We were at his parents’ house. Our toddler had just fallen asleep on the sofa. I was sitting in a chair in the same room, keeping an eye on her, and watching something on the television.
My husband was suddenly standing in front of my chair and said, with a quiet voice: “I’m going to kill you.” I looked up, thinking, oh yeah, great, and saw that he actually had a gun in his hand. It was pointed it at my face. Suddenly there was a very big boom.
It was so fast that I simply sat there and waited to be dead. A few moments later, I touched my face and my chest – and it took me a minute to realize that I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t even bleeding.
It turned out that the “gun” was a starting pistol that belonged to his father. It wasn’t even a real gun. It just made a loud bang. I learned something new on the day that he killed me. I had not even attempted to protect myself, I was defenseless. And that was stupid.
His mother had been sitting less than ten feet away, reading the evening newspaper at the dining room table. I don’t think she even looked up. I didn’t understand her passive attitude. Still don’t. Except that, maybe, she just didn’t care what he did to me. Didn’t care that her son was a batterer. Or, maybe she was also battered, and had no power to object or complain.
So, be careful of guns. I can’t even explain how quickly my mind just went away when I saw the barrel of that gun pointed at my face. I had no brain. I was dead already. I could not move, or talk, or even object to my untimely demise.
There were many guns in that home. But it had simply never occurred to me that a gun could ever be pointed at my face. That may, in fact, be a common misconception.
Here are a few links on guns and domestic violence. There are many, many sources of information on this subject. Please, if your batterer has guns, or you think he does, don’t take it lightly. Learn how to protect yourself and your children, or, maybe you need to think about getting out of Dodge.
Family Violence Prevention Fund
Violence Policy Center – Facts on Firearms and Domestic Violence<
Loopholes in domestic-violence gun law
South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault
Sweetheart,
I love what you wrote and how it was written. I SAW The Palisades in the 80’s, that balcony the thought of throwing myself over and somehow living through it as a vegetable as is my luck.
Tip toeing around the house in the morning (at 3am, just to have that quiet, alone time) to get ready for work so he would not wake up and find something to fight about BEFORE I had to go to work….I still have embedded in my brain, this one morning, ahhhh, all ready to go, and he emerged from the bedroom, and I knew to remember the eggshells. Cheerful good morning from me, I walk into get my coat, hear the up and down slide, snap, its over, of one of many of his illegal guns, and in the next minute I am standing 10 feet away from a sawed off shotgun, and he says I am going to kill you, pointed the gun at me and I froze, with a smirk on my face as my life whipped through my head, my CURRENT situation is what was zooming. I stood there almost wanting him to do it, but proud, no crying nothing, I looked great, going to work and had my work-head on. Suddenly he turned the gun on himself and said ‘fuck it, I will kill the dogs and myself’! I looked at him lazer-eyed and said, if you hurt one of those dogs I WILL kill you myself….and I stood there, tall in my boots, and stared him down. He held the gun to his mouth, and all I could think of was ‘wow this is going to be a hellova mess to clean up’…But only waited, wordlessly, like watching a movie. Something in his sick ego made him stop, he put the gun down and I went to work. The only thing I said to him while safely at my car door, even thought he always followed me out, was you need help then I prayed my car would start, it did, and I was gone…to work. I had no one to tell, it was a very cold February, I was alone. When I got home after work at exactly 6:37pm because any later meant that I was gangbanging the world. When I got there, acting casual, don’t talk, just walk, he was on the phone laughing it up with someone….I did not care who it was or whatever the hell, I started to take silent inventory of everything in the house that I had to move. He then came into the bedroom and just started talking about HIS day, since he did not work at this time because he was going for his fake, fugazy early retirement from the MTA RR all I did was listen, smile, yes him to death, and went to sleep. I used to take up to 20 OTC bedtime pain relief and sleep medicine every night just to make sure I am truly escaping him, but maybe one day I won’t wake up. Never happened.
It took me another 6 months to leave him on September 14, 2010, and another month at DV house to anonymously report his fraud to the RR Retirement board….He is now in deep shit. Maybe now he will kill himself…he does not deserve life. It was not until the ‘little niggling memories’ came flooding into my new home, new self, new light, that I saw that he was cheating on me, that he was always the victim, he never took responsibility for what he brought on himself. In the eggshell years, we were driving the hour home from my families home, to prove that I am alright, and his car blew its transmission and he blamed me and my family because had we not gone to see them, his car would not have died on the side of the road….Uh, what? How old are you? And so it goes…
I am allowed to wish him the darkest things…because I want them to happen, I want everything he did to me to come back to him, personally, from this Miss Celie. Wish I could be there to see it.
Thanks for the purge my loving sisters.
October 14, 2011 @ 4:49 pm