Welcome to the inaugural post for Dads Starting Over, a Substack about my experiences escaping a physically abusive 15-year marriage, gaining full custody of my then six-year-old son, and building a life together in a sleepy little beach town near Santa Cruz, California.
It was around 2 PM on a Monday in August of 2001 when my wife left home for her daily walk to a neighborhood bar where she drank and hung out for 12 hours on most weekdays.
Even though it was the definition of dysfunctional, I looked forward to her daily absence; it represented a period of relative peace and quiet punctuated only by the dialogue with my young son or that of Blues Clues or The Big Comfy Couch on PBS.
Approximately 15 minutes after she left, there was a knock of low to medium volume on the front door of the two story split-level townhome we rented in the Berryesa area of Northern San Jose, California.
I looked through the peephole and recognized him immediately as one of the officers who’d responded to our home on multiple occasions in response to calls about the usual mix of violence against me, screaming, or breaking glass. He was a black man with a chevron of stripes on his sleeves and a kind demeanor who was about ten years older than me — I was 44 at the time.
We sat in the living room, a few carpeted steps down from the entryway. ‘Little J,’ my youngest son, was barely six years old and he was playing with his toy kitchen pretending to make us coffee.
The sergeant smiled at him, then looked directly at me as a sober expression washed over his face. He then said something I still remember more than two decades later:
“Baz, you’re going to die here… unless you leave.”
He’d seen this all too common domestic situation play out accordingly numerous times in his career, and urged me to leave with my little boy as soon as possible, that day if I could.
“You’ll be dead, and that cute little boy will wind up in the system, and you don’t want that. I know you feel trapped, and it must feel like there’s no way out, but his life and future depends on what you do next.”
He even offered to take us someplace safe.
You’d think that would’ve been enough — a police sergeant surreptitiously holding a serious conversation with you in your home, on his own time, telling you that staying an additional day could cost you your life, and offering you a ride away from the hell you experienced every single day for over a decade.
Even though I understood the seriousness of his words, still I stayed.
I stayed another month and lived to regret it.
Those were difficult sentences to write
However, if this account is going to mean anything to anyone other than me, I need to be completely transparent about what led up to a new start for my small son and me, including the parts that don’t make me look particularly brave.
Fifteen years is a long time to practice keeping the peace. You learn to anticipate moods.
You swallow words before they become arguments, and organize your day around what might ignite the next firestorm.
Eventually, you doubt that there’s any way out of this mind-numbing existence. You’re too busy just trying to get through another day unscathed.
I was in medical school early in our marriage, and even then injuries played a recurring role in my daily life forcing me on one occasion into a position whereby I begged permission from the Academic Dean to take a missed final exam in second year pharmacology following two broken ribs and a night in the ER. Fortunately, the Dean could see I’d been battered and recognized the guarded way I was moving.
Over the 15 years we were together, I had two broken ribs, lacerations to my forearms, a dislocated TMJ, several facial contusions, and a concussion. There were hundreds of minor injuries, that didn’t require medical attention.
Though I consistently resisted and retreated from her rage-filled assaults and physical battering, I returned an attack only once at the end of our fifteen year marriage. I had a shoe in my hand when she started hitting me from behind as I descended the stairs, and as I spun around to avoid the attack I used the shoe to strike back. Once.
150 to 1
That was the final score in boxing terms. She clearly prevailed because I detested all forms of violence including hateful speech and physical contact. I never wanted the kids to witness any domestic violence, but it was impossible to prevent. She simply couldn’t compartmentalize her anger that often turned to rage in a matter of seconds.
Yet I kept finding ways to explain away what was happening, continually listing in my head and reviewing the reasons why I couldn’t leave.
‘Big J’ (her son from a previous marriage who was 10 years older than his younger brother) and Little J (our shared son) needed the buffer zone I represented in our family dynamic. I was the rational one, the parent with an even temper, and the lone protector when things got bad.
Big J was soon to start his senior year in high school; I couldn’t do that to him.
Where would I go if not a homeless shelter? I was too embarrassed to share even with my family the details of what I was experiencing.
The list was endless.
Though I was trained to recognize pain and problems in others, I struggled to acknowledge the growing danger present in my own family that was ticking like a bomb set to explode at any moment, threatening to cause casualties and collateral damage.
And there was our son, the one link that held me back. I knew taking him away from his mother was always a possibility, but it had seemed distant at best - something I’d never pictured doing and hoped I’d never have to do.
Since he was only six, I had difficulty separating the ideas of leaving her and how he’d be affected. She never lashed out at the kids nor harmed them physically.
Then there was the question of where we would go. What would happen with custody? How could I protect him through whatever came next? So many questions that it made my head swim.
It was easier to forget about it all than designing and executing a plan to leave. Fear and uncertainty kept me in that house even after the sergeant had told me plainly what he saw in my future.