I feel trapped and conflicted. I don't know if I should have seen things sooner or what. I don't know what I feel. I love him but sometimes I feel like I hate and loath him, and myself. See, he makes me feel so bad about myself, and that's never good. He said that his "abusive" relationship made him hate himself, too. I told him that I know how that feels. Fletcher never even made me feel this bad. I feel like he's trapped me, and I can't do anything without him. I want to be independent, but I don't have my license (and probably never will unless we separate), and I can barely cook, relying on him for so long, it's like my ability to make food has atrophied like some under-utilized muscle. I feel so weak. Physically and mentally. Like I can't open a jar without his help, and I don't know what I'd do if we were apart. I fantasize about it, but I don't think I could leave him. I don't want to really, I want to fix it. I want to go to marriage counseling. We have kids, we have to think of them. But me being miserable and trapped in this depressive state isn't good for them either.

Ok, sure, he's never hit me, never threatened, never bruised me (in a violent way), but emotional abuse and scaring the fuck out of me is still bad. It's getting worse and worse. He controls my entire life.

About a month ago, I was having some serious pain. Two of my wisdom teeth are coming in, and at that time, I was in so much pain, I was amazed I could get out of bed let alone make meals for the kids and change their diapers. And that's about all I did. I changed their diapers and fed them, turned on the tv and just let them do their thing. I didn't clean at all, the laundry was piling up, I didnt' shower, it was bad. I was thinking about how great the kids were. They were still well-behaved and wonderful as they always are. I felt like some higher power created them just for me. Their perfect for me. I needed help. you could say, in that time, and my kids were behaving wonderfully. They couldn't have been better. I feel like they helped me by not acting out, and by behaving well. It's hard to put into words, but I really felt, in that moment and still, that some higher being created my children to give to me to enrich my life, bring love into it, and challenge me as well.

Well, I tried to tell him how I felt, and he disagreed almost completely. He said it was us who made them so wonderful. I said that we didn't make their personalities 100%, there was something there before and we helped mold them into better children, but they came to us very wonderful and special in the first place. He didn't get it. Then, at a family gathering of sorts, his father suggested that we go to church with him. That got me thinking, I should go to church. I really liked that idea. He has resisted every time his father has invited us before. But then, the next day, we had a huge fight. He hasn't scared me like that in a while. But he has before. It was at the grocery store. I didn't want to go home with him, I was so scared. But I didn't know what he would do if he was super-duper made at me and alone with the children. I am almost positive he would never hurt them, but there's like a 5% part of me that says, "What if? What if I wasn't there, and he got so upset he couldn't control himself, got angry and hurt them?" I knew I had to go with him for my children.

At the store, I told him a lot of the things I'd been thinking and holding back. I told him he was borderline abusive. He said I was overreacting. I shouldn't be scared, I had no reason to fear him, and I should just go with him. Like nothing had happened. The fact that he wouldn't even consider my feelings, seeing how distraught I was and crying so hard, he really seemed like a monster in that moment. I was so scared. I didn't want to be beaten. If there was ever a time I thought he might hit me, it was then. Not necessarily in the store, but later. I told him i was scared, and that wasn't healthy or right. I did go with him, and on the way home I told him that it's not about the abuse, it's about the control. And he does control my life. I can't go anywhere without him, I have no money, I never have any money, not even when I had a job. I told him I can't leave, either, because I have no money, no job and no prospects, and nowhere to go. He's completely cut me off. I have almost no friends that weren't his friends first, and I'm sure they would side with him. In abusive relationships, the guy is always so charming, nice and funny to everyone else, and so it's always the girl that gets blamed and no one believes her. I told him it feels like he doesn't care about me, because he never listens and he doesn't do those things that shows he cares. And he said that I was overreacting in the store, and on the way home. I told him a lot of what I'd been thinking and feeling for a while, that I've been scared for a while, but he didn't listen, and didn't want to hear it. He doesn't believe me, as is typical of an abuser. He has always said, "I treat you great." Heh, yeah right.

But that night, I emailed my friend who goes to church and is religious. I asked her if we could go to church with her. Since I don't have my license, she was going to pick up me and the kids and drive us to the church in our van. Because he didn't want to go. And he rolled his eyes every time I told him I did. I told him I needed support, I needed to feel like someone cared about me. He said that he did, but again I told him I don't feel it. He kept saying how I'd be bored, and I wouldn't like it. I've been to church before, I know what it's like. I told him I wanted to go, and rolling his eyes at me was just pissing me off. A couple of days later, he said he'd go with us, and drive us, so my friend wouldn't have to pick us up.

Saturday night, I got everything ready. I asked him to wake me up when he got up. We ended up sleeping in until it was pretty much time to go. I was rushing around, trying to feed the kids and gather their clothes and get dressed, all the while he is looking for his pants. After I asked him to get them the night before. And he's moving the slowest I've ever seen anyone move ever. And I have three kids under 3. I've seen slow. He was stalling, wasting time so we wouldn't make it on time. Then, 10 minutes to go, he has to go to the bathroom. #2. And his #2 always takes a minimum of 30 minutes. So after he sits down he informs me that we're not going because we won't make it on time. He tells me by the time we get their it will be half over. It's an hour service. Just the previous day he was telling me it's so long that I will hate it and be bored.

He purposefully wasted time and stalled so that we couldn't go. He didn't want me to go, he didn't want me to go with the kids, and then he kept telling me the night before how he didn't want to go, either. He controls me almost completely. Give it another six months and it will be complete unless I change things.

12:44 A.M. - 09.26.11