He Beat Me Once He Wont Beat Me Again
The following is an exclusive extract of Adieu, Sweet Girl: A Story of Domestic Violence and Survival, a new memoir by Kelly Sundberg (available June 5). Here, Kelly describes how she plant herself committing to Caleb — a human being she thought was "funny, warm, and supportive" at first. Merely after the nativity of their son, Reed, Caleb revealed a violent and dangerous dark side that, in addition to a lingering depression, was difficult for Kelly to grapple with — until a perceptive therapist helped her understand what was actually going on in her own home.
THE BEGINNING: "CHILDREN WERE Not PART OF OUR PLAN"
The day the test came back with two blue stripes, I put on my jeans and The Flicks T-shirt — the one with Alfred Hitchcock on the back — and drove to work. The Flicks was an indie movie theater, and I worked at that place with cocked types who had lines of poesy tattooed on their forearms, dyed hair, and Antipodal sneakers. Nosotros wanted to make art. Children were not a part of our collective plan.
That morning time I strode through the kitchen — past the banana managing director who was making curried sugariness potato soup over the large gas range — stood before the espresso machine, turned the motorcar on to brand a latte, and stopped.
I didn't know if I could drinkable coffee. Coffee might be poison now. I listened to the whirring of the espresso grinder, the machine grinding the beans into fragments, and peered at my reflection in the brushed steel. I'm non ready, I mouthed.
A couple of weeks earlier, while we were sitting on my couch talking, my swain Caleb's face suddenly started to flush. He looked down and brushed his mitt over his head, which I knew meant he was feeling nervous or insecure. He looked up apace and blurted out, "Kelly, I want to ally you lot."
I sat stunned. Information technology wasn't a proposal as much as a declaration. We had only been together for five months, and considering Caleb lived in the woods, we had only seen each other a few times a week. Twice, he had panicked and disappeared for a week or longer. The first time, I wrote his absence off to jitters. The second time, I chosen and left a message on his cell phone: "If yous are interested in a relationship with me, yous will call me today, and y'all volition continue to telephone call me on a regular footing. If non, then this is goodbye."
He called nearly immediately, and so showed up at my apartment that evening, his face and posture apologetic. He wasn't willing to lose me, he said. He knew that at present.
Our relationship hadn't been idyllic or blissful, simply in the moment later on he had declared he wanted to marry me, all I could recollect were the beatific parts. I looked into his broad blueish eyes and remembered lying on that beige couch while he played his guitar and sang "Stake Blue Eyes."
I knew it wasn't responsible. We barely knew each other. He wanted 4 kids. He wanted to move back home to West Virginia. These were non things I wanted. Merely I wanted him.
"Okay," I blurted back, "only I'grand not having 4 kids. I don't even know if I want kids."
He leaned dorsum. "What virtually two kids?"
I could handle that. Information technology was all theoretical, after all. "Okay," I said. "Two kids."
But ii weeks afterwards the proposal, the exam came back with 2 blue stripes. I went to work in the morning time but left crying an hour afterwards. I curled up in my bed and wept the unabridged solar day. Caleb was out line-fishing with a friend, merely he came as soon as he got my bulletin. He crawled into bed with me, his eyes crushed and vulnerable.
"Let's accept an abortion," I whispered, pulling my knees into my chest.
"Let's become married," he said, smoothing his hand over his caput.
"I'm not prepare," I said. "For whatever of this."
He looked at me for a long time and and then said, "Kelly, I think that if y'all take an abortion, our relationship won't survive that. We'll have to suspension up. I don't want that to happen, do you?"
I didn't want to break up. I felt and then connected to him.
"Okay," I said. "We'll go along the baby."
"And nosotros can get married? I don't want my kid to be raised without married parents."
I nodded, only felt no joy. Simply fear.
sixteen MONTHS Later: "LONELIER THAN I'D EVER BEEN BEFORE"
That fall, we moved to Boise. It was a clean little house on a tidy street in an orderly neighborhood with a large fenced thou and a garden. It was the kind of business firm where a family could be happy.
But we were in a different part of town from our friends, and I grew alone. I rode my bicycle through residential neighborhoods to a nearby river trail where I continued the three miles to campus. That bicycle ride forth the calm Boise River was the highlight of my days. While I was on that bike, I felt a freedom that I didn't feel at abode. The heaviness lifted, and sunlight glittered on the h2o.
By then, the heaviness had become a role of my body. Even sunlight felt heavy. Our son Reed continued to be a joy, but beyond that, I felt so lilliputian. Every bit the summertime turned to fall, the sunlight grew heavier and heavier. I could feel its weight on my skin. I did everything that I could to observe more energy. I knew that exercise was important, then I would put Reed in the jogging stroller and jog or walk effectually our neighborhood. I ever asked if Caleb wanted to become with me, and he virtually always said no. The distance between united states was growing, and I was lonelier in that marriage than I had ever been before.
Sometimes I cried when he said no, and he would yell at me, "Quit crying. Y'all desire me to do everything with y'all. Yous don't respect my writing fourth dimension."
Sometimes I would lie in bed and cry for no reason at all, and he would stand in the door and scream at me, "Quit crying. What are you crying about?" I would only cry more, so, and say, "I don't know why I'm crying. I simply don't know."
By then we were arguing more, and I was beginning to experience afraid of him. He would back me into corners while he yelled at me, and I felt then helpless. Once he pushed me against the wall and pinned me. I panicked, lashing out and hitting him in the face.
The wire on his spectacles broke, and the lens fell out. He pulled back, the lens in his hand, and I stared in horror. What had I washed? I begged him to forgive me, and he did, scooping me into his artillery and telling me that it was okay, that he understood.
I was so grateful for his forgiveness. He taped his lens back into his glasses, then offered to go for a walk with me. Nosotros walked the stroller to the river and took Reed out. Reed toddled to the banks and threw rocks into the water, while Caleb held on to the dorsum of his shirt to go on him from jumping in. As I watched the fashion that Caleb protected Reed, again, the heaviness lifted, replaced with tenderness. Caleb held my hand on the way habitation, and when we got abode, he put Reed to bed, fabricated me dinner, and so tucked my head into his chest. The loneliness abated. Neither of us was perfect merely we shared an intimacy. We were all that we had.
October came, and the calorie-free continued to have this quality of intensity and dimness at the same time. I was no longer trying to be happy; I was only trying to be not-depressed.
I took Reed for long walks, and felt myself teetering on a razor'south edge. On one side of that edge was beauty, and on the other side of that edge was despair.
Every bit Reed and I walked alongside the river, I could see into the yards of fancy homes. I wondered what their families were like. Did they, as well, feel that something was missing? I finally went to the student health center and told the md that I had been feeling depressed. She gave me a low screening, and after I finished answering the questions, she left the room so came dorsum. "We cannot let you go on like this," she said. "Do y'all recollect about suicide?"
"Yes," I answered, "merely I would never do information technology. I only fantasize about information technology."
"How often do you daydream well-nigh it?" she asked.
"Every 24-hour interval," I said.
I left her part with a prescription for Prozac. I wasn't particularly interested in saving myself, simply I hoped that I had finally found the way to relieve my marriage.
I continued to see my therapist and connected to tell her well-nigh how unhappy I was in my union. The Prozac had only accomplished a manageable land of numbness for me. I wanted her to teach me how to be happy. Occasionally I would bring Caleb in to see her with me, and he would always talk well-nigh how disquisitional I was of him, and how frustrated he felt living with me. After one session she gave united states an action: We were to have a week off from criticism. No thing what, nosotros could non criticize each other. The first couple of days were wonderful. I enjoyed non criticizing him. I enjoyed letting things slide.
Soon, though, he was criticizing me. "That's criticism," I would say. "Oh wow, you're correct," he would say, and then we would both express mirth. It had get a game for us, but at the stop of the week, we both realized that I was not the 1 in the marriage who was decumbent to criticism. We went back in to my therapist'southward office and sat side by side on the burrow. "What did yous realize this week?" she asked.
Caleb didn't pause. "I realized that I am really very critical of Kelly," he said, "and that I am too hard on her." I was so proud of him for existence honest with her. I reached over and squeezed his hand.
She seemed surprised. "Wow," she said. "I hadn't expected that. How did that make you feel, Kelly?"
I paused, and so said, "I was surprised, too, simply I feel better at present. I call up that we're amend at present."
Caleb and I went abode that day and congratulated ourselves. We had done what needed to exist done. We had gotten therapy. I had started taking medication. We were working on not arguing and then much. Nosotros were going to be okay. I knew information technology.
The following calendar week, nosotros fought over again, and once again I went to run into my therapist. She was obviously disappointed to hear that we were still struggling. "When things get that tense," she said, "you need to go somewhere. Y'all need to leave the state of affairs."
"But I can't," I said. "He won't let me."
"What do yous mean, he won't let you?"
"I hateful, he will make it front of me, or back me into the corner. Once he even held me to the wall. I panicked and hit him in the face, so that he would let me leave." She sabbatum back, her face up concerned. "Kelly, that is domestic violence. What he is doing to you is domestic violence."
I was confused. "But he has never hit me," I said. "I'm the i who striking him."
"Yes," she said, "only hitting someone to escape is not the same matter as hitting someone to control them, and when he is pinning you to the wall or backing you lot into a corner, and so that is physical intimidation, and that is a method of control.Information technology is part of a design of violence."
She reached into her filing cabinet. "I am going to give you this flyer," she said. "It is for the domestic violence shelter, and I want you to keep information technology for if you need it." She pulled out a purple paper and handed it to me.
I stared at the paper. I had no idea what to think. I knew that I wasn't beingness driveling. He had never hit me, and I was strong. I was independent. I was not someone who would exist abused. I tucked the paper into my bag and and then rode my bike home.
Kelly and Caleb were married for ten years, only eventually she was able to exit him. Since then, she'due south earned a Ph.D. in creative nonfiction from Ohio University and is at present a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the same academy.
If you or someone you know is at risk of domestic violence, you tin call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or become to thehotline.org.
From the volume: GOODBYE, SWEET Daughter by Kelly Sundberg. Copyright © 2018 by Kelly Sundberg. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
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