My Ex-Husband

One night I was sitting in our house watching television. David had gone to bed early; he said he wasn't feeling well. This wasn't unusual; we'd been having problems for awhile and he would often avoid me. I had been sitting in the living room by myself for quite awhile. The room was lit by a lamp as well as the light from the television.

It was a very small house and the bedroom was directly connected to the living room. It was dark in there and the door that separated the two rooms was open about half way. At some point during the evening a strange feeling came over me--or maybe something just caught my eye. I looked over to the dark bedroom and saw a figure. Since I was in a brighter room it was difficult to focus in on what I was seeing. I kept looking, straining my neck and squinting my eyes. After a few blinks and squints, my eyes became adjusted and I realized David was sitting up in bed, still as a statue, and had a double barrel shot gun pointed directly at me.

I screamed and dove to the floor. I was sobbing, and started shouting "DON'T SHOOT ME! WHAT ARE YOU DOING??" He calmly got out of bed, put the gun away and said "Stop whining! I'm not going to do anything!" He rolled his eyes and went in the kitchen.

He treated me like I over reacted. To this day I have no idea how long he had been sitting there like that or what he really intended to do.

I don't remember much about the rest of that night, but in the state I was in at that point in my life, it's safe to say I was probably apologizing to him for blowing the whole thing out of proportion. I often ended up apologizing to David after he'd done something like this. He had so much power over me that things always got twisted around to seem like my fault.

Looking back now, this was obviously a huge contributor to my control issues today. After I finally got away from David I vowed I would never allow anyone to treat me that way again. In my mind, to keep that from happening it was clear I would need to be in complete control of any relationship from this point on.