Written by: Amanda, Survivor
It was late, and I woke him up. I knew I should not have done that, but I needed the sixty dollars I loaned him so that I could pay the electric bill the following day. A huge fight started, and we ended up in the hallway with his hands around my throat. That is where it all began and how I wish that is where I let it end.
Of course, days went by with him acting as if nothing happened. He brought me flowers and even bought me a ring a few months later. I was so young and naïve that I had no idea this is not what love was supposed to be like.
Weeks went by, and we found out we were pregnant! How exciting, we started picking out names together, and we both knew it was a girl. Just a hunch, I guess. We picked the name Zayna, meaning ‘beautiful.’ This is where things really start to go south. I was so tired during this pregnancy, and any time I would take a nap and did not respond to his text right away, I would wake up to horrible, nasty ones. He’d call me names like “stupid cunt.” He thought that I was cheating on him or I don’t know what.
Later that month we had gotten into a physical fight, and he had tried taking the ring off my finger. I ended up in the hospital. He was arrested, and, stupid me, I let him come home after he got out of jail. I even called his PO begging for him to be able to come home for the holidays. Sometimes I still think back and wonder if I had stayed away from him if our baby would still be alive.
The end of January was the worst it had ever been. I replay it in my head all the time. It is like a movie, and I cannot find the remote to press stop or the cord to unplug it. I was basically a lifeless ragdoll that he just tossed around the room. Once I finally got him locked out of the apartment, he sat outside the front door and slit his wrist from his hand all the way up to his elbow. He sent me texts the whole time saying that he was bleeding for me.
The next few weeks were sort of fuzzy for me at this point, but on Valentine’s Day, we had a doctor’s appointment to hear the baby’s heartbeat for the first time. The doctor could not find it, so they did an ultrasound to see what was going on. The look of DOOM flashed across the technician’s face. She did not even have to say anything. They were able to give me an approximate date on when the baby’s heart stopped beating. Guess what? It lined up with the huge fight where I was tossed around like a rag doll.
I let this monster back into my life, and now our baby was dead, what had I done?
The doctor wanted to schedule a D&C, but I wanted to go home and allow my body to do what it was meant to do naturally. Finally, on February 22nd, I woke up in horrible pains. Labor was starting. I went downstairs to wake my abuser thinking maybe he may have even the slightest amount of sympathy in his body and would help me through such a hard time. Unfortunately, we ended at the same place we began, with his hands around my throat. Then all of a sudden, I felt a huge puddle at my feet; my water had broken.
I grabbed my son, who was two at the time and locked ourselves in the bathroom. I called my mom and a friend who was going to help me through the process of delivering my baby. My mom called the cops, and they came to deal with my abuser. Originally, I was supposed to put a trash bag on the toilet to catch everything that came out, but I was bleeding so much I ended up getting in the bathtub.
It was like a scene in a horror movie, my horror movie. The cops kept asking me questions and wanting me to come downstairs. At first, I was able to do that, but finally, I told them if they wanted to talk to me, they could come up and see what I was dealing with.
Once they all left, I had to collect what I had passed and give it over to the coroner, who was also parked outside my door. I never got to bury her, never really got to say goodbye. That was ten years ago, and to this day, I still wonder what I could have done differently to have my baby in my arms. But that also means she would be able to be in his arms as well. She is safer where she is, as much as it hurts me.
My abuser never really got more than a slap on the wrist for anything that he did to me. Unfortunately, that is the way things worked ten years ago with domestic violence. I think that is why I kept quiet about so much of it; nothing was ever taken seriously so why would I keep reporting it?
Things seem to be looking up for women who speak out now, and that makes my heart happy. It is why I went to school to be a social worker. My situation made me realize I wanted to help other women who are in the same situations that I was in.
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