Consequences
By Pamela Jordan Lee
Owner, Sir Max

Before I get started in this article, It's utterly important to understand the definition of the word consequences: The result of an action or a logical result.

In everyday life, there are choices and consequences. However, when it comes to domestic violence, the stakes are a little higher and, of course, there are good and bad results. At this time, I am going to share some of my consequences during my experience with domestic violence. It's difficult to find a place to begin. This was back in the 70s, when there were no shelters, safe houses or family discussions about domestic violence.

My first mistake was getting married at the age of 18. I now ask myself, "What the hell was I thinking?" I thought I was in love...yeah, right. Now as I look back and I am wiser, I realize I must have been nearly comatose to marry at such a young age. Without realizing it at the time, I was leaving one problem behind and starting a new one. With consequences, the results can ripple so quickly that our problems become huge snowballs. I found myself married at an early age, only to discover that after one month of marriage, my husband was cheating on me. Shortly afterward, the verbal and physical abuse followed.

By that point, there was no way in the world I was going to tell my family what was happening. They had basically declared me "brain dead" for getting married so young anyway. My mother was one who always stated, "I told you this was going to happen," and "That's what you get for jumping into a marriage." After a few years of verbal and physical abuse, I had experienced a broken collar bone and busted lip, and had been pushed down a flight of stairs while pregnant. I had sugar poured in my gas tank, and the distributor cap removed from my car so I couldn't go to work. There was also the incident when the snake was placed in my car, and finally, my car windows had been shot out. I also can't forget the package of firecrackers he placed in the bed as I slept at night and lit them. That was one hell of a wake up call. After five years of marriage I finally realized that I couldn't change him. I decided to leave him while I was alive, and I did.

Shortly afterward, I found out I was pregnant. Can you envision my snowball getting bigger now? By this time, it was more like a boulder. There I was, pregnant and looking for a place to live. I couldn't move back in with my parents, and anyway, in my mind I told myself that having a baby would help our marriage and maybe we would get back together. In March of 1980, I had a beautiful baby boy. In September of 1980, my snowball succumbed to an avalanche when my husband and his girlfriend also delivered a baby boy. I'm not the most intelligent person when it comes to mathematics, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. A year later I divorced him. In 1984, as I as trying to put my life back together and raise a child, I met my knight in shinning armor. I still had a lot of anger deep within because I never took the time to deal with the real issues. However, things were getting better for me, but that avalanche started moving down the hill. In yet another scenario, my ex-mother-in-law (by the way, the mother-in-law from hell is another story) did not like that I had met someone else. She decided to call Children's Social Services to complain about me.

Before I knew it, I had a social worker sitting in front of me explaining that if they received another call or complaint, they would have to remove my son from the home. It turned out that child services could not find anything against me. I married my hero in 1986, had another son in 1988, and my new husband adopted my first child. Finally, I was free. Through the years, though, the anger and pain from the previous relationship surfaced inside of me, and I took it out on anyone that crossed my path.. Even though I was happy again, I still had that avalanche making its way down the hill, and it finally gave way in 1997.

My oldest son was 18, and my ex-husband came to my house, stood in my living room and told me he now wanted to be friends and have a relationship with his son. The only way I can explain what happened next is that the avalanche finally made its way to the bottom and all hell broke loose. The difference was that this time, I was the one in control. I am now a woman with spirit and power. My point is that everyday, we have choices in front of us to make. Some of these choices, we choose to ignore because it is easier, and we don't want to face the real problems. Our attitude can be, "I will deal with that decision later." For some women, "later" is too late, even to the point where there is a funeral to attend.

We need to stop running from our problems and take the time to figure out what we are running from and. We need to realize that children don_t make a marriage, and staying in a violent marriage is not what is best for our children. Instead of turning to food, drugs and alcohol, leave when it is safe. As women, we need to stop and think about the decisions we make, and the effect they can have on our lives, not just how they may affect today or tomorrow. A decision today may not have consequences until many years later. I guarantee that what you did yesterday and what you will do today will have an effect on tomorrow. As I look back on all of my consequences, despite all the pain and sorrow, my consequences from yesterday have now become my lessons for today. So much of our time is in turmoil, and we are always are looking for the answers on the outside, never realizing that all the answers are actually on the inside.