Learning to Love Yourself
“My husband wanted a plain Jane. If I wore lipgloss, I was a bitch. If I got my ears pierced, I was a whore. I thought I was in love. I was the one who went for counseling because I wanted to make myself better for him. I didn't want to be like the other people who had babies and weren't married. He started beating me, then he started beating our children. I felt like I was losing my mind because I started plotting for ways to cut his body up and drain his blood in the bathtub. In my head, I heard my mama say the abuse that happened to her was going to happen to me. I knew it was time to go.”
She had stayed with her husband because she didn’t want her kids to come from a broken home. She finally got a divorce, but a few years later a boyfriend stabbed her almost to death and threatened to stab her daughter. That was the last time a man abused her.
In her living room, pictures of children and grandchildren hang on the walls, and her neighbor drinks coffee and listens as we talk. Her mother, blind from a beating from her ex-husband years ago, feels her way to her chair, sits down and begins to knit, fingers knowing where to go with each stitch.
Her mother is a German woman who met and married an American soldier from Alabama, stationed in Germany. The soldier would get drunk and hit her mother, and once played Russian roulette pointing a gun at his family. When his service was over, the family moved to Alabama because her mother thought it would give her children a better life. Alabama was a hard adjustment, and the beatings continued.
"The worst one was the day my father hit my mother so hard she lost her vision. There were 13 police in our yard, but back then they couldn't do anything because they didn't see her get beat."
Her mother has Alzheimer's now, and caring for her is a full-time job. The woman with long silver hair and dark glasses stares at the ceiling and knits a scarf. Sometimes saying, "Ich liebe dich’ meaning “I love you,” in German.
"She says that 17 times a day and that is the only thing she says in German. She screams my name all day long and can find me anywhere in the house, but then I remind myself that one day I won't hear that voice. I beat myself up for getting irritated. She knits that shawl all day. When she finishes, I take it apart and ball up the yarn, then she knits it all over again."
Protective of her neighbor and her mother, she says she is stronger now, and no man is going to hurt any of them again.
The last time was 20 years ago. She had started going to church and changed her crowd. She says her boyfriend was obsessed with sex and sometimes she woke up with him on top of her. That felt the same as rape and she was worried about what he would do to her daughters. She kicked him out.
Four days later, he broke into her apartment at 4 a.m., stabbing her 14 times with a hunting knife while she was sleeping.
“My children woke up to me screaming and he went after my kids,” she says. “My 8-year-old daughter was in the bed with me and he put a knife to her throat and threatened to cut her if she screamed. My son went after him. When he was through, I said, ‘I forgive you and I love you.’ He said, ‘Bitch, you don't love me,’ and left. He later told the police he stabbed me because he loved me."
She spent days in ICU and overheard the doctors say she wasn't going to make it. She survived, but the healing on the inside was almost harder than healing on the outside. She saw him everywhere--in the back of her car or in the hall, and heard his voice even though she knew he wasn’t there. The pills prescribed to calm her down made her suicidal.
She lived in fear the first year because he was out on a "couple of hundred dollars’ bail" and back in town before she was released from the hospital. A restraining order didn't stop him from driving by her house on a dead end street and yelling things at her and her children. Sometimes she hid in her closet when her kids went to school
She returned to her job at a hotel restaurant, but it was too soon. The cook walked towards her and she imagined he was coming at her with a knife. She quit.
The attempted murder case went to court a year later. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but the parole hearings began after the first year.
"He has been up for parole about five times. I learned that people in the judicial system are overworked and aren't going to stay on top of your case, so you have to do it yourself. My investigator and victim advocate were my heroes."
The abuser’s family attended the parole hearings and the women in his family stood up for him, telling her, "He didn't mean to do that to you, baby."
The violence broke her trust in other men, even turning her into an abuser.
"I dated a man who was sweet to me, but I had too much baggage to see clearly,” she says. “I verbally abused him and even jumped on him once. I abused him and lost him."
One man told her he missed her, sounding too much liker her abuser. That was a trigger, and the anger came out. "Your mind bottles up so much stuff and releases it when it is triggered. Parole dates are a big trigger. When 2022 comes, I will start having anxiety the month before."
Today, she immediately recognizes an abuser and knows all of the lines.
"Baby, I beat your ass because I don't want to lose you."
"I can't live without you."
"Baby, I won't ever do it again."
"I was jealous because that man looked at you."
"Don't keep taking these men back," she says. "If he beats your ass once, he will do it again. Women need to love ourselves. We are so quick to jump in to sex before we get to know the man, just to feel loved. We don't need to have a man to complete us.’
She now makes floral arrangements and pins for victims of domestic violence or for the loved ones of victims who have passed on. Helping others get through their time of grief gives her a purpose and a chance to give from her heart. When she walks out of the room to get an arrangement, her neighbor speaks for the first time.
"She has so much love about herself. I wish I could find that. My abuse was more mental and everything was my fault. He was controlling and broke me down to make me feel like I had to depend on him. I felt like I couldn't do anything on my own. I tried to reach out for help, but didn't get it.”
The neighbor told stories of trying to sneak out while her husband was sleeping. She was five months pregnant with their daughter. He slammed her against the cabinet and then flung her into the kitchen counter. She went into premature labor but doctors were able to stop it. After the baby was born, she left him and he moved to Colorado. He said he changed and got off drugs, so she moved to Colorado with their daughter. He hadn't changed.
Returning with bouquets of red, yellow and purple flowers, she says, “I have been so busy caring for my family and going to funerals lately that I don't have time to make anything or be creative. My uncle died and two days later his son died from smoking spice. It is always something.”
She says she has a simple life now and doesn’t live beyond her means. She doesn't have more than $4 to her name, and things need to be fixed at her house, but she is blessed because she has $4 and a roof over her head. There so many things to be thankful for that the little things don't bother her. “That is when you know you made it.”
If you need help, Penelope House is a shelter in Mobile that provides safety and protections for victims of domestic violence and their children. They have a 24-hour crisis hotline, (251) 342-8994. There is the Lighthouse in Baldwin County: (251) 947-3414 main or 1(800)650-6522 Domestic Violence Crisis Line. You can also call 2-1-1 to connect you to the help you need anywhere in Alabama.
Here is a list of domestic violence shelters in Alabama.
Here are some warning sides of domestic violence and other ways to get help.
