My story of abuse actually starts when I was 18 years old, but there's a little bit about me personally that I should tell you first to make you understand it better. I was born with a very obvious disability, I couldn't walk normally, so I went through life being called "that cripple". As you can imagine that will really damage your self-confidence, although I never thought of myself as a cripple because to me a cripple is someone who gives up and I have never given up. At the age of 17 both of my parents were injured in an automobile accident and was unable to work to support themselves and us 4 kids so I worked something out with my school since I was a senior and they allowed me to go to school 2 hours on Mondays and Fridays and work the rest of the time. I got a job in a sewing factory to support the six of us until my parents were able to work again. My father never did recover because we didn't know it then but his lungs had been punctured and a year later he developed Pneumonia and died of complications. While I was working I was lifting a bundle of flannel shirts and had to tug real hard because I only weighed 98 pounds, unfortunately someone had decided to play a practical joke on the bundle boy and tied a slip knot in it and so I went flying backwards over a metal bar. I went to the doctor and was told that I could never lift anything over 5 pounds, have any children, or work again, what I wasn't told was the reason for this was that I had broken my back. Not knowing this I figured they were just talking about the pain so I continued with a pretty much normal life and had two beautiful children. At the age of 18 I met what I thought was a really fantastic man who treated me like a queen and my disability didn't matter to him. He was 35 years old but I had never had anyone treat me that good and not be ashamed of being seen with me because I was disabled so I fell madly in love with him and married him less than six months later. My uncle told me I was really lucky to have found him because no one else would have me because very few men would want a cripple for a wife. Pretty soon after we were married I discovered that he was an alcoholic and when he would get drunk he would beat me up both physically and mentally. Over the 18 years we were married he constantly reminded me of what my uncle had said. I have actually went and got my drivers license with 2 black eyes and a necklace of bruises all the way around my neck, and no one there said anything at all. I have been woken up in the middle of the night with a knife to my throat and I have had my ribs broke twice by him. I have also had to have all of the bones in my mouth reconstructed because he had hit me so many times that they shattered and started coming through my gums little pieces at a time. I have had my nose broken several times so that I will always have some problems breathing through it because the nasal passages are crooked. At the age of 29 I started having a lot of problems with my back the pain increased and my balance got really bad, I could be standing straight up and all of a sudden I would just fall over like I wasn't all one piece but 2 pieces stacked on top of each other. I went to a lot of doctors before I finally got one that would do x-rays and other tests to find out what was wrong(some doctors don't want to waste time on a cripple that can't be completely healed). The tests showed that one of my vertebrae had broken completely loose from the rest of my spine and had ruptured the disks above and below it. I was very lucky because it was my lower back so I didn't become paralyzed. I had four surgeries on my back in less than a two year period because the screws, plates, and rods kept breaking loose and wouldn't heal so I was put in a wheelchair and told that I would never walk again because the pain would always be too bad for me to be able to stand up. What the doctor didn't know was that they kept breaking loose because of my husband beating me all the time. I spent 8 years in a wheelchair until after my husband died. About a year after he died I realized that the nerves in my back and legs were healing themselves and that the pain wasn't quite as severe so I learned to walk on crutches so I would not be a burden on my children, because they deserve to be able to live their own lives without having to worry about me. My doctors still say that I will never walk again and they are probably right, I will probably always need the crutches for support because of the pain, it is quite severe and will continue to worsen as I grow older. But I thank God because at least I can be totally independent with the crutches. You probably want to know why I stayed with him, well so do I. I have thought a lot about it and I have given myself lots of reasons but I don't really know why. I've told myself that maybe I believed him and no one else would have me and maybe this one is really true. I've thought that maybe I didn't think I deserved any better but I don't think that's the reason. I've thought that maybe it was because I knew he was sick and needed someone to take care of him and I was all he had. I've also thought that maybe he really loved me but just couldn't help himself, and this is the reason that I am writing my story because 6 months before he died I found out that this just isn't true. Six months before he died he had dumped me out of my wheelchair and pushed it out of my reach and was kicking me with his cowboy boots over and over until our 15 year old son walked in and saw what he was doing and walked between us and told his father not to touch me again. My husband went to bed and never hit me again before he died, you see at 15 our son had grown to be bigger than his father and was young and healthy so my husband was afraid for his own safety. He was able to control his temper when it came to being afraid that he would get hurt so he could have kept from beating me for all those years if he had really wanted to. What I'm asking is ladies please don't let yourself believe these excuses that an abuser gives you or that you give yourself. Please get out of it before it is to late, I am only alive today either by luck or because God has some special purpose for me that I haven't finished yet. I send my love and prayers to all of you that have been there and especially to those who are there now.