Today is International Women’s Day?! I didn’t know that was a thing! Thanks to Facebook, yet again, for informing me about things that I would otherwise be entirely unaware of. Apparently, in other countries, like Russia, it’s an official national holiday. (Thanks for telling us, Anastasia!) I feel like it should be far more widely recognized here too. Learning this now has had a profound affect on me. Just a few days ago was the one year anniversary of the day my husband tried to take my life. The past year I’ve learned and grown a lot and become stronger than I ever was before in more ways than I knew were possible. There has also been a tremendous amount of attention and some controversy with women speaking out about harassment and assault, whether it’s sexual assault, physical violence or emotional abuse and also, the general inequalities we still face daily in our lives and in the workplace. It’s been a hell of a year for women and we’ve all spoken up for ourselves, shouted out for each other and are only getting stronger. So, fuck YOU, to the scumbags! We’re comin’ for ya!

This week has consisted of several days of reflection and thinking about how different things might be today if just a few decisions last year had been different. What if I let someone else’s “happiness” and desires dictate the rest of my life? Had I not asked for a divorce I would still be depressed and married to a man I had no love for, who only had love for himself. I’d still feel lonely even in his presence and my vagina would still have cobwebs. (The HORROR!!)

On the other hand, if I hadn’t asked for a divorce, I would maybe not have been beaten, thrown around my living room and strangled until I lost consciousness. (At least, not that day…It would have probably eventually happened though. I’m convinced of this after countless nightmares of being strangled to death or beaten with a hammer by my ex and being found in a shallow grave. No joke.)

Everyone who knows anything about my situation over the last year has asked, “What the fuck happened that day!?” (I may or may not have added the word “fuck” for dramatic effect.) It’s not something I’ve ever typed out and shared for all you sick bastards before but after my Murderversary and on International Women’s Day, seems like a perfect time, so here goes…

As I think I’ve made clear in earlier stories, I had been wanting to tell my husband I was leaving him for quite some time. I started thinking about it during the wedding planning process and I pushed the idea from my mind, trying to convince myself that marriage was a good idea. I kept pushing that idea as far out of my brain as possible for the whole year we were married but I couldn’t totally get rid of it, like I finally got rid of my husband. This idea kept pushing back at me, harder than I could push back, much like my husband, only stronger. (He ain’t that tough!)

Finally, on March 5th, 2017, we woke up in the morning and entirely ignored each other, per usual. I showered and listened to music and then got ready for brunch with friends and played with my dogs. He did dishes, made his coffee and sat down to check his bank accounts and the weather, as old men tend to do. I thought nothing of it since most of our time “together” was silent and separate. When I went to join him in the living room is when I realized his demeanor was off. He was angry. His clenched jaw and flared nostrils told me this. I tried to ask a question about the basketball game that was on the TV but he was staring through it, not watching it. He didn’t answer me. He took a low, deep breath and exhaled quickly, open-mouthed. Without looking at me, he tightened his fist and asked what I did the night before.

Should I tell him I went out with the one guy he loathed and was threatened by? We were with other friends but my husband would be enraged knowing I was with him without any of the other friends he knows. It was me, my “best friend” and all of his friends, celebrating two guys’ divorces. A lovely evening of debauchery and some casual flirting.

So, I left out the details and just said, “I went out with my friends…like I do every Saturday night while you’re working. Nothing special.” Another deep inhale and sharp exhale from him before he asked, “Where…did you go?” I listed the 47 places we popped into the night before but felt the way I did when I was little and was about to get yelled at or punished for something I didn’t feel was right. When I was younger I’d be too scared to speak up for myself and say how I felt so I’d just take the scolding or spanking and be angry and sad but never express it.

This day was different though. This day I was done. I’d had it with the emotional distance between us. I’d had it with the lack of sex and any physical affection. I was done with the lack of communication. “Did you eat dinner” and “have the dogs eaten” were our only topics of “conversation” besides, “Do you want to watch Criminal Minds?” The last time we had sex we had a black president and the Cubs were lovable losers. That was at least four months prior and our sex life the past two years had been a joke. I once caught him attempting to masturbate when I was in the shower but even that seemed to make him agitated so he quickly gave up. I know why the guy is so angry and violent now. I get it. I would be too if I was a loser with a Limp Bizkit.

I had planned to dump his sorry ass in our marriage counseling session the next morning but this felt like my moment. I was fed up and disgusted by him right then while he was acting like my father and I was a teenager who got caught riding in a car with boys or sneaking in after being out past curfew. I’m a grown ass woman and I’ll be damned if any mother fucker is going to tell me what I can or cannot do. Being a wife, or being in a relationship, does not mean I’m someone’s property. I’ll do what I want, with whomever I want, whenever and wherethefuckever I want.

I seized the moment. “Look, you know I want a divorce,” I said. It was the word we mentioned quietly and quickly every so often over the last few months. In my head, when I thought of this moment, every single day since November, I thought that all of the anger management counseling he had been in since 2012 would come into play and we’d have a civilized, mature, adult conversation. He would probably sob like a baby while I stayed firm and stoic in deciding divorce was the logical option for us. He would eventually agree and I would get a hotel with my dogs for a few nights while looking for a new apartment. We would agree on how to split our belongings and finances and we’d meet once every few months for lunch and remain friendly. That would all make sense and seem like the way it would go if you’re dealing with a normal human being. The one thing I forgot to factor into this whole scenario I envisioned, was he’s a violent, narcissistic psychopath. Well, shit…

His immediate response to me saying I wanted the divorce was, “Are you cheating on me?” (Because a person like this can’t fathom that anyone would just not want to be with them. There had to be another factor at play here.) To which, I replied, “No, but I feel a stronger emotional connection to pretty much any other man I meet.” “Like who then,” he asked. I went on to list my clients, my friends’ significant others, my “best friend”. Holy hell, there it is. I said the trigger word. He hated my best guy friend with the power of 1000 suns and an army of 12 billion soldiers. (That’s a lot.) “I can’t believe you’re fucking cheating on ME!!! You FUCKING whore. You FUCKING bitch!!!!” He got up and destroyed everything in our kitchen. I still don’t know what he was throwing and hitting and stomping on but I’m fairly certain he was crushing everything and picturing himself crushing my skull while he was doing it. In the meantime, I was still lounging on the couch and started texting my friends to let them know I finally did it. I finally told him I wanted that ‘D’. I also mentioned he was a little angry. I was pretty desensitized by his violent fits of rage at this point so I didn’t think this one would be bigger than all the others. Telling them that he was “a little angry” was surely an understatement.

He came back to the living room to demand that I get out. He wanted me gone “IMMEDIATELY” and again he called me a “fucking WHORE!!!” I smirked and laughed a little because at that moment I was thinking that my hymen had likely regrown itself with this sex drought and also, it was MY apartment that he moved into before we were married so if anyone would be leaving now, it would be him since this “conversation” was not going the way I’d imagined. My response did not please him. In just a quick blink, he had gone from the doorway, spitting on himself and screaming like a goddamn lunatic to right in front of me, hands around my throat, still screaming at me and bashing my head into the wall. The next thing I knew, I was flying – actually fucking flying through the air. I saw myself hitting my head on the corner of the mantel and I knew it was all over. Instead I landed between the mantel and the radiator somehow, likely by the grace of God and sweet, baby Jesus. (Although, if they existed and had any grace, I think they would have teleported Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in at that moment to flick my ex gently and send him soaring to Lichtenstein or Kazakhstan so none of the rest of this story would have happened.) I tried to get up to run or fight back but he grabbed me before I could move and he threw me again…and again. After the last time, he grabbed my by my neck again and repeatedly slammed the side of my head against the wooden arm of a loveseat until he wrestled me to the floor.

Once he got me on my back, all six feet and two inches of him got on top of me and with both knees in my chest and both hands around my throat, he screamed over and over, “I’m going to fucking kill you, you whore! I want you dead, you whore!” The whole time he’s red and shaking, spitting on me and my dogs are shrieking to the point that they too are losing their breath and voices. The few short minutes this was happening, I only remember repeating, “Rob, I never cheated on you” and “Babies, it’s ok. No barking.” I wasn’t even shouting any of it. I just said it all in a normal, conversational tone because I think it still had not dawned on me the severity of what was happening. It wasn’t until I was on my back like this with my hands grasping and pulling and scratching at his arms to get him away, that I realized this really might be the end of my life. He was not budging. He was still yelling but I couldn’t hear his words anymore. He was squeezing my neck tighter and tighter and I remember seeing so many veins popping from his arms and neck. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t dead yet. Quickly though, I started seeing black spots in front of me and I noticed my arms were heavy and weak. I couldn’t fight back anymore. I couldn’t talk or scream or cry out. My eyes were heavy and then…darkness and silence. I still wanted to fight him. I wanted to run away. I wanted to live my life away from him and create things and feel energized and more like myself again instead of a shell of a person. I wanted to be more than the happy couple in the picture on Facebook that was secretly the dysfunctional couple that was good at playing pretend for the public. I was done though. I was dead. I was turning into dust faster than I could imagine possible. I could feel it. All of my energy was gone and I barely had any fight in me. My body was still there but I couldn’t move it. I was so tired. There was a teeny flicker of light that I could see but I could not move toward it. It was fading so quickly and getting away from me.

After who knows how long, my limp, almost-dead body twitched and my eyes opened. I was lying there, blinking for a few seconds before I realized I was alive. I could see again. I stared between blinks at the blank, white ceiling. Slowly, my hearing came back and I heard my husband cleaning up the mess he made in the kitchen. All of the life and energy and electricity came back into my body and I jumped up when my brain processed what was now happening. I grabbed my phone and dialed 911. My dogs had pooped all over the living room rug, as my husband had literally scared the shit out of them. I sneakily opened the front door so if he came back in the room, the dogs could run out of the apartment and not get hurt, but I knew they probably wouldn’t leave me. My call was answered and I started to explain to the dispatcher the scenario and give him my information and address. As I was doing this, my husband came back in the room and calmly , peered down at the spot on the floor where I’m sure he thought my dead body would be and when he saw an empty carpet, he looked up at me, crouching in the corner by the window, talking on the phone. “I can’t BELIEVE you’re calling the police on ME!!! On ME?!?!?” He was hysterical again now. I stood up straight and pulled my shoulders back, staring at him in his eyes. He looked like a rabid animal and I never thought I could feel more disgust toward a person in my life. I still don’t think I can. This time, I clenched MY jaw and My nostrils were flaring. I was ready fight again.

He stormed off to get dressed and flee the scene, as he has done time and time again in his over 20 years of abusing women. He’s been here before. This is a rerun for him. He’s been in worse situations before. He’s comfortable in this chaos and violence. He has control. He also thinks he has done no wrong. In his head, I’m the cheating whore and I got what I deserved. No, I deserved to die, actually, in his mind, and he’s furious that I didn’t. He shouted more foul things at me before storming out, moments before the police showed up.

I stood there in what had been a war zone and a crime scene moments before. I stood there in silence, holding my phone. I stood there knowing he wasn’t coming back to hurt me. I stood there waiting for the police. I stood there. Shaken. Shaking. Confused. Heart racing. Heart. Beating. I was alive.