In a moment of jealousy, I sealed my fate. The question had been asked, and the answer had been blurted out of my very big mouth. My ex was getting married, and I was jealous—plain and simple. He always seemed to be so happy and on top of everything in his life; that made me sick. I wanted that, so I purposed to make it happen for myself again.

There was a lot to do. My fiancé and I took a day off to prepare for my next wedding day. We drove to get our wedding license. He parked the car, and after some hemming and hawing, he finally blurted out, “I have something to tell you.”

What now? I thought. He continued, “I have been married before.”

What? It took me a few minutes to get over the shock. He forgot to tell me about a previous marriage? He talked a mile a minute, going on and on about how the marriage didn’t mean anything, and it was only something he did because he was young. I thought his tongue was going to get tangled up.

Hello! Talk about an ice-cold bucket of water in the face! That should have been a warning to me to stop what was about to happen, but dumb old me—I said, “It’s all right, don’t worry. Everything will be fine. Everybody makes mistakes.”

I also believe my pride got in the way and would not allow me to just walk away and tell him to get lost. I had already made most of the plans myself; besides, I had already told everyone. What else could I do? Someone was trying to tell me something, but I just wouldn’t listen. Deep within, I already knew I shouldn’t marry him. I just couldn’t seem to get my lips to form the word, “No.”

The day we were to be married, I stood in my living room and wished for someone to just come over and stop me from what I was about to do. I had heard a story of friends who kidnapped the prospective groom to keep him from certain destruction. Please someone, kidnap me! Shake me—slap me back to my senses. Help me.

No one did. My neighbor stopped over to say she was sorry she couldn’t go to the wedding. I didn’t want to hear that; I wanted her to beg me not to marry this fruit loop. She knew he wasn’t quite right. Her husband knew it too. I always thought I had a knack for being able to change a man for the better. This man clearly needed something other than what I thought a happy family could give him, even if it was going to be a pretend happy family. Satan personified walked right through my front door, and I invited him in and married him.

My life was starting to spiral downward again, and I seemed powerless to stop it. Right after we were married, my new husband started to become physically and verbally abusive. He would actually strangle me as we had sex. Out of fear, I started sleeping with a knife under my side of the bed, tucked between the mattress and box spring. I remember him asking once where his favorite knife was. Well, it was on standby, ready to stab him.

He would drink nonstop every evening; he would put a pint of rum away every night. I started drinking with him on work nights—which was not my custom—just to drown him out. By the time he was completely sloshed, I had already tucked my daughter in bed for the night. She didn’t see that part of our existence. She had always fallen asleep easily. It would take her about fifteen minutes, and she would be out like a light and not wake up.

I had managed to save up about $3,000 in a relatively short period of time while working at the bank. I got up to get dressed to go to work one morning, and I was standing at the dresser putting my jewelry on. My new husband defiantly stated he was going to take $1,000 from my savings account to buy a gun. Something in me winced at that statement. I remained calm as I continued to stare straight ahead in the mirror. I recall taking in a deep breath and then silently thinking, Well, he is your husband. What’s yours is his, and what’s his is yours—though he didn’t have anything. He withdrew the money. I was afraid of him and did not know what he would do if I did not consent to letting him withdraw the money, and I did not want to find out.

He had a friend who belonged to the same gun club as my ex-husband. All of a sudden, he wanted to be an avid shooter. We would go to the club on the weekends when my daughter was with her dad. I found going to the hunt club boring, and I hated it. But I had pretended to like it when I was married to my first husband, and by God, I was going to pretend to like it for my second husband—the devil himself. I always tried to mold myself into what I thought would make others happy. I was doing it for someone I didn’t really even like, but the behavior by then was second nature to me. Trying to build this man up from his lack of self-worth and self-esteem took more than I had in my bag of tricks. It wore me out mentally and physically. I hadn’t acquired a lot of tools in my years of therapy that would help me with anything he had. I wasn’t going to admit I had made a mistake quite yet though. I had developed enough inner strength and nerve by this time to help protect my daughter. No one—and I mean no one—was going to touch her. I knew I was going to have to be tough to weather his antics.

Late one evening, he got so drunk he slipped and cut his arm on the wall. I mean, come on—how do you cut your arm on a wall? Nevertheless, he managed to do it. It was a big gash, which was not going to heal without being stitched up.

The hour was late, but I called one of my brothers to come over and watch my daughter while we headed for the emergency room. Evidently, he talked about committing suicide to the staff doctor. I had been sitting in the waiting room for what seemed to be several hours. I had made numerous inquiries about the state of my husband’s well-being, and finally, the doctor came out to talk to me and told me my husband needed help. He said he could have him legally detained if he needed to but that he needed psychiatric help. I knew that by then, but I would never have told him he needed to seek mental help for fear of what he would have done to me.

My husband had previously told me I needed to be on lithium for my mood swings—as if he just picked a drug out of thin air and said I needed to be on it. Like a fool, I did go to see a new psychiatrist, hoping it would shut my husband up. Strangely enough, this doctor did put me on lithium after performing a series of tests. I guess I was having mood swings from living with someone who scared me to death. The doctor asked me, in a caring way, if I was having problems at home; I lied and told him no. I was scared of what would happen if I told him the truth.

The doctor walked me back to his hospital room. As expected, my husband pleaded and begged me not to put him away. Then the promises started. He would stop drinking, he would go to a psychiatrist, and he would work at getting himself together if I just wouldn’t put him away. I fell for his lies and signed him out.

By the time we left the hospital that night, the alcohol was wearing off, and he started to become sober. We got home, my brother left, and we went to bed. We were sitting up in bed laughing about all that had happened. He would try to make me laugh when there was a serious matter at hand. It really wasn’t funny to me. I was laughing more out of nervousness than anything else.

About 2:00 in the morning, there was a loud banging on the front door. He got up, went downstairs, and opened the front door. I then heard him calling to me to come downstairs. Dara was asleep. There were six police officers standing in the middle of my living room, and they handcuffed him to cart him off to a psychiatric hospital. The whole time, he was trying to weasel his way out of it, but no amount of slick talk worked.

I was humiliated beyond anything I had ever felt before. What in God’s name had I done in my life to deserve this jerk? The doctor who examined him earlier that night had him taken to Westbrook, a mental hospital. The doctor told me he was a danger to himself and others and that he didn’t need my signature to have him committed. He let me take him home, but he said upon further reflection, he thought better of it. The doctor decided he needed to be locked up.

I was trying to run a large office of a bank, trying to keep my daughter happy and untouched by this man, trying to hold on to what dignity I had left—which by that time really wasn’t anything at all—and my “had to have a man” husband was putting this added burden on me. I was still trying to keep up a front and wear my mask.

After several days, the date was set for my husband’s bond hearing to determine if he was fit to be released. I had been to see him several times before the hearing was to take place. He would sit at a table with a Bible and proceed to tell me how he had given his life to Jesus and was determined to do better. He said he didn’t belong there and was actually helping several other men reconstruct their lives.

I took the bait, of course. I was always willing to believe and give anyone the benefit of the doubt about anything they said, especially if they were in the throws of despair holding a Bible. It made me immediately accept what he was saying, so I forgave him for acting like a jerk. I pushed all he had done to me deep down inside. I did not want to have to think about it. Have you ever seen a devil sitting before you holding a Bible?

Due to my position as manager in the same community where the hospital was, the judge said he would release him to me on the stipulation that he seek counseling. He ended up going one time and left halfway through the session; he said he was never going back. In a moment of weakness, he let slip the fact that the psychiatrist told him he needed serious help during his session.

Well, immediately after this intense appointment with the psychiatrist, he wanted to have this wonderful Christmas. He assured me things would be better…blah, blah, blah. He also promised my daughter that he would take her to Disney World. He went to the train store in town and spent several hundred dollars on a train set, which he put around the Christmas tree. I thought to myself, I am not into trains, and why are you spending this money? Trains and guns were his toys. What a bunch of crap and lies. It all made me want to vomit, but I tried to stay composed.

I invited his parents to stay with us that Christmas. Poor little hurt boy. I’ll mend you and your family, or so I thought. It reminded me of trying to mend my dad and his family when I was young. I certainly would to try to fix them all if I could.

My townhouse was two bedrooms with one full and two half baths. His parents arrived, and we set them up in our room. We decided to camp out on the floor in my daughter’s room. That evening, after dinner and after his parents had gone to bed, he stood in the middle of the living room and held a gun to his head. His parents were upstairs in our bedroom listening; I am certain of it. He stated he was going to blow his brains out with the new.357 Magnum he bought himself for Christmas. I looked at him, and the very first thought that crossed my mind was, Molly, how did you get here?

The Christmases I had as a child and when previously married were never like this, and this was the last place I wanted to be on earth. I didn’t want my daughter to be there either. My next thought was a wish that he would blow his brains out. I just wanted this sick, sick man out of my life and my daughter’s life forever. He proceeded to pull my hair and tell me that I needed to get on the floor and put my daughter’s toys together. He let me go when he remembered his parents were upstairs. I started to cry. I cried myself to sleep on the couch. It was the worst Christmas I had ever had.

I woke up to him gently nudging me and saying, “Wake up! Merry Christmas!” All of my daughter’s toys had magically been put together. He had a grin on his face while he said it. I had to remember his parents were guests in our house, and I had to pretend that it was a very merry Christmas. It was a make-believe existence, but as long as my daughter was happy, I didn’t care what happened anymore.

Time marched on, and I became pregnant. I know—I couldn’t believe it myself. Maybe if he just had a child of his own to love, I told myself. I had a knot in my stomach when I found out. I didn’t even like having sex with him. The same dull ache was back that I had when I was little and scared.

I knew I did not want to be connected to this man in any way, and having his child would have given us a permanent link for the rest of our lives. I had an abortion. I told my daughter that I had a miscarriage. I wanted Satan incarnate out of my life. Why was it that I could never be happy with what I had? Why did I think I always had to have a man to be happy?

My job performance began to suffer because of the hell I was going through at home. I was barely maintaining at this point; I would call in sick so I could get some peace while he was at work. It would be such a relief. He had talked up the Disney World trip so much to Dara that the following spring, we went. He talked me into taking a second mortgage out on my home, paying off all of his debts, and using the remainder of the money for the trip. I was in a tangled web, going from one mess to the next. We bought a new car right before we left so we could have a nice ride down there. He drove a sports car, so we obviously couldn’t take that. We traded in his sports car for a more expensive four-door sedan.

Disney proved to be an unpleasant and destructive trip. I tried to clothe him properly in name-brand clothes, but you can’t dress the devil up. We were going to look like a perfect, wonderful little family, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

He thought he looked like a movie star. He wanted to wear a certain pair of white pants this particular day, but I had failed to have them altered. He was furious. He put my daughter out on the balcony and grabbed my arm, almost breaking it, while calling me names. I thought, as he had me in his grasp, I have enough money in my account to fly Dara and me home, but I lost my nerve and couldn’t do it. Why was I so scared to ditch him there?

He calmed down after what seemed to be an eternity. I regrouped, putting on my perfect façade for Dara, and off we headed for the Magic Kingdom, or what I called my own private, living hell. I will never forget letting Dara buy anything she wanted in Disney World; I wanted that trip to be for her. I wanted to make up for the fact that I had divorced her daddy—to make up for him not coming home. I knew this was not the man I needed to be in Disney World with—or anywhere else for that matter—and he was not the role model I needed my for my daughter. The man I was with was evil —clear and simple. Why in the world couldn’t I leave him? The remainder of the trip was uneventful, but we never ate anywhere that did not serve alcohol. It’s what kept him calm, so I didn’t care. As long as Dara was happy, I thought, To hell with him.

XXXXX

The following Thanksgiving, he was planning a hunting trip. He demonstrated so much sorrow in his good-byes it would have made you weep. He could have won an Academy Award for the performance. He told me there were no phones where he would be staying, so I wouldn’t be able to reach him. He left the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and I was relieved to have him go.

The following Saturday morning, as I was waking up, something told me to drive by a particular apartment complex in town. My husband mentioned one night, during one of his drinking binges, where his ex-girlfriend lived. This complex was right on the way to my daughter’s dance class, so that day, out of curiosity, I turned in and started looking around for something. Without question, I knew just what that something was. Would you like to take a guess whose car I discovered in the parking lot? That’s right. I told my daughter to sit tight; I walked up the steps to a cluster of apartments and started banging on doors. One girl opened her door and kindly asked me to stop. I told her that I was looking for my husband. Who do you think opened the very next door?

Mr. Hunter stood right there, and he knew I had caught him red-handed. He was fuming mad. He tried to blame me for being nosy. His slick, wily talk managed to get him back home, but only because I had hometown friends coming in to stay with us that weekend. I didn’t want my friends walking into our crap, so we faked it for them, and I faked it for my daughter.

XXXXX

I discovered that he had been taking muscle relaxers. He had a doctor at work who prescribed them for his back problem, and he took them like candy. He was always tanked up on them, on top of all the booze he was drinking.

All the while, my ex-husband seemed to be having a happy life, which made my life seem all the worse. I became jealous of him, his wife, and their life together. I was relieved when it was time for Dara to stay with her father and his wife every other weekend. I felt as though she was in a happier place and that she was safe.

I would work all day, pick my daughter up from my sister’s, and then go home and be expected to work around the house until I went to bed. I was never allowed to sit down once I got home. I started staying at my sister’s house for a good thirty minutes longer at night so I could rest before I had to face you-know-who—Satan.

I had the presence of mind one day to call the hotline for abuse, inquiring about what I could do to seek help if he started becoming more mentally and physically abusive. I also wanted to know if there was anything I could do on my part to prevent further attacks. They said that they would have to catch him in the act of abusing me before they could do anything. How would that happen? How would I call anyone if he were trying to kill me? I just let that plan of action fizzle out. That he would do it when my daughter wasn’t there— was all I could hope for.