It began months prior to the actual physical altercation, but I was oblivious to the signs, that any good parent, SHOULD have seen. I will start with a brief background on my life. I am a 36 year old, single mother of 3. I’ve been married and divorced twice, have had a several boyfriends, none of who, ended up ever lasting for whatever reasons. When I was 35, I met this cute, younger man who I had mutual friends with. We began flirting with each other, with me doing most of the pursuing, but I knew he wasn’t entirely against the idea.  He finally agreed to go out on a date with me, and I was so nervous and excited.  That day, my 12 year old daughter, threw a complete temper tantrum, because she wanted to go out that night, and I’d told her she couldn’t, she needed to stay home and babysit. It was like watching Sybil, (circa 1978), as she went totally nuts, became a girl that wasn’t my daughter.  I ended up grounding her, left for my date.  He was very cute, very charming, trying so hard to impress me. I recall at one point he was trying to sound all sophisticated and completely blew it, knew he’d blown it, and ended up just laughing it off.  I found it very endearing. Needless to say, I fell hard and fast for him. I began spending the nights at his house, leaving after the children were asleep and coming home in time to wake them up in the mornings. Things were wonderful in the beginning. After months, things began to change quite rapidly. I began to notice he had a problem with pain pills, was in fact, taking over half my prescription a month, leaving me to suffer for two out of four weeks.  I noticed the relationship with his mother was very odd.  I just began to notice a lot of things, but since I was “in love”, I overlooked all the red flags that were popping up left and right.  Several times it got to be very physically violent between us, and I would leave him for a few days, but he would always be able to talk me into coming back.

            On the night in question, the one where my life changed forever, it was January 25, 2010.  We had had records amounts of snow, freezing temperatures.  It was nasty out, road conditions were horrible. My now 13 year old daughter had been “dating” this boy online for several months at this point. I had noticed she’d began to become withdrawn from her friends, was not allowed to be at any friends house that didn’t have a computer or cell phone so that he could be in constant touch with her. I had seen her crying several times at the computer over things he had said to her.  I told her time and again, that I did not like this boy, did not like what he was doing to her, that she deserved better than that.  In the meantime, I was so preoccupied with my own issues with my boyfriend, that I didn’t realize how bad things really were with this boy.  I’m a parent who tries to let my children have as much privacy as possible, but as we live in very small quarters, I couldn’t help but notice as I walked past her on the computer, I saw a comment he’d left on the screen in very large letters, and it said, “You dirty lying whore!”  I  was immediately irate about what he had said, told her to get off the computer, that they were done, that I would make sure she wasn’t allowed to have any contact with him, then I informed him of the same thing.  She was positively infuriated. She was sitting on the couch, screaming at me, “I love him, you can’t do this, you can’t break us up, you don’t have the right to, I won’t listen to you, I will be with him!” I got in her face, very close, and spoke to her in a very calm voice, and told her, “I am the boss, if I say you won’t talk to this boy anymore, you won’t. If  I say that you won’t be allowed any place that has a computer or cell phone, you won’t be. If  I catch you talking to this boy again, I will make a call to his father and tell him that he is not allowed to contact you.”  The second those words were out of my mouth, she spat in my face and called me a “whore”.  My first and only instinct was to smack her mouth, which I did.  She proceeded to kick me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me, and while I was bent down, she grabbed a handful of my hair, and pulled me to the floor.  My oldest son, who at the time was 15, saw her doing this, and jumped across our coffee table, and tackled her.  They began to fight.  I finally caught my breath, told them to stop, which they did.  The second he turned his back, she came at me again, kicking me in the stomach for the second time, and pulling me to the ground by my hair.  My son, again, came to my rescue, and they began fighting.  I screamed and screamed at them to stop it, as I could see they were hurting each other.  He finally went to step away from her, I was just getting myself off the ground for the second time, and once again, she kicked me in the stomach, knocking the breath out of me yet again, and pulling a handful of hair out this time.  The third time she did this, my oldest son, again came to my rescue, and they went another round, and this time it was VERY violent. I screamed and screamed and tried everything to break them up, finally succeeding after several minutes.  I got everyone calmed down, went and took a shower, and as soon as I came out of the bathroom, she bolted out the door, barefoot, heading down the street to her friends house. I looked at my oldest, asked “Was she barefoot?” and grabbed my keys to the car, went down the road, with my oldest son with me, and she was running. I passed her, went up to talk to her friends parents, told them in no uncertain terms that she was very grounded, that she would NOT be allowed down there anytime soon, and that if she did show, they were supposed to send her home.  While I was speaking to them, my son helped my daughter, who had fallen, into the car. I got in the car, we all drove home, all got out of the car, walked into the house.  She was sitting on the bed, I told her I was going to remove myself from this situation, that I was going to stay at my boyfriends for the night, and that I would see her in the morning.