The sole protector of the soul...

Twenty-three weeks into an otherwise perfect pregnancy, my son was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition (I'll tell you now that although he was indeed born with the condition, it is described as "trivial;" he's living a perfectly symptom-free and unrestricted life and is expected to need no intervention whatsoever). At the time, however, the doctors couldn't know that. They also suspected hydrocephilus, which, thank God, turned out to be completely false. In reading the tea leaves, they said that our son would either be born perfectly fine, or he could be born mentally retarded, need a lifetime of care and possibly even go into cardiac arrest upon birth, they just had know way of knowing. In a clinical effort to be thorough, the doctors then said that we should watch the condition, but in the coming weeks we would need to decide relatively quickly if we wanted to abort.

Obviously you know the outcome, and my son is beautiful, healthy, smart and the joy of my life. But when that meeting took place and during the days that followed, it hit me like never before that as the mother, I was the only person on the planet that could protect this baby. No one else could decide his fate but me, and that protector role had begun the moment I knew I was pregnant, and it would never end in my lifetime. That realization changed me forever, and from then on, I would understand the role of mother as I never had before. It may not sound fair, or equal, but that's just the way nature made it.

Regarding this issue, Derek was supportive of that particular decision to have our baby whatever the outcome. The point of my sharing this is to express that as mothers, there is an inherent responsibility to protect our babies, and that plays directly to this issue of living in an abusive home.

As human beings, we are all entitled to our own personal dignity. Women can be very forgiving creatures, and for the first year or so, I rationalized the episodes, and so did he, blaming them on his period of unemployment, then it was the pressures of the new job, then it was when we finally owned a home we could be happy, and on and on. At first I bought into the excuses until there were so many and over so long that it dawned on me: "Hey wait a minute, there's always something with this guy, when will he ever just be happy?" And the answer is, NEVER!

With children in the picture, there is no other advocate for them, and we have to be brutally honest in seeing early that the behaviors WILL NEVER CHANGE. NEVER. NEVER. NEVER. And more likely, the behaviors may even escalate and worsen over time, leading to physical abuse. That's what's happening in my case. Throwing things at me, pinching, pulling, a knock to the head, it's all foreplay leading up to what would one day be full on physical damage, and there is no way that as a mother, any of us can stick around to prove that theory right. We can't change them. We can't fix them. But we can change the fate of our children's entire lives; the way they will see themselves, you and everyone else in the world.

As someone who's endured four years of this and has been planning to leave for the last year and a half, I would plead with anyone who has children or who is pregnant to get a plan and get out. There is no other person on the earth who can make the difference for your children.

As it is, I will have to deal with the guilt I already feel for keeping them in this house for the months that I have, but I'm doing what I think is best for our security and future, and I'm setting deadlines for myself. I urge anyone else to do the same.

Just remember: it's not "What's the matter with me?" It's, "What's the matter with him?!" But don't stick around to find out. Get real. Get a plan. And get out.

As for me, today was no better than yesterday, but I carved out the beauty nonetheless. I think that's the challenge, to rise above it.

Nite, nite, dear friend, until tomorrow...