What does the life of a battered military wife look like? Well, it's extremely confusing actually. Patriotism loses all meaning, when the man that is supposed to protect you and his country is betraying all things that make your service member honorable. Not only is it difficult to face yourself, but how do you face the world, your military life and world.
I went to work at the PX and tried to be myself. I was scared to make friends, because I was always being accused of cheating. While he was the one out in "training" calling other women including my friends. Many times, I tried to fight back, I am not proud about it. But who was I kidding, I was never gonna win. There were so many humiliating moments and acts of control that even if I wanted to tell, I knew I would be looked at silly. For example, being pushed out of the car and left in a new city. Like, telling me that no one would believe me if I told, and If I told I'd be sorry. Which in many ways I would. The military has nothing in place to help a spouse that is a victim of Domestic Violence. Many times, I went to my appointments in the hospital and the Corps men asked if I was being hurt? If I felt safe? Many times, they asked me repeatedly, as if they could see it in my face. I knew they could tell, but what happens then? I knew what happened I saw it happen to other couples. It wasn't helpful at all. But all of this doesn't stop life.
As time went on, and I tried to act as if things were normal; behind closed doors things just escalated. Any time that things didn't go his way, was an excuse for abuse. For name calling, for degrading. It was just a silly game I had to play, I never knew what to expect. I was the Russian roulette of abuse. As you know deployment is like clockwork in the military. And we were preparing for an Iraq deployment. My spouse's unit had a mission change, they were last minute training to run a prison. This meant a lot of training, one week end our friends and my spouse got extra time off on the weekend because they trained exceptionally hard. That night we planned drinks and a game night. But plans slightly changed, because our friends found out they were preggo.
We waited for them to come over and while waiting for them to arrive my spouse and I had an intimate encounter that just turned bad. I felt so disrespected, and I couldn't believe that after everything that had happened between us that I would be able to feel that way. Our company arrived and like always I had to shake it off, I tried to act as normal as possible. We played and drank except for our friend that was expecting. And as the night progressed, we joked about the guys showing us what was it that got then that extra time off. So, they decided to show us, as they wrestled and as I fought all night to be nice to him after he treated me like shit in front of our company I broke. I began rooting for my friend's husband. And that's when it happened, he got up lunged at me with his fist in front of our friends, and as I moved to dodge his fist, his own friend jumped on top of him to stop him. And that is the first time someone found out my deep dark secret. Believe it or not, this changed everything and nothing all at the same time.
