After High School Graduation

I graduated in May of 1989. A week after graduation my long term boyfriend and I broke up. I think it was the stress from the fact that in Feb on my 18th birthday we had a car wreck and I nearly died. He and I split up for the entire summer. In August I enrolled in college. The day before I had orientation the high school sweetheart called me and I went to his house. He proposed to me. We moved in together in September cause things with my mom and I were no better. I found out in Oct I was pregnant so we moved our marriage up to Dec. Our baby girl was born the following June. That is when I started seeing he had changed. He was gone all the time, going to bars with his guy friends. He insisted I go to church with his family, but he never went. I found out I was pregnant again in 91. We had a son. So our kids were only 16 months apart. When I was pregnant with our son I was also given custody of his neice who was 4. Her mother had passed away and her father was an alcoholic. We split up when our son was 6 months old. We tried to reconcile but when he was 8 months old I knew it was too much. I came home from being at Taco bell with a girlfriend, and he met me outside. He beat my head against a tree and I got my kids and took off. I went back home later that night when he was gone. I locked the doors, he didnt have a key and tried to sleep. the next morning he showed up wanting to shower and change clothes for work. He was so mad. He kept walking toward me and it ended with me taking a baseball bat to him to protect me and the kids. He was on the ground and I took off with the kids. I went to a friends and they went with me to the ER. The triage nurse used the term "assaulted" and it was the first time I realized what I had tolerated for years. So we divorced. He eventually abandoned the kids too.