Thank You for Abusing Me: Why Did She Stay?

By Coleen Liebsch

Thank You for Abusing Me: Why Did She Stay? is the second book in the Thank You for Abusing Me series by Coleen Liebsch. The first book subtitled, View From Behind the Couch is a look at domestic violence from the perspective of the child hiding behind the couch.

Why Did She Stay? chronicles the author'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Performance Strategies Publishing
• Release date: Apr 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9781942333333

Coleen Liebsch

Coleen Liebsch is an author, public speaker and entrepreneur located in Eastern, South Dakota. Other titles by Coleen include:Thank You for Abusing Me: View From Behind the CouchChoices: Arrival of the 4th GenerationJudgment DayInvisible Victim

Book preview

Thank You for Abusing Me is dedicated to:

Deborah Merkwan,

for sticking with, and believing in me,

for turning gibberish into grammatically correct,

and for being the most amazing mentor a person could ever have.

This series would not exist if it weren’t for you, Deb.

You are one in a billion!

Thank you!

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Copyright 2023 Performance Strategies Publishing 

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. 

ISBN: 978-1-942333-32-6

Performance Strategies Publishing 

100 Northbay Drive, PO Box 385 

Arlington, SD  57212

www.PublishPS.com

Thank You for Abusing Me

Book 2: Why Did She Stay?

Author: Coleen Liebsch

Editor: Deborah Merkwan

Cover Art Editor: Morgan Smith

Cover Artist: James Tully

Proofreader: Sallianne Hines of Quinn Editing

FOREWARD

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed book one in the Thank You for Abusing Me Series, View from Behind the Couch. If you have not yet seen it, you may want to read that one first as it looks at domestic violence from the point of view of the child hiding behind the couch. It also explain why I do not capitalize Dad at the beginning of this book.

Book two, Why Did She Stay? considers how negative life experiences can become positive life lessons. 

Thank you for investing your time in the continuation of my story. I hope you enjoy it!

Coleen

VENGEANCE AT LAST

The only illumination came from the moon as I stared across the black waters of the lake where my father’s boat had washed ashore.

Had all my years of wishing and praying my father would die finally paid off?

I tried to tell myself that my thoughts were ridiculous. First, I wasn’t that lucky. Second, he was always disappearing for days on end. Sure, he had never had a vehicle show up without him in it, but still … My annoyance that my mother continuously worried about my father was always in the back of my mind. Why did Mom still care so much?

Dad was probably just passed out drunk somewhere. Maybe he tied his boat off poorly when he came ashore to sleep off a bender. Maybe some chick he was dating picked him up and he decided he’d take care of his boat later.

No. He had been drinking and fishing for about forty years. It didn’t matter what kind of shape he was in. He always managed to load his boat at the end of his day.

The monster was in the water, and I had put him there. My years of wishing and praying my father would die had finally paid off. I tried to tell myself that it was no less than he really deserved, but no one else seemed to remember the horrible person he’d been. Granted, we’d all changed since those days when I was hiding behind the couch with Diane, but that didn’t undo what he had done to all of us.

I shook the morbid feelings that my father was in the lake off and turned away from the dark water. He was off on a bender somewhere, and we would all feel stupid when he showed up.

When I finally walked back into the bar, there was no denying the way his fishing buddies looked. They all wore a mask of hopelessness as they discussed what else they could do to search for their friend.

When Mom had asked all the questions she wanted to ask, Jerry took us back to Grandma Naomi’s house.

The search teams descended on the lake at first light. Mom was already there waiting when the state authorities arrived, and teams were briefed. The sheriff tried to talk Mom out of riding in the boat all day, but nothing he said made a difference.

You know we’re going to use hooks and the water can be rough on a body, the sheriff told Mom. He wouldn’t want you to be here. His words fell on deaf ears and Mom climbed into their boat.

They made slow passes back and forth across the water as the large treble hook below snagged anything and everything it touched. For three days, Mom rode in the boat as it made pass after pass across the lake. For three days she watched them pull the huge hook out of the water to see if they’d caught my father. Every morning, she climbed into the boat and every morning they warned her she wouldn’t want to see the remains if they found him.

The authorities did their best to prepare all of us for what to expect. Early on, a body will float to the surface, then it will sink, someone said. When it comes up a second time, it’s crucial that it’s found because after a body sinks the second time, it won’t come up again. By the time they had scoured the lake on the third day, they knew dad’s body would have already sunk again and the odds of recovery were extremely low. They would only search one more day.

Before sunrise on the last day of the search, two of my father’s best friends walked the beaches in hopes his body had washed ashore. Their hopes were realized when they found his body caught up in rocks.

The men were instructed not to touch his body unless it was at risk of going out to deep water, so they watched his unrecognizable body smash into rocks until authorities arrived. One of the friends who’d found dad’s body was my Godfather, Jake. He was the one who called Mom. She wanted to be there, but Jake assured her they were already loading the body. By the time she arrived he would already be gone.

Mom told our immediate family, but it was the priest who broke the news to Grandma.

I was standing at the opposite end of the kitchen, so I couldn’t hear what the priest was saying. I could, however, see Grandma’s face. I also heard her clearly when she wished out loud that it had been a different family member, the man standing next to me in the doorway.

There were no words I could come up with as I looked at my grandmother’s only surviving son, standing right next to me as he heard his name.

Sometimes people say things in grief they don’t really mean, was all he said, but I knew I was witnessing grace. My grandmother had just said the worst possible thing a person could say, and he forgave her without hesitation.

I realized how little grace I had exhibited in life and wanted to be a bigger person. I wanted to love and miss my father as everyone else in the world seemed to be doing, but he had done bad things! More importantly, he never said he was sorry.

On the day of my father’s funeral, the church was filled with relatives, friends, and fans of a man they thought they knew. Our family had all been huddled together in mourning for a week, so by the time the funeral happened, we were probably the most composed people in attendance.

The condition of dad’s body meant no open casket at the funeral, so we put together pictures from his life. The photographs were displayed on poster boards and placed on easels around the casket we all felt fit dad’s personality best. We selected a sleek, black casket with brass handles and hinges, because it was what dad would have wanted. Dad would have made fun of the entire process and called it a scam. The funeral director snapped me out of my thoughts with his explanation about having the casket sealed so foul smells didn’t escape during the service. 

My grandmother watched as Mom wrote out checks and chose everything for the funeral. She was no longer my father’s ex-wife in the eyes of everyone around us. She was his widow. There was no question in my mind she had earned the title, but why would she want it?

Throughout all the preparations, I felt like the world’s biggest hypocrite. To the outside world I was a mourning daughter. Inside, I was anything but.

When the church service was over, we loaded into vehicles to follow the hearse in a procession to the cemetery. The red velvet curtains on the back window of the vehicle closed on dad’s final show.

As the hearse pulled away, Mom put the car in drive and took her foot off the brake. Out of nowhere, an older gentleman with a beat-up car raced up next to us and cut in behind the hearse. He was dad’s self-proclaimed best friend, even though none of us had ever seen him before the funeral. Dad had a LOT of self-proclaimed best friends after he died.

The days after we buried dad became even weirder. Everyone completely forgot the horrible things he had done and talked about him like he had been a saint. Grandma recounted a story about how generous it was when dad donated a truckload of pumpkins for the grade school kids to carve at Halloween. She ranted about how ungrateful it was that no one bothered to even thank him for going to all that trouble. Dad never owned a truckload of pumpkins, and he sure as heck never donated one to the school!

People we didn’t even know came to the house in tears asking for mementos of the entertainer they’d loved so much. A local bar owner put together a jam festival that would occur every summer for twenty years – in dad’s honor! Everyone missed him terribly … everyone except me.

I felt betrayed and confused. The people he’d hurt most in the world not only forgave him, but it seemed like they loved him even more. It wasn’t fair, and I hated him for that too.

While I wasn’t one of the people mourning the death of my father, it was devastating to watch my family’s pain. My heart wrenched as I listened to my little brother cry himself to sleep at night. It was terrible to see the lost look in Mom’s eyes over a man who never did anything but bring her down. It was maddening to watch people mourn someone they thought they knew. But I sucked it up and played my role; it had to die down sooner or later, but dad died in a tragedy. People have longer memories for tragedies.

Once college started up again, life went back to normal … for me. Dad had never been involved in my life away from home anyway, so nothing was really any different. And yet it was.

I was outside of this world that adored him, not just mentally but physically, and it was a world that had sucked the rest of my family in. The whole situation made absolutely no sense and was driving me crazy.

He did bad things!

Why couldn’t anyone remember that? It was particularly annoying when I came home for visits.

One night, after several drinks, it became more than I could handle. I was sitting at the local bar talking to a high school friend about my father. He was offering his condolences and recollecting stories of a man he remembered fondly: a man he missed. In my mind, I was hearing lies about an awful person whom everyone thought they knew. In my altered state, I decided it was my job to fill my friend in on what my father was really like.

You wanna know what he was really like? I slurred. He was a monster. All these people who think he was the greatest guy in the world have no idea who he was. He said awful things about them behind their back. I took another drink of my beer. He beat my mom for 22 years and then walked around acting like a saint. I proceeded to tell my friend a couple of my worst stories.

When I finished, the friend looked me straight in the eye and said, You didn’t really know him at all. I was dumbfounded.

Maybe I really was the problem.

I actually did want to be part of the group that missed him. I wanted to pretend that he didn’t do the things he did. I wanted to remember him for who he was on stage or when he was being nice, but I just couldn’t.

How could I forgive someone who never asked for forgiveness? And how could everyone else forgive so easily? I wanted dad to answer for the things he had done. I wanted to know that he didn’t just get off Scot free. I wanted him to pay. But how could he ever make things right when he was dead?

That was when I had a thought. Maybe his death itself was his punishment. Maybe he got what he deserved as the water killed him and tore him apart. I had asked to see dad’s body when they found him, but the funeral director said no. Four days in the water … between rocks and fish … he wouldn’t want you to see him that way. Just remember who he was. The subject was closed.

That didn’t change the fact that it was something I wanted to see. A year after my father died, brilliance struck me.

Television shows always have a photographer standing around taking pictures of crime scenes and dead bodies. Maybe that happened in real life. Not everything on TV was true, but some of it was. I decided it was worth a shot. I certainly wasn’t going to get any answers from my father.

It took me a couple of months to work up the courage before I went to the sheriff’s office and asked to see the pictures of my dad. I didn’t ask if there were any pictures, and the receptionist didn’t tell me there weren’t any. She just asked for his name. When I said his name out loud, the woman’s eyes opened wide, and her face turned two shades lighter. She stuttered a bit and said she would get the sheriff.

Aw, shit. I knew it was illegal to lie to the police, but did what I was doing count? As the receptionist walked away, I started to think maybe I’d done something seriously wrong. What if they arrested me for lying to the police? My heart was pounding loudly in my chest, and I thought seriously about running out the door and forgetting the whole thing. That’s when the sheriff came to take me back to his office. He was carrying a file.

I’d never been in the sheriff’s office before and part of me wondered if the penalty for faking knowledge might be stricter than I thought. Instead of sitting back behind his desk, the sheriff pulled a chair up next to me and turned it to face me.

Oh God, I was in big trouble for sure.

Your dad was a good friend of mine was the last thing I expected to hear. The sheriff went on to tell me that he believed dad would want me to remember him the way he lived, not the way he died.

I, however, knew dad wouldn’t give two shits about what I thought. These aren’t pictures you need to see, the sheriff explained. The fish and rocks do terrible things to a body. He talked to me about my hands wrinkling in the bathtub, but I wasn’t fazed.

Realizing I wasn’t in trouble, all I could think of was: Ha! I was right! They DO take pictures.

I explained to the sheriff that I understood what he was saying, but I needed closure. I’d been having nightmares about what my father might have looked like ever since the funeral director said I couldn’t see him.

While I wasn’t lying, I was only telling him part of the truth. The other part was that I WANTED to see pictures of my father’s mangled body. I WANTED to see the pictures that would prove he had paid for the things he had done. Seeing his body would finally show life was fair. And maybe, seeing the pictures really would stop the changing images of his body that flashed into my nightmares nearly every night.

Pale white, bloated faces with eyes swollen shut and cheeks exploding from pressure crept into my imagination. I purposefully watched horror movies that included scenes with victims of drowning. The images morphing in my nightmares on a regular basis was the truth, but it wasn’t the reason I wanted to see the pictures.

The sheriff finally realized he wouldn’t be able to talk me out of viewing the pictures and opened the file. Inside was a short stack of papers and several photographs. I braced myself for the triumph I would feel when I finally knew my father had paid for his sins. The relief I would know when I finally proved, once and for all, that he was the one who’d been wrong, not me.

I felt as if I had a front row seat at his execution, and I was there for revenge.

The sheriff put the first picture in my hand, and I looked down at my father’s dead body. It wasn’t the picture of a slain monster I was expecting to see. It was a picture of a man who didn’t know where he fit into the world. It was a picture of the person who called my sister just a few weeks before he died to tell her he loved her. It was a picture of the person who made sure he had a life insurance policy for my little brother before he paid for his own heat. The photo showed a vulnerable man who loved Mom more than he could love himself. It showed a broken man who never believed he was worthy of her love in return. As I looked at the pictures of his broken body, I didn’t see justice or revenge. I saw the last remains of a person I loved very much.

It was humiliating to admit that someone I loved never loved me back, and I fought the tears.

My father didn’t look like the explosive monster from my youth. He looked like a victim. He hadn’t gotten what he deserved. He deserved to be free of his demons, just like everyone else deserves.

Looking at the pictures of my father was the best choice for the wrong reasons. I went hoping for vengeance. What I found was the first step to forgiveness.

GOLDEN CHILD

I began to wonder if maybe good people are just good some of the time, and bad people aren’t always bad. Maybe we’re all a little bit of both. My father may not have donated a truckload of pumpkins to the school, but he did make hundreds of people feel like they were the most important people in the world. It may have only been for one night, but it changed some of their lives. What he’d done was, in fact, something huge. He made them feel important. I knew better than anyone how much that can help someone else’s self-esteem.

I considered for the first time what had turned Dad into the person he had become. What was it like for him growing up?

My grandmother was an awful woman, but he was the golden child. Wasn’t he? I learned a different perspective when I met Jerry’s grandmother.

Jerry’s grandmother moved next door to my grandparents when my father was a toddler. I remember her dressing him in that little white sailor suit. The old woman took a drag of her cigarette. And God forbid he get any dirt on it! She recalled how proud Grandma was to show off her son, until he was around twelve. Once my uncle was born, he became the golden child, and Dad became Grandma’s shame. He spent his teenage years in various trouble but maybe he just received more attention for being bad.

My Grandma-In-Law remembered Grandma Naomi telling Dad how worthless he was on the front step of their house on countless occasions. She told me about my grandparents’ decision not to fund any education for my father so they could save for my uncle. They actually told my father that sending him to school would be the equivalent of throwing their money down the toilet.

Jerry’s grandma didn’t have any idea when the switch occurred and Dad had become the favorite again, but I was pretty sure I did. It happened while Dad served in the Navy.

When I thought back to the stories Grandma told about Dad, her rave reviews all started when he left home for the Navy. Every time she had a high ball, stories about the time Dad called her from overseas on her birthday would come up.

I’ll never forget when he called me on my birthday from overseas. She would usually take a sip of her drink at that point, but everyone knew not to interrupt. He got his guitar out and sang ‘Silver Bells’ just like an angel over the phone. That’s when he got started in music, you know.

Grandma had a knack for making everything about herself and selectively remembering life. Dad did not join a band in the Navy but started one with some friends in high school. Back then though, dad and his friends were considered hoodlums, so she deleted that section from her story.

Thinking back to Grandma Naomi scrubbing my neck with scalding hot water and the scratchy shag carpet she made us sleep on, I imagined what it would have been like growing up with her and felt a new sympathy for my father.

My siblings and I frequently stayed overnight with our grandparents, but she always made it clear we were an imposition.

Mom and Dad slept in the twin beds that had once belonged to my father and uncle. My siblings and I were relegated to the living room floor. I remember Grandma spreading out one sheet across the two-inch shag carpeting and making sure the edges were perfectly straight. We were given a second sheet to cover up with that was also perfectly stretched from edge to edge. If she didn’t catch us, we could use the pillows from the couch, but if she saw, she would take them away. She didn’t want them to get dirty from our greasy faces.

In the winter, a single sheet was fine because Grandma always kept the house warm, but in the summertime it was miserable. Central air wasn’t available to private homes in our area yet, so Grandma and Grandpa had a window air conditioning unit. It likely could have powered their Cadillac, and it hung in the living room window. For the air to reach the back bedrooms, the monstrously huge unit had to be on maximum cold all night long. That meant the living room temperature would plummet into the 50s as Diane, Mark, and I tried everything we could think of – short of touching each other - to keep warm. If all three of us stayed perfectly still, we could pull the top sheet over and almost tuck ourselves in without itchy carpet on our skin. It was a rare event when all three of us could lie perfectly still, so we usually just wound up in a fight.

There were times when I was so cold, I crawled in between the couch cushions to sleep. It was still itchy as hell, but at least it would hold most of my body heat next to me.

But still, even if Grandma had been as awful to Dad as she was to us, he died at 46. He had been away from Grandma far more years than he was with her. He should have gotten over it.

Had I gotten over it?

If my father had been hurt, it should have taught him not to hurt others. There positively had to be a way for someone to learn good from bad.

I tried harder than ever to convince myself I felt nothing but hate for my father. Even if there were good things about him, they didn’t make up for the bad. Besides, he never cared about me, so why should I care about him?

What was so wrong with me? was the question only Dad could answer, but he couldn’t. What was it about me that he disliked so much? And how could he love his other children when he didn’t love me?

Without consciously meaning to, I had been building walls to protect myself for years. If I never let someone see the real me, they wouldn’t figure out the horrible trait that made my own father hate me so much. I could understand the circumstances that made my father the Golden Child, but what made me the Bronze? More importantly, how was it affecting my life? I rejected people before they could reject me, and I discounted the talents of people I felt I was beneath. Maybe grace wasn’t the only virtue I was lacking.

My feelings toward my father wavered between understanding and hatred on a thought-by-thought basis as I tried to figure out if his hatred was his fault or mine. I could understand disliking me as a teenager or even a young kid, but as a baby? It had to be something bad.

Mom had joked frequently about how ugly I was as a baby. Would that be a big enough reason to dislike me from the beginning?

More than anything, I just wanted to know what I could change to make me normal.

Life went on and I continually tried to remind myself that what my father thought of me didn’t matter, anyway. I was in college, dating an amazing guy, and I finally had a family I didn’t have to worry would embarrass me.

Life was just fine without my father, and I knew there was no physical way he could ever hurt me or anyone I loved again. Without him around, I could almost pretend I was a White Pants Person.

It also made it easier for me to pretend that if I had asked Dad to walk me down the aisle, he would have said yes.

Most days it was easy to put thoughts of my father out of my head. The devastating nights of waking up to the smell of burning pizza and breaking glass were long behind me, or at least I thought.

I was asleep in my dorm one night when suddenly a sound from down the hall snapped me awake.

Help! cried a female voice. Shut the hell up! replied an angry male. Accusations of infidelity, stupidity, and lying made me wonder if someone had written down all the ugly things Dad had screamed in the night only to repeat them there. I held my breath to hear better, but my heart was pounding on the outside of my chest, and I could hear it’s lub dub increasing speed. At that moment, my phone rang.

I heard sniffling and crying before my friend spoke. Could you come down here for a minute?

What’s up? I tried to make my question sound light, as if I hadn’t been eavesdropping on their argument.

Just come down here, she said, before I heard her scream at the villain, I assumed was her boyfriend, Craig, to get out. That’s when the phone went dead.

Dread filled my mind and filled it with a heat that spread down my body and into my intestines. I was contemplating the likelihood of crapping my pants, as I lit a cigarette and pulled on my jeans. I thought back to the night I stood strong against my father, and he backed down. Could that be something as common as the abuser’s script? I had no idea, but I couldn’t leave my friend without help.

As soon as I stepped into the hallway, Craig saw me. You stay out of this! He pointed his finger in my direction but turned back to Kari. What did you tell her, you lying bitch? Even from five doors down I could