I flung that ring into his dresser drawer as I walked out of hell. The hell he put in my bones, deep, down to the marrow. A man-made hell of Satan’s apple in red lies, that’s who he was. I adored that diamond studded anniversary ring and it never left my finger. He had been dead for nearly a year and I was waking up in the middle of the night and choking again. I started searching because something had to be wrong. But it was always so much more than wrong. For the reason that, he was in fact, my abuser. 

​

Though I had no idea I was being abused, nor did anyone. Because he did not hit me. Instead, he used stealth forms of Non Physical Domestic Violence to hurt and control me. His staple violence upon me was Gaslighting. Yes it was violent, he gaslit me to exert power over and control me.

​

The first time I tried to leave my husband was New Year’s Eve 1993. Two weeks earlier on a Friday night he didn’t come home from his band gig. When he finally walked through the door Saturday morning at eight a.m., I lost it. “Where were you?!” I shrilled at him. We were supposed to leave that morning for his parent’s house in Ohio for Christmas. He gave some muffled, “I was at the bar,” answer. Part of me accepted his answer and a bottled up part of me did not. I don't know the exact first time my husband lied to me. His lies were punches. They knocked me steel to the ground. But, I know now for sure that he started lying to me while we were dating. 

 

I got in the car with him because I didn’t know what else to do. Because I was ill-equipped and had no tools to face the reality of his eight a.m. coming home. Because I buried the truth that eight a.m. probably meant another woman. Thing is, when you bury something it's still there lurking, menacing, begging, ever re"mind"ing you that it is real, and still alive under there. I went with him because I thought, I can’t not show up for Christmas. Because I could not process beyond this one thought. Because I didn't know how to make a decision, or that I had a choice, to stay home or to go with him. Because I was too concerned about what his family would think.

 

It was the trappings of what was to come in his adulterous life-style. The clinical phraseology for this type of continuous disloyalty is “Betrayal Trauma,” which explained much in my bizarre denial. According to BT theory, betrayal awareness is suppressed when survival is involved with basic needs such as food, shelter, and emotional attachment. The victim will attempt to maintain a relationship with her intimate partner, which can result in unawareness of the trauma altogether. This broken coping mechanism puts the victim at long-term risk for mental health problems, severe depression, dissociation, and PTSD.

 

More, those balled up gummy condoms I found in his office were not used for excessive masturbation from meth use, as he told me. My naivety and denial fit boxing glove tight into his lies. Those were not vaginal yeast infections that I was getting. It seemed a regular occurrence that I anticipated. Getting a vaginal yeast infection after intercourse with him. No! Those were STD's. But what was dangerous was that I was at risk for HIV and I did not even know it, as he had multiple, who knows how many sexual partners. 

 

Eight hours in a car with him, I have no idea how I did it. Upon arrival all the focus was on me cause my writhing pain, unspoken, was on my sleeve. I could barely speak, my heart was swollen and had lodged in my throat. I was already so upset, and you wouldn't think I could feel any worse but I was about to. In more non-verbal communication Mike's family conversed, "What is Angie's problem?" A black sheepish, "What in the heck is wrong with her? She needs to pull it together!" Why would anyone treat an individual who clearly had been crying and shaken like this? I felt the blame, and that my feelings where my fault alone. That the wrong here, was me. That I was a weak person who couldn't hold her feelings in. So, the whole family had to pay at my expense. My husband, he did not care. Not one sand grain. It was the genesis of me crossing an invisible line into his non physical violence.

 

I realize now, I wasn’t really trying to leave that first time. It was a frenzied, long and piercing wail for him to stop. It took twenty years of his fires on my utter sanity to get out. Everyone can stop pointing my way. You all can stop doing his dirty work. He was fake flowers to unknown others, and robbing me Peter to pay Paul. He was stealth black lies while scape-guilting me the villain. No wonder I was always on edge. For twenty years and now I know why I was screaming.

 

In order to actually and truly leave him, to leave the circles of mad at him churning the mouse wheel in my head I had to understand it. My life with him. The way out is through the truth. I knew that I would have to forgive him too, but how? The cracks of truth he let through were vague, thin, masked, insubstantial, and encrypted. This truth is the vitality of my very breath, it is every last thing of me succeeding. If I had not found the truth, I am deathly afraid of how my life would be today, stuck back there. Still chipped down to itty small and the blame of everything. 

 

There is only One who could give me the truth and He did. I don’t know if you would call it a prayer as I stomped around in my house and insisted, “God, I want answers! I demand answers!” Then I found a lone shoe box that appeared out of nowhere. It was Pandora's box filled with the actual cancelled checks front and back, from his business checking account, years 2000 and 2001!

 

It was a paper trail of a routine $3000 a month he paid himself that me and the kids never saw. Now I understand that in reality, he made me beg him for money. I had to ask him for every single, last paycheck he ever brought into our home. "Cash flow problems," he'd say with a twisted grimace to make me feel guilty because I wasn't working. The box contained a $100 check, cashed, that he wrote to Lisa McCoy. Another $100 check to Elizabeth Sunden. $160 to Connie Miller. The business operations of a collision repair facility does not include writing checks to individuals. Several more cashed checks, he wrote to various men, in the box.

 

Later his economic abuse turned into giving me (his) paychecks that bounced. I became a bill collector, calling him at work to get money from him to pay our household bills. He mixed "I don't have it ask me next Tuesday," with $600 here, $200 there as I pieced these monies together every month to make the house note. Round and round I went, on Tuesday, he'd put me off again, "Ask me in a couple days." Those last few years I "collected" the house note from him and paid it on the last day of the grace period. Month after month after month after month I paid our house note on the 15th. No wonder I was always exhausted. The kids socks literally had holes. Yes, I tried to leave him seven times over twenty years.

 

It’s hard for me to ask myself the tough questions. Like what was wrong with me? How didn’t I know? Now that I have empirical evidence that I was living under a veil of lies. Yes, I did make mistakes. I did things that were wrong. I spoke harshly. I became angry, monumentally angry. But how did I not know that I was being deceived by him every day?

 

I believe the first cause was my below granite, pit low self-esteem. I spent those years in plastic materialism. I was fear ridden and anxious. Though I tried earnestly to live right and make positive changes I was moving at turtle pace, and a word that I did not understand reigned supreme- denial. Really, I never knew what was going on. Veins of incapable ran through me and stopped me short on everything, not realizing that I labeled myself as deficient and weak. Or maybe I did and I accepted it. Void of pure unabated laughter because I perpetually lived with a dull ache in my bones as he kept shoving me down to dirt, behind my back.

 

I sat in my office at my Lar’s antique walnut stained desk, resting my arm on the edge where she would have laid her bad arm. Laura- the only adult family I could count on, and my true partner in this life. The maroon vintage Austin Healey logo hovered at the top right corner of my screen as if it were my friend. Akin and a wink, as its creation evolved directly from my marketing conception and networking for Mike’s business, Decatur Paint & Body. Me unknowingly taking a lesson from Mike's playbook. He had been stalking me on the internet for years of which I had no clue. Now I wonder about him laughing at me, “Hahaha, she is so stupid!”

 

Austin was about to blow the deck lid off Mike’s dual engine life as I broke into his business account search history, dp&b13. I suspect the number 13 had some meaning to him. He liked that number as I see now that he used it frequently. He also liked “bite me” I see that now too. After over twenty years I could finally see the subtle clues, simply because I was looking. But I had no reason to read between yellow lines before because I trusted him one-hundred percent. He lured me into that from day one and straight lined me into believing he was genuinely good, kind, helpful, trustworthy, caring, loving...

 

Another password was tralfaz. What is that, and who is Martha? I’ve never been real computer savvy and he used that expertly. But God had just sent me to a job for two months that I couldn’t keep up with due to my computer incompetency. That sixty days cancelled my computer fear and gave me some darn good computer smarts. I set up a new password for me and him, and got a mere scratch of all the truth I'd eventually find. The new password is mikegettheanswers5252013. This is how he punched and slapped me, the ways he one-upped me, dominated and controlled me. The searches were shocking. They disclosed a depth of his violence upon me, why I was in such undefined and incessant pain as his wife. Please, let me remind everyone that violence is brutal, barbaric, and ugly.

 

February 8, 2012, 3:23 AM image vintage gay cowboy  

March 10, 2012, 7:19 PM searched for how long does it take for meth to get out of your urine 

March 10, 2012, 11:02 PM searched for gaslighting

April 19, 2012, 10:03 PM searched for 911 head shops atlanta

May 15, 2012, 1:51 AM searched for bi-sexual threesome

May 23, 2012, 1:50 AM searched for nxxx Free Porn, Sex, Tube Videos, XXX Pics 

​

On May 29th I would attempt to take my own life and what I took should have killed me. But even in my heltered self-loss all those twenty years, I always tried to do the right thing. To be in obedience. I had been a good wife to him all those years. As I took those cupped handfuls of pills I conferred with God aloud, “Okay God, it’s between You and me now,” I let Him know. Thus rose up a distinct and appointed kairos moment in which a new season was to begin. By the grace of God that was with me.

 

As I walked to the valley of the shadow of death, He long knew the seeds of my cry. My husband’s life was ruled by the one who only comes to steal, kill, and destroy. God gives us all so many chances, though Mike never turned from these lethal acts. Decades of infinite opportunities. Mike did not confess. Repent. Change his behavior. Confession begins with telling the truth.

 

And so I wholly believe it was merciful intervention. In that window of the next twelve months and the count of a year marker later, how Mike’s life, my life, reaped and sowed. I- was rescued from the dominion of darkness. Frankly the depths of all he did to me are still hard for me to grasp. My own husband was against me without my knowing, in sinister intent and actions. I doubt I'll ever fully grasp it, it was just that violent. 

 

I met my husband in Alcoholics Anonymous in 1988. I fully credit the revolutionary Alcoholics Anonymous for my recovery. I don't believe there was any other way my alcoholism could have been arrested. A.A. met me where I was in my personal brokenness, imparted love and hope, and bore no judgment or shame on me. This allowed me the grace and relief I needed to affirm, "I'm Angie and I am an alcoholic." Furthermore, I am absolutely certain that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous was the link that kept me abstinent. That kept me from taking a single drink of alcohol while living in Mike's stealth and cunning violence upon me, for an astonishing and remarkable twenty years.

 

Remaining abstinent from alcohol however set a dangerous precedence when my sub-conscious mind finally sought relief. Alcoholics drink to cope, escape, etcetera, it's what we do. But I did not drink, and had no desire or thought thereof. I had shriveled down to nothing from Mike's gaslit money farces, extra-sexual, and cyber-stalker bloody beatings. As he pummeled my brain confused black and blue, instead of taking a drink of alcohol for relief I became suicidal. I kept trying to find my way in the steps and program of A.A. but they failed me, because they do not address the problem of domestic abuse and violence.

 

This must be changed because domestic violence commonly co-occurs with alcoholism and drug abuse, in both the active abuse and recovery phases. Most recovering alcoholics in the A.A. fellowship experience abuse within the family unit. Although, they are not even aware of it because of this omission. Some more and some less, based on the form(s) of abuse, frequency and severity. Be it within themselves or from a family member, on the giving or receiving end, the perpetrator or the victim- Abuse is any ongoing negative or cruel behavior, used repeatedly and hurts another person.

 

Furthermore, A.A. does not cite the words abuse or violence as a possible “character defect” in any of it's literature. This gaping hole is in stark opposition to A.A.'s demand of "rigorous honesty," "admitting the exact nature of wrongs," and "making amends to those harmed." 

 

Abuse and violence are profound and destructive violations that must be acknowledged in order to "move towards correction." I know, I've had to recognize and face my own problem of excessive yelling and name calling as emotional and verbal abuse. A.A. provided me nothing to identify this disturbing “character defect” within myself. It was not Alcoholics Anonymous that brought me to understanding that I was being abusive.

After Mike had been deceased for a year and the truth came to light, we no longer lived in the shrouded ripple of his violence. It was then that both my recovery and my children's recovery sprouted it's first roots out of domestic violence. But I still couldn't see or decipher lots of things without guidance. A loving and intuitive Christian counselor gently, yet flat out told me, "Angie, you have got to stop yelling at Carson," and that weighed on my conscience. At the same time, a dear Christian girlfriend explained to me, "Angie, when you call Carson 'Mike,' it's like you being asked, "Are you stupid?!" when you were growing up." Wow, I understood that. I spent my entire life believing just that, I was stupid. Carson has a real problem with lying, but he is positively, nothing like his Father. I did not want to prophesize Mike over Carson, or stifle and hurt him and so that was the end of me saying that! 

 

Abuse and violence are a separate and serious category of "character defects" that must be addressed by Alcoholics Anonymous, and incorporated into the program and it's textbooks. Without these critical revisions the circa 1950's Alcoholics Anonymous texts remain sorely outdated and long overdue in responsible stewardship. There’s too much good in A.A. for this volcanic black hole to remain. It’s wrought with marvelous ideas and tools to help man understand and improve upon himself. The meeting rooms allow one to be totally vulnerable without fear. This gut level acceptance cannot be found anywhere else and it fosters self-discovery and healing. And most important, Alcoholics Anonymous teaches that God can relieve alcoholism, if He is sought.

 

So I met Mike at A.A., well actually I saw him first then met him later. Sitting in the front of the audience at the A.A. speaker meeting I turned around and he was magneted to my back. Every time I turned around his eyes flirted my way. He would physically strike me only one time, and that was in our twentieth year of marriage. You can’t pick them out in a crowd. He was kind and soft spoken. Intact abuse and violence is an integral weaving of many components. The wise man builds up his house,  but the foolish one tears it down with his own hands...