“I don’t know if you can help me, but my ex is on his way home, he said he’s going to kill my dog and I’m going to meet my fate.”

In the days leading up to the end, there were a few events that finally broke me. One was that his daughters (he had twins who were 11 at the time) had a choral concert. I had to cover for him, “he was sick”. Reality was that something had sent him on a rampage and he was going through every inch of my belongings. Looking for what, I don’t know…some non existent piece of evidence that I was cheating on him. He put his crazy notions ahead of his kids, which unfortunately wasn’t the first time this had happened. Once, he opened my GPS on my phone (this was 2011 and GPS wasn’t like it was now, I never used it) and drove me and the girls out to some dead end road that he thought I had been out to. Just my luck, while we’re out there someone comes home to the house at the end of the road. He gets out and claims he saw recognition of my car on this person’s face, which is impossible since I had never been down that road in my life. The girls really didn’t grasp what was going on, I don’t know what all he said to the person, but we left and went home. I still wonder if he somehow set all this up since he had access to my phone. The final straw that somehow snapped some sense into me was him claiming I had “all this new lotion”. He was actually trying to look up the SKUs on my lotions and body spray to see if he could figure out when I purchased it. I hoard stuff like that, he was looking at lotion my ex-MIL had gotten for me YEARS prior. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and decided enough was enough. When he realized I was serious, he cried and whined that he wouldn’t be able to sleep without me. I stood my ground and didn’t let him guilt me into staying.

Flashforward -

FF had gone to stay at a friend’s place in the Springs so we could be apart. He called me at 3:00am or so telling me he had a needle and was going to kill my dog in front of me then me. He kept saying over and over that I was going to meet my fate. I will never forget how helpless I felt in that moment. I didn’t know what to do, something inside made me reach out to the police. WPPD came, took me and Marley to the station. As soon as we’re walking in, my phone rings. He’s home and I’m not there. The police wanted him to come to the station so they could talk to him. He refused, kept saying that they would arrest him. I start answering questions, they go to the house and he won’t answer the door. They come back, I give them my key and they bring him in. After questions about our relationship, a picture of my wrist that he had bruised a few days earlier in an argument and a picture of Marley, they tell me he’s been arrested for domestic violence, menacing and harassment. First words out of my mouth were “he’s going to be so mad at me”. Why in the hell was I more worried about how he was going to feel than my own feelings? He had brainwashed me. He stayed the night in jail and had a 72 hour restraining order.

When the 72 hours were up, an officer escorted him to the house to gather belongings. I was such a ball of anxiety. I’ve never heard him be so polite — yes sir, no sir. In that short 72 hours, my ma and sister drove out from Illinois, I found an apartment, packed and got the hell out of there. His mom even tried to dig in on me since one of the girls answered the phone when he called from jail. Again, everything was somehow MY fault. She knew how mentally unstable her son was and never asked how I was and what was really going on.

We went to court that spring and he got off on everything. I believe he was found not guilty since I wasn’t able to go into full detail about our relationship, only what had transpired that night. It hurt, but I believe in karma and I know it’ll come back to him, if it hasn’t already. I remember having to listen to my 911 call before the hearing and that was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Hearing the fear in my voice was shocking, it took me right back to that moment. It was a long year and a half, especially having moved to a different state 5 months before we met. I survived it and came out stronger…eventually. It took another bad relationship and therapy, but a decade later I’m getting back to who I used to be. Better late than never.