Red flags
I have to talk about these occurrences that burn in my brain. I have never told anyone about them and there’s no documentation of them happening other than my memory.
Marker Bin
When we were moving out of our house in West Virginia, headed to the new one in Maryland we were trying to get everything packed up, it was chaotic. The children were running around, I was trying to keep them happy. We had a bin, a small shoe box plastic box, filled with markers. I went to put the marker bin a box to move out to the moving truck and Joe stopped me. He looked at me like I was crazy and told me that we had to go through every single marker in that box and make sure it was working before it would go to the new house. I didn’t think he was serious at first, but he was. And he was disgusted that I would even think of moving forward until they were all checked. He made us sit there for 45 minutes and go through that bin.
The Baby’s trip to the ER
Joe hadn’t slept for days. The baby was under a year old and for some reason Joe was convinced that he was having an asthmatic attack. It was very clear that the baby was not in any sort of distress. I tried pointing that out and reasoning with Joe, but he would not hear it. He flipped out at me and insisted that I had to take the baby the ER as soon as possible. He kept ranting that he knew how bad it was to have an asthma attack and the baby couldn’t breathe. So, I reluctantly left in the middle of the night with the nursing baby and headed to the ER. It was either go or continue to experience Joe’s full on meltdown.
I was so embarrassed when I got there. I knew there was nothing wrong. I told the nurses that I knew the baby was fine but my husband was convinced otherwise. They looked at me like I was insane. They confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the baby. And I left.
There are hospital records of this incident.
Comment to my older son during a kid exchange
My older son went with me to pick up the kids at an exchange. Joe said derogatory comments to him concerning his weight and being in shape. I refused to allow the older children to come along with me from that point on.
Telling my son he sucked at soccer
I testified in court to Joe telling my older son that he was “not very good at soccer” on his way back from one of his games. He had my child in tears.
