The second year- Part 2

Part One

Part TWO:

Our second year of marriage was hell. Complete and udder hell. Whoever said the first year is the hardest, didn't know us.

I think back on it and all I remember was a blur. I don't remember specifics. I cannot put into words the darkness that year was to me.

I remember it getting bad the second summer we were married. I was working two jobs and I just felt on edge all the time. Just to tell you how bad it was at the BEGINNING of the year...

I remember once, Noah was 2 hours late to get home. We were supposed to leave for the beach and he just didn't call me to let me know he was going to be late. By the time he got home, I was livid. Granted, he was wrong by not being thoughtful, but I took it to a whole new level. The more I fussed at him the more indifferent he got. It fueled my fire. At one point, I chugged a mini bottle of tequila we had lying around, grabbed a knife and proceeded to threaten to kill myself in front of him. This all escalated in a matter of minutes. Noah was so shocked and scared he just didn't react, which made me want to do more. I then ran outside our apartment, took all my clothes off and ran towards the highway that ran near us completely naked. It was raining, I was crying...I wanted Noah to follow me...to save me. Instead, I peak through the window to see what he was doing and saw he had started a movie and was sitting on the couch. I then sat my naked body down in the road and cried as rain fell down around me, holding a knife. I remember that vividly. The pain I was feeling, the SHAME I was feeling. The frustration that my husband didn't care.

(I must say that Noah was scared to death in all of this. It started with yelling and by the end of everything always ended with attempts on my life. Noah was so scared that if he gave in and reacted to me, I would take that as, It worked...so I should keep doing it. ) I don't think that was necessarily the way to help me, but it was what he did to survive...it wasn't that he was cold hearted.

This time in my life was exhausting. Almost every single night small things would escalate and I attempted suicide too many times to count. I also started cutting and drinking. I never really wanted to die...I just wanted someone to know how badly I was hurting and the desperation that I felt. I did not feel there was a way out of the madness.

I would drink a half bottle of vodka in 5 minutes and would sit on my floor sobbing and unable to move. I was numb. It just made Noah more and more angry and hurt. And his coping was to move further away from me...which drove me to do more things to get his attention...it was a wheel of death that just kept turning.

I remember one day waking up from a break down and reading curse words written in pen all over parts of my body. Horrible words written so hard that I had drawn blood. But when I woke up, I felt normal and happy...when I went to take a shower, I was shocked at the words and it all started coming back to me. The 3 hour fight, that ended up...like this.

At my Sororitie's senior dance, Noah wouldn't dance with me, I proceeded to take a bottle of Tylenol and run into the hills of the golf course at the country club. I laid there on the dewy grass waiting to slip away...or waiting for Noah to finally get the hint and come RESCUE me. Neither happened. Instead I felt stupid and as I made my way back to the party, I realized how bad off I was.

Or there was the time we went to a concert, with a lot of friends from college. I was singing along to our favorite song and Noah asked me to stop...he had come to hear them sing it. This crushed me and I moved back a couple rows. He didn't once turn to look for me or ask me to come back. So I sat the whole concert in the back, crying and getting more and more mad. By the end of it, I ran past all my friends, to my car where I started ripping into my arms with my keys making them bleed.

Once I drove the car to down town and purposely ran red light after red light just begging to be hit.

These situations happened at least twice a week. Why didn't Noah commit me? Because I was too smart for that. As soon as he would start dialing 911 I would wise up and sweet talk my way out of it.

Through all of this I was continually praying, continually journaling, TRYING TRYING TRYING to be better. To stop the madness.

I remember one night in particular trying to talk to Noah and explain how I was feeling. I told him I felt like two different people. The person that hurt him, and then me. I told him I had no idea how to stop it and that I was TRYING so hard and I could not stop my hurtfulness. It was like as soon as an argument took place, I was lifted into the air hundreds of feet above myself and I watched this demon like person say things and do things...I felt I had no power over myself.

Throughout all of this, we were going regularly to marriage counseling but never addressing our problems...mostly problems dealing with our parent's divorce and things of that nature.

I felt like my dreams of a marriage that was going to work were shattered.

If I wasn't screaming and cutting myself I was trying to make it up to Noah and he would have none of it. He was distancing himself by the minute and I don't blame him.

By the end of that year, I would look at him and I saw a wounded animal looking back at me. I would raise my hand to grab something off the top shelf and he would flinch for the hit.

I had ruined my marriage. I hated myself. And not a single person other than us knew what was going on. It was lonely and brutal. Every single day was a battle.

to be continued...