Ted decided it was time to go home. So we went home. I opened the door and we walked in. I had been told it would be cleaned. That it would be taken care of. No. Hell no. My dishes still sat dirty in the sink. A pot we had used to make Hamburger Helper was now full of maggots. All because Rim constantly lives in the land of tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. It can wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow! Oh, I was so pissed off. My good pot...full of damn maggots. Ugh...still makes me gag a little bit. Anyways.
I don't remember the reasons we had, but there were good times, then there were the fights. The knock down, drag out, claw marks, bruises, fights. I'm surprised to this day that the unfriendly lady (that's to put it nicely) below us didn't call the police. She called the cops one time because I tripped and had stomped my foot to catch myself. Any other time, she was banging on the ceiling because we were being too loud or making too much noise for her liking.
Quick rundown of what happened during the fights, because I can't remember every single one specifically:: I would get punched, held down on the bed, one fight i was still pregnant and had my mouth and nose covered so hard that I had bruises on the inside of my lips from where my teeth were being pushed against my mouth. I would try to run, he would follow. There's not many places to run to in a one bedroom apartment. But I tried. The bathroom. I jumped the kitchen divider that opened into the living room. I would literally run for my life. He broke the bathroom door by kicking it open to get at me. The fight would be over, he'd be covered in scratches here and there from my nails, I'd have bruises and he'd be crying saying I needed to leave him. He wasn't any good for me. We were going to kill each other. And he was right. I should've left him long before I did.
One specific fight, I was on a dating site and had made a profile saying I was a single mother who was trying to open a bakery. Because that seemed like a dream for me to accomplish that. But Ted decided to go through my computer and found it. He broke my glasses and if it hadn't been for the neighbor, Teddy, thank you wherever you are, I would've probably been beaten worse. I left and went to my parent's house. I came home later that night, he was bitching because I left him with no way to go anywhere, you've got a phone, Ted. You could've called your mom. I discovered he had poured a full can of mountain dew on my laptop and then scrubbed the battery under the sink like it was a dirty dish. I was and still am furious about that.
Then the last major fight we had that led to his second arrest: I had put something on facebook about knowing I've made mistakes in the past. But I didn't regret them. The one thing is...back to the 5 guys I was with when we weren't together. I told Ted about them when we got back together. And he was okay with it. Until he found out Ernest was a black guy. That just didn't set well with him, he obviously was/is a racist son of a bitch. So our last fight:
He had apparently read my status on Facebook. And assumed I was bragging about being with a black guy. I don't see color. I see people. Some are black, some are white, some are chinese, some are mexican. But we're all fucking people! In any event, I was on the toilet, and he comes in and leans against the sink, which is right beside the toilet. He starts to question me about why I was bragging about having sex with a black guy. And if I lied to him about the black guy being bigger. And if I lied about enjoying it. He snapped and called me a slut, started kicking me. Started choking me and literally ripped a huge bald patch the size of a fist out of my head of hair. The whole time this was going on, the baby was in the next room crying and screaming because he was scared to death. I went to go to him, and Ted stopped me. I put it simply to him.
"He's scared. Someone needs to go comfort him." and Ted, the most scary I've ever seen him, says, "He'll be fine if you quit fucking screaming." He threatened us all the time. Not just Gabe and myself, but himself too. He had a wicked knife collection. All of them constantly sharpened. He threatened that if I ever left, he'd just slit my throat, slit the baby's throat, and then his own. Fucked up doesn't even begin to cover him. Well, I go to work the next day, and act like nothing happened. My boss/friend Luke noticed I was off, but didn't say anything. I was sitting out back smoking a cigarette and noticed my hair was in a mess, so i started raking my fingers through it to try to smooth it out. It ended up everything that I thought was so mussed up and terrible looking...was loose hair where he had jerked a fist full from my head. I pulled and pulled and pulled loose hair out of the tangled mess it was and had a literal fist size full of ripped hair. I had a bald patch on my head for 6 months before it finally grew out again. Well, I called Peach and asked her advice. She can be a very good sister when she wants to be. So Peach called mom and dad and mom and dad came down to where I work and made me show them everything that had happened.
They called the police to get us an escort to get Gabe out of the apartment and then the police would get Ted. Which went well. I walked in at 11, Gabriel was awake in his crib. A soaked diaper and hungry as hell. Ted was still passed out in the bed. I grabbed Gabe and took him back outside and handed him off to my mother. Then two officers walked with me up to the apartment and we all went inside. They told me to stand back and I did. I hid in the bathroom and listened to it all. "Mr. White. Mr. White! Time to wake up, sir!" My heart was about to beat through my chest. I heard Ted say, "What's going on?" Then the officers spoke again. "Well, Mr. White, your wife called us. She told us you beat on her last night. Ripped a patch of hair out of her head." I heard the bed creak and assumed he sat up. "No. We had an argument but I didn't touch her."
I heard an officer chuckle. "You didn't hurt her?" Ted said, "No." The second officer poked his head in the bathroom and asked for a pair of pants and a shirt. So I grabbed dirty ones and handed them to him. "Well, Mr. White, I saw your wife. She looks a hell of a lot worse than you do. Get up slowly. We're taking you in." So the bed creaks again and they put the clothes on the bed. "Get dressed, please, Mr. White." So he did, then I heard the zipping of the handcuffs as they put him in. Ted asked, "Can I at least have a cigarette?" I laughed when the cop gave him a plain and simple, "Nope." I watched them walk him out in cuffs, down the stairs, out the door and he was put in the patrol car.
And you would think that would be the happy ending. You would think I would have learned my lesson. He was the poison in my life. And I was going to remove that poison and live on.
But if you thought that, then you were wrong. I was summoned to be in the court room for his hearing. He only got a public defender. I could've buried him under the jail. I could've put the final nail in that coffin myself. We had been talking about getting help. Marriage counseling. But that was before the fight. But I didn't. I thought we could be one happy family. I thought we would stay together forever and watch Gabe grow up into a man. And I was dead wrong. I was puled aside by the Victim's Advocate and she took me into a room by myself. Just me and her. BIG BIG BIG Mistake. She asked me what I thought the punishment should be. I explained that I loved him and I didn't want anything to happen to him. We were going to get counseling, help for our marriage. We wanted it to work. We wanted to live our dream. I just wanted it to go away.
Anyone could see my brain was in a tug of war. Half of it wanted his ass to burn in Hell. The other half loved him. Wanted to fight for what I loved. Wanted to keep him for myself. This was my husband. The father of my child. So she told me about Anger Management classes and counseling he would be required to take. And if he filed a Title 40, everything would be erased, per the Judge's approval. And I agreed. He would take some classes. We would get a grip on our anger problems, and everything would be okay.
Well, they let him off lightly with that sentence. We went back to our every day routine. Then things started to get shady. He was always texting someone. Saying it was his brother or a friend from work. Then he turned 21. And when he turned 21, HE TURNED 21. We were buying Everclear, which is 190 proof. Where as Jack Daniels or Captain Morgan is 90-100. Then he moved on to cheap vodka. By the gallon. Every night, he would fill up a cup, pour in something to mix it with to make it partially drinkable and then go down the stairs and into the laundromat that was under our apartment and talk on the phone at all hours of the night.