How it feels to see it coming - and know he'd get away with it... The sense of male ownership of women upon marriage is both an outrage and a surprise. When I told my abusive husband I was leaving him, he ran to his desk, pulled out our marriage certificate and waved it at me as if he owned me. I didn't know when I left him that I would be in danger. It didn't take long to realize I needed to get a restraining order. It didn't take long after getting one to realize it had no protective value if the police didn't take it seriously.

I did not know that the police and justice system would be biased against me because I am a woman, taking his word against mine, preserving his rights over mine, ignoring the danger he posed to me and the children, and allowing him to harass and hound me into poverty, and giving him more rights to the children than I, the primary caretaker.

Finally, through wear and tear, he did get the children. How different my life could be today if I knew these things before I left instead of learning as it happened. Waking to the realization that I, a woman alone, was the lowest form of life in the patriarchal system and that I could die because of it, was a horror. When I knew my husband could kill me and get away with it (especially if he made it look like an accident or suicide); when I knew that the police would not stop him even though his terrorism escalated each time he violated the restraining order and wasn't stopped, I reached a sense of clarity about patriarchy.

Not a bit of what happened to me made sense until I was able to see it as he, the police, and justice system must have seen it: that I and the children were that man's possessions and he had the right to do with us as he pleased. Always, his rights were given precedence over mine. None considered that he might deserve to lose some of those rights. I saw a society that was upside down and all wrong - but I saw it clearly for what it was: a social order created by men, for men, with women assigned to an inferior place. I didn't want to think he might kill me. Only crazy people think that way. Right?

One day he arranged to give the kids and I a ride home from the doctor's office. I had misgivings, but thought I'd be safe as long as the kids were there. I did not know that this assumption could be deadly. When I got into the car his faced turned strangely dark and frightening. He did not say a word. He drove past my house quickly and onto the highway and I knew a terror I never felt before. If he killed me it could have been staged to look like an accident. He stopped the car after a mile or so and I tried to get out and run. As soon as I had my seat belt off, the door open, and was on the way out, he stepped hard on the gas and pulled a fast U-turn. I could feel the force pulling me out of the car but somehow I stayed in.

He drove back to town much more slowly and then let me and the kids out. I called the police. They were angry that I called them, blaming me for getting into that situation. I pointed out the times when they said I should go with him and that he would not hurt me. They always believed what he told them. Whenever I called them about his harassment and stalking, they invariably took his side and acted like he was just concerned about the kids and that I was just being stupid, un-cooperative and paranoid for wanting my harmless estranged husband to let me live my life.

Anyway, my husband explained in an affidavit that I tried to jump out of a moving car. No kidding. The kids were right there but were too young to be able to testify. The youngest said, "Daddy, you're scaring Mommy". They (and I) felt the terror of that day for a very, very long time. When he got that close to seriously harming me and the police did not stop him - even he knew he could get away with murder. His attacks intensified after that and I was sure that if he wasn't stopped, he would kill me. Several months afterwards, he was stopped. That's another story.

For me, the terror never went away completely. The knowledge that society would have helped him kill me, and get away with it too, has changed me forever. Now when I remember him waving the marriage certificate at me like ownership papers, I realize that, according to our patriarchal system, he really did own me. Any illusions I had about women being treated as equal to men were absolutely shattered.