Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2024

Warning: DV/SA

It’s been 4 and a half years since “the incident” and another National Domestic Violence Month is upon us. This month always causes me to reflect - not just on you, inmate, but also on every toxic relationship I had up to you.

I ask myself why?

Why me?

What made me different from the other women who were able to see through the lies?

Why did I stay so long?

What happened in my life that brought me to that point?

I know the answers to all of those questions now. Four and a half years ago I didn’t. I didn’t have a clue. Those questions haunted my thoughts for months and years.

Why me?

We spent 10 years on the periphery of each other’s lives. You dated my ex-best friend off and on during the decade. She told me about you and you about me. In simple terms, you had a manual on me. You knew things about me that only my best friend knew: what I liked, didn’t like, the type of men I dated, and the kind of person I was. You had a little playbook, a one-up on all the other men on the dating app, to help you with your manipulation tactics. 

I was both an easy and an exciting target. It’s a bit exciting to think that we knew of each other and had never met. In fact, you were told that we shouldn’t meet because we’d get along better than you and my friend did. Weirdly enough, about six months before we met, my best friend decided to cut me out of her life because I called her out for having an affair with you. (Yes, I am writing a book). I told her she was married to a wonderful human and needed to stop what she was doing. Instead of breaking things off with you, she deleted me out of her life. Nearly 15 years of friendship down the drain. So imagine my initial reaction to seeing you on a dating app. 

‘Do I? Do I reach out to see what happened? Do I scratch the curiosity itch?’

Nah, that would be breaking the girl code. I would have been lying if I said I wasn’t deeply curious about you. I knew you to be a bit of an asshole, a “dominant” man, rich, a lawyer, and incredibly suave - or so I was told. Yet, I decided to go with my gut and I swiped you away, patting myself on the back for being the better person.

I should have left it at that, but I didn’t. Two days later, you liked one of my photos. ‘Ah, to hell with the girl code,’ I thought to myself. She is the one who deleted me like a fuck boi; let’s see if you know who I am and if you were aware that I was the best friend you had heard of for so long.

You remembered.

So why me? Because you had a playbook on how to “brainwash” me before you’d met me - having the knowledge of what I wanted in a man allowed you to play the perfect partner. If you got me to fall in love with you as fast as possible, then you could start taking what you wanted from me. Because the chase thrills you and what better chase than the woman you were supposed to stay away from?

What made me different than the girls that told you to fuck off?

This question haunted me the longest.

The relationship you had right before me was short and I envied her for a long while. How was she able to get out so quickly? How did she get out but I couldn’t? The truth is, she loved herself more than you and was able to foster the confidence, courage, and self-love to know her worth.

I did not. 

Nearly every relationship I’ve been in was with some shitty dude. I never loved myself enough to demand the best out of my partner. When it came to men, I was insecure, anxious, and codependent. My second longest “relationship” was with a married man. I started therapy in order to quit that relationship. The one after was essentially me accepting scraps while I bent over backward in hopes he’d call me his girlfriend one day.  My very first boyfriend at the age of 14 was the first boy who ever complimented me. I almost always gave all of myself over with the hope of being loved in return.

There were a couple great ones in there, but I didn’t know how to accept healthy love. What’s love without the tumultuous back and forth? It’s not love if I’m not fighting for them to love me and they’re not fighting me back, right? I didn’t have boundaries. Giving everything I could to the men in my life was simply second nature and though I had started the therapy journey just a couple years prior, I wasn’t in a position of practicing a lot of what I was learning.

Looking back, I was standing at a fork in the road. One path led to you and the other led to healing. I had met you at the worst time because I was right at that fork. I had just started learning about myself and what I wanted in a relationship and instead of continuing down that path, I took the path to you. Learning to love myself would have been easier if you had never stumbled into my life. 

Why did I stay so long?

I feel like I’ve answered this before in the other blogs I’ve written, generally speaking about the cycle of domestic violence and abusive relationships and I hate this question most of all.

Essentially, I believed the first three months of our relationship and the man that you were during that time to be true and everything else after that - the lies, the abuse, the harm and hurt - to be the lie. When in reality, it was the opposite. The loving and caring man, the man who made me dinner, encouraged me to leave the job I hated, took care of my pets, and told me all the sweet-nothings I wanted to hear my whole life was a lie. The abusive, narcissistic, evil human being was the truth. 

But due to the cycle of abuse, I couldn't see that. I thought if I could be better, if I could try harder, give you more, be more forgiving and loving that you would go back to being the man I knew in the beginning. I thought you were simply depressed and self-deprecating. I thought you were just projecting some kind of depressiveness onto me - when you’re hurting, you hurt the people around you. so I couldn’t blame you, right? I blamed the fact that you seemed to have been dealt a shitty hand in life and all I could do was try to be the most perfect girlfriend to you so that I could make life easier for you.

I’d see glimpses of the man who claimed to love me, usually after a horrid fight. That would keep the cycle going. I thought that he was in there and if I could just help you see him, you could be that man again. 

But you were never that man. That man was a fake. That man was the dream-boy fantasy man that you made up to get me to love you. The man who did horrendous things to me was right in front of me and yet, it was impossible for me to believe. If you were this evil human, then who was I and why was I still here? Did I deserve this kind of love? Was this all I was ever going to get - men who take what they want from me and discard me like trash? This was the incredibly extreme version of every man I’d ever known and will know - but this was all I had known to be true. By the time I started to accept the abuse as the truth, I had lost myself entirely to thinking that this was what I deserved. I was either going to die from you or from the things you were doing to me. I succumbed to the abuse. My journal entries were filled with notes about not caring for my well being anymore. I just wanted you to stop cheating on me and being violent with me and I would have married you. I didn’t recognize myself anymore.

What happened in my life to bring me to this point?

A culmination of sucky life events?

There were voids in my childhood. Emotional and unconditional love were lacking or missing completely. Communication was nonexistent. Role models for healthy relationships were nowhere to be found. 

I had to find out what love was by myself.

I learned some things by simply being with shitty men, but the overarching theme was still there: give all of yourself and accept the scraps you get, sex = love, and healthy relationships are filled with fighting and drama.

The thing is, I have a very deep sense of self. I’ve done what I’ve wanted most of my life. I make life choices without influence from others. I take my own path. I speak my mind. Generally speaking, you get what you see. I consider myself strong and independent. However, my relationships with men have not often reflected that. So for the first few months of our relationship you felt like the prize for everything I’d been through. I thought you were my gift. And instead, you were the most evil, vile, narcissistic human being I have ever met and will ever know.

And for what? So you could have a place to stay, free room and board, someone giving you money, food, and sex? That just seems…over the top?

You had a place to stay before me. You had access to food. You could have found a job as a felon if you had put forward any amount of effort. I’m also quite sure you wouldn’t have had an issue trying to find someone to fuck you. 

Yet you stayed around for so long abusing me? Why? It couldn’t have been easier to stay with me and be violent than to move back the fuck home.

Choosing to stay with me was fucking evil.

You are pure evil.

My words have always been my form of retribution. My words assured your maximum prison sentence. My words denied you parole, twice. My words got you expelled from Douglas county for the rest of your sentence.

Words are powerful and telling my stories gives me solace. After four and a half years, I feel more peace than ever. One day, I’ll let a National Domestic Violence Month pass me by without feeling the urge to write. Until then, I hope I can open the door for others to learn what it’s like to be in an abusive relationship and be a light for those who may have found themselves in one. 

You have value and are loved.