PURPLE. Domestic Abuse. Survival.
I never thought I looked good in the color purple. I always felt like it accentuated the dark circles under my eyes, the ones I spent hours trying to hide from the world. When I was younger, they were the constant reminder of my diabetes. Who am I kidding?! They're still a constant reminder of my diabetes. Learning how to hide the dark circles proved useful in my future.
"I wake up every day, with the hope that today won't hurt. That I'll be able to say the right thing and I won't provoke the anger. I spend my nights crying and days shaking. I don't even know who I am. If I scream at the top of my lungs, will the neighbors hear me? Will they help me in my agony? This anguish is destroying my core... Sometimes I close my eyes and wish this life isn't mine. I've drifted from believing to agnostic. How can God be so cruel to allow this to happen to His daughters? I scream inside my head for Him to help me. But he's not here. No one can hear me."
-December 2009, my journal.
Every year, when the leaves change color and the crisp wind swirls through the horizon, my heart skips a beat and fills with dread. Octobers are rough for me. They remind me of a life I left behind. I lost a great part of my innocence one October, when a boy walked me home from the testing center and scared the death out of me by the time he dropped me off home. His wandering hands and disgusting eyes haunted me for a long time. That's when the panic started to build in my chest. I didn't recognize what it was, that tightening in my bosom that feels like a heart attack but was caused by the brain. Another October, I had my first out of body experience, where I watched someone I thought I loved begin to emotionally and physically hurt me. I'm not sure what hurt the worst, the beatings or the words. I can't remember what the bruises felt like and I can't recall exactly how I hid them so well, but the words, oh those words haunt my soul. When walking on eggshells and hiding your own personality for safety's sake happens, you should probably leave that relationship or friendship. The words still ring, ever fresh in my ears. Angry, violent terrible phrases filled with hate and disdain in describing me. The part of me that knew I needed to leave felt crippled and frozen. I knew I had to leave. I knew the violence would escalate. But I was afraid. I was young, my friends were gone. No one truly believed me when I asked for help. It was disgruntling, to say the least.
See, when people assume women don't leave abusive relationships because they lack higher education or opportunities, I disagree (to some extent). I am an educated woman, a loud advocate that wears a feminist streak on her sleeve. This shouldn't have happened to me. I know better. I am better. But it did. It happened for 231 days. Not always in a row. Sometimes I found joy in the clouds. Other times, I developed friendships with women I adore to this day, women who didn't know what I was going through because I was so good at hiding everything. I prided myself in my ability to throw up a stone cold wall and smile through the challenges. I cut contact with my close friends because they could see through my façade and I was afraid of what they would think of me if they knew my truth.
My body was no longer mine. It belonged to someone else. The only control I had over it was the birth control my doctor gave me. The universe should bless that man because if it weren't for that, heaven only knows where I would be today. Losing that sense of self is debilitating at best. Men with wandering hands who demand and take without asking or take without caring are unrighteous devils. Don't they know that we own our bodies? Didn't their mothers teach them not to take what isn't theirs? They take and demand and force themselves without ever considering what their actions do to us. Men who pretend to be moral and good but are so repugnant that even they know how truly sickening their actions are, those are despicable creatures that don't deserve a name.
There are other forms of abuse: monetary, verbal, gas lighting, condescending, etc. My biggest fear is falling in the cycle of abuse, again. I did that once. I left half a dozen times. It's weird because looking back, I was still me just confused and alone. Recently, I was going through old emails and found one that sent me straight back to the beginning and I so wish I could have yelled at younger me to leave, get out, RUN like the devil.
In case you're wondering, I eventually got out. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I don't think we're supposed to share these stories on the internet because they're so intimate. But I have friends that follow this blog and some of them know this pain all too well. I want them to leave their abusive situations. I want them to know it's hard but the joy that comes afterwards is totally worth it. I wish someone had shared this with me. I never thought I would be able to graduate from college, work a fine job, live on my own, move away and finish a masters degree. EVER. Yet, it is done and as I journey through my current life, I remind myself of my accomplishments. I can do hard things. I have done excruciatingly painful things. It's easy to forget that I'm a queen, even on my bad days.
Sometimes I hear a creeping noise and my skin crawls, or when someone walks up to me too quickly I'll cringe and pull away. These are lasting effects and my therapist called them triggers and PTSD. I still worry that I'll put myself in a similar situation in the future. Manipulation seems all too familiar and strange to me. It comes in different forms, on beautiful faces, in ways we can't even imagine. But I'm alive. I survived.
On my DDAY, I left with a baby on my bruised hips. I grimaced every time he adjusted his weight because it hurt my aching, black and blue ribs. I had a suitcase filled with baby clothes and tears streaming down my face. The red flags were hard to see through the charm and manipulation. But since then, I have learned to find myself. I've allowed my heart to love again, even in short moments, and I've promised myself never to compromise although that's hard.
I'm part of the lucky ones. I survived (saying it makes it real, so much more tangible). No amount of PTSD, panic attacks and or crying can ever take away from the person I have become. Yes, I will probably go through many of these feelings throughout my life but at least I have the opportunity to live as I wish, authentically, without being harmed.
"I wake up every day, with the hope that today won't hurt. That I'll be able to say the right thing and I won't provoke the anger. I spend my nights crying and days shaking. I don't even know who I am. If I scream at the top of my lungs, will the neighbors hear me? Will they help me in my agony? This anguish is destroying my core... Sometimes I close my eyes and wish this life isn't mine. I've drifted from believing to agnostic. How can God be so cruel to allow this to happen to His daughters? I scream inside my head for Him to help me. But he's not here. No one can hear me."
-December 2009, my journal.
Every year, when the leaves change color and the crisp wind swirls through the horizon, my heart skips a beat and fills with dread. Octobers are rough for me. They remind me of a life I left behind. I lost a great part of my innocence one October, when a boy walked me home from the testing center and scared the death out of me by the time he dropped me off home. His wandering hands and disgusting eyes haunted me for a long time. That's when the panic started to build in my chest. I didn't recognize what it was, that tightening in my bosom that feels like a heart attack but was caused by the brain. Another October, I had my first out of body experience, where I watched someone I thought I loved begin to emotionally and physically hurt me. I'm not sure what hurt the worst, the beatings or the words. I can't remember what the bruises felt like and I can't recall exactly how I hid them so well, but the words, oh those words haunt my soul. When walking on eggshells and hiding your own personality for safety's sake happens, you should probably leave that relationship or friendship. The words still ring, ever fresh in my ears. Angry, violent terrible phrases filled with hate and disdain in describing me. The part of me that knew I needed to leave felt crippled and frozen. I knew I had to leave. I knew the violence would escalate. But I was afraid. I was young, my friends were gone. No one truly believed me when I asked for help. It was disgruntling, to say the least.
See, when people assume women don't leave abusive relationships because they lack higher education or opportunities, I disagree (to some extent). I am an educated woman, a loud advocate that wears a feminist streak on her sleeve. This shouldn't have happened to me. I know better. I am better. But it did. It happened for 231 days. Not always in a row. Sometimes I found joy in the clouds. Other times, I developed friendships with women I adore to this day, women who didn't know what I was going through because I was so good at hiding everything. I prided myself in my ability to throw up a stone cold wall and smile through the challenges. I cut contact with my close friends because they could see through my façade and I was afraid of what they would think of me if they knew my truth.
My body was no longer mine. It belonged to someone else. The only control I had over it was the birth control my doctor gave me. The universe should bless that man because if it weren't for that, heaven only knows where I would be today. Losing that sense of self is debilitating at best. Men with wandering hands who demand and take without asking or take without caring are unrighteous devils. Don't they know that we own our bodies? Didn't their mothers teach them not to take what isn't theirs? They take and demand and force themselves without ever considering what their actions do to us. Men who pretend to be moral and good but are so repugnant that even they know how truly sickening their actions are, those are despicable creatures that don't deserve a name.
There are other forms of abuse: monetary, verbal, gas lighting, condescending, etc. My biggest fear is falling in the cycle of abuse, again. I did that once. I left half a dozen times. It's weird because looking back, I was still me just confused and alone. Recently, I was going through old emails and found one that sent me straight back to the beginning and I so wish I could have yelled at younger me to leave, get out, RUN like the devil.
In case you're wondering, I eventually got out. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I don't think we're supposed to share these stories on the internet because they're so intimate. But I have friends that follow this blog and some of them know this pain all too well. I want them to leave their abusive situations. I want them to know it's hard but the joy that comes afterwards is totally worth it. I wish someone had shared this with me. I never thought I would be able to graduate from college, work a fine job, live on my own, move away and finish a masters degree. EVER. Yet, it is done and as I journey through my current life, I remind myself of my accomplishments. I can do hard things. I have done excruciatingly painful things. It's easy to forget that I'm a queen, even on my bad days.
Sometimes I hear a creeping noise and my skin crawls, or when someone walks up to me too quickly I'll cringe and pull away. These are lasting effects and my therapist called them triggers and PTSD. I still worry that I'll put myself in a similar situation in the future. Manipulation seems all too familiar and strange to me. It comes in different forms, on beautiful faces, in ways we can't even imagine. But I'm alive. I survived.
On my DDAY, I left with a baby on my bruised hips. I grimaced every time he adjusted his weight because it hurt my aching, black and blue ribs. I had a suitcase filled with baby clothes and tears streaming down my face. The red flags were hard to see through the charm and manipulation. But since then, I have learned to find myself. I've allowed my heart to love again, even in short moments, and I've promised myself never to compromise although that's hard.
I'm part of the lucky ones. I survived (saying it makes it real, so much more tangible). No amount of PTSD, panic attacks and or crying can ever take away from the person I have become. Yes, I will probably go through many of these feelings throughout my life but at least I have the opportunity to live as I wish, authentically, without being harmed.
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