LAURA

PHOTO BY RANDY BACON

LAURA

“Be Better For Yourself”

My husband would say to me “You just won’t die!” “When are you going to die!” We had been married for 23 years and the last 4 years of our marriage were full of mental and emotional torture. Lust and greed took over and he changed completely. For a longtime he made me believe that I was crazy. But now I understand that he was the crazy one.

He did things to mess with my head. He would be gone for days or weeks at a time. And he knew things. While he was gone I would talk to the dogs or walk around naked and he would come home and say, “why would you walk around the house naked? Your body is nasty”. I think he had a camera in the house to watch me. He would switch my blood pressure medications to mess with me. I would go to the store and when I would come out of the store my car wouldn’t be in the parking lot...because he would move it.

Not being able to have children of my own, my pets are my children with fur. I remember the day I told him, “you can mess with me all you want, just don’t mess with the dogs”. I wish I wouldn’t have said that. He would completely neglect them or he would torture them too. He punched one of the dogs in the head with brass knuckles on.

I had congestive heart failure and he proactively did things to cause or promote a heart attack or stroke, including not getting me medical attention or allowing me to obtain medical help on my own. He would take the phone, isolate me for weeks at a time, and leave me to suffer inhuman circumstances and cruel treatment.

We had to move the wrought iron patio furniture in the living room because he poisoned me with visine and it made me lose control of my bowels all over the old living room furniture. I was sitting in a lawn chair in the living room and because I had congestive heart failure, I was retaining a lot of water. I was stuck in the chair. He came up to me and told me he was going to rape me. Rape my face while I was stuck in the chair. He was spitting on me and just the evil look on his face. I remember thinking that I had to get out of there. I remember looking at my car in the driveway and I lost control of my bladder. He yelled at me that I was disgusting (even though he was the one who was giving me the visine that made me so sick). I waited until he fell asleep. I made it out of the chair and crawled on the floor out the door. It felt like forever. I made it to my car and to the hospital.

The day I left, I let two of my dogs out the front door and said to them, “You’ll find a better home.” Then I prayed for them. That was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make. I had no other choice but to leave my 19-year-old dog at the neighbors. This was not the best situation. Last time I saw her before coming here she was on a blanket shivering and I wondered if that was the last time I was going to see her.

I tried to go to a shelter and my husband put a syringe and a gun in my car. So I was kicked out of the shelter because the people at the shelter thought I did drugs. I had to go back to the house and he tried to shoot me. He was arrested. That was the final straw was him shooting a gun at me.

The shelter agreed to let me back in. When I first arrived, I was in a wheelchair, then a walker, then a cane. Now I don’t need any of these. My Case Manager worked to help rescue my dog. It took six agencies working together to help rescue her and she was provided a carrier, a bed to sleep in, sweaters, blankets, food, medical care, grooming and boarding when I was in the hospital.

We were both saved.

When I left, I left everything. I wasn’t sure if my husband was paying the mortgage since he isolated me from getting any information through the mail or having access to finances. Many times, he threatened that everything, all the legal issues and debt, was going to fall back on me. It has taken me some time to rebuild my life, especially my self-worth. None of this would not have been possible without the help I have received from Harmony House.

I want people who are in abusive situations to understand that you need to talk to someone. There are people who will believe you. You are not crazy. I remember calling the 1-800 hotline number and the woman on the other end of the phone listened to me and told me that it sounded like my husband was using the gaslighting method on me. I’d never heard that word before. I remember thinking, “this has a name!” Know that you can be told you are worth nothing, but don’t believe it. You are somebody. Be better for yourself, for your children, and your pets.