I met Scott in my living room, he just walked in my door and I looked at him and knew that was it I had found him. I worked with his sister, she had become a good friend and I had heard her tell stories of her brother and how he went to jail for hitting his ex wife but the way she told it, made it seem as though it was her fault and that he was protecting himself. I remember vividly her telling how she hit him over the head with a beer bottle and he was bleeding yet he went to jail. I wish knowing now I would have said yeah well what did he do to her first.

The relationship started out pretty good, we instantly hit it off and became joined at the hip so to speak.

He made me laugh, he made me happy and everything was great.. Oh sure he would say that he wasnt ready to get serious or that there were things about me he didnt like so we could never get serious but we did get serious..Why I didnt dump him then I will never know there were so many red flags, so many warnings of what was to come. The first being his gambling problem. He broke down to me and told me he had a problem and I told him we would work through it together, that it would be OK. I then spent the next 4 years wondering if he was coming home from work or losing all the money in the casinos. That is the only time he ever really showed me any remorse, told me he was sorry when he had been gone at the casino for 24 hours and lost the house payment. Otherwise things were great. He had 2 children from his marriage that I knew about from the start but they were never a factor at first because his exwife had taken off and hid and he hadnt seen his kids in almost 2 years. Things kinda of progressed he lost his temper the first time in a arguement and he threw a industrial size fan across the room where it landed just inches from me. I was horrified but explained it away as maybe I had deserved it. He began calling me nasty names, and putting me down, he would start saying things that would humiliate me in person but I was confused and trying to figure out what I had done so wrong and what I could do to make it better. His children had come back into our lives which was a major adjustment for me. Until then the exwife was a horrible woman who made my life miserable as I tried to convince him i wasnt her and the kids well I never even got a chance.. The first time they spent the weekend my children and I were made to feel like outsiders in our own home when he was there. He actually went to work and left me with these two little kids whom I had never seen before or talked to before. I had never been so uncomfortable but hey he took me and my kids right?? During all this time I was making all the money, I was paying the bills, he was in and out of jobs and when he did get a check he would lose it at the casinos. Then he took the check card and went out and cleaned out the account on his sons birthday but when my sons birthday came around he hardly got anything. The level of his opression was reaching new levels. I could watch his kids but he wouldnt dare watch mine, they were MY kids not HIS kids even though they called him Daddy and he liked that. I couldnt work overtime because he would have to watch the kids but yet we needed the money so badly because he gambled it all away. I couldnt leave town to do training and advance my career because I had children but he could leave his kids with me and take off to the casino for DAYS. Our relationship was about over, I was constantly a mess I had gained weight, was getting depressed but still had no clue that I was in a abusive relationship verbally and emotionally. He had gotten fired from his job AGAIN and proposed we move to Texas. I was sooo leary about moving and I think he sensed this but he explained to me that there were no casinos in Texas and that everything would be great. So we all up and moved to Texas and honestly things were good for awhile.. OK 2 months then it went downhill again. Instead of gambling he was drinking. He would yell at me all the time to the point where my brand new neighbors downstairs would corner me in the parking lot to make sure I was OK and that her husband didnt need to come up and set him straight. I was humiliated.

Of course to the family and friends we were the perfect couple.. The only people who knew different were my downstairs neighbors who could hear him call me everything from b!t%ch to Lazy f^*k!*g c^%# wh*%e.

Once again I kept the steady job with the income while he skipped from job to job to job. After numerous trips to Omaha in a short period of time (due to a death in the family, picking his kids up for spring break and taking them back) His ex wife called us and asked that we please take his son to live with us. She could not handle him as he was a behavior problem and that he didnt seem to have those issues with him. I truely believe she was convinced that Scott had changed and grown up but once Brandon came to live with us is when things really hit the fan. This child was a handful thats for sure but he held him to a level that NO child could reach, he called him names, he yelled all the time, he made the kids sit at the kitchen table for HOURS not one or two five or six hours writing spelling words over and over and over. If I stepped in it was a automatic He's my son and you protect your son and it was on with the two of us. He kept telling me he was going to leave me and find a real woman that wasnt so lazy (as if) and that would let him disapline his son the way he saw fit. When his daughter came down for the summer it got really bad because he would not allow me to have my children in Daycare, his daughter could watch them and we would pay her in school clothes. I had major issues with this for one she was only 10 years old. I cant even begin to tell you what a nightmare this was. Once when he was home in front of all the kids he wanted money for the house we were buying out in the country (big enough to hold us all because the apartment we were in was 900 sq feet with 5 people in it) because I had told him I was tired of him drinking and doing nothing all day and he threw me across the room and onto the bed. He held me down with my purse under my head with the money in it mind you and he put his hand to my throat and held me while sitting on me.. He ripped my purse and my shirt.. All the kids were screaming in terror. Of course after I got the baby I Love you and it will never happen again and I dont know what got into me I will quit drinking blah blah.. From there we moved to Mabank TX in the country my dream home and yet we were miserable he would get angry and shove his son on the floor and kick him and throw him outside in his underware.. I would step in a litterally throw myself over that childs body and get picked up and thrown to the side. Yes it hurt but it saved that little boy.

I know I should have left but honestly at that time it never crossed my mind to leave..If I could just make the kids behave, If I could keep the house clean enough, get all the bills paid and walk on enough eggshells he was wonderful. We moved yet again to Arlington Texas where it went to hell. I was working from home now because I was not allowed to take the kids to daycare, so I had 3 boys 2 with ADHD/Bi polar his son was not allowed on medications because it was a "discipline problem" and I was trying to work. I had no escape

I was lazy because the house couldnt stay clean and yet I was in the office working and the kids were running wild. I was getting in trouble with my job, I was in trouble with him and I couldnt cope. I litterally broke down. I couldnt get out of bed anymore. What did it matter I was fat, I had comfort ate myself to the point I had gained 60 pounds, I was ugly I couldnt do anything right. My kids didnt listen to me, they were told they didnt have to, and I couldnt do anything without getting putdown called a c&^t or humiliated by the man who claimed to love me. The boys were in baseball, and one day after the boys game I put BBQ ribs in the oven and told him I had to run upstairs it was time for me to work and that he would need to put in the baked potatoes and cook the brocolli. 2 hours later I could hear the kids downstairs going NUTS. I went downstairs to find him gone and the kids running the house and the neighborhood. There were no potatoes made, no brocolli cooked but half the ribs were gone. I asked the kids if they had eaten and they said no. So I made them a plate of just ribs because I am on a unoffical break from work and went looking for Scott. He had walked up to his buddys house who thought I was the root of all evil and had fed them the ribs prior to feeding his own children and he was drunk as a skunk. I was livid and I told him so. What I got for my efforts was thrown against a wall then held off the ground by my throat. He then dragged me across the living room floor by my hair and pulled his hand back to punch me in my face.. I remember screaming call the police as I looked at my children cowering in the corner screaming and as my oldest son ran for the phone his son did a dance in front of him so he couldnt call. I will never forget that but it did stop him from punching me. What ensued after that was complete shock from him bawling that he was sorry to me being the c^%t from hell that p!$$ed him off. The next morning he woke me up after breaking the bedroom door down that I had locked to keep him out being all sweet and could i take him to work. The whole way there I heard about how I was a b!*th, and if I wouldnt make him mad it wouldnt happen. I was sick I left 2 weeks later but was a total wreck. I went back to Texas after numerous visits by him to Omaha where I had left to. I wasnt in Texas 2 weeks before I regretted going back.. In the meantime while I was gone his sons mother had talked to me and found out what was going on and she went to Texas and took him right out of school. Scott has not seen them since. Of course that was my fault and he blamed me and never let it go. After a arguement that left me with a broken elbow, hand bruises on my throat, a bruised and swollen vocal cord and a complete bald spot where he ripped my hair out I went to the shelter and had pictures taken of my injuries but I didnt press charges. I was terrified, he worked for the airlines, he would lose his job and he threatened to kill me should I threaten his job. Like a idiot I let him back and we continued on but I started planning, I got stronger, started leaning on my online support system like it was the life that sustained me and got stronger and wiser but I couldnt get that other foot out the door. The emotional/verbal assults continued they were constant and brutal the physical threat ever looming because he would now shove me or break open doors to get where I was hiding. He forced my kids to stand in the corner for 3 hours because I refused to bend over his knees and take a spanking. When I finally did for my kids sake he called them out of the corner and pulled my pants down and told them to spank me to teach me a lesson. I had had it, I was humiliated, stuck in Texas, had burned my bridges in Omaha by going and then leaving after 5 weeks. I didnt know what to do. I had reached a breaking point I was angry I told him to go, he wouldnt. I told him I hated him, called him every name in the book and looked him in the eyes and told him what he was and that I knew and he couldnt hurt me anymore. I just need to get to the end of the school year is what I kept telling myself because I needed them to have stability and didnt want to keep moving them. It didnt happen. We got into a arguement and he had my 4 year old in the corner. Perfect Military Attention he had to stand in and when he fidgeted he picked up a size 10 Reebok and threw it at his head so hard it bounced off his head and dented the door. I lost it.. I verbally assulted him this way to sunday told him I hated him, wouldnt spend another night with him grabbed my kids and walked across the street to the firestation. They assisted in getting us to the Domestic Violence Shelter. I stayed there for a week before I was able to get the funds together to get what I could grab and get to the shelter in Omaha. I spent 37 days in the domestic violence shelters between here and in Texas but was forced to leave the shelters a week before I could get into my apartment because he had found me at the shelter. He works for the airlines so access to Omaha is not hard for him at all just a matter of 7.00 and 1 1/2 hours. I was numb, I was mad, I was angry and so I ignored his emails for awhile, I couldnt stand him I hated him, but as usual I began to doubt myself, I began to think if I had done something different, what could I have changed, maybe if.. this of course led to contact with him. He had been in Omaha numerous times and there was nothing I could do. I would see him parked at the grocery store but its not illigal for him to be here I was told. He started to contact me via instant message telling me how he loved me but that it was over he didnt want me, yet he wouldnt leave me be. He would tell me how he had slept with other women and how I was worthless to him but that the sex was great and could we still have sex. He was pushing my buttons, my need for him to want me, to need me the triggers he had placed in me so well over the course of the last 5 years and I caved and allowed him to come and see me in May. He wasnt in town for 3 hours before I regretted it. Just the sight of him made my physically ill and of course we slept together right away. Then he started telling me about his escapades and how I was worthless and nothing but casual sex and yet could he stay the weekend, and trying to get my kids to call him daddy and playing wonderdad. He was hot and cold hot and cold and I was so confused. He knew I was talking to other people and going on with my life so he would make cracks just to hurt me until finally I had had enough and got in the car and drove him to the airport. He had made a crack about the previous week that he had gone to the music festival in memphis and made sure to leave me "by accident" the disposable camera and his beale street music festival t shirt. I drove him to the airport and told him to kiss me like he would never see me again. He was planning on coming up to see me the next week for my birthday but once he kissed me I told him not to. He got on the plane and I didnt even cry, I was just numb again but full of resolve. I hated him. I still hate him. I have cut contact with him completely and only when I did that could I truely begin to live again. I know that he is still there, still watching and looking for a in. He has been staying at his mothers house alot so I know he is in town and he destroyed my car by dumping corn syrup and sugar cubes in the oil so that I would know he was still there according to his sister. I wont let him break me, I am happy, I have made new friends and I am healing one day at a time, one second at a time. He still emails, he still sends letters but I dont read them anymore I just delete them with the hopes he will get it. I have dedicated a part of my life to domestic violence awareness and education and am working on writing a book as well as plan to speak to high school girls. I know this is a book in itself but you cant know how many horrors are left out, how many incidents I cant let my mind wander too, but please know that you can get out, you can suceed and you can be happy.. I am a wonderful person, I am a worthwhile person and I am a treasure some lucky man will be happy to have. He is a sick man who will kill somebody someday. My heart breaks for her and her children if she has any but it will not be me nor my children and that is something to celebrate.