Candice’s* Domestic Violence Story

I met him and I told myself from the beginning to just be friends with him. It turned into way more way to fast. We were living together in a week as just friends but it quickly escalated into more then that. He was very possessive from the start but I took that as he is looking out for me. The physical abuse started maybe 2 months into it. It started out with a slap in the face that I let go. BIG MISTAKE.

That slap in the face turned into punches in the head which turned into getting beat at least once a day. He went all out with it. I got beat with belts, choked with belts and choked with his hands til I would near unconsciousness. He would make me sit in the corner while he kicked me in my head so hard I would see stars or black out. He would pick me up by my throat and slam me into walls. He turned the burner on the stove and held me there til he could smell the burning skin. Then he was satisfied. These sick little battles kept him satisfied. I picked glass out of my head for 3 hours after my head got slammed into a mirror.

I got beat with baseball bats, shot with a bbgun in my head several times and had a knife to my throat more times then I can count. He put a shotgun inside of me where no gun is supposed to be. I got tied up with zip ties and put in the shower with cold running water and on top of that ice dumped on my head. He would leave me in there for hours on end.

He flushed my birth control down the toilet and said it wasn’t rape since he was my boyfriend. The more I cried and begged for him to stop it didn’t matter, he loved it. He loved seeing the fear and pain in my eyes and laughed at me and called me pathetic when I couldn’t move the next day. I’ve self-healed several broken bones. We wouldn’t even be fighting and he would come into bed and start wailing on me ad jerking my head by ears and would head butt me. He has jabbed pens into my eyes, cut my hair, burned me with cigarette butts and punched my legs so hard I now have a permanent twitch. He would throw me onto the floor so I’d land on my tailbone so hard I couldn’t cough for 2 weeks without crying. When I had bronchitis he couldn’t handle the coughing so I’d have to sleep on the floor by the door in case a coughing fit got bad I could go outside.

God help me if I made eye contact with another male or was polite when he held the door for me.

He tormented me. He would make comments about my weight and then I wouldn’t eat. So what did he do? Went to Mc Donalds bought chicken nuggets and a milkshake and force them all down my throat and held me upside down til i was choking. I tried being the sexy perfect girlfriend…wasn’t going to happen. I would get so hungry so I would wait til he went to work and eat cold cans of creamed corn because we had a lot of them I knew he wouldn’t notice them missing.

One night I was sleeping and he came in and said I always keep a souvenir of the girls I am with and I thought he was going to cut my hair. He said say goodnight and stabbed me in the stomach with scissors and told me to shut the f up when I started crying cause there was blood everywhere.

I couldn’t get away. He would have killed me or hurt my family. He took me out into the middle of nowhere, had his way with me took my pants and my phone said I’m such a disgusting pig anyway so let the wild hogs come get me, I found an old blanket from some previous campers and covered up with it hoping he would come back. He did, only to say he was disappointed to see me still breathing, so he punched me in my eye and said I hope you feel as ugly and disgusted as how I feel when I look at you. He would force me to smoke a drug and beat me so bad and said you now have my permission to call the police since you are so geeked out they won’t believe you.

The emotional battle was way worse. I loved him. I did everything for him. He knew every move I made and if I left the porch I would catch HELL. The only reason I am alive I am convinced is my family, they seen a change in me and the fact I was always alone. My uncle called my dad and said my boyfriend was there and he took the keys from him and called the police because it was my vehicle. The police came saw bruises on my face and arrested him. This happened only 3 days ago and since then I have left state to go be with my family. I am very emotionally confused and no idea what to do or how to handle it. I refuse to be a victim. I want to be a survivor.

Candice*

*Names have been changed to protect identities