The heartache begins

Things seemed to change the very day we got married. We got home to the small house we had rented ( and I mean small, maybe 600 sq. ft.) around 9 pm. There we were. Married and on our own. No one able to interfere with our lives ever again. The first week was wonderful. I loved cleaning our little house while he was working and I was learning to cook so I could have dinner for him at the end of the day. Then Friday came. And a paycheck. And it was time for the guys to go out after a week of hard work and get drunk. I don't remember this being a part of our dream. What has happened? We've only been married a week and you are leaving me for the guys. Maybe I should complain when you get home. Maybe I should ask you why you didn't take me with you. Maybe I should cry when you get home and tell you how hurt I was that you would leave me like that. Next lesson better left unlearned? NEVER confront a man when he has been drinking!!!!!!!!!!! Never Never!!!!!!! " For hours I had been sitting here worried about where he was? Who was he with? When would he be home? Is he coming home? Has something happened to him? Things that over time I would ask myself a million times. The door creaks as he steps in. It is sometime after 2am and I have been here alone, afraid and worried. What happened? Just 7 days ago we were spending every minute of our lives together and now here we are like strangers. I had never seen him like this. As soon as I begin to ask him where he had been, expressing my fears and concerns, he lit into me like there was no tomorrow. At first he just yelled at me. And the more angry he became the more aggressive he became. What happened to him? Who had he been with and what in the world had they been doing to cause him to jump on me like this. After the yelling peaked he gave me his first push. "Get out of my way", "It's none of your business what I do". I began to cry. Hanging my head as if I were the one who had done something wrong. My goal now was just to get him to go to sleep. Maybe he would be sorry about what he had done in the morning. Things will be okay if I can just get him into bed and let him sleep it off. This time I was right. Morning rolled around, it was a new day and it was if nothing had ever happened. Did he remember what he had done last night? Does he remember yelling and pushing me? I loved him......so much. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope he didn't realize what he had done. I never mentioned the night before. Maybe I knew he would remember and I didn't want to believe he would hurt me that way so I consciously decided to put that memory into the closet of my mind. That was my first big mistake. Hiding and denying verbal and physical abuse just makes it easier for that person to do it to you again. Little did I know that very day I had set myself up to live in a world I never knew existed. One week led into another and one night out with the boys turned into 2,3 and sometimes 4 depending on if he had to work the following day. Each week the nights got longer. Each time he came home the yelling got worse. The pushes turned into hitting and before you knew it I was explaining the bruises away by saying I had fallen or run into the cabinet door again. The same excuses most abused women give to hide what is really going on. Thanksgiving was coming around soon and I felt certain we would be spending some time with our families over the holidays. I hadn't been feeling well the past few weeks and I attributed it to the stress I was under. I felt as if I had the flu and I had no one there to help me. Since we had been married he rarely let me go anywhere and no one would come to see me because they were afraid he would hurt me if he found out. I had no phone and no car so I was physically and emotionally trapped there. And I stayed and stayed. I loved him. More than life itself. I would put up with anything just to be with him. He was the very air I breathed. Didn't he know that? Didn't that make him happy? What was happening to us? One morning, a few days before Thanksgiving my mom stopped by to check on me on her way to work. I was laying on the couch when she arrived and a little washed out in the face from vomiting all morning. She convinced me I needed to see a Dr. and quickly helped me to the car. I remember wondering where she was going as we passed the road we would normally take to go see our Dr. As we approached a new Drs. office she explained to me that now that I was married I would need to see a different Dr. I shrugged my shoulders not knowing why but to sick and exhausted to ask questions. She knew all along what she was doing and I was about to find out too. It's amazing what mothers know sometimes. It would be this very day that I would learn what an OB/GYN was. Oh yeah........at that time I had no clue. Just because you are rebellious doesn't mean you can't still be naive about some things. So, in I went. Through the blue doors and into that little examining room with the funky bed with foot thingies at the end. What in the world could be wrong with me to need to see a Dr. like this? Well.......it didn't take long for me to find out what all this was about. One "pee" test and an exam like I had never had before and walla.............I'm pregnant!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I am being honest when I tell you I had no clue I would be pregnant. I guess I thought that wasn't going to happen until we wanted it to. Oh well.............guess what? My mom knew! Before I did. Guess that's why she drove right past my other Drs. office. Sometimes mothers are smarter than we give them credit for. And sometimes "LOVE" really is blind. Another lesson better left unlearned.