Life... abused!

I fell on the floor, and my ears started ringing. I could not hear what he was shouting. I could not think. My forehead and my right eye was hurting so bad that I did not want to move. I just wished he would stop. I wiped my tears and my nose. I saw blood on my fingers, but I did not have enough energy to try to find out where I was bleeding. I tried to take support on my hands and sit straight, but he started walking towards me, seemingly very angry with something, landed a slap on my ear and held me by my right arm to pull me up to make me stand. He was holding my arm so tight that it started to hurt me a lot. I tried to pull his hand off using my left hand but his grip was very tight. He slapped me again on my left cheek and then threw me on the bed. I fell on the bed unable to understand what was happening. 

He started walking towards me. It seemed like he was possessed. Some devil had taken control of him and was taking his anger out on me. I have no idea what I had done to piss off a devil like that. As he got close, I saw him raise his hand again, probably to hit me. I got very scared this time. I could not think of anything, so I pushed him back, grabbed Yash, my year old son, and ran out of his house. I slammed the door on my way out so it took him some time to get to me in case he ran after me. I had no clue what I was doing, just ran to my car, drove back to my house and locked all doors and windows shut. How did my boyfriend turn into this monster, just after a couple of drinks ?

I have known Anand since my college. He seemed a great person then, though I did not have a lot of interaction with him then. After college parents were pushing me to get married. I wanted to live with my boyfriend, and eventually marry him, but my parents did not let me. They had found a suitable match for me with Vikas. Vikas had a girlfriend then, and seemed to be struggling with the same trouble of being pushed to get married. After having a long conversation about this with each other, Vikas and I decided to get married. He seemed like a nice person and I was getting the opportunity to keep my recent offer of a job from a big corporation in the US. After the marriage, we moved together to the US, bought a house and were living happy. I did not have a lot of concerns with my life. Until one day, when Vikas publicly announced that we were getting a divorce. Things changed very quickly then. Vikas did not seem to be happy with me, and was having an affair outside our marriage. So, I decided to leave him, give him a divorce and go my own way in life. My only support being our only son, Yash, who was then about eight months old.

I am an Indian girl, married to an Indian guy, with very conservative parents. Divorce was not an option in my family. But for me, it seemed to be the only good decision out of where Vikas had left me. I got no support from my family whatsoever. When they got to know that I had taken a divorce, they stopped picking up my calls. I called them every minute of every hour in the days following the divorce, but I never got to talk to anyone, either at my house, or among any of my extended family. It was like my family had disowned me! I was broke, with thousands of dollars of debt on my head, without a permanent place to stay and too many loans to pay. I tried to reach out to anyone and everyone I could find in my contacts list, who could help me out for some time until I got back on my feet. Among all of my friends who could have helped, but were not able to, Anand was the guy who came to my rescue!

Anand helped me a lot, getting me an apartment close to work, so I did not have to walk as far. Supporting me so much that I could feed Yash and myself without any hesitation. He was the one who saw me at my worst and helped me get to my best. With time, I started developing feelings for him. I started going out with him. I had my own one bedroom apartment by then, so we started to hang out at each other's places. My life was finally starting to get better. Until that dreadful night!

We had been away for a couple of days. I was having a hard time at office due to upcoming deadlines and he was having a hard time with his manager. So, on a Friday night, we decided to go out, grab a couple of drinks and get back home for the weekend. That day he had had a big fight at office and seemed to be very angry and upset over something. So, I suggested him to drink a couple of drinks more than he usually did. Yeah, he could not take it! I had to somehow carry him back to his house. I had been with him pretty much the whole week, so Yash was at his house, and we had called in a babysitter. When we reached home, I took Anand to his room, thanked the babysitter for her time and relieved her of the babysitting stress. As she left, I locked the door. When I turned around, I could see Anand had walked out of his room and was walking towards me. I tried to get him back to his room and his bed to get him to sleep and forget everything that happened that day. He suddenly jumped out of the bed, threw me off with a slap and pushed me on the floor. I hit my head on the door handle and fell to the wall besides it and all the getting beaten up took place for me for the very first time!

That disastrous night gave me a very big shock. I wasn't ready for such a thing. This had never happened to me before. I don't know what else Anand did that night, but he seemingly did not bother me anymore for the night. I slept a bit scared. I woke up late the next morning. It was a Saturday morning and I had had a couple of drinks with a lot of stress the night before. As I woke up, I saw my phone was vibrating. It was Anand calling me. I realized he had been trying to reach me for some time. I did not pick up. He had also left a couple of messages apologizing for what happened the night before and a very long apology explaining how he would take care that this does not happen ever again in the future. I ignored everything! I did not reply until he texted that he was going to kill himself because he was not able to forgive himself anymore. He had helped me a lot over the past couple of months, and I would never forget what he did to me the night before, but I did not want him to beat himself up over this. So I asked him to relax a bit. He took that opportunity to invite me over again on that Sunday to make up for what had happened. I took the most emotional and worst decision of my life right then, I agreed!

Nothing eventful happened for a couple of weeks. I had given him a second chance, and he had not broken his promise yet, which made me feel like I could open up with him again. I had started putting up some of my defenses since the last event, and since he had not done anything anymore, I started lowering my defenses with him. I had seen his dark side, now I knew him completely. But a similar event happened again!... and when I forgave him for the second time, again!.. and then a fourth time! Each time this happened, he would give me such good reasoning and make such an innocent face of not doing it again, that every time I started beating myself up about having something wrong in me. Somehow, I started seeing him as trying to correct me of the incompetencies that I had within me. Every time he beat me up, he would say something that seemed so logical and emotionally pleasing at the same time that I kept going back to him. Until one day, when he hit Yash, while trying to hit me!

I could not take Yash getting hurt! He had drunk more than ever that night and was chasing me around the bed with a belt in his hand. Among all the beatings I had gotten, this was the worst! I wanted to run, but the door was locked and only running around the bed seemed like an option to avoid that monster. Yash, who was in a crib on the other side of the room, now fourteen months old, was crying the whole time because of the noise. I did not want to stay in that house, but he would pull me and beat me everytime I tried to run towards the door. I just kept running to the other side of the bed every time he would catch up to me. He had started getting frustrated of me running around the bed, so he started throwing things at me! Some things hit me, but I managed to dodge most of the things, but in the midst of this, a TV remote hit Yash on the head! I saw that and ran towards Yash. He had started bleeding!

I could not take this anymore. Somehow, some devil got into me, and I slapped Anand as he came towards me. I slapped him so hard that he fell on the floor. But, that did not stop him, he got even more angry and tried to get up again. In that while I grabbed something that I found on the floor and hit him very hard on his head. He fell on the floor again, this time unconscious. I unlocked the door, ran out of that hell to my place. When I got home, I called the cops and told them everything that had happened. I told them they could do anything that they wanted to do with him, but I never wanted to see that man again. Two cops came home in the next hour investigating the incident. I showed them what had happened and how I was abused by the drunkard. They said they did not need any more proof and I never got to see them again either.

Since then, I have always kept up my defenses with people I meet with. I have had a couple of more guys in my life. Thankfully they did not turn out to be like that monster, but I do get to see another side of people after having them in my life for some time. I told a couple of my friends about this, but I have never shared it to a lot of people. I hope and pray that no one else gets to go through such a thing in life. Although, I do know that there are a lot of people who are fighting such incidents everyday! I want all of those people (either girls or boys) to know that they are not alone. If they want, they can fight through this and get their abuser to prison. It just takes some courage!

There is a thing about such things that happen in your life. They leave you broken in a way that you cannot get back up! But, what if you chose to get back up ? What if you just let this go and come out stronger from such an incident ? There are some people, like me, who would do anything for others, because they have gone through some tough phases in life and there were people who helped them come out of it stronger. But, life is not always about agreeing with the other person. Sometimes, you just need to say NO!