I thought being a bartender would be a perfect job. I would get to interact with other people and have tips in my pocket every time I worked so that I could get diapers, formula, etc. However, that’s not how it worked. Instead, he would steal it out of my purse at night while I was sleeping and go buy drugs and alcohol. Many times I had to count on my mom and dad to buy diapers and formula for my two sweet babies.

Now that I was a bartender, he started coming into the bar to drink. And I would serve him because I had no choice. Either serve him, know what kind of mood he was in, go home and get beat or don’t serve him, piss him off, he goes somewhere else and gets drunk, he picks me up, we go home and he still beats me. Better the monster you know and can see at that point. At least that was what I thought at the time.

At this time he had had one DUI, driving home for Q Masters with me in the car also drunk. At that point, I drank to dull the pain when he would hit me. I myself, at that time, became an alcoholic. I wasn’t proud of it by any means, in fact it’s embarrassing to admit, but I said at the very beginning that I would tell you the good, bad, and ugly, and here is one of those things.

The plus to working at the bar was that I met this nice, attractive man (who was also married) who played pool and darts. We didn’t talk unless he was asking me for a Coke but we did play pool against each other every now and then in our pool league. He was so nice that it made me wonder what it would be like to be married to someone like that. I want to be VERY clear that we never even conversed, other than asking for a Coke, but spoiler alert, this guy was Aaron.

But back to the beginning of Part 1 where I had a concussion and I was looking at my children wondering how the hell I got to where I was. That, my friends, that night was my catalyst.

That night we had been at the bar where I worked. I had worked the day shift and he had come to pick me up and, or course, we drank for awhile.

Eventually we left and he was driving. We didn’t even get through the strip mall that the bar was in before we started fighting. He pulled over and immediately started punching me in the back of the head.

Luckily, two Navy guys that I had served earlier walked by while he was doing it. They stopped and called the police. They told him what they had done in an attempt to stop him from punching me but it didn’t help. They did stay there until the police came and they talked to them. At some point, he threw the keys to the truck out in the parking lot. (Side note: I never found them. I think they fell in a drain.)

A big group of older teenage boys also stopped when they saw what he was doing and they got him to start paying attention to them (he was mouthing off to them) and he stopped punching me in the back of the head. The police came and arrested him (he got his second DUI that night) and I’ll never forget what one of the police officers said to me. He said, “A buddy of mine was at your house last week when he threw you into the entertainment center. Once they start this, they don’t stop. It only gets worse.”

I was so embarrassed. Embarrassed that I had been the talk of police officers and embarrassed that I had let it happen again.

But I still didn’t leave… although, unknowingly, it put me closer to cutting ties.

Stayed tuned for Part 4 next week!