Walking away from a life

WALKING AWAY FROM A LIFE

I was 16 when I met my ex-husband. He was 18 months older than me.
We fell in love. It worked well for a good while. There were signs from
the beginning of gaslighting and isolating me from my family and friends. But it was minimal, and I ignored early warning signs.
My ex-husband took care of us for a long time. He did love us and took care of us.  We did small vacations with the kids. Money was always tight. And he had a drug problem that exacerbated that. But we went camping and to the beach when we could squeeze out money. There were good times and I appreciate those times. My aunts and uncles adored my husband. My dad really had a rather good opinion of my ex-husband.
But, there were some problematic things my dad tried to point out.
But, my head was stuck firmly in the sand.
After several years things started to get worse. The drug problem 
worsened and my ex-husband began to drink...a lot. I thought if I did this or that things would get better. I always felt that anything that went wrong was my fault. I scraped the sides of our truck going through a fence. He never let me live that down. And made fun of me in front of people for a long time. He ignored the fact he had been in at least 3 car accidents and had his license suspended for multiple tickets. There were several troubling incidents, and I do not want to get into them right now. One thing that stands out is if the wife/girlfriend of one of his friends did something he did not approve of he yelled at me for hours. One woman cheated on his friend. My ex-husband told me that if I ever cheated on him, he would beat the other man half to death, put him in a corner, and force him to watch me get beaten. This was early in the marriage. He said this repeatedly through the years. I was by no means perfect. I made mistakes. Nothing I did was an excuse for the physical and mental abuse my children and I suffered.
My ex-husband began to mentally abuse me and the kids. Then he 
began intimidating us physically. This went on for years. I left my
husband 29 and a half years after I met him. I should have left 
about 10 years earlier. But I did not. I will forever live with that guilt. 
I have forgiven myself, mostly. But I take full responsibility for not leaving. But I realized I was not mentally capable of doing it. 
Think about leaving behind the life you have built for yourself. Most of the people you have known, 90% of your possessions, the town you lived in for 20 years, the friendships, the home you had, the routines that gave you comfort. But it was the only way we could escape. If I had left him and stayed in that area, he would have terrorized me and my family.
And I honestly believe he would have burnt down the house as we slept.  My ex-husband now terrorizes his brother because my ex knows where his brother is. He breaks into his brother's house, steals from him, has beaten him at least twice, and the last time tried to stab his brother. To this day I only stay connected with 2 people that live in our old town. Because I must minimize the number of people that know where I live. Most of my family does not know the town I live in. I will tell them about the region we live in. Not because I do not trust them. But, because they could innocently mention where I live to someone, and it gets back to my ex. Or my ex could get violent with them, and they tell him.
My ex lied to anyone who would listen that I stole the money he inherited from his mom. No, we used that money to try to keep our home. Because my ex refused to work anymore. He laid in bed all day, drank alcohol all night, and laid waste to our life.
I have a relative, let us call her Oblivious, who tries to guilt my daughter into coming back and taking care of her dad. This has happened several times. It is not our responsibility to take care of him. We tried for years before I left to get him help. We turned our lives upside down and sideways to help him.
Even after I left, and he threatened to kill me multiple times we tried to find programs to help him. We got a friend to take him in at one point. My ex kept getting thrown out of programs or refused to go to them. My 
brother-in-law will not do the challenging thing and call the police every time my ex shows up. He does not want people to think he is being mean to his poor sick brother. It is not my brother-in-law's responsibility to take care of my ex either. 
He tried several times to help him. But Oblivious minimizes the damage and trauma my kids and I went through. One of my kids and I opened up about some of the horrendous things we suffered because of my ex. A trauma/abuse victim should not have to detail the abuse to anyone to try to get them to understand their pain. We do not have to justify our decision to cut our abuser out of our lives. And Oblivious knew some of it. She was close to my kids. But she does not care about the trauma we suffered and blames us because my ex is mentally ill and homeless. She has told us that we should just forget about the years of torture. It is unfair that my poor brother-in-law must be embarrassed because of my ex. We should just come back and let my ex 
abuse us some more. In her opinion, the mental health issues that we still suffer from due to my ex aren’t important.  Having to leave our home and not having a secure place to live is not important. So, this person has shown who she really is.
And we are better off without her in our lives.
We tried to help my ex. But, to save ourselves we had to cut ties with our abuser. He is still in his hometown. He has numerous family members there. But they realize he is a danger to anyone that takes him in. Oblivious told us we had been mad long enough and we needed to get over it. I had been hoping that if my ex ever died my family would be able to reestablish relationships with the people, we had to minimize contact with. But I now realize that those relationships are not worth rekindling.
These people believed the worst of me and my kids. Even after they realized my husband was a monster. They believed the lies. 
There are a few people I deeply miss from our hometown. And I have a few friends from that time that stay connected, and I cherish these people. These people have stuck with me through the darkest periods in my life. There were times when I did not have the will to continue the struggle. But these friends kept encouraging me and believing in me. Thank goodness for these people.

And Oblivious can go fuck herself.