My story is on my old FKB blogs from the former site, but I’ll try to sum it up here before moving on to the title: closure. I was married to an abusive alcoholic. She took me for granted as I gave her and her son a home while she did nothing but drink the days away. She knocked me down to the point where I thought I needed to keep trying to help her and that I couldn’t live without her. Mind you, and this is coming from the self confidence that I’ve been painstakingly trying to replenish, I’m an anthropologist with years of professional experience working with the developmentally disabled in behavioral management and I just recently published my first novel.
On 4/29/17, I came home to find her unconscious and being raped by our neighbor. Well, that’s how she played it. The trauma of the incident left me with PTSD and unstable from the incident coupled with the years of abuse. I believed her when she said it was rape and I believed her when she said it was my fault that the case was closed, leaving the rapist free. The night it happened, I drove her to the hospital and was there with her during the entire time they administered the rape kit. All of this is a memory scorched into my memory. We separated on 7/5/17 and I moved back to my hometown to live with a friend while I tried to come back from everything. Over this time, she continued to blame me for everything, even her own drinking, when I know that I fell apart, but not before trying everything in my power to try and help her. I broke myself trying to help her.
We reconnected recently and have been “working on things.” By that I mean that she said that she wanted to work on things, I went along with it because I had that residual love for her, but she just wanted to avoid the actual work while poking at anything that would trigger my PTSD. I tried, once again, to get us to counseling and to be supportive of her quitting drinking. I’ve been seeing a therapist since the “incident.” A couple weeks ago, she told me that the case was “ongoing,” but that she was going to pick up our things they took for evidence. I asked her if it was closed or ongoing and she flipped, getting upset that I was calling her a liar, which I never said, and saying that she didn’t care if the case was still open or not. I tried to encourage her to get in touch with the detectives and the DA to confirm, but she argued that there was nothing she could do.
Last week, I got in contact with the DA who informed me that the case had, in fact been closed, but not for the reasons my ex would have me believe. The case was closed because she repeatedly told the detectives that she couldn’t remember anything from that night. Why would she then say that it was my fault that it was closed? Well, that’s an emotionally abusive alcoholic for you. I contacted her to let her know why it was closed and, if she wanted to put the rapist behind bars, all she had to do is say, “I remember saying, ‘no.'” She didn’t want to do that and then argued that I was telling her this as an “I told you so.”
At this point, I still wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe that it was rape and that she would have never cheated on me, but I had placed faith in the wrong person. None of it was my fault: the abuse, the trauma, or the outcome of the case. I just went through too many years of being lied to and manipulated over someone’s sick game. To add to it all, the DA informed me that my ex’s alcohol content wasn’t nearly high enough to cause tipsiness, let alone a black out. When I walked into our home that night, she heard me and played opossum, putting me and the guy she was banging into serious jeopardy. I nearly killed him. We got a restraining order against him, by my pressure since the case wasn’t going anywhere, which placed a permanent mark on his record all because she didn’t want to deal with the consequences.
I understand that .03% of rape claims are false, so this story isn’t to take away from anyone’s credibility. I will continue to believe anyone who comes out and claims rape. It is a horrible thing to happen to anyone and those close to them and they deserve all the support in the world. I just happened to be married to one of those people who are so deranged that they would fall into that .03%. Now that I know all of this, which I haven’t even brought up aggressively, but let her know what the DA told me, she has blocked my number. My closure: I’m only at fault for loving and trusting the wrong person. Now, it is my job to make sure that never happens, again, and to, finally, put all of this to rest, so I can move on happily with my life.