I was going to kill him; he was going to die, and there was absolutely no doubt about it. No way he was going to get away with what he had done or what he was doing. Waking my daughter up gently so as not to let on that there was anything wrong, my intention was to leave, of course. I got my clothes and shoes on, pulled my stuff together, and did the same for my little one. She went along sleepily and didn’t really ask questions. My ex and I were talking loudly back and forth, him trying to act as if he was somehow justified, and me telling him he was crazy and to leave me alone. As he spoke I could see a prominent crease at the top of his nose, and he showed his teeth as he spoke, like a rabid dog. In all our time together, I’d never seen him look like this. Almost unrecognizable, he reminded me of the creatures in the movie Alien.

“You have a demon in you.” I said to him.

It was automatic. The words just flowed out of my mouth, as if I were telling him he had a booger in his nose.  I still believe those words to be true.

“No, you have a demon in you!” he yelled before continuing to rant.

It was one of those responses in which one childishly repeats what was said to them, because they have nothing else valid to say. I just looked away, determined to leave, but he had my keys, and told me that I wasn’t going to leave him there. He followed us downstairs to the car, continuing to yell, he had been talking the entire time, since this whole thing started. The need to be heard must be something he had lacked throughout his life, I figured; he became violent wanting to be heard but unable to articulate on an adult level. Deep in my own thoughts, my focus was on how I could get myself and my daughter into the car without him, outside of myself was nothing but unintelligible noise.

I was exhausted; hadn’t slept in almost 24 hours, and now I was contemplating a four hour drive back to Vegas. Once inside the car I sat there looking at the steering wheel thinking of getting an energy drink from the first gas station spotted, all the while my ex continued talking and talking. The level of exhaustion was so intense I quickly became unsure if I could even make it to the nearest gas station safely. Needless to say, we ended up back in the apartment.

My daughter and I went and laid in the spare room. It is impossible to describe what I was feeling. My emotions were coming, going, intertwining, rapid. Laying there I felt like an observer in my own body, like an avatar, like the machine I was controlling, my body, had broken down and I couldn’t get out. It was like being trapped in a crashed vehicle. Staring at the ceiling, I felt the tears stream down the sides of my face, eyes still wide open. Turning only my head towards the bedroom doorway I could see him standing there, completely still. The dim light above the stove in the kitchen cast his image as a shadow. As he stood there in the darkness, his ears were prominent and pointy. I could clearly see the outline of sharp tips. His posture was eerily still and implied that he was observing me yet unaware that I was aware of his presence. Definitely looked like the images we have all seen of demons. Funny how such a dim light was able to so brightly expose the truth, as it had twice already in that one evening.

I didn’t sleep that night. Whenever I would fall asleep, I was jolted awake either by him or by my own paranoia. Not wanting him near my daughter I tried covering her with my body as she slept. He came back and forth between the bed and the doorway, coming to the bed and kneeling down next to me. He wanted to talk, he wanted to touch, he made excuses. All I could repeat was “No” and “Leave me alone”, as if those were the only words in my vocabulary. Every emotion, every feeling, every expression I could muster came out in those few words.

When the sun rose, my body felt exhausted from getting no sleep. It felt as if I were getting over a cold, able to move around, but groggy and achy. I moved like a zombie that day, and didn’t speak much. My mind was clouded as I sat in the living room watching television with my daughter in silence. The only thing missing was a cigarette in my hand that had burned so long without attention it had become mostly ash. My daughter didn’t know what had happened, but she knew something was very wrong. It was evident in the way she looked at me. She always knew.

Though my ex and I talked little, the topic of what we would do came up. Not what we would do in terms of our relationship, but what we would do with the day. Would we stay or go home? Eventually we decided to go to the pool. It was sunny but cold out and my little one and I laid on the lounge chairs while my ex got into the pool. He never took his eyes off me. Squinting in the sunlight, he watched my every move as if he thought I’d try to escape and would have to chase after me at any moment.

My daughter began conversing with me and I knew she was going to eventually ask what was wrong. The cold air tickled as I turned my head towards her, listening. Now I was ready to leave; ready to leave the pool, ready to leave LA. Sitting up as I engaged my daughter’s casual inquisitions, I was startled to see my ex standing directly over me. How long had he been there? I hadn’t even seen or heard him get out of the pool. He had been standing there completely silent, as if he’d rushed over the moment he saw me move thinking I’d try to make a run for it. More than likely he had come over because my daughter and I were talking, and he had remained silent so as to eavesdrop. He did that often, eavesdropping when I would talk on the phone or to others in person, even if I was in another room or area. He even told me once that he could read lips and that he would know what I was saying even if we weren’t side by side.

I told him I was cold and wanted to leave the pool and we headed back to the apartment. Once inside I continued to teeter between wanting to go back home to Vegas and wanting to just stay put. In reality, I couldn’t think of how to get away from him cleanly. As day turned into night I firmly decided on going home to at least be in my own space. The oncoming night made me think of having to spend another evening with him keeping me awake as he had the night before. The compromise for leaving LA was him coming with us. Before we left he had a phone call from his mother. That was the first time I had ever heard him whisper on the phone.

His mother use to call me her daughter; she told my daughter to call her “G-mom”; and she never called me once, to this day, after this happened. She never called to find out what happened, to ask if we were alright. Nothing. We only spoke once after this incident, and I had to call her. When she and I first met, she reminded me so much of me. I’d even told my ex that’s why he couldn’t leave me alone; men often go for women who remind them of their mothers. I now realized that part of the lesson in knowing them was to not become like her, and to not let my daughter grow up to be like him in any way. I had seen myself in my ex’s mother, what I might be like when I became her age, that could be me. In her I also saw where he gained his ability to carry such a façade of a life, of himself, and I did not want such an outcome for my child.

I could be the one passing the art of pretending on to my child. I could be the one giving pity to my child rather than helping her build good character; I could be the one giving excuses for my child’s behavior rather than giving her the tools to become an accountable individual who can do her part in epitomizing what good is left in the world. I realized that in having known him and his mother, I was being shown an alternate future, for had I stayed with him, all of that could’ve been me. Imagine the effect that would have on my daughter’s outcome…now multiply that by a billion, and there you have a lot of misguided people in the world. This moment of realization was also an opportunity to say “No, I want more”, and turn my life in the right direction.

When we finally left LA, my ex drove and I sat hunched in the corner of the passenger’s seat with my head against the window, staring out at traffic. In an effort to not speak with him, I turned on one of my mixed CDs. While listening, I thought to myself: Why? He never inspired me, never made me feel good, I was never genuinely happy with him, and wasn’t even thoroughly attracted to him. He didn’t excite me or further motivate my ambition. Why? Why had I done this to myself? Why did I ignore my intuition? Why did I ignore the obvious? Trust me, you don’t want to have to ask yourself these questions while looking at someone with regret; ask them before.

In ignoring myself and my intuition I had hurt myself. The one being/entity who deserved my utmost attention, love, and respect-myself, I’d treated with very little of those things. That one part of me that is there to protect and love, that part of me that is connected with the infinite, that knows all that has ever been and will forever be, that part of me I ignored. I had been disconnected and was beginning to feel the hurt that the inner me had been feeling all this time due to my choices. Oh, that was heartache. I had broken my own heart, and it hurt deeper than any abyss. At this thought, I began to cry.

My ex, being the narcissist that he is, immediately assumed I was crying because of him. He seemed to think I had some sort of guilt that was being evoked by the music playing. He saw me crying as a moment of weakness rather than what it was, a moment of realization, of awakening. Because he saw it as a moment of weakness, and being the type of person he is, he tried to capitalize on it by making it clear he felt justified in his actions and that I deserved what he’d done to me. He turned up the music and proceeded to talk shit, expressing his sentiments of me being the one to blame.

Recognizing what he was doing I yelled out, “I’m not crying over YOU!”

The feeling of disgust flushed through my body like a strong current. My mind became consumed with grief at the thought of having ever given him a moment of my time, of not having told him a firm “No” when we first met. As we continued to drive, my anger grew. I sent text messages to my sister and grandmother telling them what had happened. It was my first contact with anyone since the incident the night before. My grandmother called, of course wanting to know if my daughter and I were alright. She told me to just make it home and get rid of him. Yes, that was going to happen for sure.

My sister also called, livid at what he had done. She hung up with me and called my ex’s cell asking him who the hell he thought he was putting his hands on me. He proceeded to call her as many derogatory names as he could articulate clearly. I remembered wondering what he had expected; had it been his sister someone had strangled, would he have said nothing? It was simple; he was in a zone of being himself, showing his true colors.

A year prior he had tried to present himself to my sister as a man in love with me. We were at the Stratosphere for the rides and he had come there wanting to talk me back into the relationship. I had left him then so he was trying to tell my sister how much he wanted me back when I wouldn’t listen. She and I agreed he was full of shit then. He had followed us around at least twice during her visit; and look at him now, projecting what I was intuitively trying to avoid all the other times I had left him.

In the early stages of our courting my ex lied about how he had an understanding and respect for women because he was raised by a woman and had grown up with a sister. That lie broke down very obviously over time. Here we had a guy who slept with prostitutes, had approached me about pimping, put his hands on me, and could speak the words he was speaking to my sister as if he had just cause, and that’s to name only a few contradictions. None of those things are done by a man who respects women or himself for that matter. All these thoughts I verbalized to him as he was arguing with my sister on the phone, calling her out of her name for trying to defend me the best way she could at that time.

When the yelling ceased, I began thinking of how I would do it, how I would kill him. He had to sleep sometime; there would be a moment when his guard would be down. I would be watching, waiting, and ready. His desperation to be liked could be used to my advantage in this plot. As I let my thoughts flow free and go deeper, they became more detailed. In my daze, thoughts of my daughter came through. If I got caught, she would never see me again; I wouldn’t be there to raise her. Even so, I felt it may be worth it, figuring that I had family I could trust to raise her decently.

No, he hadn’t been worth any of this, and surely wasn’t worth me losing the most important thing in my life. He had to go though; if we made it home together, I was going to kill him for sure.

“I want you out of my car. Pull over somewhere and get out of my car.” I told him, my voice eerily calm.

Of course he declined.

I remained steady and picked up my phone with the intention of calling the police. At least if I did kill him, it couldn’t be said that I didn’t try to end it the “recommended” way beforehand.

“You’re going to get out of my car!” I stated matter-of-factly.

He must’ve known I was going to call the police because he reached over in his usual bullying fashion to grab the phone out of my hands. We began to struggle and in an attempt to get him off of me, I put one of my legs between us and pushed. He still managed to get the phone away from me and as he drew back I kicked him with all my might, sat back up and spit on him just as I had before. He paused briefly, then spat back. My next move was to reach for a pen; I kept pens in the driver’s side door and was going to use one to stab him in the neck or the eye. Him being in between me and the pens didn’t matter, I reached over anyway. He thought I was reaching for my phone and pressed his weight on the driver’s side door, trying to keep the phone out of my reach. Next plan of action was a split second thought: maybe I could unbuckle his seat belt while I was reached over, then open the car door as I rose up, and kick him at least halfway out of the car. It was about to get reckless, my mind was in destroy mode. I wanted him out of my car and was reaching the point of being willing to do anything to make it happen.

“GET OUT OF MY CAR!” I yelled in his face.

I grabbed the steering wheel and the car swerved, it was at this point he decided to comply. He reached for his phone and called one of his cousins back in Vegas and asked him to pick him up in Barstow.

“Yeah, she done lost her wig, kicking me and shit.” he told his cousin.

Outrageous! After all he had done to me the only thing he would mention was what I had done in an attempt to defend myself from him taking my phone, and out of sheer anger at everything else he had done up to this point? My stomach turned. I had been sleeping with a coward every night and the realization literally made me sick. This guy had strangled me, held me hostage, disrespected my family and was trying to force me to give him a ride home, but all he could mention was that I kicked HIM?!

Me kicking him would also be the story he told others later; either that or “It just didn’t work out”, or downplaying what he did altogether. He had lied in a similar fashion a previous time when I left him by posting a ridiculous speech on his social media making it seem like we had come to some mutual agreement to end the relationship, when in reality I had left him and he had been begging me to come back. That’s all he knew, was how to create a fake life, and social media is perfect for that.

He began to appear more and more psychotic than just plateau crazy. This 6’5” 38 year old male wanted to shirk responsibility for his actions like a common six year old. When we made it to Barstow, I collected my keys as he got his stuff. Getting in the car and locking the doors, he and I spoke through a crack in the window.

“You’re just gonna leave me here?” he asked.

“Hell yeah!” I thought, looking at him perplexed.

He quickly reached through the crack in the window and opened the door. Once again, he was going to force himself on me; we were going to sit there and wait with him. As he began to sit down I thought to drive off. If he fell out, oh fucking well. Fortunately his cousin pulled in just then.

As I continued the drive home with my daughter, I was stoic. There was something small inside me, I could feel it. I could even see it, subconsciously. It was the size of a small marble and it was located in the center of my diaphragm, below my heart yet above my stomach. From that small source I felt relief and happy, despite everything that had happened. It was my true happiness that had shrank and been buried deep within me. My true happiness budded immediately and made itself known. It had never left me, it had always been there, waiting for me to create the right conditions for it to return and be expressed. Finally, it was over, my ex would be gone for good.

Damn it feels good to tell this story…

Once my daughter and I were back in Vegas, we stayed at a friend’s place for a few days. After the second night, we went home to get more clothes. My ex had been there. He had come and taken his television. When my daughter saw the big open space where the television had been, she turned and spoke to me in a tone that sounded both irritated and relieved.

“I’m glad we have our life back.” she said

I smiled at her sweetly, “Me too.” I replied.

*Music by SOHN – Lessons

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