If not me, who? If not now, when? –Emma Watson

Part One 

There are times when I get misty eyed thinking back on the life I have lived. Although I’m not even thirty years old, I feel like I have covered so much ground, like I’ve endured so many things. Certain times of the year, holidays for example, I allow the stimuli of twinkling lights and holiday fragrances to engulf me while I reminisce on the mistakes I have made. The minimal Florida cold that stings my lungs, the bright colors that decorate my tree, the Rat Pack Christmas music that floods my living room all become a welcome distraction to what it is I am really thinking about: the people I have hurt, the bruises I covered up, the many material items I have had to replace, the lies I told to the many police that showed up at my apartment, the lies I told my parents when they asked me how I was. 

But by far, one of the most emotional and difficult to bear collection of days for me is the month of October. October first would have been my grandfather’s birthday. I always get a little melancholy when I slow down long enough to remember all of our times together. Two days later is my ex’s birthday. I don’t know that I’m able to put my feelings for him into words. It’s so difficult because in some ways, I feel that I learned a lot from him. I learned to be strong, I learned to fend for myself, and I learned what I didn’t want in a partner. 

But in another way, I feel betrayed by him. I have to remind myself that he completely stole my innocence; he ripped away an important part of my life that I will never get back. He made me insecure, pushed me to the point of leaving my parents and kept me from any sort of normal life. I would like to say he doesn’t haunt me anymore, that I don’t think about him at night when I’m home by myself, that I don’t worry about him walking into my store after all these years, but I would be lying. Because I think about it all the time. And if I’m being honest, I don’t know what I would do if I saw him in real life. My chest hurts just thinking about it. 

The scars from mental cruelty can be as deep and long-lasting as wounds from punches or slaps but are often not as obvious. Among women who have experienced violence from a partner, half or more report that the man’s emotional abuse is what causes the most harm. –Lundy Bancroft

As much as I would like to lay all of the blame on this man, I can’t. Believe me, I would like to because it would make me feel better. It would give me a little bit of justice and closure in which to finish off this chapter of my story. But it’s not entirely true. And don’t misunderstand because he deserves a lot of the blame but the truth is a lot of what happened between us I had some part in. After all, I stayed with him for more years than I would care to admit to, didn’t I?

We were okay in the beginning. Our fights were minimal (in comparison to what they became) but I suppose that now, looking back at it all, I realize that he wasn’t what I would call “normal”. He got angry about things that I thought were sort of unimportant. I remember one instance in particular where he was absolutely livid at me because of the outfit I had chosen to wear. I remember he said to me, “Go back to your ex if that’s how you’re going to dress. You look disgusting.” I guess I should have seen the signs. I should have left his house that day and never returned. Instead, what I did as an insecure nineteen year old was drive all the way to my house, change into something he approved of, and then drove back. It just seemed like the only rational option.

As time went on, I guess you could say things got worse. I’ve always been relatively neurotic and nervous, getting uptight about virtually everything, and being with him just made it worse. I had a sickening feeling in my gut every day because everything was such a chore. If we went out to dinner and I looked too long in the eyes of the waiter, it was a fight. And I’m not talking about just a jealous little quip. It would be a full on argument. Was I seeing him? Was I attracted to him? Did I want to have sex with him? Why didn’t I just go sit with the sleaze bag waiter? I could go on and on. 

If we were out with his friends and I just so happened to agree with something one of them said, if I happened to pay the slightest bit of interest to someone other than him, it was war. If I wasn’t dressed the way he liked, if I put on the slightest bit of weight, if I happened to wear minimal makeup because I just wasn’t feeling well, he was ready to fight, guns blazing. If I mentioned something that another girl’s boyfriend did for her, made flirtatious hints about wanting a birthday or Christmas gift, or remarked on how happy a certain couple looked, he would fly off the handle because what, was I jealous? If I was ever out alone, and I didn’t call him when I arrived somewhere and when I left, I was clearly doing something scandalous. Where was I? Why had I forgotten to call? Why couldn’t I just let him know where I was? Who was I with? Why was I lying? It doesn’t take that long to get from my house to Walmart so what EXACTLY was I doing? Why was I such a scandalous bitch? Heaven forbid I should go somewhere close to the fire station he worked at and not swing by. All hell would break lose. 

But I did this to myself. I stayed and let him talk to me like I was a piece of garbage. I let him call me names that I wouldn’t dare repeat, I let him lecture me about my weight even though he was no one to judge on the subject, I let him insult the innermost, feminine parts of me and I just sat there and took it. I sat in that piece of shit Corolla that he kept absolutely pristine (as a social science major, that should have been a dead giveaway about how crazy he is) and I let him scream at me. Because screaming back became too much work after a while. I mean, what was the point, anyway? I would never be right. 

For quite a few months there, I even did exactly what he wanted in hopes to save our relationship. I dressed like a little PacSun wearing surfer girl because that’s what he wanted. I sat back and listened to all the firefighter exploits instead of joining the conversation because that’s what he wanted. I listened to freaking Nickelback, Creed and Breaking Benjamin like it was my job because that’s what he wanted. I got my weight down to 107 because that’s what he wanted. (And shortly after that, he told me that I had lost too much weight. He said my chest was bony, like a bird, and I looked disgusting.) I did everything with his parents (who were always very good to me, in their defense) because that’s what he wanted. I baked cookies and lasagna and brought it to the firehouse for the boys because he wanted his eye on me all the time. And when he worked literally EVERY SINGLE holiday, on purpose, I got dressed up and brought decorations to the firehouse so I could spend time with him. Because that’s what he wanted. 

It didn’t matter what I wanted. It was never, ever about that.  

        

Since the day I met him, I have been clinging to him or running from him. –Lisa Unger

The truth was that I always wanted a love that even time would stand still for. I was fully aware, at the age of seventeen that nothing came easy. And as I got a little bit older and allowed myself to get caught in his web, I just assumed that I had to deal with the good and the bad parts of him. I thought to myself, Sure, he can be really, really mean sometimes. But other times, he can be unseasonably sweet. I used to tell my friends, “He’s a firefighter. He saves people all the time. He works crazy hours and he has the pressure of life in his hands all day. Give the guy a break.” This was my robotic programmed speech. I was always training to be that perfect firefighter girlfriend. The girl who cooked for the entire house, treated “the boys” like they were part of her extended family, and boasted about how hard her civil servant boyfriend worked. Remember, he saved lives. He ran into buildings when everyone else ran out.   

But that was just another lie I told. I won’t deny how hard he worked (and probably still does) but his job had nothing to do with me. He could have had five days off in a row and still treated me like I was a Pinellas Park prostitute. And those unseasonably sweet moments were just that: very few and far between. And they were usually only because we had a huge fight and he had to make up for breaking a lawn chair over my car, throwing a fork at my head, or ripping the knock off Vera Bradley bag my mom got me. He was never sweet because I deserved to be treated with respect. It always came with a price.  

The genuine truth is that for whatever reason, I brought out the absolute worst in him. And that isn’t just a domestic violence survivor taking the blame, it is the goddamn truth. There was apparently something about me that just set him off. I even spoke to a former girlfriend of his about it once. She happened to overhear what he was saying to me on the phone and when I hung up, she just sat there with her mouth open, shaking her head. I raised my eyebrows in confusion and asked, “What? What are you looking at?” She closed her mouth and shook her head again, “I cannot believe the way he talks to you. He was never that way to me.” 

Of course he wasn’t. He reserved his insane behavior for me. 

He reserved the name calling for me because he knew that I wouldn’t call him one back. (It’s not really my style.) He knew that he could break things and rip my clothes because I would just try to diffuse the fight, rather than fight back. (Again, not my style. I’m more of a let’s talk this out kind of gal.) He knew that he could push me and put his hands on me because I refused to fight with him. (I was more of a please, goddamnit, let go of my arm and let me leave kind of gal.) He knew that if he left a bump on my head or bruise on my forearm (or once, on my finger), I would dismiss it. I would make something up and never talk about it again. He knew that if he got so angry that he literally spit in my face, I would be so shocked by his abhorrent behavior that I wouldn’t know how to react. (And in that instance, I really didn’t. I just sort of stared at him. And tried to control my gag reflex.) He kept all this behavior under wraps until I became his girlfriend because some crazy how, I was deserving of it. 

Maybe it was because I made him crazy. Maybe it was because he thought he was out of my league. Maybe it was because I wasn’t the girl that he really wanted. Maybe it was because he thought that since I had always stayed with him, since I had always stuck it out, he could be as big of a prick as he wanted. I would always come back. I would be there with bells on, waiting in a boyfriend approved outfit, holding a tray of chocolate chip cookies for all the boys.

I had lost myself in the abyss of someone else’s tyranny. –Cassandra Giovanni

But the most frustrating part of all this is that no one believed me. I think that to this day, people still think I’m either lying or exaggerating. I remember I sat at lunch with one of my dearest, oldest friends and she said to me, “You know, he told me he never laid hands on you.” I wasn’t offended because honestly, who is this woman supposed to believe? But I just stared at her and felt sick to my stomach. I just sort of changed the subject and downed my whiskey in two sips. If you only knew, I thought to myself, if you only knew.

This was a man who would help you move if you asked, he would drop you at the airport if you needed a ride, and he would hang out with your kids if you needed a babysitter. He wasn’t a screaming, controlling, angry woman beater. It just couldn’t be. This guy was a civil servant, not a six foot (almost) three inch abusive boyfriend. I clearly had my facts wrong. 

Moral of the Crazy: Sometimes, when I let my mind wander, I stop myself because I think, what is the point in all of this? I will always be the crazy one in this situation. I’m the crazy one who got the restraining order on the innocent firefighter for whatever reason. I’m the crazy one who likes to make him look bad even though it has been years since all of this has happened. And I think that some people even think I am the crazy one who can’t move on because I only go to my hometown when I absolutely have to. I avoid certain places because I don’t want to bump into him and I stopped talking to certain people (who I really cared about) because I don’t want them saying anything to him. I don’t want him knowing where I live, where I work, or what I’m doing. 

But then other times, like today, I think that girl from all those years ago needs a voice. My husband has been really supportive and encouraging all these years because he knows what I went through. He picked me up from the gutter I was in and still found something worth saving. “You need to do this,” he said to me a few days ago, “if not for you, for someone else. There are women out there who are going through what you did right now.” And he’s so right.

The other day, I was watching the Emma Watson speech and I got chills when she said, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” Maybe I’m dredging up old things and maybe I’m not. Regardless of whatever it is, I have learned so much from my ex. I learned that I wouldn’t allow ANYONE, much less my partner, to EVER speak to me in the manner that he did. I learned that what I went through? It was abuse. It’s not me being a drama queen or attempting to ruin his precious reputation. I could have put him in jail. But I didn’t. Because I just wanted to get away from him. I learned what I wanted in life and what I didn’t. I learned that I would never settle for being unhappy or subservient.

And most importantly, I learned how to survive. I learned how strong I really am: 5’2”, 115 pounds, unafraid, and unwilling to be treated with anything but respect. Unable to accept anything but love and gentle affection from the person that I call my partner.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m an advocate. I’m a soldier in the war against domestic violence. I’m a survivor of violence and I have learned to move forward. It’s a social problem that affects more people than most of us are probably aware. And so today, I’m your voice. I’m here for you and I refuse to back down.

Stay strong, ladies.