I was naïve when we first got married. All I wanted was to marry this man that I loved, work to make each other happy, have kids, and live happily ever after. I did not think that husbands and wife argue just for the sake of arguing and disagreeing. I knew we would argue and have occasional fights to resolve a disagreement but always thought that the end result was to benefit the marriage and the family.

That is not the case with my husband. He fights just to fight and he argues just to argue. It does not matter if I agreed with him or not, he will change his opinions just to argue and escalate the argument into a fight.

In 1993, we were sort of new to Atlanta, and I, being dumb and naïve, did not pay attention to these terrible characters trades in my husband. When the snow storm happened, I was happy that we were going to be together for a couple of days, drinking hot chocolates, and watching old movies on TBS. I was hoping for us to get closer, cook together, laugh together, and just be together. What I did not know was that my husband simply cannot have a normal conversation. Every conversation he enters must end either by him talking by himself to the point where everyone around him have moved on mentally to something completely different, or if the conversation is with someone close to him like his brother, sisters, mother, or myself, then it must escalate to a huge fight.

On that particular day, I woke up in the morning, got ready and went downstairs to the kitchen, cooked he favorite breakfast food. we had good conversation and then he went to the living room. I finished cleaning up and went after him and sat there watching whatever he was watching. After an hour or tow, I told him I was going to exercise on my stationary bike. That’s when he couldn’t help himself and started telling me that all this exercise means nothing, it has no effect on me, etc etc.

Surely I did not like what I heard so I was trying to tell him that any exercise is better than non at all. I was talking to him in a way to hopefully win approval to do my exercise, and he was knocking it down. He wanted me to just say you are right and I will not exercise every again, but I was not saying this because I did want to exercise whether it was for weight loss or not. That’s when he started raging in his usual way, I was not very used to it at that time and did not know how to avoid it, and started with his loud voice and angry movements that scared me to death. It left me wounded not knowing where this rage came from and why. It left me crying not able or scared to exercise when he is around. I was at a disbelief at what was happening.

After that I was afraid to talk to him and he was angry with me and acted very angry the whole time we were stuck at home. I remember those three days being alone, afraid to go to any room he was in, eating leftovers, and spending a lot of time in the spare room. The things I remember from that snow storm that it was during the time of our marriage when we were trying to have kids. Every once in a while someone on tv would mention there because of the snow storm, there will be a lot of babies born nine months from now and I was sitting there alone feeling awful because I said I was going to exercise.