The Breakthrough

The first time my husband hit me I felt very disgusted and small. I was hoping my daughter wouldn't remember it. The very first time she was only five weeks old and we were invited to one of my mother's friend’s wedding party. I was only 20 years old and felt stressed out to get my baby and myself ready. I packed the diaper bag, got my baby ready, and finally got myself ready. We went and my husband brought his cousin who was not invited to the party. He and his cousin kept drinking. I was all by myself with my baby. She was not happy since it was loud in there, and I was tired by 11:00pm. We got there at 7:00, so I just wanted to go home. During the four hours we were there my husband did not hold the baby once. He was just talking and drinking with his cousin. I felt lonely, sad, isolated, sleepy, and just wanted to be home. He agreed to leave at 1:00 am. For five hours I had the baby all by myself. She was crying, I was tired, and he finally agreed to leave since the party was over. We came home. I cried while I changed. I was feeling sorry for myself and my baby. He raped me for the first time. He said he had to have sex so he could sleep, and he did not care if I was too tired. I just cried and closed my eyes.

The next day I realized I left my hand bag at the wedding which had my wallet in there. I told him and he got so mad he slapped me and called me an airhead. He kept screaming at me for hours. All I said was sorry, you are right. I was happy my baby was too young to see how hopeless her mother was.

From that day I developed this fear of my husband. I knew if I misbehaved I would pay for it. So going back to hair dressing my work was a safe escape from him and my marriage. I developed two different personalities. One was passive aggressive and obedient at home. The other one was happy, social, outgoing, friendly, fun, and a strongly motivated hair dresser at work. Around my daughter I was the strong happy carefree, fun, energetic mom when he was not around. My husband kept asking for more children while I was thinking about divorce. When my daughter was six years old I had tried hard to fix my marriage. We even saw a therapist. My husband promised he would change and I hoped for that miracle. Since I came from a broken home where my father died when I was just a kid, I wanted to give my daughter everything that I did not have. A warm, loving home was the first thing she needed it. Or maybe these were just my own excuses for not having the self-esteem, inner power, and the family support to go for divorce. The combination of all these made my marriage worse every day. My husband was becoming more aggressive and I was losing myself more and more every day.

I believed I was just a stupid, uneducated low-life mother and wife. When my daughter kept asking for a baby sister or brother I felt maybe a baby would change my husband and make this marriage stronger. I wanted to become educated, always have my home clean, invite my in-laws over all the time, cook, clean, and be all that my husband wanted me to be.

I started to take one class at a time at 7:00 AM twice a week for four months at the local junior college and liked it. I was told by my husband I must study biology, became a dentist, or pharmacist. The last career advice was to go get my real estate license and work for him. I tried all that just to please my husband and none of them worked. I failed my real estate exam twice, and I barely got a passing C in my biology class. I hated all the science stuff. My accounting class was a disaster. I was earning an F, but the instructor dropped me after two weeks knowing that I could never pass his class and the F would be bad for my records. Things were bad at home, and I started losing my interest at work. All his words were in my head and I felt very lost.