By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The name of the woman in this story has been changed to protect her identity.
When Mary heard her husband’s truck hit the pavement, she knew it was time to go.
She grabbed the diaper bags for her 2-and-half-year-old son and 3-month-old daughter, jumped in the car with the children and drove.
That was all she took, she said, the diaper bags and their carriers.
“I didn’t even pack underwear. Who forgets underwear? I did. … It did not occur to me in the moment to pack my stuff. I was so worried about making sure I had diapers and formula and had this baby and just had this other baby, and I wanted make sure I had their binkies. It didn’t dawn on me to pack things for myself,” she said.
She knew she had to disappear. She had tried to leave her husband before, but he found her.
The violence, rape, psychological and emotional abuse was more than she could handle, and now she was afraid for her two small children.
One night when her son was a newborn, he cried in the middle of the night. Her husband flew out of bed in a rage and threatened the child. She moved herself and the baby permanently to the living room for fear her husband would attack her son for making a noise in the middle of the night.
“It wasn’t human. I looked at him when he was like that, and he was like the devil,” she said.
She tore through Georgia toward Kansas, a place unknown to her, terrified the entire way.
She was afraid to stop for gas.
“I knew he was going to get me,” she said, “because he always did. But he didn’t this time.”
Mary grew up in a life of violence and poverty and did not know there was any other way to live. Her mother was abused and her grandmother was killed by her abuser.
Mary’s mother kicked her out of her home when she was 14. She ended up with her husband when she was 16, married very young. Soon after, she had her son.
Mary was beaten black and blue. Her husband daily degraded her.
“Then I had my son, and it progressively got worse and worse,” she said. “It was more like torture. It was abuse and humiliation and really bad stuff. It wasn’t normal. Normal people don’t think like that.”
When Mary became pregnant for the second time, she started to plot her escape, but she couldn’t see a way out.
She went to her brother-in-law, who had tried to protect her several times, for help. She asked him to help her kill her husband.
“I knew if I didn’t kill him, he was going to kill me and my children too,” she said.
She admits now this was not rational, but at the time, she believed it was the only way to get out.
Her brother-in-law convinced her that killing her husband was not the answer. She had to leave. She bided her time until the fateful day she grabbed the children and the diaper bags and sped away on the highway to disappear to Kansas.
“When I got here, I was scared. I was emotionally messed up. I was pretty unsure of what I was going to do or how I was going to do it because I had been torn down for so many years that I was not capable. No one wanted me,” she said of her arrival in Hays.
Mary ended up in even more bad situations. She fell in with some bad people. She started to use drugs as an escape.
“At first, it felt good to not feel anything,” she said of the drugs.
Mary ended up back in a series of abusive relationships. She had multiple run-ins with the law, and her children were removed from her custody.
After one arrest, she was placed with a community services worker. Mary said this worker was relentless. She came and banged on her door repeatedly for meetings. Mary sat in the dark watching her, unwilling to answer the door.
Mary finally hit rock bottom. She was sentenced to jail and served a year behind bars.
She was released to community corrections in what she was arrested in — Betty Boop pajamas and no shoes. She had no belongings, no job and no home.
But the worker who had persistently banged on Mary’s door was there again. She wouldn’t give up on Mary even though Mary did not know how to fight for herself.
“Getting in trouble was actually what saved my life,” she said, “and I met some really awesome people through some organizations here in town.”
Mary was referred to services, including Options in Hays, a group that provides free services for survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault.
What Mary now refers to as the “Dream Team” started to form, a group of supporters who would help Mary break her cycle of abuse and addiction.
She struggled and relapsed and was put on community corrections where she met community corrections worker, Erin.
“She believed in me,” she said, “just like the other lady believed in me. I had never had anyone in my life that had been there for me. My mother was not a good mom when I was little. She was abused and tortured by her father, and she was extremely abusive when I was little.”
Because of the drugs and the years of abuse, Mary said she really did not know how to function.
“I had to retrain how to be human,” she said. “I had to learn how to talk on the phone. … I couldn’t do anything for myself ever.”
Options not only helped with counseling, but also with some household items and clothing.
“The little pieces of things that you get from organizations like this. They obviously can’t give you a brand new life and a brand new car and job and a husband that is not going to try to kill you, but the little things they do offer are huge to people. Tiny things can be really big or just a kind word from one of them. Some people have never heard a kind word.”
Although Mary worked to regain custody of her children, her final relapse ended those hopes. The state determined it would be too disruptive for her children to continue to try to place them with their mother.
Mary finally agreed to let go of attempts for custody. She said it was one of the most difficult things she ever had to do. She knows she gave them an opportunity she had never had to live in a stable home.
“I wanted my kids to have a better life than what I was capable of giving them at that time,” she said, “so I agreed to let them stay where they were. I didn’t know how to be a parent. I surely did not learn it in my house growing up. Sometimes sacrificing your pride and your happiness is more beneficial than that.”
She still keeps in contact with her children and sees them on weekends. Her son is now in college. Her children have been able to see a stable marriage, learn fiscal responsibility, attend school and participate in school activities — things she could not have given them.
“Sometimes you have to know that you are not enough,” she said.
Today Mary, 37, is clean and sober. She is a self-employed cosmetologist and she says she loves her job so much it is like she is not even working. She is remarried to a loving husband and she has built the skills she needs to cope.
One of the things that sticks with Mary to this day is that people knew her husband was beating her and did nothing. Her neighbors heard her screaming. He was arrested once for breaking Mary’s nose and her step-father bailed him out of jail and brought him home.
You can anonymously report. You can be a blessing and no one would ever know about it, she said.
Mary was alone that night as she raced down the highway with her two children as they escaped to Kansas, but Mary learned she did not have to be alone and she did not have to be a victim.
To the victims, Mary says, “They can not be victims. They can overcome anything. Anyone can. I believe that.”
She encourages others who have been abused to accept help.
“Even if you don’t believe in yourself, if you go into any type of service like Options or rehab and you let them help, even if you don’t believe you will get sober or you are not worth anything, accept the help,” she said. “Sometimes the person you meet can help you change how you perceive yourself. It is not going to happen over a day. It certainly did not happen in a day for me. There is a completely different life that we don’t know about.”
For more information about Options, call 785-625-4202. Options’ 24-hour hotline is 1-800-794-4624. No appointment is needed to seek Options’ services. The Hays office is located at 2716 Plaza Ave.