Dear Robin and Kayla,
As I sit here today with tears streaming down my face and uncontrollable sobs echoing from my chest, as I hold onto my baby girl and mascara stained tears pool on her little bare back, I am reminded of the hell we endured. I am reminded that I am holding this baby, this beautiful, wonderful child who her father does not want. This innocent little girl who doesn’t know why mommy is crying, doesn’t know why the mail made her so upset, but knows that her mommy is hurting and wants it to stop. The words “don’t be sad Momma” crack through my heart as I am shaking and holding this perfect little creation of GOD who has people all around her that love her, but she doesn’t have the one thing every little girl needs…her Daddy.
I am writing you today to tell you the truth, to tell you my truth, to tell you what I know our Adam has not told you. From the packages and cards you have sent him, which got forwarded to me here in New York and the pictures you have posted to your facebooks I do believe you are good people, and I do believe he has completely lied to you about what really happened, and why he no longer has a family.
Adam has abused me mentally and physically for the last four years of our marriage, and the final thing that ended our marriage and broke our family apart was an affair. He had an affair with a woman named Bethany, whom he met on a trip to New Mexico, I’m sure much like the way he met you Kayla. I’m going to start at the beginning, I don’t think you could possibly understand the way I feel about this situation, I feel it is my duty to tell you the truth, you can take it for whatever it is worth to you, but I want you to know that the “sweet boy” you all have come to love, is not the real Adam.
Adam and I met when we were in sixth grade, we spent summers playing man hunt, and weekends at the mall with our friends. For years we were just friends, then one day he kissed me on the chair lift and that was it, I fell in love. He went home that day, and packed his stuff up from his then girlfriend’s house, and moved it into my house. Little did I know this was a pattern for my Adam. Even then at sixteen years old he was already so much of the man he was going to be, and I had no idea. Then she had told me to stay away from him, so did the girl before her. He had pushed one through the wall, literally, he pushed her so hard he pushed her through the sheet rock. The other girl told me stories of his controlling behavior, his grabbing her, bruising her, beating her up verbally. I didn’t believe them, I didn’t want to believe them. Not MY Adam. He was so sweet and so kind, those eyes, that smile. He was so funny and romantic, there is no way he would or could ever hurt anyone. How wrong I was.
I should have known by the way he got angry and peeled out of the driveway, or the way he disrespected my father. I should have known when he grabbed me by the shoulders late one night and slammed me against the bed repeatedly that he knew exactly what he was doing, it wasn’t a night terror. That was the “truth” we allowed ourselves to believe, because neither of us could believe what he had just done. The proposal also should have been a warning sign, in that I didn’t get proposed to. I got the ring box thrown at my head…we had picked it out together, I just wanted to wear it to the big family Christmas party the next day. After all, I did get to wear it, I had a big sparkly diamond on my finger, and a bruise on my temple where Adam threw the box at me so hard it left a mark. Wedding planning was not very stressful, those months went by quickly. Adam was living with my parents because his mom kicked him out for getting violent with her, and I was living with my grandparents. I remember being so mad at her for kicking him out, I just thought she was being so ridiculous, there is no way MY Adam could ever hurt a fly. Again, how wrong I was.
April came and went, Adam was off to Texas for his training with the Air Force. In September I would follow. In that little apartment in Wichita Falls I would have a taste of what was to come, but I could have never imagined how bad it would really be. All he did was yell, cut me down. He even broke my lap top because he was upset that I was talking to someone he didn’t approve of. Slammed the screen shut so hard that the lap top bounced and hit me in the chin leaving a bruise, the screen still is shattered in a million pieces sitting in my closet at home. He begged for a child, now he says he wanted a baby because he knew he was loosing me. I remember testing every morning praying it wouldn’t be positive, GOD please just show me a sign. After three weeks of trying to make a baby I found out I was pregnant with our first child. I was in tears when I told Adam, they weren’t happy tears.
October came and he would go on to Little Rock where he had two weeks of training to do before coming home to New York for a month to visit. In December we would travel across country to Little Rock, our new home. It was on that trip the first time I really clearly remember feeling it…he was mad because he couldn’t find the room to turn the u-haul around on the narrow country roads, of course that was MY fault. He hit me that day, he screamed and said awful things to me and then he slapped me rite across the face. I hit him back, that wouldn’t be the last time I would feel his frustration that way, directed towards me in the form of a physical blow.
The first time I remember it getting really bad was in January after we had been there a couple months, at this point I was starting to show, I was almost four months pregnant with our child, who we didn’t yet know was a girl. I honestly cannot even remember why but he hit me, he took his steel toe boot and he kicked me. I ran into our bedroom in our little two bedroom apartment and locked the door. He chased me, I can remember being so scared. He eventually pushed hard enough that he broke the door open, he put a hole in the wall behind the door, again this was the first but wouldn’t be the last time this same exact scene would play out.
Adaline came that following June. You would think he would have been a happy proud father, he wasn’t. In the few days following our return home from the hospital I should have been resting from my c-section and enjoying family time, I wasn’t. I would try to sleep when the baby slept, but every time I closed my eyes he would be rite there shoving his penis in my face, literally since the day we got home from the hospital. The King didn’t seem to understand the pain and trama my body had just gone through, as usual, he could only think about him self. Adaline would cry at night, and I would beg him to just go get her from beside our bed, change her and bring her to me so I could feed her. Instead he screamed at me, and she screamed louder. Adam never woke up with that sweet baby, not once. The physical abuse stopped for a while then, but the verbal abuse only got worse.
Four months after we brought Adaline home from the hospital Adam would deploy to Afghanistan for the first time. He would come home a few months later, we would buy a home, the same home you stayed in this past week Kayla. We would make a home in Arkansas for our family. I thought it would fix everything, make Adam happy. It only made things worse. Now the neighbors couldn’t hear, the yelling became more frequent, the physical blows did too.
When you were in the living room did you happen to notice the crescent shaped hole towards the bottom of the wall near the hall to the garage? That is where Adam threw a frying pan at me and missed, he patched the wall, and we forgot it ever happened. How about the hole near the baseboard by the laundry room, that had also been patched? That is where he threw a full water jug at me as I was walking into our bedroom, he missed Adaline by just a few inches, and again put another hole in the wall, but he patched it up, so that means it didn’t happen rite? WRONG! I know my husband, so I know you spent a lot of time in our bed, did you notice the hole behind the door, how bout the fact that the door knob had to be turned up instead of down, or that the door wasn’t exactly the same as the other ones in the house? Those were all separate incidences, Adam kicked the door in with his steel toe boots late one night when he got back from work because he was mad I asked him to stop at the store, so when he came in from the garage he just stuck his boot rite through the door. I honestly thought he was going to kill me that night, I remember calling my grandmother in tears telling her we needed to come home. I called back the next day, made excuses for MY Adam, both to her and to myself, I just wanted it to be okay. The door has since been replaced, and the shattered one burned. Did you notice the shoe marks on the walls in the living room, one by the tv and there are two I believe in the hall way by the guest bathroom and other bedrooms? I’m sure he painted over those huh? Adam loved to throw his shoes at me, the one that hit the wall by the tv almost hit Adaline rite in the head as she was coming around the corner from playing in her room. I cannot tell you the amount of times I walked around in capris in the 110* weather because I had bruises on my butt and legs from him, that would stay blue for days, he would kiss them and apologize, eventually they would turn yellow and fade. We would forget what happened, what choice did we have. I forgave him and moved on, but then it would only be a matter of days before it happened again. Did you notice the scar under Adam’s left eye, your right if you’re looking at him? That is from when I scratched him to try to get him off of me. He was holding me up against the wall by my throat, my feet where off the ground, Adaline was playing in the warm laundry and watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse just a room away. He was mad because I had spent the morning garage sailing and out to breakfast with the neighbor Alysha instead of doing the laundry like he thought I should be. He went to work two days later and told them the new puppy had scratched him, god forbid anyone know the truth, that perfect Adam was a monster. I had locked Adaline and I in the bedroom, he shook the handle till it broke, and when he pushed it open he pushed it so hard that it went through the wall. On the other side of the wall all of my Willow Tree Angels fell and were shattered on the floor, there are still some that are haphazardly glued together on the little buffet next to the kitchen table. Life went on like this for a while, a good two years. Every day I would be verbally abused, and once every couple weeks it would get physical. Adam would spend a few days pretending he was father of the year, taking Addy to do things, bringing me home my favorite things from the store, offering to cook dinner, but then something would set him off and the cycle would begin again.
Another deployment came and went, when he returned he started flying more and more. In August he went to New Mexico for a week or two. That’s where he met Bethany, a young blonde girl who worked at a sand which shop and was going to college in a military town. He showed her pictures of Addy and told her we were separating, that we weren’t in love any more. All of this was news to me. It was a few weeks after he returned before I found out. He returned home from work one Friday night with a case of beer, and said he was leaving, he’d be back in time to put Adaline to bed with me. He didn’t make it. Around two am I went out looking for him, I didn’t find him. He had turned his phone off, I was worried sick, it was storming and all I could think was that he was hurt. He wasn’t. He stumbled through the door a few hours later, he had driven home drunk. I tucked him in on the bathroom floor so he wouldn’t get cold while he slept in his soaked clothes, covered in his own vomit. Eventually I put all the lies together and found out about her. He slept with her, it was after he returned from Florida that I found a text message that said “I miss your amazing sex” I wanted to die. I gave him everything, I put up with all of his abuse, I tried to love him and pray for him through every step, every fit of abuse…and he was cheating on me with some nineteen year old girl he met one day. I ended up talking to Bethany, she told me all the lies he told her over those weeks, he had her convinced that he loved her, promised he would never leave, that he would always be there for her. But he left her, he doesn’t even remember her name, or anything about her. She was nothing to him.
In the midst of all of this Adam’s anger grew worse and worse, he was caught in a lie and he didn’t like it. He was more abusive physically and mentally then ever before. He told me that week “I (him) want you and that baby out of MY (his) house by Friday” I didn’t take him seriously. We had talked about counseling, we were going to make it work, we would pray, we would go talk to someone. I would spend the next week in my chair by the window watching Adaline play, crying and praying, and waiting for the next shoe to drop. One day in a fit of rage it did, he took my cell phone and threw it over the fence onto the vacant lot next door. He then jumped the fence to get it, he wanted to delete all the emails I had from Bethany, all the text messages I had screen capped of theirs, the pictures and the conversations so that he wouldn’t get in trouble at work. I locked him out of the house and ran across the street to Alyshas house, where I knew the baby would be safe. I honestly had never felt so afraid or seen so much anger in his eyes as I did that morning. I made two phone calls. One to his first shirt, and one to my parents. It was time to go home, it wasn’t safe there anymore. He removed Adam from the home, but of course Adam came anyways. Looking back now I should have called his personal cell phone that he gave me and had him come get Adam like he said he would, but I didn’t.
This was supposed to be temporary. Adam was supposed to come get us at Christmas, and we would be a family again. He would text at first to check on “his girls” he would tell me he loved us, and couldn’t wait to see us, but never made time to skype, and didn’t pay his child support in the beginning either, even though my family paid his bills to help him out, he still couldn’t and wouldn’t give Adaline and I any of HIS money. We signed our Separation agreement in October, he gave me full physical, and medical custody, and waived all visitation rights if I would give up my right to spousal support. The only contact with Adaline he was guaranteed was a skype date every Saturday morning. In the 30 something weeks since we have been home Adam has only made that skype date a priority maybe 6-7 times, other then that Adaline has not seen or heard from her father. I’m sure that’s not the story you have heard. What kind of man would give up all of his rights in favor of money…my husband, my Adam. In the six months since we have been separated Adam has not attempted to come see Addy, now I know that is because he was too busy spending his money to come see you and pretend everything was right in the world, or to fly you to see him. To stay in our home, and pretend that he was a good man who’s family left him. That we simply fell out of love. That’s not the truth.
My daughter no longer has a father, and I no longer have a husband because one day he decided he didn’t want us. He abused me for years, he cheated, he lied. And now he has replaced us with you. I look at his smile in those photos and see how it doesn’t touch his eyes, and I know it never will. You will be no different then me, or the two before me. He will charm you, once you are his he will abuse you, tear you apart, and leave you for someone else. It is what he does. My family loved him, the other girls families loved him too, he was perfect…till one day he wasn’t. I want you to know the truth. I want you to know the pain I have lived through, and I want you to know what inevitably your future with My Adam looks like. Did you happen to know we aren’t even divorced, that his divorce papers got thrown out in Arkansas because he couldn’t pay his lawyer? You are sleeping with, and falling in love with a married man. A man who has a family who loves and wants him very a much. A man who threw his family away his wife of four years, and other half for seven, for some young blonde, and then moved on to you in a matter of weeks.
I feel as though I need to tell you this, whatever you choose to take from this is up to you. I pray you take it for the truth that it is, I hope you can see the pain in my story, and the heart break that I feel for my sweet little Addy who now will grow up with out a father, because HE GAVE HER UP. Because he can pretend to be good for only so long before the bad takes over and the truth comes out. Adam used to tell me after the abuse came and we would cry, that he “felt like he was living a lie” and he was, he was pretending to be good and he just wasn’t he just can’t. Did you not think it was odd that this week when you met all the people that you did at the party that none of them knew me or Addy? That’s because all of our family friends, and all of the relationships Adam had, they all cut him out. They all know what he did, they all know what he gave up, and the kind of woman he cheated on, they know he turned away from his family and gave up his child, and they want nothing to do with him anymore.
I know you think it will be different, and that you can’t imagine him being that monster I have described now, but I promise you, you can’t love the bad out of that broken boy, I tried and I failed. Not because of anything I did, but because he can’t love, because this life is all he knows, because this is exactly what his father did to his mother, including the abuse and cheating, and it’s exactly what he did to the three other mothers of his children. Adam has left Adaline and I with nothing, he moved rite on to you, and he doesn’t even care. He never loved us, not really, and he will never be any different with you. He is a danger to himself and everyone around him. Remember that every single day I sing you are my sunshine to my sweet baby, alone, because he father doesn’t WANT her. Is that the sweet thoughtful Adam you know? I didn’t think so.
All the Best,
Adam’s Wife
