The Escape
It was year 2011, and I was in the strange situation of being in separation from
my husband, whom I’d been with for 6.5 years. We were still living in the same
house, but in different rooms, and getting along cordially, since we had a
great base-line friendship, despite the difficult shift in our relationship
that was occurring.
I saw that my sister had started dating a new guy after her recent breakup, and my still-husband had already briskly moved-on by finding a woman on a dating website, before we’d even found an attorney or started our divorce papers. When I observed how they’d both managed to move-on from their past relationships into another, I decided that I would also try dating again too. So I joined 1 particular dating website, and I did manage to meet a handsome new man…I’ll call him C.H.
Online, “on paper”, he looked like the PERFECT dream catch of a man.
He was a handsome, successful guy with a great high-paying job, a very nice
house in a desirable part of town, and a nice name-brand car. We hit it
off, and began seriously dating.
There was this bizarre sense of security at his house: like this man could PROVIDE for me, and give me a nice home to live in, and a comfortable life. He wanted to take me on a fancy romantic trip to Breckinridge in a cabin surrounded by snow as my Christmas present. But unfortunately, that trip never got to happen.
In reality, there was always this uneasy, underlying feeling I had around him. I guess it’s a glimpse of a feeling that one would have in the presence of a predator. A constant feeling of un-ease, of imminent attack, of not being safe.
Little did I know at the time, but in hindsight, this man’s only purpose really, was to help me get divorced. He began laying on the pressure as to why was I still married when both my husband and I had started to date other people. His influence helped my husband and I to find an attorney, split the fee, and even ride to the courthouse together in friendship to get the divorce done. We didn’t fight over anything, and in the grand scheme of divorces, it was probably the most easy and non-conflictual divorce in history.
Once the divorce was completed, the new guy, C.H., began to rapidly show his “true colors”, and they were frightening. One night, as we were nestling into bed to go to sleep, I just simply began to turn over in bed to get comfortable, and he angrily YELLED at me: “QUIT MOVING AROUND AND BE STILL!!” He literally scared the shit out of me, with his out-of-the-blue sudden angry aggression yelling at me.
Then, the next morning, he announced that he wanted to cook some breakfast together. He pointed at one of his lower kitchen cabinet, and told me to “Grab a pan”. When I opened the cupboard, I kid you not: there was a high STACK of all sizes of pans! Like 6-7 of them! Of similar pan style but ranging from large to small. I asked him, “Which size do you want me to grab?” And he EXPLODED in anger back at me yelling loudly: “JUST GRAB A FUCKING PAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Again, scaring me half to death so badly that I went into a “freeze and tremble” mode, where I had a moment where I froze in fear, but then I was trembling in fear as I just grabbed one of the random pans and handed it to him. I realized there was something VERY wrong with this guy. And it was terrifying.
Fast forward to New Year’s eve, the new guy took me to his
friend’s house over-looking a cliff to watch fireworks. By this time, I was
completely fearful of this guy. I didn’t know what I was dealing with, and
never had dealt with before. The evening went okay, but the next morning, my
now-ex-husband had sent me a Happy New Year text or something (We’d just gotten
divorced on Dec 28th of that year), and the new guy C.H. saw that my
ex had text me on my cell phone, and he acted very mean towards me and he gave
me this awkward silent treatment on the entire 1.5 hour drive back home to his
house, from his friend’s house. During that long, bizarre, scary silent drive
back to his house, I had made up my mind that this guy terrified me, and I was
done with it.
As soon as we got back to his house, C.H. yelled at me and
clearly wanted to start a heated argument, but all I can remember, was just
looking at him, then turning around, and walking straight out of his door, letting it SLAM loudly behind me, without saying a word.
I was done, and I never saw him again. It was actually a
VERY empowering moment for me.
The guy tried to call me a few days later to beg for another
chance, but I held firm as a NO. His behavior flat-out scared the shit out of me,
and I didn’t want to see or experience any more.
Years later, I looked him up on Facebook…and sure enough he’d found some other woman to marry, and have a child with. I immediately, and have ALWAYS felt fear for her. Because I had seen a glimpse of his monster, and I didn’t know the extent to which he could unleash that monster, because I had escaped him after just a short 1-2 months of dating. To this day, 11/3/2023…I still worry for her, and periodically check on their Facebook pages. I did some volunteer work at the San Antonio Battered Women’s Shelter, and in my heart, I worry that she could be someone who ends up there, in that type of scary situation. Just from browsing her photos, it appeared to me that she went from looking healthy in the beginning of their relationship, to very thin, frail, and rather sickly looking. She has to live walking on eggshells with that guy, and I KNOW it because I was with him.
I escaped, and I’m glad that I did, that I was strong enough to walk away when I did, early on in the relationship.
~Mandelyn Reese
The Street Angel
Written 11/3/2023
