Does the Pain Ever End?

by LaTasha Unseld
(Illinois )

I was with a man for 20 years of my life. He,gave me two beautiful children. Our daughter will be 19 years old in July and in her first year in college and our youngest son made 9 in February. We got together when my first son was just 1 years old. It started off good. We would talk for hours on the phone and would take turns visiting each other on the weekends. We lived almost almost 2 hours away. After awhile I found out he cheated, and we broke up until his dad got sick, and we got back together.

Our relationship was up and down for awhile, and I tried for awhile to make it work. After I had our daughter he cheated on me when when she was just three months old, and I left him for a whole year. We eventually got back together and things were good for a long time but the arguing started. He didn't want me to go anywhere, do anything, talk to anything or allow anyone to say anything to me or me to them. He would even even get mad at me if someone looked at me, even if I wasn't aware they were looking at me. Even if my family wanted me to go out with them, he would make a big deal about it. I think I stayed with him because deep down I was always insecure with myself. I've never felt pretty or good enough. Even when I've lost 30 lbs, he still didn't make me feel good. When I got certain hair styles that I liked, he never complemented me on them, but instead asked me why dud I get that. That made me feel real little. He would find things to argue with me about. After awhile, I stopped arguing with him and let him argue with himself. That made him even madder. There was times when I thought it could work. He would take care of me during all my surgeries and even took one week off without pay at one time.

A week before I graduated, he threw me a big surprise party without me even knowing, and I didn't have the slightest clue. For a whole week we didn't argue, and I felt good for that short period. Six days later I endured the worst day if my life. He called me ealier that day to tell me that me got hired permanent at his job, and I thought we would celebrate. I dropped my daughter off at her first football game of her senior year, went to get some red box movies, grabbed a bottle of margarita to celebrate his job at my first free weekend of no homework. I finally felt good.

I was only home for 15 minutes before the arguing began and our then 7 year old came in and wanted to it stop like he did so many times before. He started yelling at me, and I continued to ignore him and it made him madder. He then got up in my face and that's when I said I couldn't do this anymore and we needed to separate. He then got off the bed and went to the bathroom. He came back in the room and locked the door. I saw this strange look in his eye that I've never seen before, and he balled up his fist and punched me on the side of my head. He hit me a couple of times and blood started pouring from the sides of my face. He then dragged me off the bed. I was trying to kick him off me, but he kept hitting me in my head. He grabbed me to the closest and was trying to put his pensis in my mouth and when I refused he choked me. I was screaming and crying and trying to wipe the blood from my eyes because I couldn't see. He was still punching me with both of his fist. I was trying to get away from him to get to our son who was on the other side of the door screaming and crying. He dragged me by my feet and opened the door to apologize to our son, and he came back in and started beating me again. He then sat on top of me and shoved something in my mouth to keep me from screaming and started choking me and I passed out. When I came to, he started choking and hitting me again and hitting me again and I passed out again. After I woke up again, he grabbed an extension cord and he wrapped it around my neck. He grabbed me by hair and started punching me, and I was begging him to stop, but he wouldn't. He then took my partial out my mouth and told me, I know you're going to call the police anyway, I'm going to do what I have to do anyway. So, he kept hitting me. I thought he was going to kill me.

After that he pulled my pants downs and took off my underwear and threw me on the bed and forced himself on me. While he was doing that, he was still trying to kiss me while I was bleeding all over the bed. After he was done with me this whole ordeal lasted for over 39 minutes. He made me get up and I crawled to my son with nothing but a shirt on to see about him. He was busy getting his things together. He went downstairs, and I heard the garage door open and I figured that was my chance to get away. I knew he wasn't going to hurt our son, and I couldn't take the chance on him coming back to finish me off. I ran down the stairs in in the back of the house. I was to scared to turn on the light in the backyard. I couldn't open the gate, so I somehow climbed over a 6ft gate with me being only 5ft. I ran for my life with nothing but a shirt on. As I was running, I saw him driving away. I was too scared to look back out of fear that he would stop and get me. I ran to my neighbor's house who opened the door for me without asking any questions. They called the police, gave me pants to put on, and went and took care of son until the police and ambulance came.

I spent over a week in the hospital. Two weeks in the behavioral health hospital, and over a month for all my bruises, scares, and swelling to finally go away. I couldn't walk for 3 weeks because I was severely stumped and kicked in my legs and had a lot of swelling in both of my legs. I just had knee surgery in one of my knees in January, but the surgery and physically therapy isn't going as planned, and I might have to have a knee replacement due to the internal trauma that was incurred. I've been seeing a therapist for this. It's been a year and a half, and I haven't slept a full night since. When this happened, I was off work for four months, but I forced myself to go back because I couldn't financially afford to stay at home any longer even though I wasn't mentally capable of going back to work. The worst part of it all is that the person that did this to me is still on the run and his family is hiding him out. My kids lost their whole side of their other family. I do believe in what comes around goes around. You reap what you sow.