I’ve shied away from putting my story out there for many reasons.
Mostly because I’ve felt ashamed of what others would think, their judgement and fear of the response I’d receive. But, I’ve come to realize that storytelling impacts others. And maybe, if my story reaches someone who needs it, they’ll feel less alone than I felt during this time in my life.
It all started with isolation. I was a Senior in High School when I met my abuser. I wanted to be with friends and spend time before we went off and made our own lives. If I was out without my abuser, my phone was constantly blown up with texts.
“Who are you with?”
“What are you doing”
“How late are you going to be out?”
It went from feeling like he was sweet and just wanted to know what I was up to, to accusations.
“Well, who else is there?”
“There aren’t any guys there?”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“I bet guys are all over you”
It got to a point where I slowly stopped sharing time with my friends and spent more and more time with him because I wanted him to trust me. Besides the fact that, I simply wasn’t present if I wasn’t with him.
If I told you the violence didn’t begin before that, I’d be lying. There were many shouting matches, clothes hangers thrown at me, and locking myself in the bathroom to sleep and hide from him. Once, I asked to get out of his car because he was driving erratically, but I was trapped. He wouldn’t let me out, wouldn’t let me leave until after I pleaded and begged for what felt like hours. I didn’t see these fights as threatening. He had shared with me how he was always misunderstood in his family and that he had been bullied at school and he needed me to get better. He needed me to be a better person and to overcome those struggles. I denied the obvious signs, the red flags. I thought these were proclamations of love.
Next, he became a wedge between me and the most important part of me: my family. He would tell me to come see him, even though I had already told him my parents wouldn’t allow it. He ignored the boundaries my family had of being out after curfew or obligations such as birthdays, holidays or even just simple get-togethers. He would tell me that I was an adult now, that I could make my own decisions. He said my parents held me back and denied me the opportunity to make my own choices. I had planned to attend George Mason University in hopes of achieving a nursing degree. But of course, he said he would be moving across the country to complete a program he was interested in. He told me our relationship wouldn’t last if it were long distance. And didn’t I love him? Didn’t I want to be with him? If I really loved him, I’d go with him. He would get me away from my “toxic family” and give me a happier, better life. It was after this conversation (and after only 6 months of dating) that he decided to propose. My 18-year-old self only saw a diamond and my Pinterest board dreams coming to life. Now, we were engaged. You can’t live across the country, when you’re engaged. I needed to go and be with him as he chased his dream. I told my parents our new plan and that I would be moving to Oregon with him. He was my fiancé, after all.
I broke my mother’s heart. I left my dreams and my goals and my family behind. All because I had so much to prove… to him. We’d be alright. We’d get through these hard times and start our new life and be happy. I could make him happy, I knew I could. I just had to try harder.
We moved to Oregon and things grew worse from there. I was homesick, which he dubbed as pathetic. I was 18 and broke. If I needed anything, I had to go to him for it. He made sure I knew that even though he was receiving an “allowance” from his parents to cover rent and utilities and food, that I still owed him money. I needed to earn my stay. I worked part time while taking classes to make sure I had the money he needed from me. The money he told me went towards bills, was instead used to buy marijuana. If I didn’t have enough money or if I had to cut work hours to study for exams, he let me know I was pathetic and needed to work harder to make sure I paid him what he needed. “Why even bother going to school for a degree? You’re not smart enough to be anything more than a waitress, anyway.”
I was threatened with fists that broke through walls. And a door that kicked in to the point of needing to be replaced. (I was the one blamed when we had to patch these holes, holes that I didn’t make, in order to avoid a renters fee.) I couldn’t see the cycle of anger, which led to the violence, fear and then the sweet apologies and false promises of…
“it won’t happen again”
“you know I never want to hurt you”
“I’m going to get help, I swear”
My family came to visit me that first year. They saw how I was living and witnessed the life that had become my normal. They sensed the tension and noticed the eggshells I was always walking on. My sister wanted to go for a walk and for some reason, he was angry and told me I didn’t love him, that I was disrespectful. My sister saw him grab me by the hood of my sweatshirt, choking and holding me back from walking away from him. She told my mom who instantly went into momma bear mode, wanting to protect and save me from him. I defended him. I told my family they didn’t understand us and didn’t understand him. They tried to save me, but we’d prove them wrong…they’d see.
When I made friends at school, the relationships were short lived. I’d want to go out, but if my outfit was inappropriate, in his opinion, or if I wore dangly or hooped earrings, I was a whore. If I didn’t have the exact plan or the itinerary of the evening, I couldn’t go. He didn’t trust me. Or if I did go, I’d spend days wondering why he wasn’t speaking to me, begging him to believe that I had done nothing wrong, that he could trust me. In abuse, you learn that when you decline or bail on plans frequently, people stop inviting you altogether. My time could only be shared with him.
Our first year living in Oregon, he and I shared an apartment with his younger brother and friend of theirs. During that year, I saw him bully, intimidate and control his brother. One time, he almost ran his brother over as I sat in the passenger seat screaming and begging him to stop. His brother was luckily unharmed, because as he had slammed on the brakes, his brother jumped on the hood of the car to avoid being plowed down.
After that happened, their parents decided to move from Virginia to Oregon. We then lived with them in their new home. During this time, his father traveled between the two states and was gone for weeks at a time. He made it clear that my abuser was the man of the house when he was not there. I observed him control, manipulate and bully his own mother. I watched him slam his brother’s head into a cabinet after an innocent joke. I was just outside a window he shattered after he threw a plate at it, angry because his grandmother had left a knife in the sink.
Then, I got pregnant.
I wanted a baby. I was ecstatic to be a mommy. I thought things would change with a baby. I thought we’d be happier and he’d finally see that I deserved his trust. He initially denied that the child was his. He accused me of sleeping around. “How could he trust a slut like me?” He then demanded that I get an abortion. Staring at me with arms folded over his chest, my shaky hands dialed the number to the clinic. The day of my appointment I begged him to let me keep the baby, I told him I could leave and he wouldn’t have to help with anything, “I can handle being a single mom, I just cannot abort this baby.” I went through with the pregnancy and he assured me that we would make it work. In my second trimester, I needed to go to the hospital for monitoring, fearful when I hadn’t felt the baby move for some time. He got mad, said I was overreacting and he began driving erratically. I begged him to slow down. He turned the car into oncoming traffic and we were inches from a collision. When I finally got to the hospital, my blood pressure was sky high. I’ll never forget the nurse’s questioning face as I told her I was alright. I was just feeling a bit anxious, everything else was fine.
I wanted my mom and my sister there when I gave birth. He forced me to tell them they could not be there, that they didn’t need to be there, this wasn’t about them. I labored for 68 hours and had a c section, essentially alone. I didn’t have my mom encouraging me and soothing me. I didn’t have my sister’s hand to squeeze through the contractions. My dad wasn’t there to proudly meet his first grandchild. They had to wait over a month to come meet and visit her. During that family visit, he hoarded me, keeping me away in our room out of ear shot from my family, telling me how much they hurt and disrespected him and how could I enjoy their visit when they were so rude and so hateful towards him- I ended up fighting with my family, yet again, defending him and telling them he and our daughter were my family now and that they needed to accept it and accept him.
About a month after our daughter was born, the three of us moved out of his parents’ home and into a house of our own. This was the beginning of the end. The last few months of the relationship were the most intense. When I went to work, he’d threaten to kill himself or to leave with our baby and threatened that I’d never see her again. He slammed his fist into a door as our daughter watched from her high chair, shattering his hand which he had to have immediate surgery on. Of course, it was my fault because I was the one who had made him angry. During fights, I’d lock myself in a bathroom to hide from him, he’d take the door knob off of the door to come after me. At one point I had to throw a hammer under the bed out of his reach because he was threatening me with it.
I was grabbed. I was pushed. I was thrown up against my car. I was choked. I was threatened. My phone was often taken from me and gone through. If I changed my password on any accounts, I was punished for days for being a liar and for hiding things from him. I was told on a frequent basis that he could kill me, get rid of my body and that no one would know what happened to me. And no one would ever suspect him. I believed him. There were times I would wake up in the middle of the night to him on top of me, holding a pillow above his head as though he were about to smother me. Other nights, he would be forcefully having intercourse with me- without my consent. If I attempted to get him off of me or to tell him no, he would cover my mouth and whisper in my ear that he knew what a slut like me wanted from him and not to fight it or it’d only get worse.
I didn’t begin to wake up until his interest in buying a gun. He kept telling me that I needed to be the one to buy it. I didn’t want a gun. I had never even shot a gun, didn’t know anything about them, why would I buy one? This is when I finally started to realize I should be scared, that I was in danger.
I was scared. I was lost. I didn’t know who I was. I felt like a body walking through life, but I was not actually living. I couldn’t make decisions without looking to him. I had lost all ability to be my own person. I didn’t know who I was anymore. It felt like being just under the surface fighting with all of my strength to come up for air, but being tangled in weeds that I couldn’t get out of.
When he left for work one morning, I jolted up. I knew I needed to go, I needed to get my daughter out of that dangerous and toxic house. I started throwing what I could into a suitcase. I called my mom, she bought us a one way ticket home for the very next day. His dad happened to come by as I was loading my car with our belongings. He told me I was making a big mistake. That I was being dramatic. That by leaving, I would hurt the family. “Why would I be scared of his son?” he asked. Even though he witnessed the abuse with his own eyes for four years.
I went to a women’s shelter because I was afraid he’d find me and keep me from leaving. At the airport early the next morning, I nervously looked around, expecting him to show up and to stop us. I couldn’t really breathe until we were in the air, flying away.
I left. I survived.
It took me years. Years to recover.
Hell, I’m still recovering from the psychological and emotional abuse. I had paralyzing anxiety and frequent panic attacks, as well as nightmares. I constantly apologized for things I didn’t need to feel sorry for. I had to build up my self-esteem and worth from the very bottom. Because after I left that relationship, I had neither of those things. The control and fear were masked as his way of loving me and that kind of blind torture is a rabbit hole that no one should be trapped in. I distrusted myself and any decisions I made. Even after I was 3,000 miles away, I was still convinced he would show up and hurt me or take my daughter away from me. It took me years to not feel the need to constantly look over my shoulder. Or to wonder if he was watching me or somehow told my friends to report to him about my whereabouts and/or doings. I was convinced that no one could ever love me. That I’d never find someone who’d want to be with me because I was told that no one ever would. No one would love me as much as he did, no one would care about me as much as he did. When my now husband and I first started dating, it took the first years of our relationship to truly trust him. To believe he truly was a good person and I found myself waiting for his dark side to come out around every corner. I didn’t believe I was capable of realizing when someone was dangerous and evil to their core.
Victims of domestic violence don’t speak, often because they’re groomed to be silent. I even struggled to submit this for fear of the sheer possibility of any repercussion from him.
But instead, by sharing my story, I feel like I am finally free. Free of him and all he did and put me through. Free from fearing life and loving others. I am free of the grasp he so tightly held me in.
Thank you for letting me share my story.