A Piece of the Story
Warning: DV/SA
“Be humble around trauma; the person inside of it isn’t here at the moment.”
A quote attached to the signature of an email from the Victim Services Coordinator for the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. I signed up to receive notifications regarding your movements from prison and was inquiring if that included work release. According to her, the notifications include work release along with many other reasons you’d leave prison: escape, furlough, release, and even death. She also wanted to remind me that she will be my point of contact for the entire parole process, including finding support for me the day of parole should I want to attend.
Your parole eligibility date is 365 days away.
Dear…Inmate,
Fuck you; how’s prison?
There are very few letters that don’t have some form of me swearing at you. The rage slipping out between long bouts of indifference.
I don’t know why I write at you - to you.
It’s something that I’ve done during this entire…process. I’ve gathered these letters, 2+ years of journal entries, and put them into a book - my novel of healing.
I hope that someday the letters can be for anyone else who’s been in similar shoes: suffering and healing from the abuse of a narcissistic psychopath. Yea, I know everyone throws that term around but IYKYK - and you, inmate…you know. When your narcissism destroys your job, the relationship you have with your family, dismantles your friendships, and turns you abusive in your relationships, I’m going to unprofessionally diagnose you with a disorder.
I call my time with you my “Lifetime movie moment” and I think it’s pretty fitting. A traumatic, abusive relationship with a highly intelligent psychopath who has done some unbelievably terrifying things to so many people.
I remember wondering if I would ever go a single day without thinking of you, ever have a night without dreaming of you, and stop obsessing over the discovery of what happened to me and everything you did to other women. It took a lot of time to breathe the life back into my own body. I’m still struggling to grasp onto who I am. You really did a number on me. I go lengthy periods of time without thinking of you and the peace I feel is almost indescribable. I longed for the indifference I am so grateful to feel today. I guess that’s what weekly therapy sessions, a lot of self work, and time does - heals.
It’s the “milestones” that get me. It’s the fact we’re one year out from your parole eligibility date and I have the task of writing a letter asking the board to deny you.
It’s a lot like the Victim’s Impact Statement I wrote to the judge asking him to give you the maximum sentence. This letter is where my mind is at right now - a “project” to focus on, a thing to accomplish, a to-do to check off the list.
I wrote and rewrote my VIS over 5 months and received amazing feedback during your sentencing from the prosecuting attorney and the judge. I don’t intend to spend the next year writing and rewriting the letter to the parole board. I don’t have that kind of energy in me anymore. My hope is that I can get it knocked out over the next month and then not think of or look at it until I have to send it in.
You should stay in prison for what you did to me. You should be in prison for the rest of your life for what you’ve been doing to women your entire life. I hope that the letter I write to the parole board has the same impact my Victim’s Impact Statement had and, if anything, pushes the board to place harsh restrictions on you if you are granted parole. I have doubts, of course. You’re a master manipulator and probably already have everyone wrapped around your fingers in prison.
It’s been 910 days of healing, no contact (thanks protection order), and lots of therapy. I’ve had relationships, adventures, job and life changes since you were ripped from me and taken to jail. Things I never thought were possible, I’m doing. Feelings I never thought I would feel again, I’m feeling. It’s insanely wonderful to look back on these 910 days and see my growth from the shell of a woman I was when you left me to the woman I am now.
The unfortunate part is that you’re going to be this thorn in my side for an indefinite period of time. Protection orders filed yearly for eternity, parole hearings, and the anxiety that comes with your full release - the worry that you won’t leave me the fuck alone. Address protection, social media lockdown, and a general cautiousness brought into my everyday life in order to help me feel safe and secure.
Just leave me alone, please. Make this easy for both of us.
Leave me alone for forever. Let me file the protection orders. Don’t contest them.
Forget I exist, I beg of you.
It feels good to release this, to share a little piece of the story, take a little more of myself back from the trauma you left me submerged in, and to throw a “fuck you” your way.
Maybe I’ll courage-up and share more down the road.
Maybe I won’t.
For now, this will do.