I got tired in a way that sleep couldn't fix.
Tired of telling him no. Tired of seeing him cry. Tired of being the one who always had to be strong, for myself, for my kids. Tired of saying no when all they wanted was a hug from their dad.
So I let him back in.
The house we were living in was too big for us. Five bedrooms, two and a half baths. It echoed when we walked through it. We couldn't afford it. We barely scraped by. So we let my older cousin Evan move in. He was on my dad's side. He needed a place to stay, and we needed help with the bills.
That January, I started school. ITT Tech. (Yes, the scam school. I didn't know that then.) I was doing well. Really well. I worked my ass off. My grades were solid. I had finally found something that felt like mine.
But we only had one vehicle, my van. John's truck had been repossessed. That was humiliating. The van broke down not long after, and we couldn't afford to fix it, so Evan drove me to school. An hour away. Every day.
Evan was supposed to be looking for work.
Instead, he spent his days on Plenty of Fish, scrolling, sexting, watching porn, chasing hookups like it was a full-time job. I don't want to call him a man whore, but… if the condom fits.
My sister Jane nicknamed him Gomer. It was a biblical joke. In the book of Hosea, God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute named Gomer. That was her way of calling Evan out, without saying it outright.
Still, for all his faults, Evan wasn't bad to live with. He wasn't super helpful, but when he did help, he actually did something. He cooked one out of every three meals. I cooked the other two. John? Did nothing. I mean that literally. I think he changed five diapers in our entire marriage. Maybe.
He never bathed the kids. If I asked him to put them to bed, he'd just plop them into bed fully clothed, unchanged, and walk away like that counted.
For a few hours a night, while we played Munchkin and talked trash, I felt like someone again.
And the weirdest part?
John wouldn't touch me in front of my cousin. Wouldn't scream. Wouldn't lay a hand on me. Not when someone else was in the house. It was the safest I'd felt in years. Like his anger didn't know how to perform for an audience.
But safety, for me, never lasted long.
That November, the election happened. Evan was devastated by the results. He spiraled. He had a breakdown. And looking back, I can see it now, John escalated the whole thing on purpose.
They fought. Not with words. With fists.
Evan was bigger, taller, heavier. But John had the training. He took Evan down and choked him out.
I remember standing there, frozen, while Evan's face turned red and then terrifyingly still.
His legs kicked once. Then nothing. I didn't breathe until I heard him cough.
He left the next day.
And just like that, the little bit of protection I had?
Gone.
The fighting got worse.
Not that it was ever great, but this? This was something new. Something deeper. Louder. Meaner.
Screaming, every day. Him grabbing my arms. Shoving me down. Standing over me, fist raised, jaw clenched, shouting inches from my face while I was still on the ground.
And still, I stayed.
Because we were broke. So broke.
But like I've already told you, that was my fault. Or so he said.
I applied at the grocery store three blocks from our house. It was close enough to walk. That December, I dropped out of school. A full year of hard work, flushed. The one thing I was proud of. Gone.
I had been so proud of those grades. I had worked so hard.
But school didn't pay the bills. So I started working. Whenever I could. Random hours. Overnight shifts. Early mornings. Late nights. I did whatever they needed. Whatever we needed. I didn't have a choice.
Clifford, my cousin, worked there, too. One night, around 2 a.m., I got a call from him.
"You need to be here," he said. "You're on the schedule."
"No, I'm not," I told him. "I printed mine out. I'm not on tonight."
"They handwrote you in," he said.
So I got up. I got dressed. And I walked to work in the dark, half-asleep and still sore from the last fight.
And the entire time? John stayed home. Did nothing.
My sister Jane was going to the local community college three blocks away. In between her early morning and mid-morning classes, she had an hour break. You know what she did with it?
She came to my house.
She got my kids dressed. Fed them. Every morning. Normally peanut butter and jelly, because that's all we had. We didn't have food. Not really. We were barely scraping by.
She told me later it broke her heart, walking into my house at 10 a.m. and finding my babies in wet, sagging diapers from the night before. Still in the same clothes. My daughter red and sore from sitting in her own mess. My son curled up on the couch.
My house smelled like piss, shit, and rot. like spoiled milk and something dead under the couch.
And John? Asleep.
Not exhausted. Not sick. Just… asleep.
He'd been up all night playing video games.
There was one day I got home and found them like that myself. Still in their diapers from the night before. Still unchanged. Still unbathed.
They were eating Cheerios off the floor.
They were eating Cheerios off the floor. He had poured them there, like dog food.
"I fed them," he said, shrugging. "They had food."
Like that made it okay. Like that made it enough.
I was shaking. This wasn't laziness. It was neglect. Abuse, dressed up as indifference. Like setting food on the ground and calling it parenting.
My daughter kept getting diaper rashes. UTIs. Crying when I wiped her. Crying when I picked her up. She didn't just have red skin. She had blisters. From her skin peeling.
My son has always been small. But back then? He was underweight. He looked… hollow. He looked like I felt.
And I kept walking to work.
And I kept walking home.
And I kept hoping that maybe, just maybe, tomorrow would be better.
But it never was.