My Unbreakable Heart: Part 5: Baby Steps
[image error]I knew I was dreaming. But this wasn’t unusual. I almost always knew when I was dreaming, and I could usually manipulate my dreams. Well, most of them.
Except for the special dreams.
I’d had the special dreams since I was a little girl. Sometimes I’d have the same dream every night for a year, then ‘it’ would happen and the special dream would stop. Usually ‘it’ wasn’t something good. Like my grandmother falling and ending up in a wheel chair, or my grandfather dying.
But on that night, the special dream was full of life. Literally.
I was pregnant. With a daughter. A beautiful little girl who would change my life. I saw into her chocolate brown eyes (none of my girls would get my blue) and then I woke up with my heart pounding.
My husband lay next to me, dead asleep.
I crept into the bathroom and took out five pregnancy tests my friend had left at my house. I was switching to a new form of birth control. (The shot made me CRAZY!) I shouldn’t be pregnant. I hadn’t even missed my cycle yet. But I took the first test.
Positive.
I took four more.
All positive.
I shook the sleeping form in my bed until he grudgingly woke up.
“I need you to come see something,” I said.
He reluctantly followed me through our tiny apartment to the bathroom. I showed him the five sticks neatly lined up on the sink. All showcasing very clear + signs.
His expression never changed.
“I’m pregnant,” I said. Annoyed at having to state the obvious.
“Shit!”
This was his response to the news that he was to be a father.
Then he went back to bed and I stayed up all night contemplating my future.
A baby changes everything. He had always wanted lots of kids. A big house. White picket fence. Spacious backyard with a dog and cats.
We spent 8 years trying to achieve his vision of utopia. I thought that once I gave him this, he would be happy, and the we would finally be happy. #nope
But life lessons are sometimes only learned in baby steps.
The physical abuse stopped during the pregnancy.
We went to counseling. Joined a church.
“The Power of a Praying Wife” became a book more sacred to me than the Bible itself, when I still believed in such things. It promised to be the magic bullet that would save us from his hate and anger. His weeklong binges into the bottom of a beer bottle.
Every time I was able to move forward. Make money. Create stability. Find sanity. He destroyed it.
It was like living with the Demon of Chaos. How do you ever find sure footing in this kind of energetic storm?
I couldn’t.
But our daughter was coming. There was no denying that. And life was changing. I was changing.
From the inside out, as this child grew inside me, who I was began shifting–making room for her.
The day she was born my husband saved my life. In the years to come he would slowly destroy it.
***
This is the fifth part of a 10-part series on domestic violence and relationships based on my life. Please come back next Monday for the next post, Eyes of God , or follow my blog or sign up to receive email updates. You can also like my Facebook Page for updates on my blog, my books and more. To get caught up, start with Part 1: Why We Stay.
