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On Friday, 5th July 1984, Enrique picked me up from the bus station. Needless to say, I was not very happy. If Enrique did notice, he never said anything. That was nothing unusual, however, because Enrique never ever enquired about my welfare. It was his personal gratification that was always at the forefront of his mind. He did not have any interest in how anybody else might be feeling.

That evening I sent Enrique to the movies. He was quite happy to go out and did not appear to want to spend any time with me at all. I spent the evening writing letters to Patrick, but did not mail them. Instead, I tore them up and put them in the trash can in the kitchen.

The following day, which was a Saturday, Enrique and I went shopping, as usual. We carried on with the routine that had been a part of our life for such a long time. I was very depressed and unhappy, but if Enrique noticed, he did not say anything. Just as long as he was okay he was not bothered about anybody else.

On Sunday, I went to church, as usual. I could not handle the situation that I was in any longer because I was so very deeply unhappy.

I went home from church and told Enrique I wanted a separation. He seemed very agreeable to it and did not express any reservations whatsoever that he wanted to stay with me.

On the Monday morning when I reported for work, I received a phone call within minutes of walking through the door. It was Enrique.

“You had an affair!”, Enrique yelled at me over the telephone.

I was astonished. How did he know? I hadn’t told a soul.

“I want you to come home right now!”, Enrique demanded.

I was in a state of shock. I didn’t know what to do. I went and told my supervisor that I had to go. I can only assume that he could see from the look on my face and the tone of my voice that it was serious.

I drove the 25 miles home in a state of terror. I knew Enrique was going to kill me when I got home, but I had no other choice but to face him.

When I walked through the door, Enrique was holding Aaron. I wanted to take Aaron, but Enrique refused to let me have him.

Enrique’s exact words to me were, “I am going to take Aaron away from you and you will never see him again,” chillingly staring me in the eye.

Enrique then took the letters that I had written and thrown away. When I asked him how he got the letters, he told me that he rummaged through the trash to find them.

Enrique asked me how many times I slept with Patrick. I initially refused to tell him, but he hit me on the face with the full force of his fist several times until I relented and told him. The blows I sustained broke my nose and dislocated my jaw. As a result of his rage, I now have chronic sinusitis, which is a result of obstructed nasal airways, and I also have to wear a splint in my mouth every night to keep my jaw dislocating.

Enrique then asked me why I slept with Patrick.

The only answer I could come up with was, “Because he was nice to me.”

“Because he was nice to you,” Enrique sneered, “is that all it takes for you to sleep with someone?!?”

I did not know how to answer that question. I felt so ashamed. Enrique made me feel ashamed. Maybe if he had been nice to me in the first place I would not have felt the need to go outside of the marriage for a little love and affection.

Then, out of the blue, Enrique began hitting me with the full force of both of his fists. I cowered down to protect myself. He was hitting me on the head, back and neck, and I could feel myself losing consciousness. It was at that point that I knew he was going to kill me.

Before I lost consciousness I pushed Enrique back and made my way to the floor. I began crawling on my hands and knees and tried to make my way to the front door. I thought if I could get out of the house he would not kill me.

Just before I reached the front door, Enrique jumped on top of me and pushed me to the floor. When he saw all of my blood on my uniform and my face, he started screaming, “What have I done to you?”

Then before I knew it, he yelled, “We are having a divorce! You are coming with me to the courthouse and I am divorcing you!”

Before I knew it, Enrique drug me to the car, made me get in, and drove me to the local court house. I thought he was insane, but was in such a state of shock, said nothing about his manic behaviour. I just imagined him dragging me through the halls of the court house while he was yelling and screaming to anybody and everybody who would listen that he was divorcing me.

Somehow, a touch of reason entered Enrique’s enraged mind and he decided he was not going to divorce me that day. He calmed down and we then drove back home.

As soon as I got home I told Enrique that I had to go back to work. Enrique asked me to stay home and spend the day with him, but that was something that I simply could not do. I therefore drove back to work with a black eye, broken nose and dislocated jaw, all given to me by my husband. I didn’t even bother to change my shirt, which had my blood all over it. I must have looked a sight. Amazingly, my supervisor failed to send me to the hospital to have my injuries looked at, so I carried out working through the day.

That evening when I arrived home I told Enrique that he had to leave. I could not live with him anymore if he was going to beat me to the point of losing consciousness. It was at that point that I was fully conscious of the fact that my husband was capable of murder, and I was afraid that I would be his first victim.

Enrique then took it upon himself to ring his family and tell them what had happened. At their instigation, Enrique asked me to stay with him for the sake of Aaron. Enrique did not want to stay with me from his own initiative, but only because his family wanted him to. That said it all about my husband.

I told Enrique that, no, I did not want to stay with him, and cited two very good reasons. The first reason I gave for wanting to leave was because he had abandoned me to go on a Spanish holiday on my 23rd birthday when I was seven months pregnant. The second reason I gave was the fact that I did not get any support from him when Keith Holshouser and Herb Snedeker were harassing me . I had repressed the anger in me for such a long time and I simply could not forgive him anymore for all of the things he had done, or failed to do, to harm me.

That night I slept in the spare bedroom, which is where I slept until Enrique left. I could not trust him not to harm me anymore.

The following day we had to go to the travel office on Tyndall Air Force Base so Enrique could purchase a ticket to go back to Lawrence. We had lunch at Burger King, but Enrique refused to eat his dinner. All those years he had hurt me, mistreated me, and abused me just welled up inside of me. I could not contain my rage anymore.

In retrospect, I feel very guilty about all the pain I caused him, and even wrote him a letter to apologise for my behaviour. My only excuse is that he had abused me so badly for so many years that he had pushed me to the point where I was becoming just as nasty as he was. I am not proud of the anger that I showed him, but I am only a human being capable of error and when I am put in an intolerable situation I may not behave in the best fashion.

On the Thursday, which was the day that Enrique and Aaron left, Enrique lost his ticket. I began yelling and screaming at him that he had better damn well find that ticket because he was leaving no matter what.

On the car on the way to the airport I continued to yell and scream at Enrique. I told him what a lousy husband and lover he was. All of those years when I just accepted the humiliation and abuse welled up inside me. For the first time in years I told Enrique how I felt. I could not control the anger that I felt towards my husband any longer.

When we were at the airport I kissed my son goodbye. I was not able to keep him with me because I did not have day-care sorted and was not allowed to take him to Germany with me.

I was so brainwashed by the military that it never even occurred to me that I could choose not to leave my son. I was so brainwashed by my husband that he made me believe that I was not a good mother.

When Enrique left I tried to phone Patrick at the number he had given me for his work. The man who answered the phone asked me if I was his wife, which I found to be quite surprising. According to Patrick, he and his wife were separated. I can only guess that was just another lie he told me in an attempt to get me into his bed.

The next day I rang Patrick at his barracks on the Autovon network. When he realised it we me, he just said, “Can I call you back?”

“Well, yes,” I replied, rather bemused at his response. Patrick put the phone down and I never heard from him again. It was at that point that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had been used. Patrick didn’t give a damn about me or my feelings. Like the vast majority of men who walk the Earth today, he only cared about himself. He didn’t lose even a moment’s sleep at the part he played in the break-up of my marriage and family.

Although I was hurt about what Patrick did, I put him out of my mind. The only way my personality could survive was to forget all about it. I was so good at dissociating bad experiences that I even forgot his name.

A few days after Enrique and Aaron left my life, I went into the mental health clinic to speak to them about what had happened. I specifically told the person who spoke to me that I was feeling suicidal and was driving recklessly as a result. The individual spoke to me for about half an hour and then sent me on my way. There was no mention whatsoever about following up our meeting to make sure I was okay.

One concern I did express to the counsellor was the fact that I was afraid I would never be able to find anyone else to love. I was assured that, at only 24, I would have plenty of time to meet someone else. I was not so sure, however. As it turns out, my reservations were found to be quite prophetic. Although I would go on to have many loves in my life, the vast majority of them were entirely unsuitable for the development of my personality and soul.

The weekend after Enrique and Aaron left I had nothing to do, so went for a walk on the beach. I came across a young man who had rented a beach house with his group of friends for the weekend. It just so happened that he too was in the military and stationed at Tyndall Air Force Base.

I agreed to meet up with the man the next day and he took me to his accommodation on base. During the day that saw him I related to him the break-up of my marriage, and he must have seen how upset I was about the whole situation.

The young man responded to my anguish by trying to get me to go to bed with him. What I needed was a friend, but all he wanted was sex. Is that what men are all about? Are men intent upon satisfying their own sexual urges at all costs? Do men not care who they hurt just so long as they are able to relieve the tension inside of themselves in the form of an ejaculation? If that is the only behaviour that men are capable of, no wonder the world we live in is such a depraved, unsafe place to be. If the only behaviour that men are capable of is despicable sex acts at the most inappropriate of times, I am very glad to be a woman!

The next time I went to the singles group, run by the mental health clinic, several people had commented to me that I had lost weight. The fact of the matter was that I had actually gained weight. I had just lost weight around the middle because I had been jogging every day.

From that point on I would always have problems with my weight. I suppose I turned to comfort eating as a way to cope with the fact that my son had been taken from me. It is not an uncommon phenomenon. Many women, even those who had been abusive towards their children, have turned to overindulgence as a response to losing their children, either through death or an inability to care for them.

A girlfriend of a colleague invited me to stay with her for the two weeks remaining until I had to leave Cape San Blas, which was a highly thoughtful act of kindness. There are so few people in this terribly cruel world who do anything for anybody unless they think they can benefit personally from it, so her offer was a truly rare selfless act. This woman, however, was the sort of individual who was always on the go and needed to stay busy. She related to my colleague that all I ever wanted to do was sit around the house and watch television. What did she or anyone else expect from me? There wasn’t much to do in Cape San Blas anyway, so unless one had a network of friends and family, they were pretty much at a loss for things to do.

I had been through an awful ordeal and all I wanted was to be left alone. It is a shame, really, that nobody seemed to have any understanding at all for my depression and my past traumatic experiences. As always, most people are so wrapped up in themselves that they cannot see anything beyond their own personal wants, needs and desires.

I did try to go to the mall in Panama City, but that venture ended in disaster. I drove up there and parked my car in the huge parking lot. I walked into the mall all by myself, but was soon overwhelmed by the masses of people and all the shops. The emotional pain inside me was so great that it had transcended my psyche and I actually felt physical pain from my very deep depression. I was so awestruck by everyone bustling around me that I fled the mall in a state of high anxiety. That was the last time I tried to go out on my own in Florida.

I had never heard of agoraphobia, which is a fear of open spaces, and did not know that it is a classic symptom of post traumatic stress disorder. But of course, nobody would ever see me as a victim. They would always view me as this horrible, evil woman who left my baby.

One day when I spoke to Enrique on the telephone, he asked me if I was pregnant. I could not understand why he would ask me such a thing. Surely he knew that I would not have allowed myself to become pregnant again. Once was enough. I immediately got a nauseous feeling in my stomach just thinking about getting pregnant. Falling pregnant was something that I never wanted to do again in a million years. The first experience was enough to put me off having children for the rest of my life.

Another thing I had to do was to pack and out process all on my own. When the removal man came to pack my things, I naively sat in the living room and allowed him to work on his own. Because nobody was watching him, he took it upon himself to steal my wedding ring.

It was several months before I realised what the man had done. I did not begrudge him the ring because I did not want it anymore. That wedding ring had brought me so much pain and heartache that I could not imagine how anyone wearing it could have any kind of happiness in this life. In fact, I felt sorry for the next person who would be wearing it.

Enrique had stopped wearing his wedding ring long ago. He “lost” his first ring, so I bought him another one. He then promptly “lost” that one as well. Quite obviously, for reasons that only Enrique will know, he did not want to wear a wedding ring. I had refused to purchase another ring before him because I thought it was just a waste of money if he was going to keep “losing” it.

Enrique’s behaviour towards me quite clearly indicated that he did not want to be married, and this ambivalence reflected in his refusal to wear a symbol of our marriage, such as a ring. I therefore cannot understand his attitude towards me. It was quite simple: Enrique did not want me but he did not want anybody else to have me either.

I left Cape San Blas to go to Lawrence, Massachusetts for two weeks before going to Germany.

I was totally numb inside. I was already beginning to dissociate the whole experience. Because I am an adult survivor of child abuse and neglect, and was forced to keep so many family secrets, it was second nature for me to forget what had happened. Forgetting, you see, was well and truly the only way my personality could survive.

As in my childhood, my personality fragmented into a sub-personality that accepted the experience for me. Were it not for the many sub-personalities that graciously decided to accept all of the traumas and abuses for me, I would have either committed suicide or gone insane long ago.

The only recollection I have of many of my more difficult experiences is through flashbacks, where I remember just a small fragment of the more traumatic episodes. Even those fragmentary flashbacks, however, are enough to send me into a spiral of self-loathing and guilt.

My mind was kind enough to equip me with multiple personalities. Without multiple personalities, who have been gracious enough to step in during those times of intense stress, I would never, ever have made it through four decades of life.

For me, multiple personalities are not a mental illness or a personality disorder, but a way of living that has allowed me to survive a life of abuse and neglect that no person should ever have to endure.