August 31, 2022 @ 2136
Dear Diary,
I think the worse part is.... the fact that people don't believe me.
Like..... I'm intentionally making this stuff up? Why would I make things up? For the attention? For the drama? For the control? Or maybe I'm a gold digger looking for "easy money"?
Ha! Makes me sort of laugh just thinking about it.
For reals?
Me.... misses straightforward, direct, unfiltered girl...... me?
Yeah, right.
I have no reason to make anything up.
I have no purpose to make things up.
I honestly would have been further ahead by staying with him. Our house will be paid off in 7 years. We have close to no debit, except the house, a small amount of student loans, and one small loan for a bathroom remodel. His retirement is already over 250k..... well..... it was before the economy took a dump.
He's already in the will to inherit another 500k or more between his 2 parents, along with the 40 acres of property that is just down the road from us. Financially..... staying where I was, was the best thing I could have done.
But..... money isn't everything. In fact.... money is nothing when you live in a hypervigilant state of mind everyday, all day. Where you dread him coming home. Where you fear...... totally fear pissing him off..... where you constantly have to pretend that everything is ok and that you are totally happy every minute of everyday. When you feel like you've lost your mind and can't bring yourself to do anything because you doubt everything you do.
Money isn't worth it.
But..... just because I kept things a secret, just because I didn't speak of things...... doesn't mean I made them up.
And yet....... almost everyone in my life thinks I've made up all these "horrible stories" about my soon to be ex.
Ugh.....
I was with him almost 20 years....... trust me. I didn't make up anything.
In fact..... I lied to myself. I lied to myself and convinced myself that...... it wasn't abuse. That I wasn't being abused. That my kids weren't being abused.
No. He never punched me. He never slapped me. He never beat me to the point of needing hospital attention.
The physical stuff was different then that. It was shoving me down the stairs and then acting like I slipped and fell.
It was shoving me into a closet and locking the door, keeping me in there crying and begging for release and then...... later convincing me that he did it out of love..... that he was scared about my emotional state and that I would hurt myself because I wasn't thinking straight.
It was dismantling my car....... several times. At first he totally denied touching my car..... it just sort of conveniently stopped working when it did. But he was the hero that fixed it within 10 mins. Later, once I caught on..... it was convincing me that again he did it out of love and fear that I would get behind the wheel and hurt myself or someone else by driving when I was emotional.
We lived on a dirt street..... in the middle of nowhere. I had no one to help me, I had no one to turn to. I was just left there..... alone..... for an undetermined amount of time.
It was chaining me to the bed at night so I would be there in the morning. Because ya know, I was crazy and he loved me but he needed sleep.
It was dragging me up the driveway by my hair..... and then pinning me down to the ground.... and...... for the life of me I can't really remember what else happened.
Later..... it was telling me not to act a certain way cuz it would hurt the kids.
It was telling the kids that mommy was upset and needed to be left alone to think (of course i didnt know that, thats what was being said)..... and them suddenly taking off without me and I had no clue where my kids were, nor what happened. And conveniently my car wouldn't start again. And even more convenient...... his cell suddenly died as well. Then later reminding me that the kids can disappear at any moment if he felt that he needed to keep them safe from me.
It was the body change..... him standing taller, broadening out his shoulders, eyes becoming blacker than black, jaw going ridged, hands in fists.......... and he walked towards me quickly ...... always backing me into a wall or a corner. Inches from my face. The more I cried or showed fear...... the angrier he got. Him not allowing me to move. Speaking in harsh but low tones that I could barely understand and sometimes didn't understand.........
But I knew..... one wrong action from me and it would cause him to flip out.
For the life of me..... I can't remember what he use to say to me. For the life of me.... I can't remember what always happened.
It's like..... those memories are just gone. They are black. Just like someone pulled the curtain down over those memories and I can't see them, can't reach them...... but at the same time.... I know they are there.
I try not to think about it. I try not letting it bother me. But..... sometimes I react to random things a certain way...... usually a bad way.....like..... something, a certain phrase, a certain situation, a certain body language.......... and its like i have such a strong emotional, over the top response to that trigger that its almost ridiculous. Sometimes its fear. Sometimes its pure panic. Sometimes its anger. Sometimes i just start crying hysterically and dont know why.
Sometimes i just feel like a wall slammed into and i instantly feel like i need to run for my life...... and sometimes i do.
Sometimes i run outside or to an open room...... just to breathe and calm down. All the while not understanding what the hell is happening to me and afterwards wonder why I reacted the way that I did.
Sometimes I'll start remembering things...... things from the past and everything will sort of make sense but..... then I have to work on that piece that was uncovered. Most of the time...... I don't remember. I can guess..... but.... I really can't remember.
Not remembering is extremely frustrating to me. I don't understand how I can't remember things that were said, that happened, that totally destroyed me for a little while....... but.... I don't remember.
So it's even more frustrating when the people I thought were my friends, the people I thought were my family........ don't believe the things I do remember.
Instead they take his side. They tell me that he would never do that, he's such a great guy, always willing to help, always there for people. They say things along the lines about how much he has always loved me, and has always done everything he could to support me. They have never seen an ounce of aggression nor meanness from him in all of their life/his life.
And yet......... they weren't his spouse. They didn't live with him past the age of 17. They have no idea what happened behind closed doors. What happened when it was just him and I. What happened when it was just him, the kids, and me. They probably truly have never seen that side of him cuz....... he always kept it very well hidden.
I didn't see it for over a year. The first time I saw his....temperament...... saw what he was capable of doing..... it confused me, scared me, and..... I blamed myself.
In the early years...... he wasn't like that very often. But when he was....... I was terrified.
He use to tell me...... actually he had always randomly told me....... the different things he would do to my body to dispose of it, so he wouldn't get caught. The conversations where never out of anger. They were just random, calm conversations that would spark out of no where.
Like..... when a local woman went missing in my small town. People searched for her everyday. One day we drove past a certain search party and he actually started laughing. He told me that they wouldn't find her in that field they were in. I asked what he meant.
He just looked at me with a smirk and told me that if he ever killed me..... he would just take my body and any evidence to the dairy lagoon and put everything in the lagoon. He continued by saying that there is an auger at the bottom of the man made lagoon that slowly rotates, turning the lagoon up constantly. The auger is somewhat sharp but more importantly it's tough enough to slowly crush bones up and carcasses up as it turns.
Cuz ya know that's the whole point of a good farming lagoon.
He would throw my body into the lagoon and watch me slowly sink under the muck......
He paused......
laughed......
continued telling me about how between the auger and the high amount of chemicals they put into the lagoon...... he figures my entire body would be dissolved within a week..... 2 week max...... bones and all would be just tiny shreads of nothingness within days.
The best part, he told me..... the driveway back to the lagoon is not gated, not locked, not guarded. He could go back there during the night time and....... no one would ever know he was there.
He concluded his story with a laugh, shaking his head, and saying that I would just disappear like I never existed and he didn't even think anyone would look that hard for me.
We rode home in silence after that, just listening to music....... by that time..... I was very good at looking out the window and crying in silence.
That wasn't the first time I had heard of his idea of the best way of getting rid of my body if he ever decided to kill me.
Also wasn't the first time that he reminded me that I wasn't loveable. That I was unwanted. And if I ever disappeared...... no one would really miss me....
Except for him, of course. Because he loved me so much and couldn't imagine his life without me.
If he couldn't have me..... no one else could.
As he would often tell me at random moments in our life.
Even to this day....... I still wonder when I'm going to come up missing.
I still wonder if..... if anyone would actually look for me.
I still wonder if he would...... will get away with it, when and if it happens.
I still hear his voice sometimes..... especially in the quiet dark, as I'm drifting off to sleep...... low tones..... almost a whisper...... telling me how he would kill me. How I would just disappear. How easy it would be.....
I hate my mind when it trys to make me remember things when I need to sleep.