Post 3

THAT FATEFUL NEW YEAR’S DAY
By
Suzanne

(This is copyrighted through A Word With You Press as an Entry to their “A Few Words With You” contest. It is my Story of the day I left my abusive husband.)

I left him on New Year’s Day. I know it was New Year’s Day because I had just celebrated the beginning of 2003 with fireworks and wine. I had to leave. I had no choice. I was lying in a dark hotel room in San Diego, shivering, realizing my marriage was done, in the arms of another man. And I’d just got caught. And there was the chance that my ex-husband was going to kill me. I couldn’t go back to Las Vegas and walk in the house, not alone I wouldn’t. A lot had happened to bring me here.
My marriage had dismantled slowly, in an ugly, disturbing way. The first four years were happy, for the most part. We’d travelled to Hawaii twice, romping around on their exquisite, sunny shores, in awe of the colorful sunsets, mingling orange, purple, reds and yellows. A cruise to Alaska and a week in December in Florida, basking in warmth while the rest of the nation was frozen. We had bought a house in Las Vegas and I’d started a whole new life. He taught me to play poker and I had been a champion. I won a bunch of jackpots playing the poker machines. But there was the truth just bubbling underneath. He snatched me from my hometown and took me to Las Vegas, where I didn’t really know a soul. And the friends I made there I wasn’t allow to see much. He made it clear that they were weird or stupid.
It was the fifth year when it all bubbled up. Everything began to change. My husband’s shady past crept into our lives, and he indulged in it. Criminal dealings, secret meetings, friends who were not friends infiltrated our home and our lives. I awakened every morning to confusion and fear. And I was isolated from the others who lived in their normal suburban homes. I was afraid to tell anyone; whether they would believe me, and if they did, I might end up dead.
So my head went numb and my heart felt dead but I stayed because I was afraid. I tried to leave but he threatened my friends, and it was more important to have them in my life than to leave. When I tried to walk out the door during an argument, he’d grab me, shove me to the floor, and sit on me until I gave up. And I didn’t want to leave my house. I was attached to those four walls, to the staircase, and the balcony off of the main bedroom. It’s funny how much you can attach yourself to a building. And deep down, I still loved him. So I stayed. But the passion was gone and the sex mundane.
And in walked David. He started out a friend, who I could confide in when my world looked about to crumble. He started out cleaning our house then working for my husband in one of his dealings. He became aware of the criminal activities that took place behind the white picket fence and iron-barred doors and windows. He stood outside the door one night when my husband held me on the floor. And after a time, we fell in love, in secret. We shared passion whenever we could, indulged erotic fantasies, and my heart came alive again. My senses were awakened after a year of slumber. My affair with David kept me going. And the rush of forbidden sex, performed under the threat of a death penalty, of getting caught, and never living to tell about it, was like shooting cocaine in my veins.
So I sneaked around behind my husband’s back, uttering excuses of working late, attending a conference, meeting up with other friends. And when he found a hotel key once, I lied it was the key for my locker at the police station. I’d engage in passion, lighting my senses on fire, embracing true love before walking back into the darkness again. And then it happened. And I knew that my life had no choice but to change.
And so on that New Year’s Day, my husband found out, uttered his threats over the phone, and there I sat, isolated and afraid. I was in this hotel room and I couldn’t go home. I didn’t dare set foot in the house in case I never left again. His friends were trying to find me and I was naked, lying in a bed, in the arms of another man. And I was very much afraid.
As much as I was afraid, I felt relief. For the first time, that secret of hiding my love for David in the closet, could now pop out. The ugly secrets of my lonely emotional abuse, the criminal activities that I could never tell, it all could come out now. I could set it free.
I did go back for a time. I went to get my things. I had to take people with me, but I dragged items out, piece by piece, but I left so much behind. I said good-bye to the house I loved, took one last backward glance over the balcony, and drove away. I was starting all over again.
I remember the day I left him, New Year’s Day of 2003, because I began a new year with a whole new life.