I Am a Warrior: Lets Get Our Fight Back

Part One

The signs of Domestic Violence

The first part of this book is about the signs and how I survived being in a domestic violence relationship in my marriages. I will be detailing events and feelings that I myself experienced in my relationships. I will also be sharing quotes that I have found extremely inspirational throughout the years. I will also be sharing the steps I have taken to gain the ground that I have to survive since then.

I have had many hardships throughout my life and have had to really fight for the survival that I value so much. I have really had numerous demons that I had to fight to get to where I am today. After all the violence that I dealt with, I have had a lot of emotional and mental demons to deal with and really, in all honesty, continue to deal with on a daily basis. These demons constantly tear me apart, and it gets hard trying to fight them on my own, but I have made it to where I am now.

This is my fight to be a warrior and it has been a long journey to get to this place. Because at the end of it all I am a warrior and I will survive. I do not know how I will do it, but I have made it this far and I will continue to make it even further. This will continue to be my fight and I know this and have accepted that. I know that I am a warrior at heart and I know that I can survive, even with all the fights that I will have fought I know that I will be better for the fights that I have suffered.

I will be a better person at the end of the day, because of what I have been through and the battles that I have fought. Because of these battles, I will become who I’d like to believe I am meant to be at the end of the day. It may have taken me many years to get to where I am and where I need to be. However, that will just mean that I will be better for all of the fights, battles, and scars that I have gained to become who I am.

Prelude…

Being able to survive a domestic violence relationship is hard. Knowing that everything you do is wrong in the eyes of the person that you are doing it for. After all domestic violence is not just physical violence. Domestic violence is any action that is done to gain power and control over a loved one. What no one realizes though is that abuse is a learned behavior that can be caused by many different things. This book is going to be outlining a few of the types of domestic violence that can be suffered in a relationship with a significant other, whether it be a boyfriend or a spouse. No one should ever have to go through the ugliness of domestic violence. I will be using research that I have done and personal anecdotes from my own experiences with domestic violence in my past marriages.

There are several types of domestic violence that one can experience, but I am going to outline in this book this types of violence that I have suffered in my past relationships. In the coming chapters, I am going to show the types of violence that I have dealt with and share my own experiences with those types of violences. I will be showing these experiences from my point of views and I will state here that no one’s specific name will be mentioned to any one specific circumstance as a way to protect all involved and as a way of protecting myself from being sued. The only name that will be accurate will be mine and the circumstances will be accurate.

This will be an emotional book for me and I may not always be able to explain the things the way that they should be explained and some of the circumstances in which this violence was experienced will be a bit harder to take for some who know me. This will be a very emotional event, but also a book that I think is necessary to be written so that I can finally move past the violence that I have suffered. Things will be rough and those who know me will probably have a hard time reading this book when it is finished.

Though I hope that will not keep anyone from reading and knowing that I am who I am because of what I have suffered and lived through. I am a warrior and I will continue to survive whatever is thrown at me because I know that I am special and made exactly the way that I am supposed to be. I am who I am because of what I have done and what I have lived through. With that being said I will get on with the rest of the book.

Chapter 1

Control

Control is a way for the person who is doing the abuse to maintain his force or dominance over the person that he or she is abusing. This type of controlling behavior is the abuser’s way of justifying what he or she is doing the person that they are abusing. The abuse is often subtle, but almost always insidious, and pervasive. For example:

• Monitoring phone calls and checking caller ids just to make sure that the person is not talking to someone who they shouldn’t be.

This was done to me numerous times in my second marriage. My ex husband even before we were married really was all time checking my phone and asking who I was talking too. It was almost as if he believed that my phones calls were with someone they shouldn’t be. However, I barely ever talked on the phone to anyone unless it was my mother or my best friend. Though in his eyes every time my phone rang I was talking to some other guy.

In my first marriage I was not even allowed to have a phone until close to the very end of the marriage and I only received one than because it was bought for me as a birthday gift from some friends. Which didn’t matter cause the minute my ex-husband suspected me of doing anything he didn’t like he snapped the phone in half. He broke the only line of communication I had to the outside world and once again I was all alone.

• Forcing or encouraging the dependency of the person that you are abusing is another sign of control.

In both marriages I was dependent on the person that I was with, because both men were good at telling me that I was useless and not worth anything to anyone but them. They were good at constantly putting me down and telling me that no one would want me if I left them. Constantly telling me that I would never find anyone better than them. I heard those remarks so much over the nine years that I spent married to my first two husbands that I began to believe them.

In some instances, even now, I still believe them. Even though I am married now yet again to husband number three I still believe that at times I will never have a happy life. I still believe that I am not good enough to be happy think that I am just not worthy of the love that others receive from their spouses or significant other.

Another way for the abuser to control the person they are with is:

• Invading her or his privacy by not allowing their alone time and space on their own.

That was something both of my ex-husband was good at, each in their own way of course. My first ex was open to me being able to come and go as I pleased if it was with people that he approved of, which made my number of friends very slim. Heck, it made them almost non-existent in most cases. While married to him I was able to go places with my then sister in law, and my mother and any one that he himself deemed okay for me to be around. Other than that, I was not allowed to see those he deemed unworthy and or a threat to our relationship. I practically had to cut my best friend out of my life for the most part because he made my exes uncomfortable. He was not the only male friend I was made to cut off though and that at the time was a sacrifice I was willing to make, because I thought that was what was right.

However now looking back at all the memories from those times I know that was not what was true, but instead just what they wanted me to believe. If was their way of controlling my actions so that I would stay with them the way that they wanted me too. It was their way of making me feel cut off from those around me that had cared about me for so many years.

Because when you get down to the bare basics of both those relationship, the true is that I never really wanted to be married to either of them. I mean my first marriage was a marriage of sacrifice that I made, because I thought it was what was right for my eldest daughter who I was already pregnant with when I married her father at the insistence of her grandmother. Than the second marriage was a marriage of spite when I am totally honest with myself. I married him simply because my mother had told me for many years not to do it.

However now looking back I realize that both of those relationship failures is what shaped the woman that I am now. They are what made me into the warrior that I am.

I leave you in this chapter with this quote that I was told after my second marriage ended.

“God will never give you a battle that he does not believe that you can handle.” This has held true for me for many years and it is in this quote that my faith lies still today. That is because I know that my lord is watching over me and he will see me through each phase of my life no matter what