When I left my ex-husband I had vowed never to get involved with another man again! In fact I had threatened to become a lesbian!! I know, laughable now, but so very real to me then. I mean, the trouble I'd had so far in life was enough to discourage me from men....however that didn't last long, did it? I know that was my hurt talking at the time.

Sometime afterwards, I had moved interstate to escape the emotional torment I was still receiving from my ex-husband, who was determined to see us back together. Here, I began my new life - away from the confusion. In my attempts to make a new life for myself, I found an old friend whom I had met when I first lived in the area some years ago before my marriage. We had parted on bad terms, and I was wanting to make amends for what I believed was my fault. I know I was not free of total innocence, as at one time I remember taking his entire pay packet and going on a shopping spree to "get back at him". Yes, I had been involved with him a little when I was about 21, about two years before I married. But I had come to the conclusion that we were better off as friends. I should've kept that in mind....

I should add that "Rod", once a trucker, is now in a wheelchair from a degenerative condition that affected his spine and his ability to walk. He was using crutches at one stage, but found he received more female attention in a chair, so he cut his achilles tendon to prevent him from walking.

I guess I have always been one to need a relationship ~ I have to be with someone, to feel needed and wanted and loved ~ to be made to feel special, especially after my ex-husband. And my friend, Rod, had always given me such devoted attention and made me feel special. So before long we had launched into an intense relationship. And upon moving interstate, I moved into his little bungalow he rented from the owner who lived in the house out front. It was a small one bedroom flat, and we only needed to find a storage facility for my furniture and stuff that would never fit. So, with my family all living where I had come from about 1000 km away (600 miles), I only had Rod....... I was happy and I would make him very happy, and I envisioned us living that way forever. But forever is a long long time....

In fact, there became a few flaws in my little fairytale. Rod was showing signs that I didn't make him happy at all, and began to find fault with much of what I did. I knew that I wasn't doing my best, and so I promised to be better and make sure I did a better job. He often told me that I didn't clean properly, and proceeded to show me how it was done. So I didn't have an excuse as to why it was never done the way he liked it. There were many places he couldn't reach, he often told me, and because I was tall and walking I could. But it didn't phase me, as I wanted to do everything I could to help him and make him happy. So I endeavoured to do my best to do so.

Rod used to tell me stories and made me laugh....I remember him telling me how he used to go to pubs, and being in a chair, he was the subject of a lot of attention. He told me that women used to ask him about being in a chair and if it affected all of him....Rod laughingly knew what they meant, and piped up: "Well, I may be broken down but "mr Wiggly" still works so if you want to go out back and give it a try......" I didn't think the story was vulgar at the time, in fact if I had been present during an exchange like that, I'd had probably found it amusing myself. I was completely under his spell.

The bungalow in which we lived was situated on a road that had a steady climb, about halfway up. Rod and I would often go down to the main centre of town in Frankston which was only a 10 minute walk, often getting groceries. On the way back up, Rod would then tell me to push his chair, which was no easy feat. He was not a lightweight person, in fact he was heavily built in the upper body, and it was extremely difficult to push him up that steady climb to the flat. I could not stop for too long a break as he would get restless and want to keep moving. His upper body size was built up from weight-lifting, he told me, as he was training for the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney. And I had to contend with a weight bench and weights in the very small lounge area of the flat, though he didn't appear to train as often as I thought a Paralympian would. But what did I know about weight lifting? You couldn't over-do it, he told me, and to stick what I know.

Although these were early days, I soon realised that things were not getting better. I had met his ex-girlfriend when she came to the flat to pick up some of her things. She too, was also in wheelchair although she was a Quadriplegic. Rod had told me that when he met her, she was couch-ridden and wouldn't get up, stuck there by her "over-bearing" mother, and he helped her get out. But now, he said, she tried to control him, was a bitch and he couldn't stay with her. Her mother and her had it in for him, he said. She was often a sore point between us, and he said that they were still friends.... This was just a small issue. Rod began to become terribly insulting, and I could never seem to speak my mind - he would belittle me and tell me that no wonder my ex-husband would hit me, if I whined all the time. I already knew that he HAD to have the best of anything and nothing less, and he criticised my taste in things saying that they were cheap and nasty, although I was taught growing up to be thankful for small mercies and for whatever we had. He told me that my cooking was boring with no taste, and that he would rather eat the cardboard box it came in! He told me that I was boring in bed and not adventurous enough and constantly complained about my weight, saying that I was getting fat. He refused to buy me a pair of jeans that he had promised me unless I lost some weight. And slowly, I was losing any self-confidence, self-worth, and my happiness I had left. Where I thought I could make him happy, I was wrong. Where I thought I was good cook, I was wrong. Where I thought I was special and loved and wanted, I was so wrong. I was a fat, boring tasteless person, who couldn't cook or clean properly. I wasn't worth it. I felt nothing but a black hole filled with emptiness....and I wondered would I ever be happy again.

Although part of me believed that didn't deserve this treatment, I still thought that I was doing something to make him unhappy with me. So I tried more to please him. But no matter what I did, I could never please him. He'd go out for hours and not come back till dinner, sometimes after. He trained on alternate days as a Nail Technician and "shaking a tin" for Wheelchair Sports Victoria during the week, and sometimes Saturdays. At least then I could relax with myself. Still, I must've been doing something wrong....but I began to realise that there was no pleasing Rod. I also realised that he also tried to control what I did - he wanted me to lose weight, he wanted me to cook they way "it is supposed to done" and clean the way "it was supposed to be done"....I even had to leave the toilet door open whilst occupying it, and if I closed it, then he accused me of hiding things from him, and he'd question if I was cheating on him too "like I did with my ex-husband"! He even stole my engagement and wedding rings from my previous marriage and had them melted down into a "Russian" wedding ring for himself. He told me that the jeweller had kept them diamonds that came out of it as a "trade". He used to lock me out of the flat, and I had nowhere else to go. He took great pleasure in telling me these awful things. I'd stand up to him and say that he was no better than my ex-husband, and he would say how dare I compare them, and Rod would always say that he never laid a hand on me. He never hit me, that he was good to me. I can still hear his words: "I have never hit you, have I?" But by then I realised that he didn't have to.

One day , I ran into his ex-girlfriend down the street, whom I shall call "J", and we went off and had lunch together. I discovered that she was a lovely person ~ not at all like Rod had described her. I ended up spending the day with her and liked her immensely, and admired her spirit. She enlightened me on some of the things about Rod. The reason her mother didn't like him was that she saw right through him, and when he moved into her house, he had taken over the entire house by changing everything into his name within a week of being there. And many more things that I had begun to realise about him too. But I dreaded going home. Before I left, she asked me if the only reason I hadn't left Rod was because I had nowhere to go....I said that it was. She then said that if ever I needed to, there was a room in her house for me if I wanted to leave. When I got home, he wasn't there yet, but when he did come in he questioned me about my day and was mortified that I had spent the day with his ex-girlfriend! He said that she would have bad-mouthed him, and how dare I deceive him by doing that. When we argued constantly about it, in his attempts to control me, he would rip the phone out of the wall and then lock me out of the flat. I realised that I couldn't go on like this ~ Rod wasn't going to change, he was just as self-pitying and selfish as he was when I knew him years before. If he hadn't changed since, he wasn't going to. So I called "J" (my new friend) and she told me to get a cab to her place. I took as much as I could in the taxi, and walked out. Two of my very good friends helped me move some stuff from his place to "J's". We arrived to find Rod out the front holding his finger and saying "watch out for the blood", from a teeny cut ~ he had been on the phone to us earlier and said that he was ending it etc. and the line went dead. I also found that he stolen some of my belongings that were important to me ~ like my Family History information that I had been researching, my leather jacket and a teddy bear that my grandmother had bought me for my first Christmas when I was a baby...and my grandmother died in 1990.

Rod had no idea where I went, but it wasn't long before he found out. My larger items of furniture were still at his place and I needed to arrange to get them, as he was getting impatient. I went to church with "J" and at the end of the service someone called out and asked for a woman with "J" in the wheelchair. There was phone call for me to take in the office ~ it was Rod. He screamed at me when was I coming to get my stuff. I told him as soon as I can get someone to help me, to which he replied that if it wasn't out by tonight he'd deposit it all on the nature strip and burn it!

"J" organised one of her friends at the church to help me, and at last I was out. He still had my bed and I had his in storage. When I moved into my own flat a month later, I told him to return my bed and couch, and I returned his. He then "wheeled" out of my life.

"J" and I are still good friends to this day, and she is a wonderful woman with great courage and determination. I will always be grateful for her help, but then she understood what Rod was like. As it turned out, Rod was sleeping with BOTH of us at the same time, telling her that I was a "pen friend" from Sydney, while he explained her as being "just a friend" whose nails he practiced on sometimes ~ before explaining that they used to go out. It was then I found out that he had put himself in the wheelchair ~ by cutting his achilles tendon (the muscle behind the foot) and keeping the wound infected. He had told "J" that he got more attention from women in the chair than when he was walking! What a sad human being.

I cannot explain all that Rod did to me...it goes beyond explanation. But I can tell you that his treatment of me was undeserving and most certainly abuse. Though my marriage to my ex and my relationship to Rod were different - they were still just as abusive and as damaging. Remember, you don't have to hit a woman to abuse her!