Introduction

February 1987

It was an instant. In that one moment he was across the room and the very next second he was on top of me. His hands wrapped around my throat. My body falling backwards only to hit the bed behind me as the world slowed down to a crawl. I could feel every second pulsing through my heart. His blue eyes starring at me, were now black with red shooting threw them.

I screamed, “Let me go!” I think I screamed ‘let me go’.

He clenched his fingers tighter around my neck. The smell of the nicotine from them burned into my memory. I prayed ‘God please where are you?’ My thought’s ‘stay in control, stay in control.. Escape!! Escape!!’ I started wiggle my body throwing my legs over the end of the bed. If I could just get my legs over the end of the bed I could use the bed as leverage to pull myself off.

He must have realized what I was doing. As I got partway off the bed he pulled me up close to him holding me by the neck starring at me in the face. “I will make you love me!” His voice odd, each of his words dripping with his Walloon accent. In one movement he pulled me up to the top of the bed throwing me down. His body now straddling over mine, as I’m pinned helpless to the bed.

“I will make you love me!”

I screamed, this I know for sure. “Get off of me, get out of my house!” The anger now meeting up with my fear, brought me clarity. I remember my mother taking me to a self-defense class at our local police dept with I was 13 in Visalia. In that moment I take a deep breath and in one fluid movement bring my hands up in between his arms that are around my neck. Using my forearms I push his hands away from me and I roll onto my stomach. He is off guard. It is just an instant I know he will be coming after me. I back up to the end of the bed, falling on the floor and I continue to back up watching him as he is trying to get to his feet. I turn and run to the door. My body telling me to get out and get help!

I tell myself if I can make it to the door I just might be able to live. ‘No no, you can do it. Get to the door, when you get there, you can make it, don’t forget the door is locked. Remember you have to turn the knob. Get the door open and run. Run and Scream!’ I repeat what I was to do 10 times in my head. The apartment is small. It is a one-bedroom apartment in the silicone valley, barely big enough for my cat and me. My brain is moving at hyper speed. I’ve never experienced this, and I’m scared.

I get the door open. He is closely behind me. I start to scream, “Help me!” And I see him back away back into the apartment. Why isn’t he coming after me? Why isn’t he pulling me back in? I am grateful that he didn’t reach his hands out and pull me back in. But they are questions that I later would learn answers to.

I pounded on my neighbor’s door begging for them to open up. 2 doors down a gentleman and his wife opened their door. They allowed me to call the police. I stood in their living room, out of breath, tears falling down my face, my hair a mess my clothes barely hanging on and my life in shambles. I am only 19.

‘What the hell am I doing?’

The police arrived moments later. Had they already been called? Had my neighbors heard our fight inside the apartment? Were they just around the corner when I had called?

Jon Paul had written a broken English note saying he was killing himself if he couldn’t have me. The police show it to me and ask if I knew he had written the note. I told them I had never seen it before. I hadn’t. They told me that he was being taken to the hospital. Apparently, he took all the medication that I had in the apartment in his attempt.

“How do I get rid of his stuff?” It was all I was concerned with. I wanted him out of my life. That included the few items he had in that apartment.

3 days later, after receiving a call from him, I agreed to meet him in the parking lot of his sister’s apartment complex. His clothes and guitar in the passenger seat of my 914 Porsche, as I drove into the complex I saw him standing there. I got out of the car, with my no care attitude I walked over the to passenger door and removed his items. I placed them in front of his feet and turned to walk away.

“What can I do to get you back?” he asks

I flip around “Do? I think you’ve done enough!”. That’s when I saw it. His blue eyes were back. The ones that said he was sorry. That he would never do it again.
3 months later we were married.