Julie Lockhart loves an adventure in wild places. She spent most of her career in academics, where she published in peer-reviewed journals, such as Critical Issues in Environmental Taxation and Advances in Accounting Education. During the last years of her career, she led a grief support nonprofit, where she discovered the beauty and depth of personal stories, writing about her experiences to help grieving people feel less alone. Her essays have appeared in Minerva Rising, the Journal of Wild Culture, and bioStories. She has placed three times in the top ten for the Women on Writing Essay Contests. Find her at: julietales.com. Julie lives in Port Townsend, WA.  

Worthy

The first time he directed his rage at me, we were jogging through the cornfields of Central Illinois on a warm morning in 1979. Peter blew his top over something I can’t recall now. He screamed, “You stupid bitch.” Sobs erupted from my chest, which ramped up his anger. He ran ahead. Crying strangled my air passages as I tried to catch up. I felt desperate to show him I was worth his time, that he could be happy with me in his life.

When I first encountered Peter, I gawked in fascination as he strutted in front of the classroom chalkboard in cowboy boots and tight jeans. His thick black, shoulder-length hair elicited fantasies of fingers romping through its silky waves. Sporting a well-groomed beard and mustache, with an athletic build, my friends at the university swooned over Peter; he was delectable. He was also the most popular teaching assistant from the PhD program. 

I registered for his accounting class in the fall of ’78. Peter sparked fascination in what could otherwise be an incredibly boring two hours. I could taste his salty vibrancy. With innate skill, he instilled a love of learning in students, and his level of rigor scared the hell out of all of us. 

After that semester, I spotted him on the business quad sitting under a large tree, recently transformed from bare winter to fresh, spring-green foliage. He called me over. I felt a mixture of wonder and anticipation that he had noticed me. When he motioned for me to sit, I dropped my backpack and sat across from him, wrapping my arms around boney knees to keep them together. 

He smiled and said, “I’ve paid attention to you. You’re different from other students I’ve taught. I can tell you’re special.”

Heat danced into my pale face. “But I got a ‘C’ in your class!” Intermediate Accounting was the most difficult course I had ever taken.

He waved his hand, “The exams don’t tell the whole truth about a person.” 

I’d never had a compliment like that from such a man. We chatted about mountains, climbing, his adventures, my family vacations to Montana and Wyoming, and our mutual desire to live out west. It turned out he grew up about a mile from campus — a local boy. I could feel my cheeks redden again when he asked me on a date. I had attracted a celebrity.

As spring transitioned to the muggy Midwest summer, Peter would pull out his credit card to buy us lavish dinners. On weekends, we’d pack up his red F150 Ford pickup and head to nature’s hidden hangouts that only locals know about in flat farm country. I’d never felt so special, so I gave him my virginity. I loved his rebellious attitude toward the conventions of the world, and we hung with a group of his friends where conversations meandered into the night. Peter loved a good party with lots of beer, Jack Daniels, and loud music, all new to my classical music-loving, geeky self.

I soon discovered that he had a demanding perfectionist side. And a bad temper. Real bad.

Even so, I stayed because I thought of him as someone important in the world. I felt proud to be with a man who would soon earn a doctorate and who had won a campus-wide teaching award. And when Peter was fun, he was really fun. I stayed because he spoiled me, expressed big love for me, and seemed the adventurous man of my dreams. I stayed with him because I didn’t think anyone else would ever love me like that. I stayed because he was going west, and I feared doing that by myself.

Nice guys never interested me.

After three years and the completion of my master’s degree, we did move west. Peter represented everything my parents feared. Too liberal, crass, and disrespectful of their values. They witnessed his anger and rebellious behavior at my CPA exam award ceremony where he refused to wear a suit, and proceeded to get drunk and belligerent in front of them. And the worst of all — we weren’t married. My father had a saying that’s seared in my mind: “A man’s not going to pay for what he can get for free.” I was “giving myself away” without a marriage commitment. Yet adventure called, and I couldn’t grasp the truth of Peter in plain sight. Back then, “Me Too” wasn’t on the radar.

We first lived in British Columbia near the highly regarded university where he was a new professor. I couldn’t get work in Canada without us being married. In August, he saw an ad for a position south of the border teaching accounting and called them to see if they might be interested in me. The university was about 50 minutes south of where we lived; later that week I crossed the border in a drizzly fog for an interview and was hired on the spot. I remember the whispers in the classroom when I arrived for my first class with a large backpack stuffed with books and notes. I looked their age.

As we both settled into our new jobs, living in the U.S. rather than Canada made the most sense. Peter had dreamt of living on acreage. We put an offer on a log cabin on five acres that had been owned by a couple who divorced before finishing it. The deck was half built, and the interior needed work, like closets and other finishing touches. This was 1982. With interest rates through the roof, we got a mortgage at 12%. My parents went ballistic. I cared about their opinion, but not enough to ask Peter to reconsider the purchase. At least we got married that next summer – at the courthouse. It took a couple of hard years to make our home beautiful, and in the end it was a place worthy of show. Yet the quality of our relationship was something else — not worthy of anything but secrecy.

Peter kept a handgun under the bed — cold and steely, loaded. He stashed another one in his underwear drawer in the dresser that had a mirror above. I remember looking at myself in that mirror, my right hand resting on the wood surface. I could practically feel the chill of the gun below. Fear would surge into my head just thinking about being that close to a loaded gun. I could imagine taking it out, pointing it and pulling the trigger. I wasn’t suicidal, but I did have an imagination for the worst possible tragedies. I remember thinking if we ever had children, loaded guns would keep me from sleeping.

Yet as time went on, I didn’t want children with Peter. I didn’t want my kids to grow up thinking that I was stupid. My dad had done that to my brother and me. To this day, my dad’s constant criticism of my mom leaves me wondering if she is stupid. Something in me had the wherewithal to understand that Peter’s intermittent nasty eruptions would affect our children. Yet I couldn’t translate that into leaving the marriage. We were building a life in our new community. I was living the dream, wasn’t I? And there were always good times with Peter where I could feel that he loved me. His career accomplishments at the university made me proud.

He blamed me for his unpredictable anger. I can own that my lack of organizational skills could drive a persnickety organizer like Peter crazy. I tried to meet his standards, but failed. One time he got so angry about a pile of unorganized mail that he pulled food out of the kitchen pantry and proceeded to stomp all over it, yelling, “Fucking Bitch!” Bags broke open and corn chips covered the floor. My fault. I tiptoed across the room to clean up.

I wasn’t much of a cook either. And even though Peter would puff up his chest and tell you he was a liberal who championed women’s rights, he tried to mold me into a traditional wife. He wanted me to be like his mom — posting a dinner menu for each week that he could critique before I went shopping. Peter insisted on variety, but I also wanted healthy meals like my mom cooked. I asked what was on his mother’s menus that he missed so much. Thus began dinners with gooey Campbell soup toppings, thick cheese sauces from Velvetta, and hotdogs rolled in Pillsbury crescent rolls with a slice of American cheese inside. The more unhealthy, the happier he was. We fought the pounds of extra weight by regular 4-mile runs through the wooded back roads near our place. If I made the same meal two weeks in a row, all hell burst into our home. One time, he got so mad about a repeat dinner that he put his hand through the dinner plate filled with food — a strong high-five to the table. We ended up in the emergency room to get stitches on a large gash in his hand. He insisted it was my fault. I believed him.

Peter loved that I received a paycheck, but he also expected me to do all other domestic chores, including ironing his dress shirts to perfection. He would relax on the couch, a beer in hand, in front of a stupidly funny TV show, like Night Court, while I ironed. At the commercials, he came over to inspect. If I missed something, I had to keep working on it. Why did I do it since I loathed ironing so much? Self-protection. I’d do almost anything to avoid him pushing me against the wall with his hand around my neck while yelling in my face.

I became a compulsive eater, stocking up on large bags of red licorice and other junk foods from the bulk section of the local grocery store. I was also addicted to soap operas, skipping out of work early some days to watch my favorites, instead of tackling the research projects on my desk — instead of facing the real drama in my own life.

I remember loathing my reflection in that mirror hanging over the dresser containing a loaded gun. I was lacking as a wife, gaining weight, and finding it difficult to get my academic research done. Perhaps unconsciously, I wished for death as I imagined and feared his gun. Death may have been easier than trying to mold myself into a woman who could save Peter from his anger.

During the summer of 1988, I travelled back to Chicago to visit my family, then headed south to visit his mother. Peter’s best friend, Elliott, came over too. Both Elliott and Peter’s mom insisted that I do something about the horrible way he was treating me. They could see it. I defended Peter. I cried.

Peter’s broad smile greeted me at the airport when I got back. Inside, my mind wrestled with a new reality – the words “Do something about the horrible way he treats you,” echoed from my visit with Peter’s mom and Elliott. Everything in me wanted to believe in my marriage as a happy scene. But reality twisted my brain into a churning blender. As we hugged and kissed, I guarded my heart, but said nothing to Peter. Locked in my own simmering, solitary head, I moved through my outward life as though nothing had changed. Yet I now knew this: others could see what I thought was veiled.

As the university’s fall term began, I put together my application for tenure. The research section of the portfolio was weak, but I hoped to highlight the few accomplishments as well as show forward momentum on current projects. The concept “publish or perish” is real in academia. If I didn’t receive tenure, I’d be left without a job in the small, economically depressed city. Fear of financial insecurity bubbled into the muddled ruminations about my marriage.

At the same time, a new fellow at work clouded my reasoning even further. Frank and I enjoyed mild flirtatious conversation when we’d pass in the hall. Fantasies about him interrupted my sleep, and then I would lambast myself for not being able to control the attraction. My use of self-descriptors like hussy, slut, and adulteress grew as my feelings for Frank flourished. I’d question myself: Why would I be attracted to someone else when I’m happily married? Denial is a powerful thing. Having no one I felt safe talking with exacerbated the madness circling in my head. The words of concern from Peter’s mom and Elliott trickled into my thoughts like a small spring.

Even a small spring can feed into a rushing river. The truth about my life with Peter gushed into full view on a bird-hunting trip over Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe it was the convenience store turkey sandwich on that dreary Thanksgiving Day — our only option for celebrating the holiday — that deflated my resilient spirit. Later that day, I followed Peter through a grassy ravine, our shotguns loaded and ready for the pheasant flush. He kept turning around to yell, “Shut the fuck up!” because my steps were too loud on the dry leaves. The irony of him yelling to be quiet was a final straw. Disgust swamped me with a power I hadn’t allowed until then. I glared at the back of his camouflage hat hugging his head. Did he really need to be that mean? And still, I kept my mouth shut. Maybe the holding it in is what accentuated my attraction to Frank, because in that moment, I fantasized about a better, happier life in his arms.

I received notice of tenure on Friday after the hunting trip, which gave me the career stability to thrive without Peter. After rehearsing for several days, I braved an awkward conversation, telling Peter I was leaving. He yelled, cried and declared his life-long love for me. But I was done. I confided in my only close friend, Gerry, and moved over to her house a few days before Christmas.

Right after the holiday, Gerry and Peter met for a drink. He asked her to marry him as a way of getting back at me. Only then did my friend get a clue about why I left. And Peter, it turns out, already had a prospect. Tanya was a university graduate student who wrote him a thank you note “For letting me into your life,” which I found on the kitchen counter in our house while picking up some of my things after Christmas.

In early January, Peter asked to meet me for breakfast. As we sat down at a local cafe, he gushed about how much he loved me and asked if I was serious about leaving him, because “women are hitting on me, and I don’t want to move on if you are not sure.” It felt so disingenuous, since I’d heard Gerry’s story and found the note from Tanya. I assured him that I was serious. I floated out of the restaurant with a dizzying desire to see Frank and didn’t listen to my new housemate’s cautions about rebound relationships. I’m not proud that another man entered the picture, yet I now understand that leaving an abusive relationship often takes whatever opportunities show up. Peter could have reeled me back in with his sweet talk. Even though Frank didn’t work out, his presence helped to keep Peter from unraveling my resolve to leave a marriage that had ravaged my emotional well-being – something I couldn’t yet fully understand.

A year later, Peter called me on Christmas Eve and said, “I have a diamond ring I’m about to give Tanya, unless you’d like to reconsider.” If I had any smidgeon of trust left for Peter’s words, this call smashed it into crumbs. I said, “No thank you,” and hung up.

I didn’t know back then that it would take much of the next twenty-plus years to build a healthy sense of self. Between my parents’ unhappy marriage and Peter dragging me deeper into self-loathing, relationships did not come easy. The emotional whiplash of dysfunctional parents distorted my sense of what’s normal.

Digging out of the hole of self-loathing took grit. It’s a laborious process of moving forward and backward—pulling out of the tight parking spaces of imprinted ways of being. It wasn’t until two years after the divorce that I braved my first therapist appointment. After listening to my life story, she opened my eyes to patterns of abuse and the ramifications of growing up with an alcoholic father. I could see Peter as a continuation of what I endured growing up and I felt vindicated for the first time since I left him. Even though Peter had many fine qualities, the therapist assured me that the behaviors I described were abusive. Thus began a journey of understanding myself, and my poor choices in men. After years of therapy and spiritual practices, such as meditation and mantra, my relationships got better—in small increments at first. My choices more often supported self-respect and self-love as I untangled the coiled twine from Peter’s abusive power over me.

I might not have broken free without financial stability. My mother clung to my dad because she didn’t have the skills to make a living. My training and skills allowed me to be independent, for which I carry deep gratitude. To this day, I recall my father asserting, “A girl needs a business degree,” as I was looking at colleges. Little did he know that his insistence back then gave me the power to change directions when relationships became unbearable.

Little did I know that a nice guy would finally come into my life when I turned fifty-five. This relationship radiates with love, respect, and the adventurous spirit that first sparked my interest in Peter – without the nastiness.

I am worthy of this healthy, happy, and fulfilling relationship.