When her husband came home from work each day, Kelli Bundzinski and her three youngsters tried “not to move and stay super quiet,” afraid to do or say anything that might set off a fit of rage.
It was only after he started talking that she would be able to gauge his mood, and then they could all relax a little if he wasn’t angry. He was a bully who was “pissed off all the time,” she said.
Tired of living in constant anxiety, Bundzinski took the kids and left home a year ago, and is filing for divorce after four years of marriage.
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“This past year, I feel like my kids and I have been through a lifetime’s worth of stress and heartbreak all squished in and compacted. … I took us out of a bad situation and we fell into a world of struggle. We have been moved around so many times,” staying with friends or at shelters for a few months at a time. Now they’re living in a Waianae transitional housing shelter, and “stability is making its way into our lives,” Bundzinski said.
She is saddened that her own family abandoned her for leaving her husband, so when neighbors and people she doesn’t know perform small acts of kindness, “that takes the hopelessness and lost feeling away and restores our love,” Bundzinski said.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser readers can help Bundzinski and other families grappling with despair and hardship through the annual Adopt A Family Program, run by Helping Hands Hawaii. This newspaper’s Good Neighbor Fund drive works in partnership with HHH to collect money and donations of clothes, household goods and other necessities; readers may adopt any family or individual featured in stories running every Sunday until Christmas. Funds will provide a special Christmas dinner and a few extras from Santa, and help people with basic expenses throughout the year.
Bundzinski, who is using her maiden name, says she openly talks about her husband’s physical and mental abuse, although she is afraid he will make their divorce difficult.
“The more you speak out, the more they (abusers) will hide from people because they don’t want people to know,” she said. “I just hope that whoever reads this, somebody that’s getting hurt will be able to realize it’s not OK and then get out of it, like they’ll have the courage to speak against it.”
She’s found women are ashamed to admit they’re being beaten or emotionally manipulated — “It’s all hush-hush,” even in domestic violence shelters. And it’s the hardest thing for the abused to stop thinking like victims, she said.
“If you’re in the victim mindset, then everything (is about) blaming something, like, ‘I can’t’ and ‘This isn’t fair’ and ‘Why me?’ and that’s not productive. Maybe speaking up against these people, not hide in the fear behind closed doors, we should be standing up and say, ‘No! You are a bully!’ These people are bullies. They don’t have the guts to do the things they’re doing to other men; they’re doing it to women when nobody can see ’em,” Bundzinski said.
“I’m very upset with people who knew about it (the abuse)” and didn’t support her in any way, she said. When he threatened to kill her, and Bundzinski told his family she was going to call the police, they were more worried that he would get into trouble and lose his job.
“They didn’t really care about my life,” she said.
Even her family thinks she should be a dutiful wife and overlook his temper and moodiness, Bundzinski added. Even worse, they take his side because they feel sorry for him when he cries over her leaving him.
“They’re enabling him,” she said, so he doesn’t get the therapy he needs. In domestic violence shelters, other women have shared the same stories, she added.
Bundzinski tried to hold a job, but when her car broke down a month ago, she couldn’t get her 3-year-old to his babysitter and then be at home in time for her two girls, 5 and 11, after school. She has to ride the bus with three squirming kids to go grocery shopping, to the doctor and everywhere, and most appointments are far away.
It would cost $1,800 to fix the burnt-out clutch in her car, “and if I don’t figure out like a magic solution, it’s going to take three years to save up the money,” she said.
On top of that, someone stole her kids’ shoes from outside their front door a few months ago, and they’re wearing slippers that are breaking down. That’s why for Christmas, Bundzinski is asking for shoes, socks and underwear for her children, and a toaster oven.
