A man whom I loved brought me down to my lowest point.

He swept me off my feet, right out from under a Great relationship I was already involved in. He was so manipulative that he made me believe all these things about him. I was also at the time my sickest I have ever been. I was diagnosed with Bladder Cancer and was dealing with the procedures. On top of it was going through menopause by shot to try and fix my endometriosis.

He was there for me. He made me feel so beautiful, special and sexy.

The abuse began immediately. But I had already gotten myself in way too deep.

I remember the first time he hurt me. He thought I said something about his kids that I did not say. He pushed me in the bedroom and was yelling at me. He cornered me and would not allow me to leave the bedroom. He was standing in front of the door and holding me away from it. I was trying to get out and was going to leave. He was scaring me. He then decided he would push me out of the door to the apartment. I had no shoes on, no cell phone, keys, money. So I was trying to get back in so I could grab them and go. He had me by the shoulders at this point and shoved me away from the door. He was trying to shut the door and lock the deadbolt. By this time we had woken up the landlady and she was coming out of the door downstairs. He shoved me one more time but this time with more force and I fell down the stairs right in front of her. She saw him push me down the stairs. She helped me stand and Steve pretended as though I had fallen. I was so embarrassed. He was acting so calm that I just went back upstairs and inside the apartment.

I remember feeling so scared that I was shaking. I smoked a ton of cigarettes that night. Steve wanted sex, and I gave in. All the while thinking how could he have been so cruel to me than be in the mood to have sex.

The next day he acted as if nothing had happened and I started to think maybe I had overreacted and it wasn’t that bad. It only got worse from there. The arguments got so much worse. Usually they were over him doing something that seemed out of place. Like he said he was at the Firehouse every Monday night for drill, but I was being told by friends that he was never there. He made me feel stupid for thinking any of the things I did. I was informed by another one of his co-firemen that he had brought two different girls up the firehouse and banged them in the fire trucks. When his ex finally got the nerve up to take back her car he was using my Neon. He was working in a town right nearby where I had a two-day surveillance. We were both staying in hotels within minutes of each other. He was at work doing an audit and said he would call me when he was done. He never called. He finally answered one of my many texts and said he needed a break! A break! WTF! We lived together, had been together for a while now. How could he say he needed a break? We weren’t even fighting. It made no sense to me why he was doing this. He then shut off his phone and made me sit alone in a hotel in the middle of nowhere all night wondering what was really going on. I remember this is the night I set up a myspace account and relocated Amy. Amy and I ended up talking on the phone and she helped me make it through a rainy horrible night.

The next day, no contact with him. I remember thinking how could he do this to me? Was he even going to allow me to come home? Where was he, he had my car. I thought about reporting my car stolen but I didn’t want to make him mad or upset with me. Why? Why did I care what he thought? He had just really hurt me. Stayed at the hotel again that night alone, learned Steve had checked out of his hotel. I called the landlord before I went to sleep and found out he was not home either. Where was he? This was the worst two days so far.

The next day I finished my case, which was almost impossible. I got nothing accomplished while out there. Sucks because I am a good investigator. He just made me so sick to my stomach I couldn’t work. I got home late that night. He was not there. I remember putting the TV on and sitting on the couch in the living room. We hadn’t even gotten a bed frame yet so the mattress was on the floor in the bedroom. Anyway, I was on the couch with the TV on. Crying my eyes out. He still wouldn’t answer my texts or calls. Wouldn’t even let me know if he were ok. I freaked out. I called Eric, he said he didn’t now where he was either. Now I was really worrying. He wasn’t with Ronnie either. In my heart I knew where he was the whole time. Still with my car. With another woman. I felt like I had no one to talk to. I kept calling him and leaving messages to please come home or to let me know he was ok.

At about 12:45 a.m. he called. He was wasted! I was hysterical. I wanted to say as much as I could as quick as I could. I told him I would come get him. We could go home and go to sleep and not even talk about it tonight. I told him how much I loved him and to please come home. He told me he didn’t love me anymore and hung up and shut off his phone. I was so distraught that I was hyperventilating and couldn’t breathe. I remember collapsing onto the mattress under the window and screaming into my pillow I tried to go to sleep. It didn’t work. I remember lying there looking out the window at the driveway hoping to see the sensor light kick on. I don’t know why but I wanted him home. I was so hurt but still wanted him to come home and say he was sorry and it would never happen again. I was crying so hard right up until the moment I fell asleep.

I woke up in the morning pretty early. With a huge headache. He was still not there. I decided that I would get out of the house after moping around for a while and calling his phone, which was still off. I went to do laundry of all things. I was gone only about an hour and a half. I got home and he was there. My car was in the driveway like it was never gone. I was shocked. I brought the laundry upstairs and put it in the bedroom. He was sitting on the couch watching TV smoking a cigarette. He did not look at me. I walked over to the chair and sat down. I immediately started crying. He got all defensive and started calling me a baby. When I asked him where he was he said he went to Vestal to do an audit. He acted as if he had done nothing wrong. I remember trying not to cry because I didn’t want to upset him or make him angry. He said he got invited to go to a casino by a girl he worked with but that nothing happened. He said he got drunk and slept in my car. He said after he talked to me on the phone the night before he had tried to leave but was so drunk he had to pull over on the side of the road and sleep it off. I knew it was all lies. He wouldn’t even look at me. He just went on as if nothing happened. As if I wasn’t there. I sat there for a while. We did what we always did, smoked until we could stand each other.

Went to bed and in the morning he acted like nothing had happened over the last 3 days. Inside I was so torn. I wanted to badly to believe him. And so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. More and more things continued to happen like this. A few weeks after this he was at work and called to say he was going out with people from work for a while. He came home, showered, changed into nice clean freshly pressed clothes and than left. He said I couldn’t come with him. It was only going to be people from work. It really hurt my feelings but he said he would only be gone an hour. Several hours later he returned home. I was really upset and expressed this to him. He called me a few names and made me feel crazy for not trusting him. Than one night following this he ran to the store with Eric. I don’t remember where I was but I got home before him. I heard his work cell phone ring and went over to look at who it was. I thought maybe it was important since he was on call if there were a problem at Kohl’s. It was a text message from a girl named Lindsay. Lindsay sent him a text message asking if he were awake. This peaked my interest and so I looked through his other texts and pictures. There were several pictures of this girl, one of her nipples, another of her and her little stupid dog. She was beautiful. There were hour-long phone calls several times a day logged into his history. I called his personal cell phone, which he answered. I immediately asked “who’s Lindsay?” he paused and got silent for a minute. He then said we would talk about it when he got back from the store. When he and Eric returned he came into the bedroom where I was sitting on the mattress that was still on the ground. He said she was a girl who worked in the Vermont store that he grew friendly with. He said they had done nothing sexual and that she was just awesome to talk to. I asked him why he would tell me he was at drill but spend three hours on the phone with her? I traveled to CT a few nights before this and left around 8pm he said he couldn’t talk to me on my ride out there because he was going to watch a TV show. Lie. He was on the phone with her for over an hour. It hurt more that he had begun an emotional relationship than a sexual one. Oh and come to find out, the nipple picture was his nipple he sent to her. Gay.

I called and spoke to the girl the following day. I don’t know why but I felt like I needed to hear from her that they hadn’t slept together. She told me they didn’t and that she had a boyfriend. Lie. He kept denying that anything sexual ever happened and made me believe that emotional cheating doesn’t exist.

Life continued on. He was still abusive, still mean. But there were days when he made me feel like the only one on earth. The sex was so passionate. Sex is emotion in motion. We were both very angry people. We had great sex. All the while I knew he had lied about the vestal girl. I knew there was way more to the story than he would tell me. I am after all Wicklander trained. He used to make me feel so stupid. Most of our fights were over me asking him a question about that night. I couldn’t help it. I had so many questions and no answers. I couldn’t continue to live like we were without going crazy.

Than one night he was angry with me for something I said. I apologized but guess I didn’t show I was remorseful enough. He got so angry with me and I decided to sleep in the kid’s room. I went in there and lied down. Shut off the TV. He turned the TV up really loud, knowing it was up against the wall to where I was trying to sleep. I went out in the living room and asked him to please lower the TV. I went back in and laid down once more. He didn’t turn it down, but up. He then came to the door opened the door and let the light in from the hall. He was just staring at me. He looked so mad, I asked him what he wanted. That made him angrier. He kept turning the light on and leaving it on and walking out and back in. Just to annoy me while all the while I was trying to fall asleep. He returned at one point with a jumbo marshmallow or hot dog poker stick. He poked me once with the stick in the side, which made me jump. I asked him to stop. He waited another minute standing there staring and than poked me again this time a little harder. I jumped but ignored it. He waited another minute and did it again. And again. And again. And again. Harder each time. I finally sat up and covered myself in a blanket so he couldn’t poke me anymore. He still poked me but harder this time so that I could feel it through the blanket. I tried to get up to leave the room. He pushed the poker into my stomach. He pushed me back onto the bed with the poker. He sat there and tried to kiss me. I backed away from him and he grabbed my wrists. He held them down and kissed me on the lips. I didn’t kiss him back. He slapped me. I then used all my strength to get away from him. I headed to the living room to grab my purse. He grabbed me by the hair. He pulled me over to the couch. Pushed me down on the side by the window. I had my hair in a ponytail. He grabbed the scissors off of the table and started to cut my hair. I was struggling with him the whole time. He cut my hair at the base of the rubber band. It did not go all the way though but he got a lot of it. I was crying and struggling to get away from him to no avail. I was so hysterical and must have woken the landlord. She started to bang on the ceiling for us to be quiet. I tried to scream for her to help me and he covered my mouth. He had one hand over my mouth and the other holding my wrists as I struggled to get away from him. I was just going to get to the door than run without anything. I was going to leave my cell and keys and everything I just needed to get out of there. He sat on top of me so that he was holding my arms under his weight and he covered my mouth with his hand. I couldn’t breathe and he made me promise not to scream if he let go. I promised. I didn’t scream. He kissed me. We smoked and went to bed.

When we got in the bedroom I remember feeling so scared. I didn’t want to take my clothes off in front of him to put on my pj’s. He always made me sleep naked. I was so disgusted with him that I didn’t want to tonight. I knew if he asked that I would have to suffer through it so he wouldn’t hurt me again. I was right, he made me sleep naked. He wouldn’t let me sleep in the kids’ room. He was afraid I would leave in the middle of the night and go to the police. I got into bed and turned my back to him to try and fall asleep. I remember feeling disgusting and not wanting him to touch me. Bad idea. I shouldn’t have turned my back. He pulled up right behind me. I remember that he was hard and I was shaking. He started to kiss my neck, which immediately made me cringe. This all made him angry. He tried to push himself into me. I resisted. I told him I wasn’t feeling like sex right then. He didn’t care. He rolled me over and got on top of me again he had both of my hands held above my head with one of his hands. He had the other one in between my legs forcing them open while using his knees to pry them apart as well. I was resisting the whole time, telling I didn’t want to have sex, saying please stop. Nothing was working. He slapped me again and again. He choked me all while fucking away and holding me in place. I kept trying to wiggle away from him while crying which made me run out of air quickly. I was crying and trying to scream and asking him to stop but he kept fucking. Once he was done cumming in me he tapped my shoulder and said thanks. He then got out of bed and went to the bathroom. I lay there crying for a few minutes than felt so nasty I had to get up and go to the bathroom. I wanted to wash him off of me as quickly as I could. I felt so disgusting. He waited in the bathroom while I was peeing. Its very demeaning to be watched while you pee especially right after he had just raped me. We then returned to bed and he started to cry. He brought up his daughter and how he missed her so bad, how he was a bad father and how he had such a horrible childhood. He completely took the attention off of what just happened by playing “feel sorry for me.” It worked. I felt sorry for him. I ended up holding him as he cried himself to sleep that morning.

The sun had now risen and I had to be on a case at 6 am. I still to this day remember where I had to work that day. It was horrible. I was at work and Steve had called in sick, he was at home sleeping. As soon as he woke he was calling me, begging me not to go to the police. He said he was so sorry, asked for another shot, said he would go to counseling, we would go to counseling. I said ok. I had noone else. I couldn’t talk to anyone about this. I loved him.

But it only got worse. That Christmas we attended his holiday party in East Greenbush NY. The party itself was all right but once we returned to the hotel things got out of control. We were both drunk. I remember I was sitting on the chair in the corner smoking a cigarette. Still in my dress. He came over to me and started to initiate sex. I finished smoking my cigarette and before I knew it was being thrown on to the bed. He pushed me onto my stomach and started to push himself into my butt. I was pushing him off of me from behind but he was holding me down on my stomach. He was trying to force himself into my butt! I scratched his stomach really hard and he let go long enough for me to get up and run to the door. I got out of the room and he threw my suitcase at me. I picked it up and the few things that fell out and started to run to the stairs. There was nobody around. It was all I could think about. I realized that when I got into the stairwell I did not have my phone. I walked back up the stairs to see if he had put it in the hall but he had not. He saw me and threw my purse out into the hall. In the process he broke my personal cell phone but I still had my work cell. I called Angela and she headed to get me. He then started to chase me out of vestibule at he bottom of the stairs and outside. I remember it was freezing and there was tons of snow on the ground. I was scared to death, crying and hyperventilating all the while thinking “where is everyone” Isn’t there anyone watching this go on?

Angela finally arrived, I got in her car ad talked to her for a little while. She just kept trying to convince me to leave with her, I wanted to SO bad but was so scared of what would happen to her or my family If I did. I ended up staying and she went back home. Steve and I left and started heading back towards home. The whole time he kept telling me how messed up I was and how I needed to be checked into a mental hospital. I just remember begging him to take me to the hospital, I knew if he did that at least I would be away from him. I was willing to be kept in a mental hospital as long as it meant I could be away from him. He would not take me, he kept driving home. Yelling at me the whole time, laughing as if this were all no big deal. I cant even remember what happened after that.

~Jessica

 

 

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