asking if we could still be friends. Trust and believe that I didn’t respond.
I was with a man shortly after I turned 18 that beat me for 2 years. He was so charming and sweet, to begin with, that 3 months after meeting him, I moved from Indiana to Oklahoma with him. To a town where he knew everyone and I didn't know anyone other than him. And he used it to his advantage. I remember one occasion where he strangled me while repeatedly hitting my head off of the floor. I swear we had concrete floors. They were so hard. He continued until I was seeing stars and finally passed out. Before this incident, I could sing soprano (the highest notes in the choir), but now I am lucky to be able to sing at all. My voice is different and it actually hurts to use it for extended periods. (Even now, 9 years later, it hurts.) I’m pretty sure he damaged my vocal chords when he strangled me, but I've never gotten them checked. I just deal with it.
He beat me so bad that I should have been hospitalized on 3 separate occasions. To the point that I couldn't move or speak for days. And during that time, I wished for something to take me away. I was exposed to meth, but I never used it. I was scared that if I grasped onto that escape that he would kill me because I wouldn't be coherent enough to fight back. My 19th birthday was spent being hit and kicked and screamed at in the pouring rain, in the mud, in the middle of the road in front of his grandmother's house. At some point, I remember arguing with him and getting backhanded so hard that I fell onto the mattress on the floor, where he proceeded to kick me in the face with his steel-toed boots. My left eye socket is permanently chipped from that night. (And even now, if I sleep incorrectly or my sinuses swell, I will develop a black eye without anyone having to touch me.) During one of the short periods that I got away from him a few weeks later, I got introduced to Kentucky Deluxe whiskey. And I started drinking 2 pints a day at 19 years old to just be able to function. (My struggle with alcoholism extends all the way to today, even though I am at almost 4 years sober.)
The next time we tried to be together, he sold me to an old man as payment for a four-wheeler. And before you judge me for going with him, I need you to know that this man had a 15-month-old Bengal tiger in his backyard. And they threatened to feed me to this tiger if I didn’t comply. (I did manage to escape, thankfully, or I wouldn’t be here to write this post. And as terrifying as the situation was, I got something beautiful out of it. I got to spend an afternoon with the hugest lap cat ever! He was so playful and his fur was so soft! It is an experience that I will never have again and one that I would never have had if not for the bad. How many people can say that they have spent an afternoon with a Bengal Tiger?!?)
It was a year later when I finally got home. And I was pregnant within a month after coming home. He was a good man and I really hurt him, because I was not whole or healed. Thankfully, 8 years later, we are friends again. And our daughter is this amazing creature that reminds me so much of the person that existed before I met men. I hope that I can keep her from the evil that is men, but I know that is most likely not going to happen in today’s world.
The next 2 relationships I was in, I destroyed as well. Between the pregnancy with my oldest and the flashbacks from the abuse I had suffered up to that point, I got overwhelmed with life. I attempted to commit suicide at 7 months pregnant. I tried again at 7 months postpartum. The second attempt landed me in a rather sticky situation. I went to my doctor, explained that I had put my daughter to bed, kised her goodbye and walked outside to get a .38 Special from my mother's truck to kill myself. I explained that when I put the barrel to my temple, that the metal got so cold that my hand felt like it was burning and I dropped the gun. And I explained all this to him without batting an eye. All I wanted was a prescription for some kind of medication to make it all go away. My doctor told me that I had 2 options: I could walk to the local treatment center for outpatient treatment, or he would call and have me committed. Of course, I chose to walk the 4 or 5 blocks to the treatment center. I got diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Reoccurring Depression, Postpartum Depression and Major Anxiety. I got put on medication, and into weekly therapy. I started to get back on my feet. Sorta. It didn’t last long.
The following 4 relationships were a variety of different abuses, including being gang-raped by 3 men. (I am still unsure if they drugged me or if I just drank way too much.) A couple of months later, I re-met my now ex-husband while I was at work. We had grown up together but lost touch after we both left 4-H. We got married, both of us continued to have outside relations and he left 3 months into the marriage, about 2 weeks after we found out I was pregnant. I knew that the baby was his, he denied it. (Continued to deny it for almost 3 years, even after the DNA test came back positive!!) The courts made us wait to divorce until after our son was born. I got with someone about 2 months after my husband walked out on me. This man was absolutely amazing and caring. But he was a meth addict and a dealer and a manufacturer. He taught me the business and he introduced me to an escape that stopped the flashbacks to Oklahoma. He introduced me to a demon that took my hand and led me to a safe place. He gave me the means to escape. And I ran with that demon until I couldn't run anymore. For 2 years I used religiously. And it made me so I didn't care when that same man strangled me and punched me in front of my newborn son. I didn't care because I was high within the hour after it happened. This was 2013.
After he and I broke up, I got with another childhood friend in February of 2014. When the relationship ended a couple months later, he strangled me to the point of passing out in front of my children and then when I came to, he was aiming a shotgun at my oldest 2 children. My son was less than 18 months old at the time. That day was the last time I held a gun. I had the barrel pressed to his temple when the man from the last paragraph showed up and saved us all from the situation turning fatal. That is about the only redeeming action I can say about him, although he did not ever physically hurt me past that one time.
He got me out, and I ran back to my ex-husband. He was never physically abusive, but he was extremely manipulative. And I excused it because he didn’t hit me. By fall of that year, I was pregnant with my youngest son. I was a dancer in a bar. Still using meth daily. Multiple times a day. Once again, as soon as the test popped positive, my ex-husband ran. So I was 5 weeks pregnant and met a really nice guy at the bar I worked at. But never judge a book by its cover. Because underneath that nice exterior, this guy was a pill addict. And addicts do crazy things. I know from my own personal crazy decisions. I got clean and sober on August 26, 2014. I met him about 5 weeks later and I didn't realize he had a problem at first. But it soon became apparent and we struggled with finding a balance through my entire pregnancy. Halloween 2015, my youngest son was just shy of 7 months old. This man was on a high and strangled me in my living room because I asked him to leave and not be around the baby high. He then proceeded to call the cops on himself! They asked him to leave, escorted him from the property and informed me that they could take my children from me because the man that attacked me had gotten a bruise in the process of me trying to get loose. (I'm still trying to figure this one out!)
After that, I didn’t speak to him for almost 4 months. But then the constant messages started. He missed me, he missed his son (he had signed the birth certificate, knowing the baby was not his), he was sorry, he wanted his life back, he had given up the drugs, yadda yadda. He knew I was into chickens and he knew that I had been searching for some really good bloodlines to add to my flock. He offered to buy me a couple roosters that would do just that. And so, on my 26th birthday, we got in a car for a 5-hour car ride…. (Yeah. I know. I’m an idiot.) We got roughly 20 minutes into that car ride and a male friend messaged me to say “Happy Birthday”. Apparently, it is illegal to have guy friends wish you a happy birthday because we spent the rest of the car ride fighting over it. The time we spent at the breeders, he was loving and attentive and put on an amazing show for the lady. We didn’t get out of her driveway before he started in again. It was a 2.5-hour drive back home. 30 minutes out of our hometown, he snapped because the baby had been crying for over an hour because we were yelling and screaming. So he turned around and hit my 11-month-old son in the mouth. Then he proceeded to call me a whore. And I snapped. I was like, oh hell no. You did not just hit my child and then call me a whore. I backhanded him so hard I thought I broke his nose. Unfortunately, it was just his sunglasses. Then I pushed him out of the car and left him standing on the side of the road.
I stayed single after that for a year and a half. I was through with men. I was through with the abuse and the drugs and the hell. And then I met my baby's father. He rescued me from a stupid situation I shouldn't have been in, to begin with, and kept me from being raped by 2 men with a gun. And I suppose that positioned him like a white knight in shining armor in my mind. When I met him, I had just purchased a car, I was working full time, was rebuilding my credit from having to file bankruptcy from my marriage, and I was getting my life together. I had money in my bank account, not a lot, but enough. And I was happy. He was 13 years older than me, working at the same festival I was, and even though he told me that he was a convicted felon (like 95% of my exes), I thought that he was better than the other guys I had been with. He seemed to really have his life together. The first 2 or 3 months were great (like they always are) but the next year was spent getting my phone confiscated constantly because he wanted to see what I was sending and who I was talking to. He threatened multiple co-workers because he swore I was sleeping with them. He withheld money for bills and rent. Demanded to be in charge of grocery shopping. I was not allowed to leave unless he was with me or unless I checked in with him every 15 minutes or so. Even when I was home, he was messaging me every 20 minutes or so from work asking what I was doing and who was there. When I got put on bedrest with the baby, it took me falling down the basement stairs twice before he started helping around the house. He brought drugs into the house. He beat his brother on my front porch in front of my boys. He yelled and screamed a lot and threw things. Left repeatedly and threatened to not come back.
The relationship ended in November 2017... We had signed my car into his name and bought me a Durango to fit all the kids because I was pregnant again. When he left, he had already wrecked the car and sold it, then stole my Durango as his getaway vehicle. He came home the day before I went into labor and left the day after she was born. In my Durango. With my debit card. And my kids' Christmas presents. It was Christmas Eve. I am now over $20k in debt, without the ability to work outside the home because I can't afford childcare for 3 children too young to attend school, I can't get housing assistance because of the $1k owed on the house we had together (which the landlord had removed his name from so I could get one month of rent assistance, and therefore he has no liability), and I am borrowing a vehicle from my grandparents. And I justified it all because "he didn't hit me". I am still very much in love with this man. Or rather, the man I believed him to be. I found out last month that he had been seeing someone else since before the baby was born. That he also was waiting for my grandparents to die so he could get their money. And that he robbed their house 4 days before he left and stole 12 antique, irreplaceable guns.
Somehow, I am not completely insane. I get up every day and I pour myself into my children and my business. I was diagnosed last year with PTSD and the diagnosis was confirmed when I started working wiht my new therapist this past spring. I am absolutely terrified of men. I am terrified of what they can do in every form, physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, mentally. I will never go back to being who I was. But that's okay. Because who I am now is one strong woman and I'll be damned if I let anyone hurt me or my kids again. I will walk away at the slightest red flag. And I want to shine a light on the darkness that is abuse. It is never okay. Even if "s/he doesn't hit me". And to help me do that, I have just recently launched a new Motivational Mindset Coaching Program called The Fae Project (the baby’s middle name is Fae and that’s what I call her, so I thought it was fitting to name this after her.)
Through my jewelry business, The Fae Imagination, I have met SO MANY WOMEN that come from backgrounds similar to mine. The abuse, the drugs, the alcohol, the failed relationship after failed relationship. And two things the majority of these women have in common is that 1) they are still in the same mindset that led them to these problems to begin with and 2) they have really negative coping methods. So I developed The Fae Project based off of my own experiences, tips, and tricks I have learned over the last year from coaches and therapists and business mentors, and off the basics of the 12 step programs from AA/NA. And what I have come up with is a combination 1:1 and group program to help women from abusive and additive backgrounds to overcome the negativity and limiting beliefs that they have held onto to help them to become their best self and to truly overcome the issues that led to them being in these situations, to begin with.
The Fae Project will consist of live 1:1 and group coaching in the exclusive Facebook group for paying members. I will host workshops and webinars as well as the workbook that I am currently in the process of creating. There will be daily motivational posts, journal challenges, and many more amazing benefits for just $35/month!! I will also be opening up a limited number of private 1:1 coaching spots for $75/month. There are discounts for bulk payments as well. For more information, or to sign up for our weekly newsletter, click here!
Until next time, feel free to let me know your thoughts and feelings in the comments below or you can private message me! Love you all! Smile bright and stay creative!
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