*EXTREMELY LONG POST ALERT*
It's been a while... again.
I was about to say "Life keeps me busy," but that would be a lie. I keep myself busy to avoid life.My last post was a typical "woe is me" post in December of 2016.
My mind has been extremely heavy recently. More so than it has been over the last 12 years since I started this blog. I just spent over an hour re-reading my blog posts. I had to. Unfortunately, I see so many of my posts have been so similar, that I'm wondering if I have ever been truly happy. Maybe I just blogged when I was depressed. I needed to see if I had already talked about what has been on my mind these last few days. I haven't. So here goes nothing.
Only a few close people to me know SOME of the details. Some of this I have not told ANYONE. I mentioned back in my blog post from July 9th, 2016, that I had an unofficial diagnosis of PTSD from an emotionally abusive relationship. You can read it
here if you really want to. I was extremely vague in my post, and didn't go into details about anything. That is until now. There will be things I still won't go into detail about, and things I will leave out, but these are the important parts that have been weighing on my mind that I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO GET OFF MY CHEST.
Going way back to 1997-98: Danny was a baby. The husband was already showing me his destructive side, but of course I was naive and young and didn't understand any of the signs until years later. One night he woke up and started peeing on my computer... I screamed at him, and he seemed to "wake up" and then stumbled to the actual bathroom. I found out, years later, that he was high on marijuana and cocaine that day. Then in 98, he had come to pick me up from work, and he had an open container of beer in the car, so I forced him to pull over and let me out, and I ended up walking home.
Flash forward to the early 2000's, probably 2002 or 2003: I stupidly go with him to a party, about an hour away from our house, with Danny and Marie, young still. He starts to drink. I argue with him that the kids and I needed to go home before he drinks any more, and then he gets angry and punches me in the side of the head. He yelled at me to shut up and leave him alone. Little did I know, or even realize, at that point that he was already drunk and on drugs, probably cocaine. He makes us wait a couple hours, while he continues to drink, even when the kids start to whine that they want to go home. Coming home, he was so freaking drunk I was scared for our lives that we would die. He almost crashed the car multiple times. I still didn't know how to drive at that point and wasn't comfortable trying to drive with him anyway. It wasn't the first time he drove drunk, and wouldn't be the last, but it was the only time he did it with us in the car with him.
That also was the ONLY time he ever hit me, and he claims he doesn't even remember.
Sometime between 2005 and 2007, he started being more verbally abusive. He'd try telling me that I was too smart to be working in fast food, and I should get an office job. I started going back to school for my bachelors degree in late 2003, and finally finished my degree in 2006. During that time, we fought so much. He wouldn't drive me to school, so I had to walk from our apartment at 4pm, across town, sit in class for a couple hours, and then often walk home again at 10pm. Sometimes he would come and get me, but I had to wait for him for HOURS. I had worked at Target for a bit before starting school, and when I would get off at midnight or 1am, sometimes he wouldn't come pick me up until 4am. I'd be sitting in the lobby waiting for him the whole time. When he finally picked me up he would make me feel guilty for "waking him up for this." But he wouldn't allow me to get rides from anyone either, or allow me to get my licence and get my own car. There were also times when I would get home from school, after walking home, and find my kids at home alone. They were 5 and 8 years old. NOT old enough to be left alone. I would get home and ask "where's your dad?" and they would say "he went to get food for us." And then he wouldn't answer his phone for hours, and often wouldn't even come home until the next morning. I graduated in 2006, and he begrudgingly rented a car so that we could pick up my mom and take her to the graduation ceremony then take her home. By that time in 2006 I had already started to drive, but still didn't have a license.
2007 came, and he had finally received his residency, so he decided to go visit his mom for her birthday and then stay to celebrate his as well. Coming back, he "decided" to "help" a co-worker cross his kids across the border, and got caught when one of the kids called his sister by her real name, and not the one in the fake passport. That was March of 2007. That's when things started to get worse. Apparently while he was in Mexico visiting his family, he made an arrangement with his older brother to help him sell drugs in CA. He started selling meth, and I didn't find out about it until 2009. Also, aside from selling the drugs, he couldn't keep a full time job, and kept "looking" for work. He'd be away so often that I got used to being home alone with the kids. We never had sex anymore. December came around, and the day after Christmas I was drunk, he was drunk, and we had sex for the first time in months, and ended up being the last time ever. I ended up pregnant with our third child.
Almost immediately after I told him I was pregnant, his behavior started to change drastically. By that time, early 2008, he had already started to cheat on me. He also had started to actually smoke the meth he was supposed to be selling. It took a year for me to discover that. During my pregnancy, I was stressed out about the immigration situation, his change in behavior, our living situation, and more. My midwife sent me to the clinic psychologist, who then diagnosed me with severe postpartum depression that had been undiagnosed since 1998. I was 5 months pregnant at the time. During the pregnancy, I dealt with him verbally telling me I was a good for nothing mother, I didn't know how to be a woman, and much more. I started seeing a therapist a month before Gabe was born, and all the way until Gabe was almost 1.
It was after Gabe was born that I finally started opening my eyes to what he was actually doing. He started getting paranoid and delusional. He would be gone for days sometimes. When he was home, he would be locked in the other bedroom, or sleeping. He started bringing teenagers into the house, who were 14 and 15 years old, and a few that were 18 or 19. Mind you, we both were in our early 30's by then. The teenagers were gang members of some local gang. He was their drug dealer. The teens at one point started staying over in the one bedroom, and started smoking marijuana inside my apartment. I freaked out at them, and they laughed and said "this is why he hangs with us, because you are crazy." I had a 4 month old baby, an 8 year old daughter and a 10 year old son. And I was called crazy. One of the girls that would come over frequently, I later found out he had met at one of the bars, and was the one that he cheated on me with for OVER A YEAR. He even thought he had gotten HER pregnant. He brought her over to the house one day, when I was around 8 mo pregnant, to "introduce me to her" and see if I would give her advise because she was a few months pregnant. He had brought her because he thought she was pregnant with HIS child as well, and wanted to see if we would "get along." Once the girl had her baby, he was "relieved" to find out it wasn't his, because the baby was black, and it was her boyfriend's baby. The poor guy never realized that she was cheating on him either.
Now we are in the summer of 2009. One day, I walked into the bedroom he usually had the door locked on, and walked into him smoking meth. I lost it at that point. I am having a hard time with writing this down, but it needs to be talked about. Gabe was about 7mo at the time. Thankfully Danny and Marie were at school when this happened. He begged me to not tell the kids he was doing drugs, and acted like he was ashamed that his life had come to this point. He "agreed" to "get away" from the drugs, but he had to finish selling what he had been given to sell. That same week was when the teenagers had shown up and started smoking marijuana inside my apartment. At this point, we barely were speaking with each other, and it was only to ask each other how were we going to pay the rent, the bills, get food, etc, which always ended up in a screaming match between the two of us. Months dragged by, and his behavior kept getting more scary. He told me he had put a camera in the living room because he wanted to catch someone who he thought was breaking into the apartment. He would "show" me video of where he allegedly see "someone" opening the hallway closet door or the kitchen cabinets, but there was no one on the video. One day he burst into my bedroom, with a gun in his hand, and yelled at me to move off the bed, and he lifted the mattress to try and "find" the son of a bitch I was cheating on him with cause he wanted to kill him. I told him he was crazy. How the hell would I bring a guy into the apartment with my kids sleeping in the same room as me, and him in the next room? He told me that he had a camera IN MY ROOM, hiding behind a stuffed animal, that "proved" that I was cheating on him with someone and he would catch the asshole, then deal with me after. Gabe had been sleeping peacefully, while Danny and Marie were staying the night at a friends house.
The next day I had my appointment with the therapist, and I broke down and told her what had happened. Naturally, she told me she had to legally call the cops and have them do a "welfare" check on him. She made me call the schools to tell them to NOT allow him to pick up the kids, have them wait in the school office, and that I would be there as soon as I could. The police called me and wanted me to be there outside the apartment when they went to check on him, and I didn't want to. We were sitting in the car, and the police came back down, and said "He just admitted to having smoked meth within the last 30 minutes, and he is obviously drunk as well, so we have to take him in." I started to shake and cry, and my kids were with me, and I begged them to not do anything. I tried to move the car away from view so they kids wouldn't see their dad being taken away in handcuffs, but I was not quick enough, and as soon as he saw me, he started to cry "Why are you doing this to me?" The kids and I went back into the apartment, quickly packed some clothing and essential stuff, and drove to my mom's house, where we stayed for 5 days. He was released less than 12 hours later, because he had refused to allow them to do a blood test to see what he had in his system other than alcohol. He immediately started calling me as soon as he was released. I didn't answer for two days. School had just started for the kids two weeks before, and it was Labor day weekend, so thankfully they didn't have to go back for a few days.
In the end of July, we had received an eviction notice as well. So between all of the drama of him accusing me of cheating on him, finding out he was spying on me with a camera in the room, him threatening to kill the alleged guy I was supposedly cheating on him with, we were trying to pack the apartment to move. We had no idea where we would go. With all of the craziness he was putting me through I had already made the decision that I was going to take advantage of the situation and move somewhere on my own with the kids. Having him arrested for being drunk at 2 in the afternoon, and being high, just reinforced my decision.
After two days I finally answered his phone call. We talked for a few hours. I agreed to let him see the kids, so we met at the local Chuck E.Cheese. He "apologized" to the kids and to me, claimed he finally understood what he had been doing was extremely wrong, and that he understood if I couldn't be with him because of that, but he still wanted to be a part of our lives and try and redeem himself. The kids and I moved back to the apartment to finish packing as much as we could, and he moved in with a friend. September 1st, a week after he was arrested and then released, at 7:30 AM, I was heading to the car to take the older kids to school, while he stayed in the apartment watching Gabe, who was 2 weeks shy of his 1st birthday, so I could go quickly and be back to help continue packing, when two people headed up the stairs. The kids came down after me, and Marie said "Mom, they were looking for dad." Within a minute, he texted me "hurry home, its the police." It took me 30 minutes to get both kids to school and then get back home. Turns out it was ICE, and they were there to take him because he had a warrant for his arrest and deportation. To explain that, I have to go back to June of 2009. We had been fighting the immigration authorities from his incident back in March of 2007. Multiple trips to San Diego, close to $10K spent on lawyers with filing for a stay, and then an appeal, only to receive a letter from Immigration that was basically a blank letter head. We called the lawyer for them to say they got the same thing and were already investigating and would get back to us. We called every two weeks from June until August, for them to only say "we are still investigating." According to the ICE agents, the order for deportation was issued in June. I immediately called his lawyer, only to be told rather rudely by the secretary that the lawyer was too busy to talk to me and I would have to call later. I called multiple times throughout the day, and when I finally got a hold of the lawyer, she told me that they had been trying to get a hold of us since June. So basically we had been screwed over by the immigration attorney. He was deported immediately, and he was in Tijuana by 10 pm that night. So in the course of one week, drugs ruined our family dynamic, my kids lost their dad to immigration, and we also lost nearly everything we owned due to eviction.
My brother in law allowed us to stay with him and his family for a couple months, as long as we could help pay the rent. I had just started a new job in August, and had to scramble to find day care for Gabe. What we were able to save from the apartment was put into a storage locker. Over the course of the next couple months, I had multiple conversations with the hubby. He "confessed" to having cheated on me, multiple times, he told me about the drugs he had done over the previous 11 years, he told me about the girl he thought he had gotten pregnant... and he kept "apologizing" to me that he was sorry and he never meant to hurt me, yada, yada, yada. And stupid me, I fell for it. The kids and I decided that we "needed" to move to Mexico, to keep the family together. They thought, just as I did, that we'd be happier and that dad was truly making a change for the better. So, my dad agreed to help pay the storage for a while, and we packed the car, I gave my notice at work, and then we piled in the car the first week of December and started the drive down to Mexico. He met us in Tijuana, and drove the rest of the way to the house in Mexico.
In the course of the next two years, between December of 2009 and August of 2011, I discovered how naive I still was. He never stopped doing drugs. He never stopped drinking. He did everything he could to control my life. In early 2011, he took me on a walk, to "show" me a beautiful, remote, swimming hole. It was there that he grabbed me by the neck and told me that if I ever left him, or took the kids away from him, that he'd bring me back to this swimming hole, and no one would ever find my body. That feeling haunts me still today.
It took me those entire two years to try to save money to get myself back to the US. I started playing his game, going along with it, and making him think that I was just a stupid American girl. I somehow got him to agree to have me move back to the US, get a job, find a place to live, get him a new lawyer to get his papers started again, and bring the kids back, and then get him back. I finally was able to get a hold of my parents to tell them I was needing to come back but that we didn't have the money and I needed some help. My dad stepped up and started sending me money to "pay off my debts" in Mexico, and then sent me what I needed to catch a plane to Tijuana and then the bus across the border back to San Francisco. I finally got back on US soil at the end of September, 2011. I stayed with my brother in law for a couple weeks until my dad, sister, and step mom drove down from Oregon to pick me up. My dad rented a U Haul, and we emptied out my storage and brought EVERYTHING to Oregon. I arrived in Oregon a few days before my birthday. In fact, I believe I arrived in Sheridan October 20th, 2011. So I've been officially here in Oregon 7 years this week.
Once I was here, in Oregon, alone, I had plenty of time to reflect on the last 13 years of my life. It took me two years to find a job, save the money, and go back to get my kids. 2 years of torturing myself, questioning myself why did I allow it to get so bad, and why the hell didn't I just bring the kids with me immediately. I was so afraid of telling anyone that I was going to divorce him, because if it got to him before I had the kids back with me he might try and hurt them. So I said nothing. July 2013 I finally had saved up enough money to purchase my plane ticket down to Mexico, and the tickets for the kids and I to fly to Tijuana and then a bus to San Diego, and the train from San Diego to Salem, Oregon. Sadly, the week before I headed down there, my father in law passed away. He tried to get me to postpone the trip, but I had already purchased the tickets and I told him that they were non-refundable. I think he figured out that I was up to something but he had no idea what. I was only in Mexico for 4 days, and I was scared the entire time. He stayed away, and was passed out drunk the entire 3 days, partly because he knew I was taking the kids back to the US, and partly because he was grieving his dad's passing. The day we had to leave, he had not been home for a day. He didn't even come say good bye to his kids. We passed by the local cantina, and there he was, drunk as hell.
For at least the first 4 years the kids were back with me, I had nightmares nearly every night. I dreamed that he showed up and tried to kill me and the kids, or that he would stalk me and then break into the house and set it on fire and then kill me and take the kids back to Mexico... I would wake up in a cold sweat. I started having anxiety and panic attacks. It was awful. I finally had a brief talk with the two older kids about how dad wasn't able to come back to live with us because of what had happened in CA. I made sure that I never said anything bad, or derogatory about their dad to them. He was their dad, and they loved him no matter what, and I didn't want to force them to see him any differently. They both seemed to understand that things were not going to be the same, and I never fully said that I was leaving their dad for good, but I think they understood the unspoken as well.
Like I said, I've been in Oregon for 7 years now, the kids have been with me for 5 now. I still have not filed for divorce. At first I made the excuse that I didn't have the money to file, but when I had my tax return, I could have filed then, but still put it off. This year, as my oldest son turned 21, my only daughter turned 18, and my youngest son turned 10, I realized that I cannot put it off any longer. The man that I used to love has only tried to contact me ONE time in the last 5 years. He sent me a message over FB, that went into my "message requests" folder. I never clicked on "accept" so he doesn't know if I actually read the message or not. He acknowledged that things were over between us, and he didn't want to try and change that, but he just wanted to have us be able to chat like adults and be civil, and set an example to our kids. While I do not like the idea, I cannot keep my kids from him, nor will I purposely try to keep them from communicating with him. However, I still have nightmares occasionally, and I still don't know if I can ever forgive. I'm still working on that part.
