Carl continued to lie about his relationship with Anna for several months. I saw him with her in Wal Mart and the grocery store. My friends saw him with her and he introduced her as his girlfriend. He drove her car around town and even picked up my kids in it. He sent me emails (which Anna later told me she read and they upset her) saying he loved me and wanted me back. Then he would call me and tell me he hated me and wished I was dead. He told me I should kill myself to save him from having to do it. He would berate me which left me crying for hours on end. We worked in the same office and I became unable to go to work because he was sending me emails in which he was sexually harassing me. I complained and even showed the emails to management. The woman in HR had a "process" she had to go through and when she began the process she found out Carl was my ex. She told me she would not help me as this was a "personal issue to be sorted out among yourselves". I was exasperated. Carl caught wind of my complaint to management and he called me, yelling and threatening me. He said he would "bury me" and that I could interpret that any way I wanted to. I called the police and they said they couldn't (don't they mean wouldn't?) help me. That was the first of many calls I have made to the police over the years.
Children's Aid (also known as CAS, the child protection agency here) showed up at my door. There were allegations of my house being in a disgusting mess. I sat down with the worker (who found no such mess) and explained that Carl had been abusive to us. She decided that she would interview the children in the next few weeks. In the meantime though, he called CAS several more times. It got to the point I suspected they believed his lies.
One night, Carl called and said some horrible things. Not only did he reiterate how much he hated me and that he felt I should die but he also told me he would never leave me alone. He said that from that day on, he would make my life so completely miserable that if I didn't kill myself, I would wish I had. Why did I listen to him? Because he told me that if I hung up he would call me back. He said that if I blocked his phone number he would call my cell phone. And if I didn't answer my cell phone he would come to my house with CAS and the police and he would make up horrible stories so that they would apprehend my children. So I listened and I listened, to the terrible things he thought about me.
After he was done terrorizing me, I sat and cried. Daniel came home from work to find me hysterical. He took me to see a crisis nurse at the ER. She had me see the doctor on call, who gave me a prescription for clonazepam and increased my dose of Effexor. I went home and slept.
The next day was a beautiful spring day in May of 2004. I didn't get to enjoy it because I was unconscious and in the hospital. I will never really know what happened that day. The kids all went out to play and the next thing I remember is getting my stomach pumped and having seven stitches put in my arm. I saw a doctor, who interviewed me at length and he released me the next morning. He called the city police and we made a report after I told them everything Carl had said and done over the past several months. I was put on a medical leave of absence from my job until Carl either quit or was fired.
CAS still showed up constantly. The worker finally interviewed my children and when she was done, she was horrified by what they told her. She had us all put into counselling immediately and told me that Carl was not to see the children under any circumstances. He was so pissed off by this that he started threatening me again. I had just gone back to work (he was fired) and I couldn't handle it so I found a new house to move into and we moved. I felt as though the new start would be good for us. My counsellor told me to slowly start buying new curtains, furniture, etc and when I did, it was so therapeutic! Things were starting to look good.
If only this were true... but the happiness and freedom only lasted a couple of weeks.
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