Of Course it’s My Fault

While married, my ex-husband was gone 250–300 days a year. My children would be toddlers before they stopped treating him like a stranger. I was the victim of a 25-year-old man preying on a 15-year-old child.

When we were married, I used to joke whenever he complained: “Well, you raised me.”

He signed me out of high school.

I raised his toddler daughter.

I thought food and shelter were love because I had gone much of my life without either.

I started as a meek, grateful child—thankful for food, attention, and a place to sleep.

Then I went to college. I found friends. I found support. I saw what normal looked like. I watched To Catch a Predator and was horrified to realize that the age gaps on that show were often half the size of mine.

Eventually, him being gone all the time, cheating, and controlling me were no longer acceptable. And when he could no longer verbally control me, on June 4, 2007, he threw me out of a moving truck.

I left, but disgustingly, I didn’t stay gone until 2011. Our divorce was finalized on Valentine’s Day, 2012.

All week my hip has hurt. My ankle has been swollen. A rash has appeared on my left leg. It wasn’t until tonight that I remembered what tomorrow is.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day he threw me from that truck, leaving me with injuries to my hip and ankle and gravel embedded in my skin.

My body was screaming for me to remember the moment that broke me. It screamed so loudly, and for so long, that I can no longer ignore it.

Recently, he helped produce an album for a Christian music artist centered on addiction and abandonment. The irony is not lost on me. After my children reacted to seeing him publicly celebrated, I spoke to the artist. They told me they were considering the information I shared, yet continued posting publicly about how wonderful and supportive he was. It made me physically sick.

Later, he had the opportunity to speak to our children. His explanation was that it was all my fault—that he saw me in them and therefore couldn’t be a father to them.

Honestly, fuck that.

And fuck him.

I am profoundly broken because of his abusive, rapist, pedophilic actions. But broken or not, I am still here, doing my absolute best—however broken that best may be—to support our children.

I never had the luxury of checking out.