Hindsight is 2020

I know this entire story is going to seem like I'm trying to convince you why I had it the hardest in 2020.

I'm not. And I didn't.

It is a series of very poorly timed decisions and events, but isn't the practice of gratitude itself the ability to look for the silver linings, the slivers of hope, the rays of light in a hard situation? It's one of life's most difficult but most fulfilling ongoing quests - to find gratitude in each day. I surely struggled with that for most of this year, starting about a month before the world went on lockdown. I do have to give you a content warning before I begin, that this story will include abuse and self harm. I have also changed names to protect the identities of the people involved.

I am no stranger to hopelessness. Since adolescence I have struggled with depression, and living in the very north of the northern hemisphere, it gets downright dreadful once November hits. Last year around this time, I was working a night shift job that drained me, feeling lost and alone after being dumped by the man I thought I would marry the previous summer. So when Trevor came back into my life over Christmas, I thought it was the Get Out of Jail Free card I had been wishing for. He was visiting home for a few days and over drinks while catching up, offered me a place to stay in California to escape the snow and get a change of scenery. It worked for him, why not me? I had nothing to lose - no partner or children, a dead end job, no mortgage or pets to care for. I had known this man for a decade, and I trusted him. It was the biggest and most spontaneous thing I have ever done, and it was so unlike my typically pragmatic self. But a few days after Valentine's Day, I boarded a flight headed for LAX.

By this time, Trevor and I were dating. Up to this point, he had me convinced he was everything I hoped for in a partner: supportive, romantic, a good listener, intelligent, and thoughtful. What I didn't realize is that I was willfully ignoring big red flags that I just brushed off as part of his personality - a need for attention and grandeur, or an alpha-male kind of complex. We had already gotten into a few major fights before I even arrived in the Golden State and he had me believing that he was "70 percent sure" he was going to break up with me a week before my flight departure. I was terrified of losing it all before it had even begun. I clung to hope. Only a month into our relationship, he had already discovered how easy it would be to make himself my everything - so that's exactly what he did. Of course looking back is 20/20, and I should have addressed these things before the move. What was actually happening was what I believe to be a contrived set of issues he fabricated in order to change our dynamic so that he had more control and a sort of power over me.

When Trevor picked me up at the airport, without having given me any inkling of a hint before my arrival, he told me that we were going to visit his sister and her partner in Hermosa Beach. I was already stressed from the move, the state of our fragile relationship, and now I was meeting his family, completely unprepared. Great. This was one of his favorite control tactics - we would get in a fight, and then he would decide we were going to socialize with people without having come to any sort of resolution. It would force me to put my feelings and concerns on hold and play the part of the happy girlfriend so he wouldn't have to deal with the problems we were actually having. The visit itself went well, and afterwards Trevor told me that he decided that he wanted me as a partner again and would allow me to stay with him.

The first few weeks were incredibly frustrating. It was mostly just going to bars and appeasing Trevor in hopes that he would warm up to me again. Drinking with him was the only way I knew how to connect with him. Once we would arrive back home, he would ignore me. I didn't know what else to do, so I would clean. I scrubbed that entire janky apartment ceiling to floor, which he clearly hadn't bothered to do once since he moved in five years prior. A half inch of dust was caked on every surface. The first time I showered there, I swear I emerged dirtier than I had been going in. Trevor also decided I would also be in charge of groceries, paying for and doing laundry, and he would pay the bills. He decided what was fair for the both of us. I didn't know it at the time, but he had already transformed into Mr. Hyde, and the Trevor I had fallen for was gone.

It was after a night at his favorite cocktail bar with one of his friends that I realized things were not going to improve. On this night, I had blacked out and walked back to the apartment by myself. I don't recall what set me off, but I was upset and confused. I missed home. The Covid situation was getting worse and Italy had shut down at this point. Trevor was treating me second-rate to the dogs. I didn't know what I was doing wrong. I was in a bleary-eyed haze until I heard Trevor stumble loudly in. I snapped out of my stupor and shoved the pocketknife under my pillow. I approached the living area and asked him what happened earlier - my timeline of events didn't seem to match up. He told me that we went home together and we went to bed around two. It was currently five in the morning. It was the first time he gaslighted me. I sat in stunned silence. He made it make even less sense. That’s when he noticed the red snicks on my left thigh.

"If that happens again," he said, half irritated, half coolly, "we're gonna have a problem."

If we had come home together, I thought, then when did I have the time and privacy to do this to myself? I was already confused and miserable, and now I felt crazy. Nothing felt real. I didn’t feel real.

It wasn't long after that when the States went on lockdown. My situation went from bad to worse. I would have panic attacks daily. I was desperate for an escape, yet I was terrified to leave the house. We lived in a pretty rough part of town. I would hear houseless people relieving themselves in the alley behind the house while I did the dishes. The lightrail was basically in our front yard and I could hear people yelling indistinguishably at all hours of the night and day. Minute tasks became mountains to me. I would freeze in terror at the thought of having to attend online training with my new job as a telemarketer, learning to drive his car, or going to the laundromat down the street. The only escape - for both of us - was alcohol.

I know that by now you’re thinking, good riddance, woman, what does it take for you to leave a shitty situation? I didn’t see that I was in an abusive situation at the time. Covid became the scapegoat. It was why we couldn’t - or didn’t - get along, why I was scared, why I couldn’t go home. I truly believed it for a time. Not only that, but there were still glimpses of the Trevor I had fallen for in January. We would watch Disney movies, I convinced him to let me get some houseplants, and he set up the apartment so that I could have a little desk to work and do art. For birthdays and holidays we would have Zoom calls with our families, and he came from a lovely one. I, like many people, believed that abusive relationships were only “real” in the form of physical abuse.

The “bad side” of our relationship took a very dark turn for the worse with the Murder of George Floyd. I started seeing Trevor for who he really was. The murder took place on my old bus stop when I was going to community college five years prior. As if my life didn’t feel surreal enough, I watched many of my old neighborhoods burn from 1500 miles away. I watched my friends and family take to the streets I knew to protest, volunteer, and help. Trevor would have a police scanner app on his phone and the TV on every second of the day. But it wasn’t for justice. It was tourism. He would play devil’s advocate, bringing up Floyd’s “criminal record,” criticize the concept of white privilege, the efforts of Black communities and allies, attempt to discredit the idea of defunding the police, and in the same breath follow it with, “I’m not racist. I have Black friends.”

I was having none of that shit.

I knew that the person I would be proud to have as a partner would not ever try to discredit the struggles of another, when he was born into such privilege. The person I wanted as a partner would be by my side, trying to educate themselves with me on things we were previously blind to or didn’t know about or didn’t take the time to understand before. The person I wanted as a partner would admit with me that they don’t have a place in deciding what is “right” or “wrong” in response to racism, unless it is dismantling it or amplifying and supporting the voices of those who have to experience it almost every day of their lives.

I was disgusted and angry. I started calling him out. That’s when the threats started.

When the protests swept across the nation and arrived at our city, I asked Trevor if he would go to a protest with me. He said no. As the sun descended, sirens engulfed our block from every direction, going every direction. Police lights from about six cars flashed outside the pawn shop a few doors down. The opportunists that craved destruction, that we knew would come, were here. They took the shop owner’s gun and tried to break into the dispensary next door to us. They had broken the wrong window and fled, so Trevor went to help board up the shop. National Guard trucks drove by with what looked like army men packed in the back. He ordered me to go back inside and said he’d be back soon. I finally fell asleep at 1 AM to the hum of helicopter blades, alone.

The next morning, he heard me up and texted me, telling me to make breakfast. When I asked him if he wanted coffee or espresso, he retorted,

"Do you know how late I was up last night? I was patrolling the neighborhood while you slept. I love you, and if anyone is going to hurt you, it's me."

I hadn’t known his abuse tactics to come in doubles: a threat thinly veiled as morbid humor and a guilt trip. Trevor had used guilt to manipulate me before, but this was telling - this was my tip off. That was the moment I realized the feeling in the pit of my stomach - my gut - had been begging me to listen all along. It was screaming now. I started taking notes. I started opening up to my friends and asking them about his behaviors. And he started spiraling. He was now at the point where he was drinking a third of a handle of Jim Beam a night - until six in the morning. He would sleep until evening and then say, “Well, it’s too late to work now,” and Beam himself up. (His work was freelance, and actually lost his contract with a major company this way.) I was still so confused - none of my feelings I felt earlier in the year had gone away, but now there was this strange depth and complexity that existed alongside them. I was still longing for the connection I thought I shared with him in the past, but I was also suspicious of him, scared of him, as well as worried and concerned for his health and happiness. Was I wrong? Was I weak? I myself was at the point where I was drinking almost two bottles of shitty wine a night. Did I have any right…?

There are so many more examples of fucked up things that occurred. There was lots of name calling, insulting, belittling, manipulating, gaslighting, silent treatments, passive aggressive behavior, guilt trips, and towards the end, when I started calling him out and demanding respect, there was a lot of denial, deflecting, and trying to project the things I told him he was doing onto me. One day in late June, after a long day of listening to the heavy stomps of our upstairs neighbors and wishing the ceiling would cave in on me, I decided I'd had enough. This wasn’t sustainable. I wasn’t happy and I wasn’t going to get any happier. I reached for my phone and looked through the texts I had been ignoring for weeks until I found the thread with my mother.

“I’m thinking of coming home.”

"Really?! Wait, you mean for a visit? Or moving back? Are you ok honey?"

"Moving back."

Admitting you need help is always hard at first. But after the initial ask, it feels like a giant surge of water being released from a dam. All that tension, that energy being spent just trying to hold it together and pretending everything is fine - all you have to do to let go of that pressure is open your mouth. The irony about being in the darkness of a struggle is that you can’t see all the support that surrounds you. Your loved ones only need to hear those words that you needed to say, and they will step in, step up, take to your side and lift that burden that’s been so heavy for so long. They’ll help you take those first few steps towards healing. They want to help. They want to see you heal.

The night I left Trevor was the scariest. I actually feared for my physical safety and almost had to get the police involved just so I could pack my bags and seek refuge at a hotel. He texted and called all night and all the next day, swinging like an impetuous wrecking ball between extremes. One moment was desperate begging, saying he’d stop drinking, he would be the man I needed him to be, he’d do anything. The next would be back to calling me names and accusing me of being the abusive one. I didn't know who this man was anymore. I was trying to reason with a volatile stranger. He would not listen to anything I told him, so I stood my ground.

“No, that is not my home.”

“No, I am not your girl.”

“No, I do not want this anymore.”

That was the night I learned how to say no. Even when my emotions swung recklessly between extremes, even when I remembered the small amount of good we did have, when I thought of the dogs, I said no to myself. I said yes to my gut. My gut wasn’t screaming anymore, but I was still listening. I was listening when I took my luggage with me to Target on the way to the airport so I could buy another duffel bag to put my dirty laundry in, because I didn’t have a chance to wash it before I left. I was listening on my way to the airport when he was texting me that he was following me, that he would find me and take me back home to him, to his home. I was listening when I felt the joy that came with telling my siblings and my friends I was returning home, to my home. I was listening when I found comfort in that boy with the cool boots from New York and we exchanged similar stories for hours, why we were in airports, fleeing our situations and flying across the country during a global pandemic.

I arrived back home in Minnesota at 5 AM on Father’s Day. I was able to see my parents outside of my Extended Stay Hotel, and even though I couldn’t hug them, my dad said through tears it was the best Father’s Day gift he’d ever received. And for the first time in months, I saw rain. I felt peace. I felt safe.

Being home has not been without its own set of problems. After living in a hotel for a week, my Covid test came back negative and I moved in with my parents for the remainder of the summer. My parents and I had always butted heads and this time was no different. Except this time, I was on a slightly more elevated plane of awareness. I recognized the growth I had experienced in the four short months I was in California. All that confusion, guilt, pain, fear, panic - all that hardship - was not for naught. I was able to reflect on the person I was before I moved to California, who I was before I was given the offer by Trevor, and who I was while I was in my last relationship. I realized that my last breakup - the one with the man I thought I was going to marry - from the time it took me to collect my things and move out, move back in with my parents that year, and from when I got back on my feet and into my own place - it was all paralleled in 2020. To the exact day. I was supposed to learn a lesson from that break up, and clearly, I hadn’t. I had to repeat it. And boy, did I get the message this time. I heard it loud and clear. It fast-tracked my awareness, my progress, and came bursting out of me like an alien life form out of my sternum. I was forced into expedited growth, like those sped-up timelapses of a butterfly breaking free of its cocoon. I have learned I can only rely on myself for happiness. I have learned what my boundaries are, my needs and desires, how to listen to my intuition, and how to ask for help when I need it. I now recognize the voice that tells me when something is wrong. I recognize it as my own. I respect it.

And for that, I am thankful. Thank you, Trevor.