As I’m sure most of you know, this month is extremely
important to me. It’s obviously Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which is a
super important awareness cause for me personally, and it’s also Breast Cancer
Awareness Month (which, who doesn’t
want to advocate for the eradication and early detection of breast cancer?) and
the month my paternal grandfather was born. “I came with the rent,” he once
told me, mocking his October 1st birthday.
It’s also the month of one of my best friend’s birth and um,
hello, HALLOWEEN, which means skulls, slasher movies, and all things scary. So
what’s not to love, am I right? If I
could just live inside Morticia Addams, my life would pretty much be perfect…
But all joking aside, it’s also the month of my
ex-boyfriend’s (aka, my “abuser”) birthday, the month in which I’m sort of
brought back to all I ran away from, and the month I use as a spiritual
awakening regarding my survivor status. It’s sort of like my “January 1st”
and my way of remembering all the people we’ve lost to domestic violence, all
the people who have been affected in one way or another, and all the tragedy
that has ensued because of it.
It’s about awareness, understanding, and safety plans. It’s
about meeting people where they’re at and accepting who they may have become
because of their abuser. It’s about lifting people up and sharing stories, and
reminding people that being a victim doesn’t equate to “fault” or “weakness”.
But this year, this year was different. I’ve always found
myself to be really ahead of the curve when it came to emotions and
sensitivity. Maybe it’s because of my upbringing or maybe it’s because of
social work school. But regardless, I came to terms with my past relationship very early on and I understood very
quickly what was right and what wasn’t. And although it took me some time to
not be scared to visit my own hometown
grocery store or favorite bar,
I’m fairly far past all that now.
Quite frankly, I could care less. Because at this point in
my recovery, I find him to be sort of laughably pathetic. And maybe that means
I’m cured, if there even is such a thing.
Now I’m floating like
a butterfly, stinging like a bee, I’ve earned my stripes. I went from zero, to
my own hero. –Katy Perry, Roar
It took me a long
time; let me go ahead and really state that clearly because I don’t want to
give the impression that I’m above anyone else. It has taken me literally years to get to this point.
But as more and more time goes by, I see that he is still stuck in the same
place and I’m just not.
Upon writing this blog, I actually took some time to really
sit and think about what I wanted to write. (That’s actually why I skipped a
week.) My husband and I had discussed in depth my being what he calls a “man
hater” and continuing to “talk shit” about my ex-boyfriend. “I know he sucks,”
he had told me, “but you’ve got to write about other things; you need to reach
other people. You’re a mother now: how do you want Brooklyn
to know you?”
And I’ll be honest with you, at first, I took some offense
to this. I even reached out to some of my friends for their feedback because
this was all part of my story. This was why I became a social worker, this was
why I became such an incredible domestic violence advocate, and this was why I
went to work for CASA and took a job in child safety. And now I was just
supposed to change my shift?
It didn’t really seem fair and for a moment I felt stifled.
But then I started to realize that it wasn’t stifling to let
go. It wasn’t pushing aside “my story” to show that I had moved on. It wasn’t
changing the look and feel of my blog to say that I was happy in my life now
and willing to accept my abuser for the total loser that he was.
It just meant that I had moved on. And I was good.
So for a few weeks, leading up to October, I struggled with
how to properly represent how far I had come. How did I share my story without
really delving too deep into the past, without really chipping away at my
recovery? How did I reach people without hurting my own really well sought
after sanity?
I have recently reconnected with a longtime girlfriend of
mine and I even wrote a blog about it. She had dated the same “abuser” prior to
me and hadn’t really come to terms with the fact that she was a victim until
recently. She is doing some of her own mental health work and has uncovered
things that she never really took the time to think about before.
It’s startling to see how far she has come as a person. She
has conquered a lot and it’s exciting
to watch the transition.
But like everyone and
their mother, she had a couple moments where she panicked for a hot second.
Because of him.
She texted me one day telling me that her parents (who are
seriously too sweet and polite for their own good) had bumped into our abuser
at a local grocery store. Thankfully she wasn’t with them, but true to abuser
fashion, he approached them and spoke to them like they were old friends.
Because he knew that they would never be rude to anyone and in his tiny, twisted mind, he
probably thinks they like him. The sociopathic mind is truly fascinating.
Anyway, as we all know, he’s a firefighter. He’s been at the
same station forever and apparently
told them he had transferred to one of the county stations and was a captain.
He even commented that he had seen my friend’s mother sitting outside one day.
My friend was telling me that she was worried he would know
she was back in Florida
(she had recently moved from out of state) and would try to harass her or just
do generally douchey things, since that’s his default setting. I sat with the
text for a moment because I really wanted to lash out on how pathetic he was to
clearly still have the need to cause
problems in her life after something like fifteen years. Maybe even more,
actually.
But what I texted back was, “He’s probably lying,” because
as we all know if we’ve kept up with my blog, he is incapable of telling the
truth in any instance.
A couple weeks later, she texted me again saying that she
had to call 911 for a neighbor and had to hang up quickly and they called her
back. She had told me that they asked for her name and number so that they
could cancel the first responders or something. She was freaking out because
she wasn’t totally familiar with how the system worked and didn’t want him to
have access to her information.
Well this time I did lash out because I was angry that he
was continuing to hurt her. I was angry because that had been me all those
years ago. I was angry because one of my former friends (who I’m pretty sure is
still friends with him) had sided with him when he said “I never laid a hand on
her, but I was pretty awful to her.” I was angry, not at her, but at him for
being so goddamn pathetic that he
can’t just leave us alone.
Despite the fact that he has a longtime partner with whom he
has a child. Despite the fact that he’s allegedly a captain for our county. Despite
the fact that he thinks he’s so much better than both of us.
Like seriously, get a life, dude.
And it’d be nice of
me to take it easy on you, but nah. –Demi Lovato, Sorry Not Sorry
While we were talking (I assume because I wasn’t physically
there), my friend’s father, who is fiercely protective, Googled our idiot ex-boyfriend
to settle our discussion about where he worked. I had bitterly maintained that
he’s a pathological liar and as such, nothing he says is accurate information.
She didn’t really have an opinion but was just worried about him having too
much knowledge about her.
Totally understandable. But he’s a creep and as mentioned
earlier, he clearly has no life.
After some quick Googling, it turned out that he was a captain, but not for the county,
like he claimed. He was a captain at the station he’s been at for 9407837465
years. Congratulations, you’re still a douche bag.
She was saying to me, “Why would he bother making that up?”
and I said something like, “He was probably just trying to get information out
of your super honest parents. He claimed he saw your mom in hopes they would
say ‘Oh, we don’t live there anymore,’ or ‘Couldn’t have been me, I don’t sit
outside anymore.’”
I don’t want to discount what my friend was feeling because
that shit is real; I’ve felt it. I guess I’ve just gotten to the point where I
can see through him these days. And again, to very seriously preface, it’s
taken me a long time to get here but:
I’m not scared of him anymore.
Because he is pathetic. Because he is clinging to the life
he had with us. Because he is desperate to know where she is and what she’s
doing, so much so that he would talk to a set of parents that hate him but are too polite and human to
be nasty in public. Because he is frantic to save the garbage reputation he
thinks he has with girls who want nothing
to do with him. Because he is, really unfortunately for him, balding so
horribly in the back that it’s borderline pitiable since he’s only 35.
Because he looks like Danny DeVito as the Penguin these
days. And that’s not to shame him. It’s just a fact, y’all. Karma is a nasty
bitch and he has been way too bad for way too long. That shit finally has caught
up with him.
And all I can do is feel sorry for him. Because honestly,
it’s really sad.
Meanwhile, let me tell you about her. (No risk of him finding
out since he obviously never reads anything that doesn’t have a car model on
the cover.) She has jumped leaps and bounds mentally. She even met me at a
local juice stand, a place she claimed she would never go, for fear of bumping
into him. She works out almost everyday because she is trying to form healthy
habits. She doesn’t drink much because as she told me herself, she “just
doesn’t have the urge these days”. She has a bomb job and has already made a
ton of friends who see her true self shining through.
She is fine. She is better. She is not easily threatened.
And her moment of “panic” lasted like, five minutes and she only texted me
about it because I understand him and I understand her.
Let me tell you about him: walking around the local WalMart
stalking his ex-girlfriend from 2005’s parents to get information to her and
about her.
Moral of the Crazy: It’s
hard to really even come up with a conclusion, to be honest. I feel so far
removed from my own abuser that it’s hard for me to come up with the words that
really mean something.
I guess I would say, if I was in my old job, that as much as
we like to genuinely hope for them, our abusers never change. I mean, if it
wasn’t evident to me before, after the last few weeks, it certainly is. I would
say it’s not about you, that it’s nothing you’ve done wrong. I would say that
there’s clearly something missing, some sort of insecurity lurking beneath the
giant, sad bald spot that creates monsters of men. Sure, part of it is genetic;
part of it is things they’ve endured during impressionable years.
But essentially, it’s a lack of self-control. There are just
certain things you don’t do in life and one of those things is put your hands
on another person. Another one of those things is perpetuate lies to find out
about your ex-girlfriend and her whereabouts but you know what? We can’t all be
functional adults; look at our society. Look at our government.
Peace be with you, good people. Victims, I believe you and I
can help. Survivors, I stand with you and have faith in your future. Abusers,
you disappoint me and I see through your continual alleged efforts to change.
Take care of yourself in these hard times. You’re stronger
than you know.
So, look what I’ve
got, look what you taught me. And for that I say, thank you, next. –Ariana
Grande, thank u, next
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