The wire on his glasses broke, and the lens fell out. I panicked, lashing out and hitting him in the face. Once he pushed me against the wall and pinned me. He would back me into corners while he yelled at me, and I felt so helpless. I just don’t know.”īy then we were arguing more, and I was beginning to feel afraid of him.
What are you crying about?” I would only cry more, then, and say, “I don’t know why I’m crying. Sometimes I would lie in bed and cry for no reason at all, and he would stand in the door and scream at me, “Quit crying. Sometimes I cried when he said no, and he would yell at me, “Quit crying. The distance between us was growing, and I was lonelier in that marriage than I had ever been before. I always asked if Caleb wanted to go with me, and he almost always said no.
I knew that exercise was important, so I would put Reed in the jogging stroller and jog or walk around our neighborhood. I did everything that I could to find more energy. As the summer turned to autumn, the sunlight grew heavier and heavier. Our son Reed continued to be a joy, but beyond that, I felt so little. The heaviness lifted, and sunlight glittered on the water.īy then, the heaviness had become a part of my body. While I was on that bike, I felt a freedom that I didn’t feel at home. That bike ride along the calm Boise River was the highlight of my days. I rode my bike through residential neighborhoods to a nearby river trail where I continued the three miles to campus. It was the kind of house where a family could be happy.īut we were in a different part of town from our friends, and I grew lonely. It was a clean little house on a tidy street in an orderly neighborhood with a large fenced yard and a garden. “And we can get married? I don’t want my child to be raised without married parents.”ġ6 MONTHS LATER: "LONELIER THAN I'D EVER BEEN BEFORE" He looked at me for a long time and then said, “Kelly, I think that if you have an abortion, our relationship won’t survive that. “Let’s get married,” he said, smoothing his hand over his head. “Let’s have an abortion,” I whispered, pulling my knees into my chest. He crawled into bed with me, his eyes crushed and vulnerable. Caleb was out fishing with a friend, but he came as soon as he got my message. I curled up in my bed and wept the entire day. I went to work in the morning but left crying an hour later. Only two weeks after the proposal, the test came back with two blue stripes. “Okay,” I blurted back, “but I’m not having four kids. He wanted to move back home to West Virginia. I looked into his wide blue eyes and remembered lying on that beige couch while he played his guitar and sang “Pale Blue Eyes.” Our relationship hadn’t been idyllic or blissful, but in the moment after he had declared he wanted to marry me, all I could remember were the blissful parts. He called almost immediately, and then showed up at my apartment that evening, his face and posture apologetic. That morning I strode through the kitchen - past the assistant manager who was making curried sweet potato soup over the large gas range - stood before the espresso machine, turned the machine on to make a latte, and stopped. Children were not a part of our collective plan.
The Flicks was an indie movie house, and I worked there with artsy types who had lines of poetry tattooed on their forearms, dyed hair, and Converse sneakers. The day the test came back with two blue stripes, I put on my jeans and The Flicks T-shirt - the one with Alfred Hitchcock on the back - and drove to work. THE BEGINNING: "CHILDREN WERE NOT PART OF OUR PLAN" But after the birth of their son, Reed, Caleb revealed a violent and dangerous dark side that, in addition to a lingering depression, was difficult for Kelly to grapple with - until a perceptive therapist helped her understand what was really going on in her own home. Here, Kelly describes how she found herself committing to Caleb - a man she thought was "funny, warm, and supportive" at first. The following is an exclusive excerpt of Goodbye, Sweet Girl: A Story of Domestic Violence and Survival, a new memoir by Kelly Sundberg (available June 5).