Free To Be Happy, That's What I Gave Them

My son is such an angel. When I talk to him, I realize that I did everything just right. He is thoughtful of other people’s feelings, and he has such compassion that he collected shoes and coats for the prisoners in a small town jail. He is in school and works at as a dispatcher for the local law enforcement, EMT, and Fire agencies. He tells me such sad stories, stories about domestic abuse, children calling in with such sad stories, and it really breaks his heart. He told me he never understood why I didn’t stay with their father, but then he said that he knows now why I did it and is thankful that he wasn’t raised like those little kids who call in crying, telling him their dad is drunk and is beating up their mom or their older brother or sister. He says they, the children, whisper into the phone, and he talks to them until the cops arrive, and sometimes the cops have a hard time getting the child to release the phone. He knows that his father was abusive, not something I told him when he was a child, but years later his father made a statement that he might have been a little rough on me. He was defending what he thought I had already told the kids about. So, both of my children asked, and I decided to tell them the truth. I wanted to tell them what a fucktard their father was, how he was mean, a drunk, and cruel, and how his anger put me in the hospital months before my son was born, how he forgot to pick me up after my son was born, and he didn’t even show up during the labor and delivery. But, I didn’t, instead, I said that he had problems, and the alcohol turned him into a man without control, and that’s why I left him. I didn’t elaborate, didn’t have to, my kids are grown up, nearly thirty and they know me well enough to know what I didn’t say. My children never had to call 911 and I wonder, and I know but I wonder why women do that, why do they stay with a man who terrorizes their children, forget what the men are doing to the women, but look what it does to the kids. I left when I saw my daughter, just one-year- old, trying to scream and nothing coming out as her father shoved me against the wall. My crime, the food was cold. That night, I packed our things, the next day, while he was at work, we left and I filed for divorce that same day. No looking back, no what if he would have changed, none of that. I emancipated my children before they became a slave to his violence.