I did get married in 1970 and we stayed with my sister for 2 weeks until Tommy lost his job and he was still nice, but he decided to move us to the mountain with his Mother, he said it would be easier there. Doc drove us up and I was shocked at the living conditions, it was a 2 room shack with no amenities what so ever. There was an outhouse with creepy crawlies and no running water inside the shack, you had to trek down to the spring and carry it back until they put in a pump outside.

There was a wood burning stove for heat and a wood-burning stove for cooking and holes in the floor and it was so cold and drafty and we didn’t get electricity inside till much later. It was very primitive and I cried because I had never had to live in such conditions before and didn’t know that people were so poor. Thinking about my stupidity and the mess I had brought my baby into was heartbreaking. There was 2 double beds in the one room and Tommy promptly made it very clear that my Son would share one with his Mother.

I felt like he was trying to take my Son away from me right from the start. I was allowed very little alone time with my baby. I didn’t know at the time that he had been married before and had 2 Sons from that marriage and he wasn’t allowed to see them. I found out many other things that I should have known from the start, but as he told me later he was afraid I wouldn’t have married him and the only reason he had married me was because he wanted my Son. He was like a Jekyll and Hyde and for a month and a half I had only seen the nice side.

The second night after the move he decided we were going to visit his best friend and his wife to introduce me. I had always been a friendly person and liked to meet new people so that was a fun idea until after the visit and we were walking home. That’s when the jealous side came out which I had never seen till this point. He started calling me horrible names and accusing me of wanting to sleep with both of these people, what a horrible twisted mind. As if the verbal abuse wasn’t bad enough he then proceeded to beat the crap out of me.

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. No one had ever done anything like this to me before and I felt like I must be a horrible person for someone to beat me up with so much hate and violence. Of course afterwards he apologised and told me he was sorry and that I would have to learn to control myself around other people and not be so friendly. I didn’t do anything except make conversation and I certainly wasn’t flirty. He wanted to have sex when we went to bed and of course I didn’t want to because of the beating so he started kicking me and hitting me again.

That was the beginning of my fear and Hell, but just for myself at first….To be continued

My Life Part 1