Feeling Like I Had To Stay...

I met my husband in a dark time in my life. I was heavily abusing drugs and was in no position to start a relationship. He also was a drug user, on top of psychiatric problems. He is bi-polar, pscyzofective (spelling) and has several other diagnosis's. In a haze of drugs and craziness we were married after 7 short weeks. Our first DV was 3 days after we got married. The police showed up after he through all of my belongings outside in the mud because I found out he was sleeping with his ex. He threatened to kill me if I left so I stayed but then he tormented me for days with a gun. I left for about 2 days but he would call me begging me to forgive him and stating he was back on his meds. 3 months went by with similar, but smaller incidents leading to our eviction and moving into a new place. Once in the new, bigger place we had a spare room which he quickly "loaned" out to his drug dealer. With the traffic in the house and the amounts of drugs being consumed it quickly became a very violent environment. He was constantly threatening me, and cutting phone lines. He would hold me hostage for days. For his 30th birthday, his family thought it was a good idea to give him a machete sized buck knife. He celebrated his birthday for 3 long days with no sleep and more drugs. By the third day he hadn't let me leave the upstairs and had invited friends over whom he would tell how and when he was going to kill me. Finally he decided he was going. He held me in the living room with a gun to my temple and the knife to my throat, screaming how he would do the time for killing me. Thankfully, my parents had grown concerned after not having heard from me and were outside and could hear him. They quickly called the police and he was arrested. After his release from jail, (3 days later) we didn't speak for several weeks, and once again were evicted. But at our first court appearance we met afterwards in the parking lot and decided to try and fix it. He was clean from drugs and I thought it might get better. Unfortunantly he was still not taking his medication and while he was less physically violent, the emotional violence increased. He would constantly tell me how fat and ugly I was, make fun of facial hair I have from a condition, and tell me I was lucky he was with me as no one else would be. My self esteem was always bad, but he took every last ounce of it and destroyed me. 5 months after his arrest we found out I was pregnant. Something about that really made him snap and he cut all the phone lines leading into our new apartment. The police couldn't prove it was him, however they could tell how out of his mind he was and they were able to court order him to a psych ward. He spent 2 months in the hospital and came back a whole different person. He was fairly nice to me, and the violence had stopped. But his meds ran out and he hadn't found a follow up doctor, and decided to drag me, pregnant and all, through our apartment with a phone cord around my neck. I was so scared to leave. I would try and go and he would hunt me down and flatten my tires. He tried to set fire to my mother's apartment. He would barricade me in our apartment if I went there to get anything. And through all this we had court dates over the domestic incident from his birthday which made him increasingly unstable. Thankfully 4 weeks after the birth of my child he was sent to prison for a year. He hasn't been out since. He kept getting new charges and has been in there for almost 7 years.
Next month he is finally set to be released. We are still married, although legally separated, but he his moving to another state to be with his family. My anxiety is very high and in the last 6 months I have finally started therapy and am medicated for panic attacks. I'm in a new relationship that isn't very healthy itself, but not abusive. He is working with me to work through my past. I hope to one day be healthy again. I have horrible trust issues, and of course no self esteem which makes me insecure. Right now I'm just taking it day by day...I hope to be better soon.