Thinking back to the darkest time of my life

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the eerie thoughts that had been running through my mind and found out it was all due to menopause. Since then, I had been thinking back to when I had these similar thoughts, but I just couldn’t pinpoint when that was. As I continued racking my brain, it slowly started coming back to me. My daughter was about three years old at the time, so that means it was about twelve years ago.

Still not being able to make sense of it all, I had gone back through my journals and read. As I continued reading, those missing pieces were put back into place that caused the memory of that dreadful time to come back to me like a lost chapter in a book.

My husband was going to take off for a day trip to meet up with some friends from an online forum that he was a moderator of. He claimed that spouses were not allowed to attend and that upset me a great deal as I knew something was up. We had argued about it because I was also a member of that forum just to see what was going on. It was actually a way of trailing him. It was a time shortly after his affair was revealed and we were trying to work on our marriage, or at least I was.

Anyway, he said he was going to take off for the day, meet everyone, have lunch together and then return home. It was a three and a half hour drive each way but he said he would be home that night.

When he left that morning, I started having this strong feeling come over me. A feeling of wanting to hurt my daughter, but it was more like a feeling of wanting to kill her. I grew fearful because I didn’t understand why. She wasn’t out of control. She wasn’t throwing tantrums. It was nothing like that to where a mother would normally get fed up with their kid and want to kill them.

The fear I felt was vigorous and I didn’t know what to do. As the feelings became stronger and stronger, I sat there thinking what I should do. There was no one to turn to to ask for help as I had no friends or family there. I had no one.  

The only thing that came to mind was that I had to stay as far away from my daughter as I could but how would I be able to do that? I needed something to keep her occupied in order to route her attention away from me. So, I run to the kitchen, grabbed a bunch of snacks and put them out on the coffee table in the living room. I then put in a DVD for her and headed to my office where I locked myself up for the entire day.

Every time the DVD would be over, I would hear a knock on the door and a little voice telling me she wanted another DVD put in. So, I would quickly go out to change it and returned to my office.

As the day went by, I tried calling my husband but he wouldn’t answer his phone. Feeling so helpless and not understanding where these thoughts were coming from, nor having anyone to turn to, it was one of the darkest days of my life and one of the longest.

As the night grew close and it started getting later, my daughter was no longer coming to the door. I went out to check on her and saw that she had fell asleep on the couch. After putting her in bed, I started calling my husband repeatedly but he wouldn’t answer his phone. I was leaving him voicemails asking him to return my call me right away.

About 11:30 that night, he finally called me. He told me he didn’t see any missed calls which he would have seen when he picked up his phone. He then said he was in a restaurant that had loud music, so he never heard his phone ring. He said he called to tell me he was getting a hotel room whether I liked it or not and he and his friends were heading to another tavern to continue drinking. He then hung up on me. I could hear a lot of laughing in the back ground and knew he was with quite a few people. I didn’t tell him at the time what was going on because he had been drinking and from the sound of it, he could have cared less. I figured I would tell him when he returned the next day.

I went ahead and slept in my office that night because I didn’t want to get near my daughter. The next day was more of same. I spent the day away from my daughter in my office and did not call my husband once. I figured I would have a talk with him when he came home.

One thing that had been going on over the last several weeks had been him calling me crazy when I would ask him about calls he would accept from women all hours of the day and night, not to mention texts he would receive. He refused to show me any and would delete them before I could get to his phone.

It then progressed to where he was telling me that I should be locked up in a crazy house and when hearing that on a daily basis, one begins to believe it. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was all part of a plan to have me locked up so he could be the sole parent of our daughter. He wanted me out of the picture but didn’t know how to get rid of me without me taking my daughter.

When he finally returned that evening, I told him that I hadn’t been feeling well the entire weekend, but I didn’t tell him exactly what was going on. If I would have told him the thoughts I was having he would have thought I was truly crazy and who knows what he would have done.

We had a lot of arguments regarding what had occurred during the time he was gone and his behavior while on the phone with me in front of his new-found friends. Of course the topic of those arguments all reverted back to me being crazy. It was a no win situation.

As the week went by, I felt trapped and knew I needed help, but I just couldn’t let my husband know. I decided to go and see my gynecologist who knew my history since the pregnancy of my daughter. I knew on Saturdays he was usually at his office doing paperwork without patients. I was really hoping he was there.

Knowing that my doctor did not speak English, I decided to type up a word document with all my symptoms. That Saturday morning, I printed my list out, had my sister-in-law watch my daughter and I took off to my Doctor’s office. My husband was at work at the time and I didn’t say anything to him because I knew he would prevent me from going. It was a time when there were many threats from him knowing I had no one there and he had me between a rock and a hard place.

That Saturday morning I took off running through the congested streets of the city in tears while on my way to see my doctor.  As I ran, I felt overwhelmed not only about how I had been feeling but also the relief of the abusive relationship that I felt I was escaping from. I knew all this was not in my head and I would be damned if I wasn’t going to prove him wrong.

When I arrived, I pounded on the door as though the building were on fire. For a brief moment, I thought to myself if he was not there then what was I do? I continued pounding on the door. When he opened the door, I handed him the paper I had typed up, got down on my knees and begged him to help me. He was my last resort and I was pleading for my life.

I remember him reading the paper and laughing while helping me up and taking me into his office. He told me all I needed was hormones. I was per-menopausal and this were the symptoms of it. He thought it was funny but not like ha ha, more like I cannot believe you think you are crazy when you’re not. If your husband keeps on telling you that you are crazy, you start to believe it.

A few minutes later my husband walks in yelling up a storm saying that I need to be locked up in a mental hospital because I’m crazy. It took the doctor about thirty minutes to convince him that I was not crazy. He told him what I was going through and how the medication he was going to prescribe to me was going to help me. Needless to say that my husband was very upset with me for going to see the doctor but I was there and there was nothing he could do about it. He finally calmed down.

A few days later I was back to normal. Funny how the plan was to get me locked up, so that way he could have my daughter but when his plan back fired, there was nothing more he could do.