Leaving

David,
I know you know that Hailey and I are gone. I don't know what to say or how to say it. Part of me feels like I should be screaming at you, throwing things and letting out all of the horrible feelings that I have in me because of you. I know it's not all your fault, after all I was the one who made that decision to keep up this relationship with you. I can't tell you how many times I've thought of that day when Samantha and Allison came over and I had the opportunity to say "no, I don't want this," and walk away. I wonder how my life would have been. I do believe things worked out the way they should have, the way God wanted them to be, because if I hadn't had this relationship with you I never would have had Hailey. I guess that's not entirely true, God could have blessed me with her, but once I decided to choose the path that followed you, I believe God wanted things this way because without Hailey I never would have had the strength to leave you. You're probably rolling your eyes right now, but it's the truth. You know, I can't explain to you the damage that you've done to me, I don't even think I completely understand it yet. I mean I had my own issues with self-esteem and everything long before you but now it's so much more than that. You've managed to take what I feel like is my inner self and just squeeze it the way someone could squeeze a piece of fruit until there's nothing left but this mangled outer shell. I know you tell yourself that you weren't that bad, that you never beat me or anything so what am I complaining about? You used that argument a lot while we were together, while you were screaming at me and terrorizing me and reducing me to just a blubbering mass of submissiveness. You would scare me so badly, you would ball up your fist and pull it back like you were going to punch me hard, or you would back me up into a corner or against the wall and try to make me push you off so that you would have a reason to strike back. I even remember at least 3 or 4 times that you had swung out to hit me and either caught me on the tip of the chin or popped me on the cheek, but you never just out and out hit me. What you did was bad enough, though. You may not have actually beat me up, but we both know that if I had been anything other than a timid little mouse you would have. That's what all those almost hits were about, weren't they? Just making sure I knew that if you really wanted to you wouldn't hesitate to hurt me, and probably badly. You broke me like someone does an animal (which you don't treat well either) and trained me to behave as best I could for you. I didn't figure out for a long time that that's what the beginning of the relationship was about. Looking back now it seems like so much of that first year when I was still in school and we had to sneak around was spent with you getting mad and screaming and calling me ugly things almost constantly. Of course this was after your "nice guy" act that drew me in. I know now that it was part of your training process. I don't understand why. Why would you do that to people? Is it just the control thing? Knowing that you can manipulate people and make them into whatever it is you want, like all the mind games you like to play with people? I mean really, why would you take a 16 year old girl who obviously had troubles already and prey on her? Why do you do that to anybody? I know it wasn't just me, I know there were several other girls before me that were around the same age, and it's not even just girls. It seems like everybody you know gets the same treatment. I know you seem close to Kelly and her family, but I've been on the other side of conversations with you, before we got together, when you would leave and they would start talking about how much they couldn't stand you and how horrible you were. You do the same thing to everybody, you can be so charming that you disarm people, you win them over, everybody wants to like you. But as soon as you feel like it's safe, you let them see how you really are (or maybe you just can't hold it in anymore, I don't know) and you expect everyone to put up with it, to give in to you. And most people do. Do you know what it's like to live with yourself, knowing someone has treated you so badly and you just put up with it? I know it's one thing at work or with people who don't see you constantly, but do you know what it's like for those of us on the inside? I mean, people who don't see you all the time can brush it off a little better, they can forget about you and the way you treat them because you are just passing through, but to live with it everyday, whether it's me or someone else from your past or even someone now that is around you a lot, it's terrible. I don't know what to do anymore. I had resigned myself to literally living one day at a time and for the longest time I lived to get through the day until I could go back to sleep again, but I have Hailey now and I can't do that anymore. I have to think about her and put her first. I can't let her grow up around someone who is going to put her down and yell and scream at her if things aren't right. It's bad enough that you have the ability to completely break a person, but I can't let you ruin Hailey's life. No child deserves to have their childhood, their life taken from them and be made some sort of twisted soldier instead, being groomed to follow someone's orders and always be on alert instead of being raised. That's exactly what you would do, you basically said so in the past when we would talk about children and you would go on about how you wanted to raise a child to be mean like you, to be so mean in fact that the only person who could handle them was you. I can't let that happen. I worry too much about you being around Hailey as it is. I don't think you even really love us. I think that maybe you think you do, but in reality I think we are just possessions to you, like that stupid boat and your guns. I'm bitter about that, by the way, not that it matters to you now. Not that it ever mattered to you, really. I remember being pregnant David, maybe about 6 or 7 months along, when you woke me up at 3 in the morning to go to Walmart for you because you had a bad toothache and you needed something for it. I understand that you were in pain and I hate for people to be in pain, but we lived like 3 minutes from Walmart, why couldn't you go? You sent me alone, and it was cold, I was barely awake and quite frankly a little scared. I also remember that I probably got less sleep when I was pregnant than in the entire 5 or 6 years that we lived together. For some reason it seemed like you picked that time period to stay up later and wait until 10 or 11 to make me scratch you or rub your back. Most of the time you didn't let me go to sleep until 12 or 1 in the morning, knowing I worked full time and had to get up in just a few hours. And even then the only reason you let me go to sleep was because you said I "sucked" and whatever it was you were wanting me to rub or scratch, so you would insult me and roll over and go to sleep. There were times when I would wake up for work and want to cry because I was so tired, and later on when I tried to talk to you about it after Hailey was born, you chuckled like "oh good times." You made me feel like nothing about me mattered. Not even when I was pregnant did you care. Do you know what it was like for me being 17 years old and thinking I was madly in love with you but not being able to tell anyone, having to sneak around, and then you would get angry about something stupid and yell and scream and say all of these hurtful things that cut me open inside and broke my heart, only to have you screaming at me more that I needed to suck it up, I couldn't be crying because my parents would want to know why. I had to call you every time I had a chance because you never trusted me since I couldn't be there with you (even though you knew you were my first everything and I never had an interest in anyone else) but almost every night you would get mad again because apparently I couldn't say goodbye right. You would say I sounded too sad which you said meant you had to be on the phone with me longer (in reality I was just being quiet because I wasn't supposed to be on the phone, I tried to tell you) so you would scream at me that I was keeping you up late when you had to work. After that I tried to sound a little happier on the phone so you wouldn't feel that way, only then you said I was too happy and that I must be trying to get off the phone with you so I could see another guy, and you wouldn't let that happen so you wouldn't get off the phone then either. I tried so hard to figure out what to say, and no matter how much I tried to make you understand, you would never believe that I didn't have an interest in anyone else. After all those times that you blamed me for keeping you up late, you started telling me that since I kept you up late you were going to do the same to me. It didn't matter that you had work and I had school, you would make me stay on the phone with you until after 1 in the morning. We weren't even talking about anything, most of the time it was silence, but when I begged to get off the phone so I could get some sleep you wouldn't let me. If I accidentally fell asleep while on the phone with you I would wake up to you screaming so loud that you would lose your voice. I bet you didn't know that there was more than one night when I would finally get off the phone with you and my mom would find me the next morning, still sitting in my floor in exactly the same position I was when we got off the phone. We had hung up and I had put the phone on the charger while I was sitting in the floor leaning up against my bed and slept all night sitting up like that. I bet that probably makes you proud. Do you know how sick that is? I used to think you were exaggerating about how you were mentally unstable and all, but I don't anymore. There are things that you've told me from your past that still make me sick and I still think about at night. I know there are women that have husbands and boyfriends that treat them far more cruelly than you did me, but I can't shake the feeling that you really are capable of pretty much anything. I think more than anything it was your paranoia and wanting to keep yourself from ending up in a bad situation that kept you from really being the way you wanted to be. I think there's a monster of just pure anger and hatred inside of you that's just itching to break free and have it's will. You can be cruel and mean and sadistic but I believe deep down in my heart that it hasn't scratched the surface yet. I think all of that ugliness and meanness is just Dave, I don't think it's even touched on the monster inside of you yet and that's a scary thought. I wish you could understand, really feel the way I do. I wish you could understand how other people are affected by the things you do and say, I wish you could feel exactly what the rest of us feel when we are exposed to you but I think that you're incapable of any kind of empathy. That's another scary thing about you. You know, I want so badly to be angry at you for all the things you have put me and Hailey through. For all the things you have put anyone who's ever met you through. I don't know if I'm actually angry at you though. I think I'm angry at the things we've been put through, the way you've treated us and hurt us. I think the reason I'm not so much angry at you as I am angry at the way things happened and the way you have treated Hailey and I and everyone else for that matter, is because part of me really, really thinks that more than anything, you need help. I know that's another thing that you will roll your eyes at. Don't get me wrong, I'm angry at you, but I think eventually it will pass. It's the anger at the things that happened between us that I'm worried about. I don't know if I'm even making sense with this. Basically what I mean is, I know that all the anger, along with the hurt and heartbreak and everything else I feel about you, will eventually go away because we are leaving you. It's knowing that these things happened, that I let them happen, that someone could be that hateful and just mean that worries me. It's awful to know that there really are people that do the things you do, and it makes me never want to trust another man. Things like that don't just fade because you left the person who hurt you. That's what bothers me. You know, I used to hurt myself and I used to enjoy it. I've got scars on my legs and stomach from the burns and cuts I used to give myself, and I don't like other people to see them because they are mine. I know why they are there, I know the reason and in a funny way I don't regret them. But you David, you gave me a whole new set of scars, ones that no one can see but I don't want them. They aren't things that I understand and probably never will completely understand them. I didn't choose to put them there because of personal reasons, you put them there for me without my consent. Unlike the other ones that I made, these scars are a lot slower to heal and part of me wonders if they will ever completely fade. That's why I have to leave David. My daughter doesn't deserve to have these scars too.