The worst

April 3, 2016

For 16 years I gave everything I had to a career and co-workers that I truly loved. Not a day went by that I didn't want to go to work and do what I loved, what I excelled at and what gave me the most happiness in my life.  Working anywhere from 40-80 hours a week sometimes 5 days sometimes 7 always taking work home with me. I was driven, focused and learning more when I could, never wanting to stop educating myself on how to be a better employee and be able to give my clients more. 

I never imagined at the age of 21 that the choice I made to apply for a job at a Farmers Insurance office would turn into a lifetime career. I didn't look that far ahead back then, I simply needed to make a change in where I was heading and had never had an office job up until that point. My first year with Sandra's office should have been it for me. My boss was a drunk on prescription medication and made me go on daily liquor runs for her to keep her addiction flowing. I drove her brand new Subaru Legacy and I was her only way to get home safely, she would have her husband drive her to work in the mornings. I did work for 5 full time Insurance Agents and Producers and I serviced and maintained all of her 2300 clients. I didn't take days off or vacations that 4 years I worked for her and I never told anyone about what went on in her office because I truly felt sorry for her. 

I was involved in 3 company audits while employed with her, and in the end I was forced to cooperate with authorities when they learned she had been stealing client payments for her personal use. I was part of a team that her Agents formed who tried to help her with her addictions and save her Agency. We staged an intervention after finding boxes of Life Insurance applications with cashed checks but no policies and dozens of empty gallon Vodka bottles hidden throughout her office. She denied it all and refused to accept our help and the waiting bed we had set up at a local treatment center. That was the day that I could no longer work for her and hide her secrets and another Agent in her office took me on and we moved out the next week to another location. 

Because of my ability to adapt in such a negative environment I was able to figure out the things I didn't know how to do and became determined to become the best customer service agent I could possibly be. I was the highest paid csr in my field who wasn't licensed and was being given bonuses for writing new policies even though I should have been licensed to receive bonuses. I was the most experienced girl in Spokane and most of the Agents I knew would have me come out to train their girls and get them up to speed. I had several Agents themselves ask me for help and training and all of my relationships with the Agencies were positive and lasting, never burning a bridge when I moved around to different offices. 

I never had to fill out an application or apply to work for an Agent if I wanted to move up in my career. They always approached me to work for them, one of the Agents waiting over a year for me to accept his offer. That Agent became my mentor and longest running employer at 6 years. He showed me Commercial Insurance and I fell in love with it. We were a great team and never had any issues working together. He enjoyed the fact that he had the number one csr in our region and was happy to lend me out to train new csr's and Agents whenever they needed me. He owned the house that Jake and I rented and I did my best to keep my home life separate from working for him. I spent my entire marriage to Jake working for him, and I never spoke about my problems to my boss though he knew for years something had to be going wrong. I never had to say anything to him, he just knew and a few years into my marriage my boss put a bathroom shower and bed in a back office then told me it was ok for me to stay there anytime I needed too, no questions asked. It wasn't until the end of August 2009 that I could no longer hide what was happening from him. It was early on a Monday morning when he came to work expecting for his office to be open and lights on with me on the phone checking messages when he came in. But not that day, that day he came upon an office whose lights were still off, window shades still drawn and phones ringing off the hook. He would find me at my desk, broken, beaten and sobbing with my head laid down, and when he turned on the lights and said my name "Chelle?" he would see someone unrecognizable whose face and right arm were so badly beaten and bruised it made that grown man breakdown in tears too. 

We sat across from one another for a long time, not saying a word to each other just crying and him holding my hand. When he did speak he told me I had to leave Jake that this had gone too far and that I would pay with my life if I didn't leave him. He wanted to know what had transpired over the weekend and I did what i had never before done, I told him the truth and every detail about that weekend not holding anything back. He closed the office that day and we never took one phone call as the lines rang off the hook until 5:00 that night. He sat and listened to me, disbelieving of what he heard while a continuous stream of tears flowed down his face. I remember the look in his eyes was like looking at something that deeply terrified and scared him but he couldn't do anything to stop it. 

I began with my last day at work the week before, on Thursday. I had gotten home around 5:30 that night and as usual was met by my neighbor Neva at the mailboxes for a quick chat and a smile. She was a little old Angel in my life and without fail Monday-Friday Neva would be waiting outside for me to get home so she could say hello. I think that she must have always known what was going on in my house because she always made sure her presence was known to Jake and that he knew someone saw me everyday and would question if I wasn't there someday. After our quick chat I went into the house and was met with Jake in a fit of anger already, cursing and throwing things around the house for no reason. 

And I knew that my night was about to get ugly, I just didn't know for how long or how bad it would get. It ended up being the worst weekend of my existence and there was never another time in my marriage to Jake that I felt more scared or tortured. We were to be leaving the next day to head to Olympia Washington to be guest speakers at the Hempfest that was held all weekend. We still had to pack and get ready and still needed to make a trip to Hermiston Oregon to his family's farm to pick up a 15,000 pound load of watermelons to take to Olympia with us to sell. Jake decided that I needed to understand and realize what life was life not having legs like him and proceeded to demand that I spend the entire evening packing our truck by doing so on my knees. He didn't care that our driveway was made of cobblestone or that it was at least 12 feet from the house through the garage to where our truck and trailer were parked. He just wanted me to do it on my knees while he screamed and threw whatever he could find at my head all fucking night long. 

I never tried to refuse his request because I knew that would make it worse. I spent all night until around 3 am struggling to carry supplies with my hands while walking on my knees to the truck. I could barely manage near the end and there was a bloody trail from inside my house through the garage out to the truck from my legs being torn up shuffling across the cobblestone driveway. I remember looking at the blood trail thinking "i wonder if this is what a snails trail would look like it they bled when they moved?". Odd thought I know, but it was all that came to my mind as I had to block out all that Jake was saying and doing to me. I also thought about how I couldn't forget Jake's leg braces because he needed them to stand up on while he was on stage speaking to the thousands of people who would be listening to him. 

Around 3 in the morning he finally had enough fun and told me to come inside and get cleaned up. I wanted to lay down so badly and go to sleep, just sleep and rest my bloody and torn up legs, I hurt so badly but somehow I couldn't really feel the amount of pain I was in. I collapsed from exhaustion inside of the bathroom door, laying on my side while I tried to peel my pants off of my legs without taking off more skin. I was allowed to crawl into the bath tub and soak my aching body for awhile and I honestly thought he was done torturing me after he saw what that nights work had done to my legs and to me. But I was sadly mistaken and I mistakenly underestimated Jake's ability to torture a woman who had done nothing but love and take care of him and would soon find out how demented and evil he really was. 

When he thought I had taken long enough to take a bath he came rolling into the doorway and told me to get out and dry off. As I was getting out of the tub i looked up at the ceiling and it hit me. About a week before that Jake had one of his buddies come over and install a pully system over the tub so that he could lift himself up out of his chair into it without hurting himself. It had a rope through the pully and a winch that when pressed would pull the rope up, locking it into place wherever he wanted to stop it. Until that moment It had never crossed my mind that he could use it for any other purpose, then the panic set in as Jake neared my naked, broken body with a knife and a set of handcuffs in his lap. 

No matter what i chose to do, I would either die or get hurt very badly so I usually chose to comply with his insane demands to try to make it easier on myself. This time, I didn't want to comply, I would rather have died at his hands then do what he asked of me but I ended up complying in the end. Jake fashioned the rope into a noose and wrapped it around my neck and handcuffed my hands behind my back. My face was lowered down just above the top of the tub, which he filled with water as full as it would go without  it overflowing. If I tried to sit down off my knees, I would get strangled or my face would fall in the water and I would drown. I wouldn't dare try to stand up and get relief either because he sat in our bedroom which adjoined the bathroom, so that he could monitor what I was doing. He forced me to sit in this position for over 7 hours until after 10:00 the next morning.

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* I have to stop here and will continue at another time. Writing about this night is extremely painful and I am not doing well at the moment. I am sorry*