Memories of a Nightmare

This is a true story, or as much as I remember of it being true. It happened to me six years ago this month. Writing about it, I'm told, is one way of bringing it out and setting it free...

I was 18 years old the year I married and had my first child. The man I married, at first glance, seemed to be a wonderful person. He was devoted, caring and loving. The sex was okay, but at 18 I wasn't exactly an expert on sex. Until my marriage to this man, I'd only slept with one other person. Our marriage lasted a short 18 months and then it ended in a fight. So many things were tucked away in my subconscious about that marriage...the physical abuse, the verbal abuse, the emotional abuse...and the sexual abuse. He went to jail in 1994. I thought I would never see him again...

I was 22 years old the year my ex-husband, Bruce, left prison. My daughter, by this time, was three years old. We were living in Texas. Bruce lived in Georgia. No one called to warn me he was out and about, so to speak. So, my life went on as it usually had. One weekend, my brother, John, and my fiancée, Connor, were both in town visiting. My brother lived in England. My fiancée taught at the Naval Academy in Maryland. It was a Friday afternoon. They had gone to rent movies and grab dinner. I was home, on the computer, with my best friend at the time, a man named Daemon. The doorbell rang. I went to open it... I wish now I never had.

There in the doorway stood my ex-husband. All 6 feet and 3 inches of him and he was not happy. I tried to close the door but he knocked it back, sending me to the floor, trying my best to move away from him. As he leaned over me and grabbed the collar of my shirt, I kneed him in the groin. As he doubled over in pain I ran upstairs to my bedroom and locked the door behind me. In my closet was a birthday present from John: a Beretta 9mm 92FS already loaded. I picked up a knife from my dresser and tucked it in the waistband of my jeans. I grabbed the lock box and just did get it open when Bruce broke down the bedroom door and grabbed me, throwing me into the nearest wall. The knife stabbed me in the lower back. Bruce grabbed the loaded gun and shoved it in my face. He smiled then...a smile so evil it has haunted me ever since. He backhanded me with the pistol still in his hand. I blacked out. When I came to, my hands were tied behind my back, and my clothes were being systematically ripped from my body with the help of the knife. My back was on fire and I was losing blood. My husband proceeded to rape me, not once, but twice, both vaginally and anally. During this time he kept threatening me with my death... as he put it, a slow and painful death reserved especially for someone like me. The knife he now held had a rounded hilt to it and he used that to rape me.

John and Connor arrived home about an hour after this all started. John was the first to my room. I was in shock. Bruce put the gun in my mouth and threatened to kill me if John didn't guarantee his safety. Connor walked in at that point and Bruce must have known he was outnumbered. He threw my limp body at John and the gun at Connor and then managed to make it as far as the front door before the police arrived. My body was broken and bruised. I was losing blood at a rapid pace now, both from the stab wound in my back and from where I'd been raped as well. My brother, thinking he knew best, began to drug me to the point where these memories would lock themselves away for several years, leaving me only bits and pieces to a puzzle that, even now, has never been completed.

Last night, the past two nights, my nightmares have given me a window into what happened that day and the two days following. During the rape itself, Bruce forced himself and various objects inside of me, one of which was the knife that had stabbed me in the lower back. He took the blood and smeared it across my body and wrote the word "bitch" on my back. The carpet in my bedroom was replaced the next day...the walls were repainted as well. Two days after the rape, I put the 9mm in my mouth and begged for the strength to release myself from the hell I'd been imprisoned in....

That was six years ago...this morning, I sit here and wonder why. What could I have done differently? What should I have done? My ex is on trial next week because he came back to finish what he had started six years ago. I awoke in the early afternoon several days ago to find him standing over me with my gun in his hand. That has just hit me. I should be dead...why aren't I? Will he escape jail this time too? If he does, I know I will have to disappear...because he would cease to exist.