Abuse in my relationship was limited predominately to verbal abuse. However, in or around June, 1992, things went South in a major way. My now "x" who lived with me was pregnant. We had been discussing keeping the child versus aborting. My STRONGEST preference was to keep the child. After roughly a month, she decided for both of us and went in and had the abortion. I was depressed to the point of being dispondent (I had been talking to the child for almost a month by this point).

The next day I was scheduled to attend a charity golf tournament for Adopt a Family. I attended and a male friend of mine, noticing my depression (without knowing why) "made" me stay and attend assist him with passing out refreshments to our co-workers. I got hammered and went home.

I was lying in bed asleep when my x bust through the door of "our" bedroom shouting "You Son of a bitch!" and wielding a baseball bat. She brought the bat down across my legs. I managed to trap the baseball bat with a pillow which I had been using to protect my upper body and head and wrenched the bat away from her.

She left the room to return with a marble rolling pin, stood over me in bed, reared back shattering the ceiling light with her back-swing and took another swing at my head. I blocked that one with the pillow and took that away from her as well.

She left the room. I got up to get dressed. At this point I heard her say, "I'm going to kill you, you son of a bitch". My quickly sobbering mind flashed on my 357 magnum which she had evidently gotten out of my "gun room" and left on the living room railing (I had noticed it when I came in as it was most definetely out of place). I managed to grab the gun and trap both the cylinder and the hammer of the gun as she came through the bedroom door. (Yes, she had just completed loading the gun.)

I controlled the gun so that it was not pointed at either one of us, took her down and took the gun away from her, unloaded the gun and left. One of her wrists was slightly sprained when I twisted the gun out of her hands. Other than that, no injury.

My ex was in the 150 lb class. I am an ex-wrestler weighing about 200 lbs. I do more damage to myself on an average mountain bike ride than my X was able to inflict on me during this entire episode. But you make the call. Was I subjected to domestic violence? Am I a domestic violence survivor?

Instead of calling the police, I called her parents as it was evident that she was out of control. No charges were filed. I was later accused of domestic violence by her in a paternity suit which followed this incident.