A serious issue....

I Got Flowers Today

I got flowers today.
It wasn't my birthday or any other special day.
We had our first argument last night,
And he said a lot of cruel things that really hurt me.
I know he is sorry and didn't mean the things he said.
Because he sent me flowers today. 

 

I got flowers today.
It wasn't our anniversary any other special day.
Last night, he threw me into a wall and started to choke me.
It seemed like a nightmare.
I couldn't believe it was real.
I woke up this morning sore and bruised all over.
I know he must be sorry.
Because he sent me flowers today. 

I got flowers today,
and it wasn't Mother's Day or any other special day.
Last night, he beat me up again.
And it was much worse than all the other times.
If I leave him, what will I do?
How will I take care of my kids?
What about money?
I'm afraid of him and scared to leave.
But I know he must be sorry.
Because he sent me flowers today. 

I got flowers today.
Today was a very special day.
It was the day of my funeral.
Last night, he finally killed me.
He beat me to death.
If only I had gathered enough courage and strength to leave him,
I would not have gotten flowers...today.  

By Paulette Kelly 

_____________________________________________________________________________

Does this poem make you think at all?  This woman was beaten to death by her husband but it's not the only kind of abuse that's out there.  I know.  I was a victim of one of the most subtle and horrendous forms of it: Verbal and Mental abuse.

For years of my marriage, years, I lived with a man that thought that he was the king in our house and whatever he said or did was okay.  

At our wedding he looked the pastor in the eye and asked if he had to kiss me when he was told he could.  IN front of the church, he kissed me on the cheek.  

Our first years I wouldn't have described as that bad really.  He told me I couldn't cook and set to teaching me how to cook.  In my mind then, I had been an only child that never had to touch a stove so yeah, I needed lessons in the kitchen.  I didn't like that his mother basically held me hostage teaching me his favorite meals and not letting me go untl I had done something the way she wanted it done.  I started cooking that way and he was happy.

When my son was a little less than six months I did the laundry for the first time.  I'm serious.  The first time in my life being in charge of laundry.  I bleached everything.  The problem.  My son's clothes were blue and white and my husbands uniforms were white.  I thought the bleach would keep the white parts white and the blue parts would just get clean.  I was kinda wrong.  So when I had to stand in my living room in front of his friends and take the ass reaming Randy gave me I thought it was warranted.  I even went into my own pocket and took his uniforms to the cleaners to get the blue out.  From then, I handwashed his white and he was happy.

I got pregnant with my first daughter and when I showed him the pregnancy test.  He gathered his clothes in a bag and told me he was leaving.  He called drug stores trying to see if there was a test I could be given to verify that I had been taking my birth control pills.  I was daunted.  I was horrified.

I got AOL while he was on a deployment because he requested I have an email he could email me at to give me instructions.  Well back then there was no free AOL.  You had to pay for it.  This was fine with him.  Or so I thought.  Well the account that it was linked to suddenly didn't have money in it.  It didn't for maybe three months but I didn't know this because he had the main account, I had a satellite account.    AOL got smart one month and took three months worth of their money at one shot since it was there on payday.  This caused him not to be able to get a playstation game.  The result was that he screamed at me, told me to get out, and threw my clothes into the street.  

The next morning, I was rushed to Langley Air Force Base Clinic Urgent Care.  I had taken 8 Motrin 800 mg. pills.  At the time Motrin 800 made the pain go away and made me sleepy.  At that time all I wanted was for the pain to go away and to sleep.

Two years later, we had had Olivia and we were moving to California.  We got to Chula Vista and as I was putting the crib together, it fell on my ankle and I couldn't make it move.  I screamed for hours, but Randy who was in the next room sleeping, didn't hear me.  Or so I thought.  Later he told me that he heard me.  He just didn't feel like getting up.  He only got up when the neighbors next door pounded on the door because my wailing and screaming was getting to them and they, unlike my husband, had already called 911.  It was my left ankle and it was sprained really badly.  Randy told the paramedics that I had a history of hurting myself for attention and this was probably one of those times.  The result?  I sat in the room in the ER for HOURS being ignored by the doctors because I had been labeled drug/attention seeker.

A week later, I was putting away his underwear and found a love letter from his long time friend.  I won't go into details but a few things happened.  The first was that I began to see that I was not loved.

But what could I do?  I had three children, no education and no one out in California.  So I stayed.  I took it in stride.  I even moved to a house that was seven times worse than the worst place you could put your children and call it a home.

Meanwhile the fights got worse.

By the time we moved back to Virginia, I knew it was over but now I was in a position where I could go home to my mother.  But she wasn't convinced I should do that and she urged me to stay.  Stay for my children.  

But my children were not okay.  They saw their father screaming at their mother.  They saw their mother over compensating to make their life seem okay.  They saw there mother retreat further and further into herself.  They saw me dying.

Little by little, I was dying.  I was a shell of my former self.  My weight would go up and I would withdraw further and further.  My weight would drop and he'd pay attention to me but as soon as he did, his long time friend would come back and blow my temporary paradise.  So I began to drink.  I do believe I was quickly on the verge of becoming an alcoholic at that point.

At one point.  Maybe the most vital point in my life to that point I tossed aside the motrin and reached for the hard stuff.  I called it a cocktail.  I don't even remember what I took but I know it was a handful.  I wrote my children a note apologizing to them and locked my door so that they wouldn't find me.  Randy found me.  And he gave me an ultimatum. Either I seek help or he takes my children and lables me an unfit mother and I never see them again.

Bloggers.  The thought of that man being the sole parent for my children scared the shit out of me.  What if to Gods Horror, they turned out like him.  So I did it.  I walked to the base clinic and I told them that I had just tried to commit suicide and I needed help or it would be the death of me and quite possibly my children.

I got help.  I went to Bethesda.  There I met up with Capt. Marjorie Renior.  I may never forget that name as long as I live.  She saved my life.  She asked me why I stayed.  I said because my children.  WHere would I go that I could keep my children?  She pointed out that there were government programs like Food stamps and subsidy housing that could send me to school and feed my family while I got on my feet.  

The thought of being a welfare mother horrified me.  Growing up they were the peple from the unmentionable side of the tracks.  At least that was how I grew up.  I know now that thats not true but the captain asked me one very important question after that.  

What is more important?  Living as a single welfare mom or dying as an abused wife?

From that point everything I did was in an effort to live.  Live for myself.  Live for my children.

To live.

I know you are probably sitting there reading this wondering why I am telling my story.  Why I am finally after these years saying something?

Because I have friends who are being abused both verbally and mentally and all of them say the same thing.  They can't leave or they can't leave because of the kids.

Kids adjust.  Believe me.  Kids are made of strong stuff.  They adapt no matter where they are.  Or most of them do.  If where they are now, they see Mommy being treated like dirt under someone's shoe, they grow up thinking this is okay.  Mommy stayed so it's not that bad.  But if Mommy takes them someplace and suddenly Mommy is happy and confident and more sure of herself, they're going to know, what Daddy was doing is not okay.  Daddy has serious mental issues.  True the younger they are the better the bounce back but think on this.  Teeneagers have email and phone.  They have short scant years left until they can be trusted to go visit their friends back home alone.

If you are a woman in a situation like I was and you need to get out, there are ways.  There are friends.  Get away.  

Ask yourself.  Whats better?  Living as a single mother whose children will adjust to new circumstances or dying slowly and painfully each day because you don't want to uproot your children.

If you happen to be a child or teen reading this who is watching your mom go through something like what I described, ask yourself this.

You have probably have facebook, oovoo, AIM, Yahoo, email, texting, and phone calls to keep track of your friends.  You can make friends wherever you go.  Would you rather see your mother happy, healthy, confident, and self assured away from your father, or would you rather that she stay downtrodden, moody, and stress filled with your father until you turn eighteen?  Would you feel okay risking your mom maybe doing something permanent to end her daily pain just so you can stay in the town you, a teenager, grew up in?

Ask yourself.  Who benefits?

Please.  Don't let the poem above be about you or your mother.  

Single and Blogging is begging you.   Do something.  Get out.  Get away.

Really?? Seriously???

Can I have a day where I'm not riled beyond normal?  Please??

First my friends husband pisses me off... I really don't want to get into that one again.

Then my son comes home from school and sasy nothing to me except that he was home.  My youngest come to me about ten minutes later and wants to know whats wrong with Jovaughn.  So I called him to my room and asked him whats wrong.  At first he said the normal nothing but then he says that they put the fight up on you tube. 

Hello!?!?!?  What fight???



HE's near crying and he says that this kid showed him the video on his phone and said he said he put it up on the net.

This is more than enough for me.  I have been calling the school since August last year and writing notes that seem to go astray.  He comes home with bruises, fat lips, torn clothes and the school does nothing about it.  I'm done. 

They are about to know my name.  They are about to know exactly why three schools hate me.  They have fucked with the wrong mother.  Call me a bitch I'll answer today.

Single and Blogging is pissed off still....

Little pissed....

As you can tell from my blogging infrequency, it usually takes a good deal to piss me off to a point where I feel a blog is needed to vent my frustrations.  Well, that level has been reached.

Everyone I know has a friend who has a friend that has a spouse that the initial friend just cannot stand.  I'm special I have a couple but one in particular pushed his way through the crowd and stepped up to the front of the line wearing a lime green jumpsuit.

My very dear friend is on a diet.  Why is she on a diet?  Because she feels she needs to lose weight.  Just like the rest of us, that bell went off in her head that said, "Okay it's time."

And she's doing awesome with it.  She lives in a world where a can of beer at the end of the day dulls reality enough so that climbing atop a water tower with a sniper rifle is not a fix it option.  She lives in a world where the Wii Fit board is a horrible device of torture that needs to be destroyed. (I actually live in that world.  It's a pretty world.) But she tossed the beer and climbed on the wii and in one week, she lost twelve pounds. (this is where you do a fist pump and say "Wow!  That's awesome!" because it is.)

And like ninety percent of excersizing  America, she plateaued at that twelve pounds.

She went on her Facebook and she expressed her annoyance that while she's not gaining any weight, she's also not losing any.  Aside here:  notice I said her facebook. and her annoyance.  This is like I posted at the top of my blog.  My blog, my bitch moments, you don't have to read it. It was HER facebook.

So what has me so pissed off?  Her husband went on her facebook and I would post here what he said but the comment was deleted.


He basically said that the only opinion of her body that should matter to her, was his.  And then backed that up with a scientific fact about what will happen to her muscles if she does the liquid cleansing diet.

I was a good girl, Bloggers.  I didn't say what I wanted to say anywhere nearly as violently as I wanted to say it but the first thought that came to my mind was WTF?  Where does he come off saying that?


We women have a whole world of media telling us that thinner is the better.  It's in every magazine, it's in every movie, it's on every show.  Thin is in.  Thin is the thing.  There's people like Victoria Beckham, Kiera Knightly, Kate Moss who are so thin and so pretty that they make every good list. Best beach body, best dressed, best everything.  Then there's people like Queen Latifah and Camryn Manheim that when they make the nest dressed list, the media attaches the line for their size to the compliment. "OMG did you see that dress that Queen Latifah wore to the grammys?  It's was a pretty dress.  She looked awesome for her size"


So of course women today always want to lose weight.  Hell I want to lose weight.  I can't pass a full length mirror without wanting to cringe.


I challenge any husband that says his wife's weight should only matter to him, to put on his wifes jeans or her swimsuit and see if he doesn't feel like a complete whale when that button snaps or that spandex settles into one of his beer belly rolls.  I dare him to have to go to the store and shop for stockings and not let just a little of his self esteem fall when he has to pick up queen instead of A, B, or C.  I want him to have to plot his weight on a weight chart for a piece of clothing and see if he doesn't feel like he is the Titanic in human form. 

I have one piece of advice for husband out there.  A woman's weight is territory uncharted by men for a reason.  It it that dark cobwebby door in the attic that you grow up afraid to go near.  It is that barbed wire fence that's guarded by the large red nose pit bull with the foaming mouth.  Approaching that door without riot gear and traveling the paths of a woman's psyche where weight is concerned is quite literally in some cases, signing your own death warrant.  Don't go there.  For god sake, Don't go there, and DO NOT go on her facebook and say in front all of her friends that yours is the only opinion that matters.  It is not and never will be and to tell you the truth, in most cases, your opinion matter so little that it's insignificant.


I'm spent bloggers.  Until my rage is flared once more...


Terminally Single and Blogging is going to watch television.