Reaching Back to Help
I remember the first day I met Josh at a friend’s house in Colorado. He never seemed to care about anything going on around him, or anyone, for that matter. His lack of compassion appalled many, yet somehow it appealed to me. His infectious laugh could fill a room. He was an intense person with a dark and mysterious energy. I was attracted to him.
On the outside, he appeared fun-loving and pleasant, but on the inside, he was bitter and troubled. He had beaten up a gas station clerk while tripping on mushrooms just a year before I met him, and he would laugh as he described this event to others. He was experimenting with drugs when that happened, I said to myself. I didn’t think this would be normal behavior for him.
Then, Josh decided to join the military. We married within a week of him graduating from Marine Corps boot camp. The comparatively ambitious, hopeful, and joyful man I had first met disappeared little by little with each passing day. When he wasn’t around, he would insist that we talk on the phone for hours on end. It eventually reached the point where he didn’t want me around my best friend or family members. Our bank account began shrinking, too, and I knew the excuses he made for this were lies. I knew he was going out and blowing the cash on alcohol and maybe even on other women. Loved ones pleaded with me to stay home when it came time to join him in North Carolina. No one in my life trusted him. Deep inside, I didn’t have faith in him either, though I desperately wanted to.
Family and friends somberly helped pack everything on the back of the truck in the middle of the frigid Colorado winter with frosty winds biting at our faces. A snowstorm had moved in across the country just in time for the commute. On the way, my brother and I saw a semi-truck tipped on its side on the highway unable to withstand the harsh winds. The windshield wipers could hardly keep up with the excessive snowfall, and the brutal cold was almost unbearable. The timing and weather cast a horrible pall over everything from the very beginning.
As I pulled up to drop my brother off at the airport in Raleigh, North Carolina, the uncertainty of when I would see my family again suddenly struck me like a thunderbolt. To make matters worse, hours later, I arrived only to discover that I had no place to live despite Josh’s promise that I would. I had a hundred dollars in cash and an overdrawn account paying for my stay at the cheapest run-down hotel in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
About a week later, someone in his command found an old house on base where we could stay temporarily. It was located next to a busy road leading onto Camp Lejeune. To the left when you entered was an outdated kitchen with fifties-style black-and-white checker tiles that covered the floor. The living room and bedrooms consisted of scratched and worn wood floors, and cockroaches scattered everywhere when you opened the front door. The house was as bad as the apartment we had lived in back in Colorado, where the inside smelled like stale cigarettes. Water leaks dribbled from every tap, and an imaginary maintenance crew never showed up to fix anything. The first time I had second thoughts about our relationship happened in the bedroom of that place when, during an argument, Josh threw all my fragile belongings into a suitcase, breaking many of them, and punched a hole in the wall. Regardless, I believed we would make it through the rough patches together.
On the night of December 30th, 2007, a few neighbors invited us to a party. Being nineteen years old, we happily obliged. As the night continued and people got increasingly wasted, a drunken neighbor made a pass at me. Uncomfortable and ready to leave, I went to find Josh outside. When he learned why I wanted to go home, he began acting like a vicious dog. A side of him I had never seen started to appear. Reminding him that a fight with another Marine could put his brand new military career in jeopardy, I finally convinced him to come home with me.
Even after we got home, the glazed look never left Josh’s eyes. Nothing I said seemed to reach him. He told me men hit on me because I dressed like a slut, and that I wasn’t attractive otherwise. These demeaning words led to a heated argument, and before I knew it, his verbal abuse quickly grew into physical violence. Several punches later, I came to, confused and in a daze in the hallway between the two bedrooms. The bright hallway light beat down on me. That’s when I heard a frantic Josh from the living room calling someone on the phone. His voice sounded fearful, almost regretful, as he told someone that he needed a lawyer. I heard him say that I would think he had beaten me when I came to. Devastated, I started to weep.
I heard his footsteps coming across the wood floor towards me. He had heard me and came to try and apologize. I took one look at his insincere face and began screaming at the top of my lungs, fearful that I would never see daylight again if I didn’t break free from him. He attempted to keep me quiet by covering my mouth. Realizing that I wouldn’t give up as I bit him in my feeble attempt to be heard, he threw another punch to silence me. I faked unconsciousness with the hope he would walk away. After what felt like ages, he headed outside. Obviously panicked, his voice had raised a pitch as he murmured, “Shit. SHIT!”