Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi, everyone, this is Dawn Klem, and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and Monarchs.
[00:00:08] For those of you who have known me all my life, this story may shock you.
[00:00:16] For those of you that have known me in the second half of my life, this is definitely going to shock you.
[00:00:24] It's not a story I really like to talk about that much.
[00:00:30] There are people that knew about the story and did not help me. And there was one good friend who always stuck by me during these troubled times, and that was my friend Liz.
[00:00:51] So the story really is about my ex husband, and I don't really like to tell the story, but since I've talked about him in my podcast and he is someone who was in my life for 10 years, I really need to talk about how and why our relationship ended.
[00:01:18] Because getting a divorce really was never in my purview. It's not something that I ever thought would happen.
[00:01:27] So we did a lot of things. He taught me so much in my life, and for that I am grateful.
[00:01:35] I wouldn't have known how to backpack, how to hike, how to go sailing.
[00:01:41] I lived in Iceland. I lived in Guam. We were in the Navy together.
[00:01:46] We went back to college together.
[00:01:49] So. So we did a lot of things together.
[00:01:52] But did we really get along? Not really.
[00:01:56] And he did many, many things that when I look back now, I think, why would I ever tolerate that?
[00:02:04] Well, I was living so far away from my parents. I was in San Diego. I went two years without even seeing my family.
[00:02:15] And I was growing up on my own without much guidance, really. Basically, that's what it is. I had the Navy. The Navy was overseeing a lot of what was going on, but I did not have the guidance that I really needed from my parents. I would call them, but they're not really much help that far away. They really weren't.
[00:02:42] And I was on my own. And I was struggling to figure out if I should just keep going and trying to make the marriage work.
[00:02:53] So we were in the Navy. We both went overseas. He went to Guam. I went to Iceland.
[00:03:01] When I got done with my tour of duty in the military, I joined him in Guam.
[00:03:08] And then after he got discharged, we went back to live in San Diego. Go again.
[00:03:15] And we were back there for about three, three, four years. We started back to college out there, community college we went to just to get all of our prerequisites out of the way. So that made a lot of sense.
[00:03:30] But during that time, there were a lot of unsettling things that happened, and it was not good.
[00:03:37] And finally, we decided, like, let's move back closer to our families. It would be good for us to be closer to home.
[00:03:45] So we moved back to Massachusetts, still quite a ways away from Michigan, where my family was, but closer to Vermont where his family was.
[00:03:59] And he. We both had a good friend that we had been in the military with, and he was living in Massachusetts, too. So there were going to be people there that we knew when we got there.
[00:04:12] It started out not so great. Right out of the gate, we really did not get along that well. And I felt like I had to put up with a lot of abuse.
[00:04:25] And it started really. It started in San Diego, and I just didn't know how to handle it.
[00:04:33] But in Massachusetts, it got worse, even worse.
[00:04:40] And I think I kept hanging in there with him because I thought, well, I'm part of the problem too.
[00:04:49] And I was part of the problem. We could not communicate well. I couldn't get the response from him that I was looking for.
[00:04:59] And so we had many, many fights. We went to therapy. We went to a lot of therapy.
[00:05:07] And it just wasn't getting us anywhere. It didn't seem like it was gonna work.
[00:05:16] So it was a typical Saturday.
[00:05:21] We had gone to the grocery store shopping, and we had.
[00:05:29] It was during a time before you had plastic ketchup bottles, plastic syrup bottles, plastic Miracle Whip bottles. Everything was in glass.
[00:05:41] And we probably had four or five bags of groceries. And we were in the car and we started to argue.
[00:05:49] We were actually arguing about his cousin. He had a really good female that he was close to, and he talked to her quite often.
[00:06:02] I think she was a good support for him. She really was a good support for him.
[00:06:08] She had known him through hard times.
[00:06:14] When he was nine years old, his mother had died of cancer, and he was the second oldest. There were five children altogether. The youngest one was 18 months.
[00:06:27] Their dad was a nurse. He had been in the Korean War.
[00:06:33] And so he was working at the VA hospital there in Vermont. And he was trying to raise these five kids by himself.
[00:06:42] And he told me his dad at one point, the town didn't think he could manage it.
[00:06:51] My ex husband had an older sister. She was 11 when her mom died.
[00:06:57] And so she was basically trying to go to school and raise the other four children, including this infant.
[00:07:06] The town kind of got together and they were like, he's got to give those children up for adoption. They just did not feel like he could manage to take care of these kids.
[00:07:21] But his dad felt very passionate about it, and he made up his mind that he was going to stick it out and parent these kids. And he went up against the town and the town saw that he loved those kids so much, they decided that they weren't going to push it any further.
[00:07:46] And I think people started helping him at that point. People started to pitch in.
[00:07:53] So as they say, it does take a village and they just happen to be in a great town where people started showing up and helping out.
[00:08:05] When my ex husband was 16 years old, his father got remarried to a woman. They were in their 40s then and she was a nurse as well, but she had never been married before and she was from New Jersey.
[00:08:24] And I would say she was kind of harsh. I would not say she was warm and fuzzy. I mean, if I think of a nurse, she's not somebody I would necessarily think of as being a bedside nurse or with patients. I could see her more in leadership roles because she really was not that interested.
[00:08:46] The, the two youngest she became closer to and she actually raised them. They were like 10 and 8 maybe, or 9 and 7.
[00:09:00] But the older ones did not like her at all. And it was going to be a big problem. It, it actually did develop into quite a bit of a problem.
[00:09:11] So these are all things that I was like trying to figure out on my own because I, the part of me, the compassionate part of me was trying to understand what it was like in that kind of upbringing and trying to give him empathy and encouragement and stand by him.
[00:09:37] But he just had periods of a violent temper that there was nothing I could actually do anything about.
[00:09:47] The one female cousin that he got along with, I started kind of feeling jealous about which when I look back on it, it's a little bit ridiculous, but understandable because he would talk to her more than he would talk to me.
[00:10:02] I felt kind of pushed out. And we already did have so many struggles, believe me, things that no one probably but me would have tolerated in their life.
[00:10:16] I mean, things like we got in an argument at a Padres baseball game, a San Diego Padres baseball game, and we were in Jack Murphy Stadium at that time.
[00:10:31] And he left me there at 10 o' clock at night.
[00:10:35] He left me, actually left me there. And it was during a time when there were no cell phones.
[00:10:46] There was no. I didn't have a phone, I didn't have a purse, I had no money on me.
[00:10:53] And so he left me there to walk home at night from the baseball game. It took me two hours to walk home. I was petrified.
[00:11:06] And when I got home, he wasn't even waiting up for me or anything. He had already gone to bed. He just figured, oh, she'll find her own way home.
[00:11:14] He did not care. Okay?
[00:11:18] Those kind of things should have been a clue to me that we were in deep trouble in this marriage. Because he really did not show me the kind of care and attention that you would like to see from your friends, your husband. I mean, my one good friend would be like, you gotta leave him. He's terrible. He is not somebody you should be staying with.
[00:11:48] You deserve so much more. And I kept saying, oh, you know, he had a rough beginning. I want to see if I can work this out, if I can show him that you really can love people and that you can get beyond all that. I never put myself first, which is ridiculous, but that it really is how I was. I really am have this kind of humanitarian mentality.
[00:12:14] Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not so good. And I just didn't think about myself.
[00:12:22] Another thing that would happen is we were. When we were going to college, we had to drive. We didn't go to the same classes at the same time, and he insisted that he have the car.
[00:12:35] So a lot of times I'm like riding my bike to college.
[00:12:42] I mean, he was just unbelievable. I would work the night shift. He would drive me to class with my bike, drop me off, take the car and leave. Want me to go to class and then ride my bike 17 miles home from class, which I did. But I don't know. I think I was falling asleep half the time. I don't know how I ended up even making it.
[00:13:08] So there were just so many things like that that I was tolerating and trying to work out. Trying. I really did love him.
[00:13:21] He had a lot of great points, too. But this dark side was really, really hard to navigate through.
[00:13:35] It got to the point where that was part of the reason why we decided to leave San Diego.
[00:13:43] We thought we needed a fresh start because a lot of things that had gone on and you didn't know if you were going to be able to get over the hump. Are we going to be able to work through this?
[00:13:56] Maybe we need a new environment and a fresh start.
[00:14:01] So it made sense to me that that would be something that we were going to do.
[00:14:09] So we packed up and we moved and get back there. We found an apartment.
[00:14:18] Everything was going okay, but we were struggling.
[00:14:25] It's the morning where we've gone grocery shopping and we. He had talked to his female cousin and I was over it.
[00:14:37] I started pushing him a little Bit verbally. Well, why. Why are you talking to her anyway? You know, you're married to me.
[00:14:45] Why aren't you telling me how you're feeling about things? I feel like you are more attracted to her than you are to me. Those were the kind of conversations we were having.
[00:14:57] And I definitely was pushing him. There is absolutely no doubt about it. I have to take my part in this.
[00:15:11] Well, by the time we got home to our apartment and we've hauled all those bags of groceries upstairs, he is now in a frenzy.
[00:15:20] And he takes each bag of groceries, and they're all in paper bags, and he slams them on the floor, okay?
[00:15:31] And so it's all those glass bottles, glass bottle of ketchup, glass bottle of Miracle Whip.
[00:15:42] And I. I am wrong about the maple syrup. We got Aunt Jemima, and it was in a plastic bottle. And the reason why I know that is because he proceeded to take the plastic bottle of syrup and he sprayed it all over the walls and the ceiling of the kitchen, so there was maple syrup just dripping down everywhere.
[00:16:12] And then he proceeded to grab me, and he pulled me into the living room. And we had an electric typewriter at that time. And he took the cord of the electric typewriter and he wrapped it around my neck.
[00:16:27] He put his hand over my mouth, and it went up over my nose, underneath my eyes. And he was quite a bit bigger than me, and he was screaming at me that he was going to kill me, basically. And I was absolutely petrified. I don't think I've been more afraid in my life.
[00:16:50] And I couldn't scream because my mouth was covered up and the. The cord around my neck was getting tighter.
[00:16:59] I'm like, oh, my God, I'm going to die today.
[00:17:02] I'm absolutely going to die today.
[00:17:07] And finally, I just stopped struggling. I didn't fight. I didn't do anything.
[00:17:12] And when that happened, he let up.
[00:17:16] He let up, took his hand off my mouth and unwrapped the cord from around my neck.
[00:17:24] And then he went in the back bedroom, and he's like, you're gonna clean up that mess.
[00:17:30] And that's what I did.
[00:17:32] I went to the kitchen, and I just started bagging everything up, throwing everything away, washing down the walls where all the maple syrup was.
[00:17:44] What a mess.
[00:17:46] It probably took me two or three hours.
[00:17:50] I didn't say one word to him for the rest of the night. I didn't talk to him at all.
[00:17:57] Zero.
[00:17:59] I said absolutely nothing.
[00:18:03] We got up in the morning, and I had, like, a black eye. It wasn't from him hitting me. It was more like a blood blister underneath my eye where he had held his hand over my mouth and no, so tight.
[00:18:17] And it had created a blood blister there. And I had, you know, marks all around my neck from where he had strangled me.
[00:18:27] So there were black and blue marks everywhere, all over my face. I will never, ever forget it, believe me.
[00:18:35] And he said to me, get dressed, you're going to work. I go, I'm not going to work looking like this. He goes, oh yeah you are. You're going to work.
[00:18:46] He takes me in the bathroom and he takes my makeup and he starts covering up all the black and blue marks. He goes, nobody will ever know. Nobody will ever know. I got everything covered up. You're gonna be fine.
[00:19:00] I'm go, I'm not going. He goes, you're going.
[00:19:03] That's how it is.
[00:19:05] We had one vehicle at the time and so I was completely dependent on him to drive me to work and pick me up from work. And we lived about 20 miles from Worcester. We live done the outskirts.
[00:19:19] So we would, we drove in there without me saying a word.
[00:19:26] At that time, I was working for three orthopedic surgeons.
[00:19:32] I had passed my LPN test and so I was able to work as a licensed practical nurse in an office practice.
[00:19:44] I had started taking prerequisites to go back and become a registered nurse.
[00:19:51] So there I was, I walk in there, they all knew right away, they all knew, but I didn't say a word.
[00:20:01] I just got through the day. I worked with all three of the surgeons. I brought the patients back, I did whatever anybody needed. I made it through that day. But I don't know how I made it through that day.
[00:20:15] I really had no idea. I was ashamed, I was embarrassed, I was scared.
[00:20:24] There were so many emotions running through my mind that whole entire day.
[00:20:31] And I just didn't know if I was going to be able to.
[00:20:36] To fake it, fake it till you make it. And that's exactly what I did.
[00:20:43] So finally the end of the day comes. I worked from 8 to 4:30 and I'm, you know, getting my desk and everything all straightened up.
[00:20:53] And one of the orthopedic surgeons said, hey, you have a minute? I'd like to give you a shout in my office.
[00:21:01] And I said, sure.
[00:21:03] So I go in and I sit down. His name was Dr. Canfield. I will never forget him and I will never forget that day.
[00:21:12] He said, take a seat, Don, I just want to talk to you for a minute. I said, okay.
[00:21:19] He said, I know you don't want to talk about what went on, but all of us can see what went on between you and your husband.
[00:21:28] We see how he comes here every day and waits in the car that he never comes in. He never talks to anybody. He's not friendly. He's not nice. We see it.
[00:21:42] And now you came to work looking like this today, and we saw that, too.
[00:21:48] I want you to know that I am here for you, and so is everybody else in here.
[00:21:57] If you need anything at any time, I want you to call me.
[00:22:05] And he gave me his business card with his home phone number on it.
[00:22:10] He says, nobody needs to live a life like this.
[00:22:16] Nobody.
[00:22:19] He says, you're free to go home now, but be careful.
[00:22:26] I never said a word in there.
[00:22:29] I never said a word. I think I just shook my head yes.
[00:22:33] I was just so grateful and so taken aback and still so scared because somebody knew. Somebody knew, and somebody said something, and what was I gonna do about it now?
[00:22:51] So I got in the car, we drove back home in complete silence, and we didn't talk.
[00:22:58] A couple days later, I went to see our good friend's wife, and I tried to talk to her about it. She didn't want to hear a word about it. She didn't believe me. She didn't like me. She was on his side. I was the problem.
[00:23:17] And I remember thinking to myself, how much longer are you going to take this, Dawn? How much longer?
[00:23:26] Well, I ended up getting through my prerequisites.
[00:23:32] We left that apartment, we moved into town, and I got myself through nursing school.
[00:23:40] I got my associate degree in nursing.
[00:23:44] I passed my boards.
[00:23:49] So it was probably almost two years after that incident.
[00:23:55] And that was when we moved to Cape Cod.
[00:24:00] And down there, I was surrounded by a group of strong women.
[00:24:08] Those women saved my life.
[00:24:11] And they saw what he was doing to me. They saw it, and they finally convinced me to leave him.
[00:24:23] Between them and my good friend from the Navy who was living in Connecticut, I finally got the guts to leave him.
[00:24:34] But can you believe I stayed there with him for two years after that incident?
[00:24:43] And I was. I was petrified.
[00:24:47] I just was.
[00:24:50] So I'm telling this story because most people would never believe that I'm the type of person that would tolerate violence like that.
[00:25:04] But when you're isolated and you're alone and you don't feel like you have any recourse, that's when people take a lot of abuse.
[00:25:15] So I don't hesitate to reach out to someone. Now when I feel like they're in need.
[00:25:25] I want to pay back what my friends did for me.
[00:25:35] And now you know why. We only lasted 10 years, thankfully.
[00:25:44] Thank you for listening to my story today.
[00:25:47] I hope it definitely impacts people out there that need to hear this message and that they know you can get out and you can move forward.
[00:26:02] I mean, after that marriage, I got my bachelor's degree. I got my master's degree. I adopted two children. I had a successful nursing career, and most importantly, I've been married to my second husband for over 30 years.
[00:26:19] Happily, happily married.
[00:26:23] Nothing like the first one.
[00:26:26] Thank God for that.
[00:26:31] You don't have to stay stuck.
[00:26:35] You can move forward.
[00:26:41] Until the next time.
