by Mary Tyrer

Created on: October 24, 2010   Last Updated: October 26, 2010

The minute I read this title, I knew I had to write this article. Growing up we had no physical violence in our family. However, at age 10 my parents divorced and my mother would say terrible things about my father every chance she had the opportunity. I am the oldest of six kids. My mom always treated me as an adult. I knew my father did terrible things, but I also knew he was never a violent man. In fact, he was a soft-spoken man who drank too much. He played lead guitar in the local honky tonks (or if you are not familiar with the term, small bars, and places like the VFW, sometimes he and his band would even play at weddings) anyway he liked chasing the skirts, and that is why my parents divorced.

Yet even at the age of ten, I never saw him raise a hand to her in anger. Physical violence cannot be tolerated, and has to be dealt with. I was a battered wife before the O.J./Nicole Simpson ordeal. I called 911 so many times, only to be left in a house with a man who was even angrier than before. What many people do not understand is when there is physical violence in a family bruises go away, and especially nowadays people are more apt to walk away from a relationship, bones heal, and bruises go away.

Once my parents divorced, we moved to another state and he stayed behind. From that moment on, I never heard a good word come out of my mother’s mouth about my father. I can understand from her point of view, yet she refused to allow him to visit us, so I saw my father at age 11, and formally not again until I was 22. I thought I would see him watching us play in the park from a distance. At 16, I had a job during Christmas and I noticed a man was following me around the store and it spooked me. Face it, I had not seen him in five years up close and those years a child’s minds eye changes about how people look, especially if there are no pictures allowed in the house.

I have been married twice and had six boys. My youngest was killed the day before his 21st birthday this year (June 2010). The younger four grew up with their father because he took them from me. It took me five years to find them and when I did, they chose to live with their dad, and visit me. The entire time he had them away from me he spoke poorly of me. I did nothing wrong, except run from the final beating I was going to take from him. It took me a week to get in touch with them and tell them I would not be coming back, but we had sold a home and I would receive part of the money

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