32 Years of Pain

by Diana Lockwood
(Boise, ID, USA)

My domestic violence history started in 1985. I had just married a counterintelligence agent for the Army, and we were living in Maryland by Fort Meade. We had gone to Upstate New York to get married in his family home and then moved into a different apartment together when we came back.

He was an alcoholic. He would tell me that he spent all those hours after work in bars because it was part of his job. He was the youngest member of his office, and everyone wanted to take him under their wing. He couldn't handle all the pressure, so he drank to deal with it I guess.

One night he came home drunk. He was sitting at the table, and he said to me "I told everybody we're getting divorced" while at work today. I just sat there stunned. We had just gotten married. We talked about maybe not being able to make this work even though we were so newly married. But, I made the Wrong, and now we had a tete-a-tete. It was fast a pick-me-up and body slam me on the kitchen floor. It wanted to I thought I was dead.

My husband did minor things before we got married and I started feeling like I was probably making a mistake. I was 24 and had no council. I just knew that I wanted to back out before the wedding, but my mom had already started sending me engagement gifts, and I didn't want to disappoint everybody. So I married this jerk.

He said what he said that night, and I hit the ground. A neighbor called the police, and they showed up very quickly at the front door. My husband scooped me up and threw me in the bathroom to do his acting. He came to the bathroom, opened the entry door a crack, and said with eyes bugging out and gritting his teeth, "the officer wanted to talk to me and not to tell him what he did, or he can lose his top security clearance." So I covered his ass for his job.

I did not know that he gave me fibromyalgia, and I would have it for the rest of my life. The military doctors had trouble diagnosing me, and I didn't find out until after the divorce was final. He never had to pay for anything when he caused my significant disability, inducing my head to toe pain every day! I am on disability because of it and depression. I was a model. I played tennis. I was active. I loved going out. I enjoyed dancing. I was a dance major in college. So basically no more fun for me because I instantly gained 50 pounds. I had never been that heavy. I was a 176, and my husband was very critical of my weight gain which was a Telltale sign of the onset of fibromyalgia. That was in the eighties.

I just got divorced three years ago from an old cowboy who said he never hit a woman and I believed him. He gave me a slipped disc in my back and went on with his life, so neither one had to pay me for any damages. I have to live on welfare. This ex-husband battered me and made my son and myself lose our home of three years. Ruining my rental history - so I have to live in bad neighborhoods. My ex, call him M, made me lose everything I ever owned; Pictures All Gone! Then, my car and four pets. "Where is the justice?" I'm wondering, especially now.

Fifty-seven, I don't get housing. I spend most my income on rent. Life is miserable. I live in Idaho but my last ex "M" battered me at a hotel in Nevada. I would have to get an attorney in Nevada to pursue charges and civil action, and I don't know what the statute of limitations is. I need help, thank you.