I celebrated my fourth wedding anniversary by opening a good bottle of Malbec that I had treated myself to then sat down at the the kitchen table, cheap ballpoint pen in hand, to fill out my divorce papers.

Meanwhile, my (now) ex-husband spent the evening bouncing between fits of not caring what I was doing to badgering me about leaving him. But this was normal. So were things like his insistence that our relationship was over and he was done with me to then wanting me to stay and calling me a quitter for thinking of leaving. He wanted to divorce me but also wanted me to stay at the house (for which the mortgage was in my name). He also wanted to have sex with other women. So I found myself on December 27, sitting in our kitchen, watching the snow fall, drinking wine in front of a crackling fire, and filling out divorce papers on our four-year anniversary. Two days earlier was the worst Christmas of my life.John had invited his brother and sister and their families to come stay with us for Christmas. In a rush to finish the floors at the house, he began taking pills to help him stay awake at night to finish the task. He’d drink alcohol to come back down. He’d smoke marijuana throughout the day, all day, every day, along with those other two substances. I set my sewing machine up in the living room in front of the big picture window where I could look out at the snowy mountains while I finished making aprons for his sisters for Christmas. He told me to move it to the back room. When I resisted, he waited until I went to work and moved it himself, to that dark windowless room.

Somehow I had become the enemy. He wouldn’t talk to me, would barely look at me. By the time they arrived, I was in tears, trying to hold it all together to be a good host. At night, after everyone went to bed, I’d come out into the living room and sleep on the couch.

By Christmas Eve, his hatred toward me was becoming more obvious. The family had planned to celebrate Christmas Eve at his other brother’s house who lived near us. We were all planning to spend the night there because we knew we’d be drinking. John said if I was going, he wasn’t going. He ended up staying home while I went with his mom, brothers and sisters to celebrate Christmas Eve. That night, I laid in my brother and sister-in-law’s living room under the light of the Christmas tree and cried myself to sleep.The next morning I left early and headed back to my house to get ready for Christmas Day where I was making Christmas dinner for all 11 of us. When I got to my house, John was there. He was sitting on the couch, watching a show, his hand wrapped around a bottle of champagne.I started to vacuum and he yelled at me to stop. I explained the family would be here soon and I needed to clean the house. That’s when he lunged at me, grabbed the vacuum cleaner from my hand and rammed it over and over into the Christmas tree, crushing the presents underneath. He left the vacuum there, smashed into the tree. Tears in my eyes, I pulled it out and grabbed the presents my parents had sent us, tried to make them look normal. They were the only ones there besides the one’s I had gotten John. A few days later, he would throw a card at me that contained a gift card and a note saying, “Sorry I’m an asshole.”I don’t remember much about the rest of that Christmas Day other than fighting back tears while preparing dinner for his family.Two days later, I would fill out the divorce papers. Days after that I would leave for good after he would throw my jewelry box against the woodburning stove and smash all my jewelry as I was on my way to work. For the remainder of that holiday season, I would couch surf and stay in motels. Two days before Valentine’s Day, I would return, after things had cooled down, to pick up baking supplies to make my friends cookies. I would see his pupils completely dilated as he ripped up our marriage license and threw it in the fire, telling me he was waiting for me to do that. I would know then I was in danger and I would try to leave. I would get as far as the front door where I would wrap my fingers around the exit, trying to get out. He would drag me back inside. He’d knock my legs out from under me, drop me to the dirty wood floor. He’d pull a knife on me, one I had used to make us dinner many times, and cut my jacket apart to get a cell phone. I’d escape but I’d be scarred.Scarred. But not broken. Christmases have gotten a lot better since then. I have a fiance now and a new baby. That terrible Christmas from years ago is now just a memory, a different life I once lived. I still remember how hard it was leave: my home, a marriage I wanted to make work. But thank God I took that first step, because it led me to a much better life.