Fighter
Sometimes writing down your own story is the hardest part. Part of the reason it’s hard is because once you tell it, it’s out there for the world to see and you wait for support or judgement. The more I pass my story on when I speak, the more people I’ve met that have experienced the exact same thing I have and thank me for sharing. So here is my story.
2011
I had met my first ex partner through a former friend in college. I was a junior in my Fall term. She had tried to set us up during our sophomore year, but I had told him I wasn’t interested in dating. Part of me was nervous because I’ve never had a really boyfriend before. I had only been on 1 date my entire life.
He texted me out of the blue one day several months later and we began to talk and it just continued after that. The first time we met was in the beginning of September. It was the first time I met him. He was so charming and attractive. He had this silent confidence that drew me in. Our first date I should’ve seen the signs, but I didn’t. I was completely enthralled by him. We went to the movies and he kissed me and we started to make out. Then he moved my hand to touch himself and I pulled away. Eventually he put them back again, I pulled away, I said no, I didn’t want to touch him like that. This happened several more time. I should’ve seen the signs, but I ignored them.
October 31, 2011
We became an official couple after a house party. We were pretty inseparable and we became that way very quickly. In the following months we would text constantly, sending thousands of texts in a month. Maybe for some this is normal, but for me it was not. I didn’t even have a smart phone at the time.
Then one of the worst moments of my life happened. I don’t even remember what month or day it happened, I tried to forget most of it to be honest. Throughout our relationship, he wouldn’t listen or respect my boundaries. If I said no or moved his hands, he never took that as a no, he took that as try again in a half hour. I laid out my boundaries, no oral, anal or vaginal sex until I said I wanted it and at the time I didn’t want it until marriage. Over and over and over again we’d play the game of starting to kiss and he’d see if he could go farther, me saying no or moving his hands and then he’d try again. Over and over and over…
He’d always make the excuse “You’re so attractive I can’t hold myself back….”
One day when I was at his house, in his room, we were watching TV and I was in and out of sleep. I was wearing a skirt and he kept trying to put his hands under it, but I kept moving them and saying not now. I woke up to him kissing my leg, not too high, just the skin that was visible and didn’t think anything of it. It felt nice and as long as he didn’t go farther….why would he? I told him my boundaries. Then in an instant his face was no longer there, he had moved so fast and started doing what I did not want him to do and I just laid there paralyzed. I told him I didn’t want oral sex, I’d always move his hands, I’d tell him no, I’d always tell him.
I felt completely broken. I felt worthless. I felt as if I wanted to die.
I pushed him away and cried. I asked him why he did that and he replied with his usual I was so attractive he couldn’t hold himself back and added, well you didn’t stop me. In my head I was screaming “What do you mean I didn’t stop you? I’ve been stopping you this entire relationship! You’re supposed to love me, you’re supposed to respect me, you’re supposed to listen to me!”
After that nothing mattered to me anymore. This had been a feeling that had gradually been growing deep inside me. Every time I had to move his hands, every time he ignored me. Every single time he wouldn’t respect me, a little piece of me chipped off until I was snapped into a million pieces, broken and destroyed.
I tried to hold my life together…but even that was crumbling
I began not caring about anything. I missed class, I let him do whatever he wanted with me sexually. He’d go through my phone without asking, another violation of my personal space. Any time we’d argue, he’d minimize my feelings saying I was just being over dramatic. He had previous sexual partners which didn’t bother me, not everyone decides to wait until marriage and that’s fine, but he believed that women shouldn’t sleep around a lot. That, of course, made me feel even worse about myself not only because of what he had taken from me, my choice and my body, but that’s what he wanted from me and it made me un-datable at the same time?
My parents hated him. They saw the changes in me. We fought much more often than was normal, I hated being touched, I hated people in my space or near my body, I’d cry often and anxiety doesn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling. I had to sneak around to see him.
He was always so jealous
One night at a bar, he thought I was checking out my friend boyfriend which made him so angry so he ignored me when I asked what was wrong, then I walked away in tears and he grabbed my arm hard. I pulled it away telling him to let me go and he walked away. I thought he had left so I got the car and left the club only to receive angry texts, him demanding I come back, calling me a bitch. When I finally returned, he kept calling me ruthless names and yelling at me in the car. I still didn’t know what set him off to begin with, I slapped his arm begging him to stop screaming at me. I was in tears, trying to navigate home from the city, no idea where I was with him yelling at me. When we got back to his place, he kept calling me names and I pushed on his arm to try to get him out of my car and his eyes changed. It was like he wasn’t there anymore, like he was possessed and he launched at me. He was a big guy and his hand gripped my neck. That minute of my life seemed to last forever, it was in slow motion. He pulled back and began to cry and apologize. I left and said I need a break.
Three days later I went back to him
This was our relationship until January 29, 2014. That was just a summary of my life during those years. I was depressed and anxious. I was always afraid he was going to call me names or say something horrible to me. He loved other women as well, so cheating was always a close thought in my mind. I can’t begin to describe the pain I felt every day, especially after that night in 2011. We split up 6 times and got right back together, the 6th was the last.
In 2013, while I was still with him, but I began volunteering at a local nonprofit working with women’s issues. I always had to tell him where I was going or who I was with, making sure I didn’t speak to any men. He said he didn’t require this, but he’d get mad if I didn’t tell him. At this nonprofit, there were only women there so he couldn’t get jealous. Starting early January 2014, I began training as a medical advocate at a domestic violence/sexual assault shelter. After he left for good, that’s when I realized what I experienced. I was a victim of domestic violence.
It was also the point that I realized that it wasn’t oral sex, that was sexual abuse.
I told him my boundaries and he every time he pushed past them, he was breaking me down. Over and over and over and over and over I said no, I moved his hands, I stopped him, I spelled out my boundaries and he ignored them. There’s a certain point where you stop caring, they’ve broken you down between disrespecting your space to calling you names to making you check in? That is prepping you to get what they want. Once you’re broken, you’re all theirs.
I believe he had no idea what he was doing was wrong. His parents were nonexistent in his life, his father an abuser and it’s not like our school system educates youth about consent and assault. This is one of the reasons I am such a proponent of education for prevention. If he knew, then maybe he wouldn’t have done what he did to me….that’s how I justified it in my head. That doesn’t remove the fact that he did, that he consistently worked around my no until he just decided to do what he wanted, no matter what I said. He removed that choice from me.
My second partner, that wasn’t the case. He was a vicious man, an incredible narcissist with a temper that mixed with his various drug and alcohol addictions. That all started shortly after my first partner and I separated.
February 14, 2014
After my first ex and I separated, I began talking to an old friend who I knew before my second ex. This guy was on a list of men who I was not allowed to speak to. (Yes I had an actual list because of my first ex’s jealousy.) My first ex thought I was hitting on this guy. I wasn’t.
Eventually I began dating this new guy and it swiftly went downhill again. He had a drug and alcohol problem that became apparent about 5 months into the relationship. He leeched off me financially, becoming extremely upset or angry if I questioned why he had bills. He’d never pay me back but if he borrowed money from friends, they’d get their money within a week and he continued to purchase drugs and alcohol never paying me back. The amount I lent him was well into the thousands, between the credit card debt, car, rent, food and god knows what else he spent that money on.
June 2014
He moved into a new apartment with one of his friends (we’ll call him A) who I knew as well. I felt myself slowly stop caring about everything by this point. When we were hanging out with his friends (A & B), B and I would always get into political or social discussions, all friendly but very energetic, which I loved. My ex though, would scream at me as loud as he could, telling me I only felt that way because I was playing the victim card or because of what my first ex did to me. He’d get up onto his knees on the couch, leaning forward to get in my face, trying to minimize my opinions and beliefs and make me feel as stupid as possible, always in front of his friends as they watched in silence. I can still smell his breath mix with alcohol in my face.
I’m not sure if he was just a narcissist or had self esteem issues, but he would go on and on how about how he thought faster than everyone else, how everyone else could be smart, but could not possibly think as fast as he could or pick up on things like he could. He could go on and on about this topic, lecturing me for hours about his grand intelligence. He’d talk about his roommate ‘A’ like this all the time as if he was saving him, giving him something to live for, as if someday A might be as intelligent and capable as my ex when in reality A was a very brilliant man and had about 1000 times the work ethic (and intelligence) than my second ex partner did.
August 2014
This was the first time he had ever gotten physical with me. I don’t even remember what set him off. He’d get set of with any of my idea about women’s equality or the social issues I still worked so closely with since most of my free time was spent with nonprofits.
This time became furious and I cried, begged and pleaded for him to stay and talk with me. I placing myself in front of him as he walked toward the door so I could see his face. He threw me to the floor and looked at me. I cried more, it hurt so badly and I asked him why he did that to me? He looked at me saying “what am I the abuser? I’ll call the police on myself then” As he took out his phone, I reached for it begging him not to do that and he grabbed my hand hard and tight.
He paused for a second and you could see the moment his eyes changed what he was thinking.
He gripped my hand harder and harder until POP! This immense pain shot through mybody. I knew that pop, I knew what that sound was. I was a former athlete, that was my tendon tearing. I recoiled and cried holding my hand as he mocked me. He laughed at me and said I was overreacting, I was being over-dramatic and after he was done mocking me, he ran out the door.
I sat there alone, on the floor, holding my hand and feeling my body ache. I just sat there and cried.
That what would happen if we fought and I began just letting him go. If I called him out on his behavior, like when he’d call me a bitch or say I was overreacting to invalidate my feelings or scream at me in front of his friends, he would either run out the door like he was on fire and run across the field at the apartment complex or he cover his ears and hum or repeat over and over “I can’t hear you” as if he was 5 years old.
The police were called on us once.
He just got finished yelling at me and he was laying in his bed covering his ears humming when I heard a knock on the door. I tried to ignore it but they kept knocking and I saw it was the police. I told him and he said that it was all my fault. So I wiped my tears and tried to fix my makeup as best I could and opened the door to 3 officers. They split us up, 1 talked to me, 2 talked to him. The were really incredible and did a great job. I still didn’t go with them, but they knew, you could tell they knew what was going on there.
I knew I had to leave and I made a plan to do so, but I was afraid. He lived only 3 minutes from my home and my family was there, I was so afraid if he became angry, some of his friends who I hadn’t met, might retaliate against my family.
January 1, 2015
New Years day, just after midnight I came to celebrate the New Year with him. Sometime came on TV and I made a comment about it. It had to do with the social issues I worked with. We started to argue and he said “This is how you want to start the New Year you crazy bitch? Really?” and stomped off to his room. I waited 30 minutes for him to cool down and walked in to tell him he can’t call me that name.
I closed the door over in case his roommate came back, I didn’t want him to hear what I naively hoped was going to be a discussion. He began his usual humming and repeating “I can’t hear you” and as I kept trying to talk to him, he flipped over and spit out the words “You crazy fucking bitch, get out, we’re done, I can’t deal with you’re insanity anymore, you’re fucking insane, do you know what you’re doing to me? Do you know what you do to people? No wonder your ex did those things to you, you crazy fucking bitch”
I couldn’t believe the word coming out of his mouth.
I was standing near the door when he decided to try to run out of it, so he shoved me as hard as he could. As I fell backwards I hit the door and, since his apartment was old and in disrepair, his doorknob fell of.
That’s when everything started
He became frenzied, screaming at me, calling for help as if I did something wrong to him! I kept trying to hug him, saying please relax, calm down, I’ll find the door knob, please just talk to me, we don’t have to do this. Every time I tried to hug him, he threw me across the room as if I weighed nothing. I landed on anything that was on the floor, cups, dishes, and whatever else was hidden in the dark room under his laundry. Every time I flew backward, I felt more pain that I did the first time. I clenched my teeth and tucked my chin so I wouldn’t bite my tongue or damage the back of my head when I landed, something I had learned in a self defense class I took a year before. He laughed and mocked me, continuing to scream and call me names.
I was frantically searching for the doorknob. His dirty laundry was everywhere and he had no substantial lighting in his room. Between throws, I’d scramble around on the floor. I finally found it when all of the sudden he began to try to climb out his second story window, still screaming for help as if I did something wrong. I had no idea what drugs he was on that night and I was so afraid he’d hurt himself or worse if he jumped out the window so I tried to pull him away. As I pulled I dropped the door knob out the window which he thought I did on purpose and became even more livid.
He flipped backwards, flipping me over, landing on top of me. His knees pressed my arms down and both his hands pressed on my throat. I started seeing spots, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t scream for help.
I thought “This is it, I’m never going to leave this apartment again, I will never see my family again”
He let go after I don’t even know how long. I laid there stunned, trying to catch the breath he took from me. I snapped back to reality and went back to trying to clam him down because now I had to figure out how to open a door with no doorknob. I tried and tried only to be flung like a rag doll across the room. I got up again and he leaned in, so close, I could smell the alcohol and cigarettes. His nose touched my cheek as he hissed at me “You fucking crazy bitch, look what you made me do” and I clenched my teeth as he finished his sentence, preparing to be thrown. What I didn’t know was that as I clenched my teeth, he was so close I caught his lip, so as he threw me, I cut his lip.
He howled and started calling me the abuser and spit his blood on me multiple times. This caused him to sit on the edge of his bed and scream that I was the abuser. As I worked at trying to get the door open with no door knob he kept calling me stupid, saying I wouldn’t be able to figure it out because I was dumb and this was all my fault and a slew of other horrible things. I got it open, finally, and he ran out to get his doorknob. I grabbed anything of mine I could see and ran out of there.
It was just after 4am at and I called my best friend and she let me come over to her house to clean up. I was bruised and covered in the blood he spit on me, but it was done.
He texted me a few times after that, begging me to come back, telling me he loved me, it was a mistake and blaming me. He sent me pictures of his face, saying he’d forgive me for that and he had to miss work because of it. I had to miss work too because that Friday, I couldn’t dress myself because I was in pain. I knew I did nothing wrong so I demanded he pay me back the thousands of dollars he owned me and I never heard from him again.
Recovery
It’s been overa year since all of that, one hard and crazy year. The hardest part was accepting what happened and not blaming myself. We see so often in media how people things it’s because her skirt was to short or she let it happen. I was so afraid I’d be blamed for what my first ex did. When we think of rape, we think of a stranger jumping us in the parking lot or it being this horrible violent act with force or threat of a weapon. Mine wasn’t like that. That conflict broke me just as much as the act itself. How was I suppose to explain this? I went to counseling for a while at Mutual Ground, where I was volunteering and they helped me see that it wasn’t my fault.
There was the part that was also blaming myself because I was an advocate, I was working with these issues, I was hosting educational programs and going through it myself at the same time. I should have known better, I should have left earlier, I shouldn’t have let this happen…….I had to let all those thoughts go.
It wasn’t my fault.
What happened with my second ex, I cut his lip. I never meant to hurt him and even as he was beating me up, any of the times he beat me up, I never laid a hand on him. That wasn’t my fault, I’m was not the abuser. That was really hard to get over, feeling as though I did something wrong.
I have flashbacks and triggers. Certain smells, locations, scenes in movies, songs……some I know and some come out of nowhere. My current partner (who is incredible, supportive and so loving) is my hero. He’s stood by me through all of my healing. He helps me when I have triggers or flashbacks. We had to learn together how to deal with them and what they were. Certain movie scenes, like choking scenes for example, can really upset me so he warns me about them or holds me as I close my eyes if one comes that we weren’t expecting.
Before a trigger, most of the time I’ll just glaze over, I’ll space out and get lost in another world as my reality melts away and that’s when he knows something is wrong, the calm before the storm. He’ll try to make me snap out of it or if we’re with people, he pulls me aside so I don’t get embarrassed. He is incredibly sensitive about the entire thing and I don’t know what I’d do without him. My friends and family are the same way. My friends are saints, they stuck with me through ever break up, all the tears, the phone calls and being woken up at 4am with a help me call.
Sometimes my flashbacks are bad and it’s like I’m in the scene all over again, that’s why it’s so important for me to continue to look at my partner. I’lltypically try to tuck my chin again because I wait to be thrown and then I lose all sense of reality. Sometimes I call my current partner by an ex’s name, sometimes I cry and beg for it to stop. Luckily, this has improved quite a bit over this past year so normally my triggers just result in my crying and talking about how I feel.
I have nightmares too about my ex partner returning. I’ll wake up myself in tears or my current partner will wake me up and ask if I need to talk. I struggle with my anxiety still. It’s always something that has been a part of my life since I was a little girl, but it is enhanced in certain situations, for example, if I’m around a lot of men I don’t know. That terrifies me even when it shouldn’t.
I needed surgery on my hand that was injured. A cyst grew on the damaged tendon so that had to be removed. I freaked out after waking up after the operation but Mom knew what to do. I have a song I listen to so I can focus, to get out of a trigger or flashback. It’s on my phone and I always have headphones with me. Everyone knows how to access that song just in case. Even after the surgery, my hand still hurts. The doctor said it might always hurt a little just because it was most likely tendon related. It upsets me and makes me so angry that he did this to me, he hurt me and it will never go away, but I try to turn that anger into motivation.
While I’m struggling, I’m gradually getting better and improving. This takes time, healing takes time and what I’m experiencing is normal, I know that. I’ve been trained in all of this so I know logically what to expect, but when it is actually happening, a trigger or flashback, I feel like I’m losing my mind, completely out of control. I hate it, but this is not the end of my story, just one chapter.
I repeat my life mantra, I’m confident, I’m capable and I got this. As my two favorite quotes are, “I’m not a victim, I’m not a survivor, I’m a fighter” (J.E. Methewson) and “I wear my pain as I wear my stilettos, all you can see is the beauty” (Harriet Morgan).
As my photos says, I’m a fighter and I made sure to put it on my neck since that is a very sensitive area for me. My amazing Fiancé took this photo of me just about a week after my surgery which was this past November (2015). My hand is still bandaged. This was a massive turning point where I decided to go for it, to do this photo project (if you’d like to learn more about my photo series, click here), to branch out as my own image, as a speaker and educator and make my dreams a reality.
I’m fighting my triggers, I’m fighting my anxiety, my sadness and my fear and I will come out of this stronger than I was before, even if sometimes I don’t see that. I’m doing more than I ever thought I would ever do in my life and I will own every second of it. I will continue working toward my goals, reclaiming me.
Why I didn’t you leave?
This is one of the most common questions I get. As I mentioned, my 1st ex, I didn’t even process what he was doing was abuse until my training. Abuse and assault weren’t portrayed like that in media, it was always super violent with the person struggling, forcing penetration. That’s not what happened to me. I didn’t even know what coercion was and I never thought about abuse being oral.
My 2nd ex, as I’ve mentioned lived close to my house. I was afraid of retaliation against my family.
I was also embarrassed. I was an advocate. I was helping people, creating educational programs, talking about this with young women and men but I somehow got stuck in it again. I’ve met other advocates who’ve struggled with that exact same fear, the fear of being called a hypocrite….they’ve exited their abusive relationships but it still took them a while. The shelter that I volunteered at and received some counseling at, they never once acted like that, they treated me just like everyone else. That was a huge help in getting me to talk about my experiences.
Those are some of the biggest reasons why I didn’t leave or tried to exit myself.
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If you have more questions about what I went through, send me an email at reclaimingme1@gmail.com. I feel comfortable talking about my story and I am here as an educator. There are some questions that you shouldn’t ask survivors (Ex: why didn’t you leave? the question should be why did the abuser make the choice to hurt someone.), but I do know that they are complex and can be hard to comprehend from an someone looking from the outside in which is why I’m here, to answer those hard questions.