This Is How I Survived the Worst Marriage of My Life at The Hands of a Narcissist
The Beginning, 2007
The year I hooked up with Hawk Hardesty and proceeded to allow him to use me, string me along, and cheat. With every word, with every action he would tear me down, rip and scrape all that made me who I am away until I was nothing but skin and bone.
Then, he would ever so slowly build me up again.
He would tell me how sorry he was, and he would baby me. Hold me. Cry in my lap and tell me he needed help.
Several times I believed him. He did have a way with words and my heart.
Yes, the first 4 or 5 times I believed it.
But he underestimated me. I over think and over analyze everything. I do not have to be the center of attention. Like to listen and think. Not big on talking much.
Most of the time I knew what he was going to do before he did it. I left him for a while. The hardest thing was knowing he was lying in bed with another woman.
The Middle, 2017
I was planning to go home to mom. He had kept me from talking to her and I was looking forward to seeing my best friend. I knew she was lonely and needed me anyway.
I had called my sister-in-law Snow to get me.
As we were packing everything into the car, Brother called me asking if I had heard from mom. I told him no, Hawk had kept me from talking to her, but I was going there soon,
We both agreed something felt off, but I was also in a mess, leaving my cheating husband and all.
Brother said he was going to have the police officers go by and just check. I told him mom would be pissed but yeah, go ahead.
He called me back and told me the police had been knocking with no answer. Did I want them to kick the door in? I don’t know why, but I said yes, better safe than sorry.
A few minutes later Snow’s, my sister-in-law, phone rang. She looked at the other two people in the room and yelled, “Grab her now.”
I knew right then that mom was gone. I lost it. She had been dead for two days.
I had to be the worst daughter in the world. I deserved the worst punishment that could be given. How could I have let my mom, my best friend, lie there for two days and not know?
Feeling lost and not knowing what to do, I ended up going back to Hawk.
That is where he thought he had me and for a moment, yes, he did.
I had begun a new nervous tick with rubbing the back of my ear and rocking, staring off into space. At first, he was kind. Then within a week he turned hateful. Asking me what was wrong with me, I needed to grow up and get over it.
That’s when he told me that if I left our hotel room, I would get us kicked out, because of the scene I had caused when I left, the owners didn’t want me back, but he loved me and wanted me there.
I didn’t have anywhere to go anyway. I was just drifting.
Plus, he kept me so hi I didn’t care. I soon created a sore on the back of my neck and shoulder that turned into boils.
The one on my neck got so big I was in so much pain. I didn’t want to go to hospital because one, I was hi, and two I was sure he would leave me there and I wouldn’t know what to do.
He would lance it every day and drain a t-shirt worth of puss. This is how he managed to keep me locked away for three months.
Even when he came home to take care of me, I wasn’t allowed to talk. There would be days when he wouldn’t come home at all, knowing I needed him to lance the boil because the pressure would build, and the pain would be unbearable
While going through this, he told me he was still seeing that woman, he believed she was the one, she made him happy.
He would make me go upstairs to a friend's room just to bring her over.
At one point I decided I had made a mistake and took my check on the first and left, got a room with our friend in another hotel.
Hawk looked for me for two days. Searching and calling everyone. I was sick, scared, and convinced myself that if he was looking for me like that, then he must love me. So, I called him, and he came to get me.
He must have loved me, right? He cried when they had to remove my toe. He took care of my foot and me.
It didn’t matter that he left me homeless in the cold to be with someone else, he was just stupid. He came back, didn’t he?
There must be something wrong with me or yes, yes stupid Trish.
Always doing something wrong and never paying attention.
Classic dumb Trish.
At least he loved me the way I was.
That is what he always said. He was the only man that would ever understand me.
What did it matter that he would stay gone from four in the morning to midnight every day?
He had to work
I did not need to talk when he came home, all I talked about was stupid stuff anyway.
Oh, and I know he did not really mean to yell and accuse me of moving his stuff or stealing it. He was tired and stressed. Should have been a better wife and not yelled back.
If I had kept my mouth shut, he would not have needed to hit me or black my eyes. My fault.
It was not him that pulled me out of the truck and kicked me in the ribs and head and kicked me so hard it knocked me out or twisted me so hard I could feel the muscle tear from my shoulder.
My husband would not let me lay there in all that pain poking me and hitting me with a stick telling me he was going to kill me.
Before all that, I mean I could understand why another woman would make him happy.
I am not pretty, and I am oppositional.
I have a temper and I did get us kicked out of three hotels.
If I had just kept my head down and mouth shut.
The End 2019
Like he said, he took care of me. Got me what I needed, made sure I had a place to sleep, even if it was in a trailer with no running water or heat or even in the truck.
Got to lay in a warm hospital bed for a week, it was just a missing toe. After everything he did for me, I could be grateful and fly a sign to get him some beer. It was my turn to take care of him.
BULLSHIT!
I coward only long enough to get away, but like a stupid idiot, once again, nowhere to go and not sure how to do it I ended up believing him only to almost get thrown out in front of a car over $80.
I went to work, and I took care of him after the car hit him. And again, I thought maybe?
Wrong. It got worse and worse. He caused me to lose my job and I thought if I am home, and he has my phone he must see how wrong he is.
But he was putting things on my phone and then accusing me of it, he tortured me for 3 months constantly yelling and demanding I answer questions that I could not answer.
Not letting me sleep.
Began stuttering and unable to think of even the simplest things. I began locking myself in the bathroom to have peace, but he took that from me eventually.
Then one night he blocked the door and said he knew I was cheating, and he knew I had money stashed back so I could leave him and until I confessed to both I was leaving that house alive.
I Fought. He chokes me till I passed out 3 or 4 times, punched and kicked me till I passed out. But I fought back.
The one thing he thought he had done, he did not. He wanted to break me.
He took everything materialistic from me, but my heart and my spirit could not take from me.
Wrote this because now I am asking for a divorce, and he is writing to me telling me how he loves me, and I am his everything. He wants to see me.
Several years ago, I would have fallen for it. No denying that. But I have had two years to let go. ✌ years to make it on my own and I have forgiven him, not for him, but for me.
To live with hatred or bitterness would allow him that control over me and that is something he will never have. See him for what he is now. I feel sorry for him. Because for him it has been and will always be superficial love. He cannot and will not see how deeply I genuinely love him.
Yes, I will always love him. I glimpsed the real Hawk for a moment. A moment where we were friends, and he was that man that only I could see from the start.
But he will never be that again.
He will always believe it was his looks, the sex, the drugs, and money that kept me. He will never see the moments when we had none of that and I was the happiest not having money living in a tent at the lake.
No, I am ready to move on. Ready to breathe and be free and find that guy who wants to be loved that deeply and that fiercely. One who will love me back and know that no matter what I do not give up.
I’m not a victim anymore
It is time for me to live the life I was meant to have
No longer afraid because I know that my life is in God’s hands
My husband tried to break me for 12 years. He controlled my finances and my time, he lied about me to family, friends, and coworkers; he tried to humiliate me in public on numerous occasions.
But you cannot break that which is strong enough to bend.
You cannot destroy that which is fluid and adaptable as water. You can toss it against the rocks but eventually it will pool back together or evaporate only to come back down as liquid once again.
He said I could not make it without him.
Never tell me I can’t do something; I love proving ppl wrong😁🤪🤓
—
Patricia Hardesty
