1 in 4 Women are Abused- I was one of them

Growing up, I was the kid everyone looked to for answers. I was the one who lead the group, chose what we did, what we played, where we played. I was a natural born leader. I took this strength with me throughout all my school years. I was the person people would come to for honest answers, because I felt there’s just no time to lie. I was capable of being tactful, but I was always very honest. My friends admired my strength, others feared it. 

Children and teenagers are made aware of the issue of domestic abuse. Our parents discuss it with us, we learn about it in school, even our children’s programs will talk about it. It’s no secret that domestic abuse happens, and it is wrong. So when I hit the age of dating, I was very up front about domestic abuse and how I would not stand for it. I went so far as to tell my boyfriends, in the beginning of each relationship, “if you so much as raise your hand at me in anger, I am out that door so fast.” Imagine my surprise when I would find myself in an abusive relationship years later.

When I was 18, I realized I am gay. I said farewell to all the failed relationships with boys, and I started dating girls. However, my strength and conviction remained. I started each potential relationship with the same disclaimer, “you so much as raise your hand at me in anger, I will be out that door so fast.” Many may think there was no need for me to make that disclaimer, but I felt it was important for them to understand I am not that weak little girl they can push around. So if that is what they were looking for, now they know and can look elsewhere. I didn’t understand, at that time, what abuse was really like. I also didn’t understand that abuse didn’t have to be physical.

Abuse comes in all forms. It can be emotional, financial, physical, sexual, the list goes on. Someone doesn’t have to hit you in order to abuse you. My focus my whole life was on the physical abuse. That is probably why I didn’t notice I had participated in an emotionally and verbally abusive relationship until I was too deep into it. 

When I was 19, I met a woman who, for lack of a better term, rocked my world. She was fun, she was edgy, she was risky, she made me feel like I wasn’t this boring teenager I had felt I was. I really liked being around her, and she made me feel wanted. That, above all, was most important to me. All I ever felt from everyone else was that I was needed, but never really wanted. She pretended not to need anything from me, rather just wanted me around. I fell quickly in love with her. 

Things were fun for awhile. We enjoyed each other, we did fun things together, we had a blast. From the outside, you would think we had the perfect relationship. If you looked a little closer, it was more like the relationship from the movie The Secretary. It was purely sexual, but I was so young, I had confused it. The number one rule for lesbians is never be someone’s first, because they’ll fall in love with you. My girlfriend broke that rule, and I was head over heels. She gladly reciprocated that love, but only for a short time. Step 1 was done: madly in love.

About 6 months into the relationship, I had left behind all but a couple of friends. Most people get it when I say the honeymoon killed my friendships. People tend to disappear when they get into a new relationship, and I was guilty of that. The couple of friends I still had, unfortunately, were pushed away because my girlfriend got jealous, or she didn’t like them for some reason. I was more than eager to oblige and remove myself from them. Step 2 was done: complete isolation.

My girlfriend started to change. She had always been snarky, but it had always been to other people. She started to direct her comments and judgments at me. I was all of the sudden “too girly”, which I found funny, because I had never, in my entire life, been called “too girly”. At first, it was easy to put these minor and ridiculous insults aside. I told her if she wants to be with this woman, she’s going to have to accept that I’m a woman. 

Unfortunately, as the months ticked by, the insults grew more and more personal. She would insult my family, she would insult my job, she would insult my jokes, my opinions. She said I was too liberal, too atheistic, too stupid, too fat, too lazy, etc, etc. At one point, she even compared me to Nazis. I didn’t have my friends anymore to tell me otherwise, and my voice inside was becoming too quiet to drown out her bashing. She also had a way of making the insults not sound too cruel. She would laugh at the end of one, as if it’s just a joke. She would quickly follow it up with some sort of backhanded compliment, so it would somehow seem better. Or she would say it as if it’s endearing: “You’re so stupid! I love you.” When you spend most of your time with someone, and you love them, their insults eventually become your truth. Step 3 done: low self esteem.

About a year after we started this mess, I had become severely depressed. Her words became my truth, and I had started living by it. I gained 60 pounds in record time. I was at the heaviest I had ever been. I hated my job, I hated my home, I hated my car, I hated my life. I fell into a deep depression, and, as most people know with depression, our sex life disappeared. We hadn’t had sex for 2 months when she decided to warn me that she was going to cheat on me. She said to me one night, “if you don’t start putting out, I’m going to find it elsewhere.” I guess I should be happy that she warned me, instead of just cheating on me, but that didn’t make me feel any better about the fact that she felt I owed her sex.

This warning threw me into an instant panic attack. I completely freaked out, got very sick to my stomach, and retreated to the balcony to smoke. As I’m sitting there, contemplating smoking a whole pack in one puff, she came out to apologize. She did the usual song and dance that any abuser does, “I didn’t mean it. You just have to understand that you pushed me to this. I’m not really going to do it. I love you, you know I’d never hurt you. I’m sorry.” But I didn’t believe her. I am that person who gives you all of my trust from the get go, but if you do anything to lose my trust, you never get it back. She had, in one sentence, lost my trust. I knew, from that moment on, that I would never trust her again. I, unfortunately being the person who can’t keep her mouth shut, told her this fact. She cried, and she went inside. I sat in silence for a minute, and I felt calm. That minute was quickly over when I got a sinking feeling inside of me. I knew that she was doing something harmful to herself as I sat quietly outside. 

When I went inside, I knew I would find her in the bedroom. Sure enough, she had locked herself in the master bathroom, and I tried everything to get her to open the door. Knocking, banging, pleading, speaking sweetly, and finally yelling. When she opened the door, she had no pants on, a razor blade in her hand and 5 slashes across her thigh, dripping blood. I don’t know why she decided that night to become a cutter, but it was the first time I had ever experienced this scenario with her. I didn’t get angry, I got concerned. I quietly asked her, “why do you feel the need to do this to yourself?” At that point, she looked at me as if I was the Devil himself, and I had just killed a litter of baby kittens right in front of her. The pure hatred in her eyes has stayed with me through the years. She grabbed the door and slammed it harder than any door should be able to withstand, it shook the house. In a moment that probably lasted no more than 30 seconds, but seemed like hours, I realized that the door was shut and locked, but my hand remained in the door frame. I was actually confused. Her expletives being yelled from the other side is what brought me out of that shock. And when she opened the door, and my hand was freed, the tip of my middle finger fell to the floor. I had never seen so much blood in my life. I couldn’t believe it was coming from me, and I didn’t know what to do. Maybe it was the amount of blood, maybe it was because this was the worst I had ever been injured, or maybe it was because I was so confused as to what to do, I called 911. When I called, they put me on hold to transfer me to another department, and that’s when I came to my senses, and I remembered we lived 2 miles from a hospital. So I hung up, put on jeans, grabbed my glasses, grabbed my wallet, wrapped my bloodied hand, and went to the car. My girlfriend, who was in worse emotional shape than I was, ran around the house screaming, grabbed my missing fingertip, and ran outside. Unfortunately, somewhere in between the house and the car, she lost my fingertip. 

Once I was checked into a room, the doctor asked my girlfriend to step out for a minute, and she asked me directly if this was a case of domestic abuse. I laughed at her, and I found myself telling her that it was an accident. I told her that I’m not abused, and that this situation was unfortunate, but in no way abuse. I truly believed because she didn’t mean to cut my finger off, she wasn’t being abusive. I focused on the act of losing the tip of my finger, and I completely forgot about all of the emotional and verbal abuse that led up to that incident. I didn't even put together the emotional manipulation she was using by turning that whole night into her being the victim, and me being the jerk. So, no, of course I felt this wasn’t a case of domestic abuse. 

The weeks following that traumatic night were interesting. It was hard for me to deal with the pain, because surprisingly, losing the tip of your finger is extremely painful. I was out of work for awhile, because I had to take strong doses of pain medications, and I was pretty much comatose for a week or so. When I was awake, I was remembering her threat to cheat on me, her slicing her thigh open because I was upset by her threat, and my finger getting cut off. This whole time, she’s doting on me, and she’s telling me over and over how much she loves me, and she’s acting like she acted when we first started dating. We were staying at my mom’s house, because I couldn’t go home. It was a place that made me remember everything, so I wanted to stay with my mom. I had my girlfriend stay too, because she had to take care of me since it was her fault. This whole time, I’m also trying to keep up the lie I told my parents. You see, my mom is a therapist. I would never tell my therapist that my girlfriend cut my finger off, because that question about domestic abuse would come up again. And I would certainly never tell my mother that my girlfriend cut it off. But my family was nice enough to pretend they believed my lie that I was trying to shut the bathroom door, but since it’s so humid, the door frame swelled, and I had to tug on it hard. As I’m yanking on the door, the AC kicked on and sucked it shut. Unfortunately, my finger got caught in the crossfire. Lame lie, isn’t it?

After some time went by, we finally returned to our home. It wasn’t long before the verbal abuse started up again. She had successfully gotten me back into the “in love” mode, and she was able to start abusing me again without question. After 8 more months of feeling like I was absolutely worthless, I found myself sitting in a bar with her, listening to her flirt with some other girl. As if she remembered I was there, she put her hand on my thigh, leaned in, and whispered “I love you.” It was in that exact moment that I had realized I deserved better. It was in that moment that I realized my need for love was not going to make me settle for someone who just pretended to love me. It was in that moment that I got the courage to face the world alone rather than stay with someone who had nothing but disdain for me. I looked at her, and I calmly said, “I’m done with this. I’m going to get my stuff, and I’m going to leave. Take care.” I walked out the door, leaving her sitting in shock at the bar, and I never returned. 

That was 11 years ago. Over the next 11 years, I worked very hard to find myself again, and I hate to say that I’m still not there. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know what I want, I don’t even like myself very much still. Her words, as utterly erroneous as they were, have stuck with me over the last decade, and I have to battle daily to silence them. I still struggle with my weight, and I have not since been the size I was before I had met her. I can still hear her telling me how fat I am, and I can only agree with her. I struggle every day to love myself, because she never did. 

My story is not nearly as tragic as a lot of the domestic abuse stories out there, and my story has a happier ending than most. She did not hit me; she did not break my bones (other than my finger, which I still say was an accident, even if it was in a sea of verbal and emotional abuse.) I did not end up dead at the hands of my partner. But we often don’t realize that you don’t have to be hit in order to be abused. My story is about that fact. I was, most certainly, in an abusive relationship, and I never once got hit. 

People always ask “why do you stay”? I can understand asking that question; why does someone stay in an abusive relationship? If we all are free, shouldn’t we have the freedom to walk away from that? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is not so simple for those that are inside the situation. From the outside, it seems easy. When you’re on the outside, you’re strong, and you love yourself. You have a sense of pride, and you will not tolerate that type of behavior. But when you’re on the inside, you have been emotionally beaten down to thinking you are absolutely nothing. You are less than nothing; completely worthless. You have been isolated from your friends and your family, you have been torn down to the bare bones, and it’s a wonder you can even get up in the morning. I wasn’t able to truly convey the extent of her verbal abuse towards me, because it’s just too much to write here. But that is where I was at; lower than the furthest bottom of anyone’s rock bottom. I was worthless. I deserved her words. I deserved her opinions and judgments of me. And at the same time, I loved her. She had somehow won my heart, and I thought I had won hers. I thought her abusive words were out of love. No matter how irrational or skewed that thinking is, that is the success of an abuser. That is how we keep staying. Other situations, worse situations, are life threatening if they leave. They truly believe they will be killed if they try to leave. Tragically, some are.

I really wanted people to ask “why did she abuse you?” instead of “why did you stay?” Because the latter question makes me feel like it was my fault I got abused. If I hadn’t put myself in that situation, I wouldn’t have been abused. However, I really just wanted someone to take my side and ask why she did it in the first place. Place the blame where blame is due. 

I ran into her not too long ago. It was a few months before I moved out of state. She invited me to lunch, and she spent that time apologizing to me. She told me everything I wanted to hear for so many years. She said that I was very special, and that I had been nicer to her than any other person in her life had ever been. She said I was so strong to take the abuse she gave me for so long. She felt deeply sorry for treating me so poorly. She asked if I would consider being her friend. I have been trying to live my life with compassion, and so I said that I would. I told her, however, I will not put up with that kind of crap again. Step 4 done: start the cycle over.

A month or so went by, and it was nice having her as a friend. She knew me from when I was young, and she reminded me of all the good times we did have. Not surprisingly, that only lasted a couple of months. Shortly after our friendship began, she started getting abusive again. She started using me for things she needed or wanted, she called me names, she talked down to me. I started to feel that worthless person rise up in me again. Thankfully, this time around, I wasn’t in a relationship with her, I wasn’t in love with her, and I had been working too hard to love myself again to let her tear me down again. I deleted her phone number from my phone, I blocked her from my facebook, and I walked away. I have not looked back since. 

But every time I hear a story of abuse, every time I hear someone ask the question “why did you stay”, every time I hear people negate the fact that abuse doesn’t have to be physical to be abuse, I am reminded of her. I am reminded of how much one person made me hate myself. I am reminded that I was abused.