Real Love Doesn't Kill

   Our mind and our hearts always pull us in opposite directions when it comes to love, but a woman’s intuition is a true indicator of how she really feels inside.  I should have listened to myself time and time again. I really tried too, but the fear a man likes to instill in us to gain control of our vulnerability made me choose otherwise. This is a true story…..

      When I was 19 I had fell in love twice. Once, was the moment I connected with the man I thought who understood me completely and the second time was the moment I found out that I was pregnant with a healthy baby girl. I never thought I could love any two people more in this world, but I did and I loved them with all my might. I just wish I would have loved myself.

      I wish my parents could have loved me beyond material objects so that I knew what real affection felt like. If I had I probably would have left him the first time he punched me across the face while I was four months pregnant. Or the second time when he pushed me onto the ground, kicking me repeatedly until an innocent bystander came after him long enough for me to escape. The third time was when I told him I was leaving for good.

     I happened to spill my feelings as we were driving to a local store in town by where we lived. He insisted on being my chauffeur since my stomach was entirely too big for me to drive.  There were plenty of times where he tried to really love me, but abuse is too much to call real love. My throat was so dry and my nerves were on the fritz, but I knew it was now or never.

     I had to be honest with him. I didn’t want to be in a relationship where the love fell to one side. I couldn’t make him happy no matter how much I tried. I gave him so much just in a short period of time, but nothing could heal him from his own past of abuse and neglect. I stared straight ahead as I simply told him that I wasn’t sure how to love him anymore and I thought we should take a break from one another for a while.  I really wanted to end things in a good place for our child, but he wasn’t having it.

      He didn’t respond for a moment, but I could see the veins trying to escape from his neck and forehead. I soon started to feel the bass from him beating the steering wheel to my junked up probe over and over again. He was enraged, paranoid and pissed. I could hear the sound of my screams in my own head as he turned the wheel slightly to the left into oncoming traffic.

    The driver’s ahead of us were doing their best to avoid a collision, but he persisted to drive in and out from car to truck, truck to car ranting at me like a child. He made powerful threats as I cried and screamed all at once. I didn’t know what he was doing nor why. He kept saying that I better not leave or we would all die! He would kill me, himself and our child right then and there if I chose to leave. I was not going walk away from him so easily.

      I gripped the leathered seat so tight my hands started to turn purple. I begged for my life as he swerved left and then right taunting me, “If you leave me, I will fucking kill us you hear me? I will fucking kill you, you stupid dumb bitch!” Those were the words I will remember him saying to me for the rest of my existence.  The words of a man that claimed to love me more than anything else in this universe.
  
      I soon realized it was either him or death.  At that moment I had to give in. I wasn’t exactly given the opportunity to make a choice at that point. I had to give in for the sake of our child. I had to stay and love him the way he needed me to. I wanted to live for the first time in my life. I wanted to be a mother, the type of mother I never had.

      So in response to my fears I let the only words I wish I wouldn’t have said leave my lips. The set of words that started this vicious cycle in my life, a cycle I could not stop. A beginning to six years of torturous hell that I could have stopped at any time, but couldn’t…or possibly wouldn’t. “Ok, ok I promise I won’t leave! I love you so much just please, please do not kill me. Don’t do this please! You are the love of my life and I am not going anywhere!”

      He kept looking at me with such hate, then back at the road again. I think he believed me because he soon turned our car back to the correct side of the road. I had never been more scared in my life than I had at that moment. Truth is, is this was only the beginning. We never spoke of the incident again, but it surely wouldn’t be the last incident I went through....

      No woman ever thinks that she will ever have to live through such pain, but things like this happen all the time in controlling relationships. So many live through situations like this and worse, much, much worse. If anyone knew me, they knew me as a strong woman. They would have never guessed that my life was like this because I was always smiling, trying to pretend my life wasn't so bad. I was being bullied by the one person who I thought truly loved me. 

      I should have gotten a restraining order. I should have ended things once and for all in a safe environment around lots a people in a public place. I should have told my family, my friends and all those people that really cared about me so they could help protect me. I should have researched counseling, called a crisis center, anything. 
 
     I should have done a lot of things, but I didn’t. For so many reasons (reasons I kept telling myself) I had stayed with him. I stayed for him and I stayed for my child, but one thing I should have done, I should have stayed because I wanted too not because I feared what he would do if I didn’t.