What Happened?

I stayed with Carl for six years. He would leave or I would break up with him over the years. Sometimes he refused to leave. I would go on with my life, working and doing my own thing while he continued to abuse us. He would date other women but still profess his love to me and he would apologize for all of the horrible things he did and said to me and my kids. What kinds of things? Kicking my children, hitting them, biting them, calling them names, dragging them by the hair, letting them see him hit me, letting them hear him threaten to kill me. His favourite thing to tell me was that if I ever dared to leave him permanently, he would kill me and make it look like an accident. In fact, Carl had it all set out. He would stab me in the chest and throw me down the stairs. Everyone knows how clumsy I am and would believe that I fell down the stairs, impaling myself with the knife.

I was scared but after six years I was tired of it all. He was seeing someone, a woman I had been chatting with quite a bit online. I was hanging out with her friends and I was oblivious until I saw his chat logs one night. He was sleeping with Anna. I was furious. So I broke it off. He refused to leave and he also denied sleeping with her. He had deleted the chat logs and he insisted that I was crazy. He liked to call me crazy a lot. I was on Prozac for depression and he thought that was a sign that I was a complete psycho. If only he knew, I only needed Prozac to deal with him.

Then I met someone. I was 33 and he was 21. He was sweet and treated me like no one else ever had. I will call him Daniel. I was hesitant, obviously. He was so young. I had four children and a crazy ex. But we began to date and fell in love. We would go out after I was done work at night. I usually worked until midnight. It was winter and the snow had been falling. One night I saw footprints in the snow that had followed us from my house to the coffee shop and back. Another time, I saw footprints following us to my friend Sara's house. It was bothering me. So one night I called the house after I had left. No answer. I was right across the street from the house in a schoolyard. I decided to go back to the house and I saw him. Carl was following us. He had been for a couple of weeks. I told Daniel to go ahead to Sara's house and I confronted him. He yelled at me, calling me names and I yelled back at him. I went into the house and I locked the door. He kicked and punched the door and I was terrified. I told him to go see Anna and leave me and my children alone. After about 15 minutes he left. I got a call from Daniel once he arrived at Sara's house and I told him I needed to be alone. I sat there and cried. What would I do?

Gradually, Carl spent more and more time with Anna and by February I knew I felt strong enough to kick him out permanently. He came home one day on his lunch break and I told him it was time for him to leave. I said he should be with Anna and leave me alone. He still vehemently denied even knowing her but Anna has since confirmed that he was definitely dating her for months by that time.

We argued and he hit me. I yelled and swore at him and I went outside to where his friend Dave was parked in my driveway. He was laughing and I was pissed off. I told him he was a useless piece of sh*t for sitting there and laughing while a 350 pound man hit me. They left and I went in the house, packed all of Carl's stuff and left it in the front porch. I waited and waited and he didn't come home. I had the night off work and I finally called his friend Andy's house at about 8 pm. I told Carl to get his stuff out of the porch, he was officially kicked out.

Daniel came and consoled me. He was furious that Carl had hit me and he wanted to protect me so he never left my house after that night. I thought it was all over but I was so wrong.