The Day I Chose to Survive

My friend might get upset with me using this picture but itʻs okay - she knows why I would post this in this article.

It is the same reason that I have posted this picture for almost ten years now, as well as write a bunch of words about it.

It was a few more years after this photo was taken (5 years, to be technical about things), January 13, 2012 was the day that I figured out NOT that I could change him, but that if I wanted to get away from him for good, I would have to make that choice and not be afraid of the things that I was told he would do if I did that.

I did that shit.

I made an announcement of it on my social media accounts and was sure with the choice.

It was a whole lot of work.

It is still a whole lot of work in a lot of ways. It is still a lot of work even though that stupid bastard is dead. It is still a lot of work because there was a whole lot of other things that happened. Those things were the things that for all of my life I believed would be the very end of me.

And it was, but for the very rightest of reasons. That is what I am still working on. That is part of what a whole lot of people, namely women, end up finding out...that your life is changed forever, that your closest people might not be there anymore, that you will (more that you will not) feel like you are doing it all by yourself because sometimes you will be, and for the most part you are.

You are the one who is responsible, not for the violence, but for taking an actual look at the damage, for learning to actually look at things as they are and not as they were wished to be and you are the one who is responsible for your healing, as well as the rebuilding of your life from the rubble to the roof.

Even though the violence is over, there is still the rebuild. Not just of my self, but my whole life. Sometimes it feels like it stalls, and sometimes it feels like I cannot keep up with it, but always, it is mine to have, to hold and to heal.

Which brings me to this - if you have never had to survive domestic violence, you have no idea what you are talking about when you tell your loved one that they can just get out of the abuse just like that. It is not that simple. They cannot just get out as easily as it is assumed. To just up and leave like that is dangerous. NO one thinks that way. People want to believe that it is just that easy, and it is not at all.

Stalkers do not stop stalking just because you leave, and beaters do not stop beating just because they say they will. I went through this shit for a very long time. One must think about all of the things that the abuser did solely for the purpose of creating an image of themselves as well as you that supports their story of your being a cheater, a liar, a thief, a whore - which, in my case I was never any of those things. I still am not. I wonʻt ever be.

That is just not who I am. Neither is it who I have ever been. This is the thing that we, as those victims in the throes of things, hear, almost all the time - that we are these people who we have never ever been. Then for some time afterward, you are left to try to escape just that energy that this person has painted of you for you. People believe that the most insidious abuses are physical, but mostly it is the emotional and psychological abuses that last the longest and are the hardest part to rebuild of oneʻs own life.

Emotional and psychological abuse is harder to get past than physical abuse.

It is a hard time trying to get past it all, namely when people who have never had to deal with being someoneʻs target for years actually want to help but really have no clue what you are dealing with (and you do not want them to, ever).

You never forget what happened.

Too many people are convinced that somehow, whatever it was that caused a person to become violent with someone, anyone else - but namely the mother of their children - for years and years and for what seems like no reason at all - had some sort of reason behind it and the reason was something that maybe the victim said?

Did?

Thought?

Believed?

Wondered about?

And was, again and again, kept in the dark.

And I could go on and on about how many times people suggested to me what THEY would do....no, no they would not, and no you would not.

And please - do not get me started with the whole "it would never happen to me because I would not let it happen to me..." trust me, you do NOT know when it is going to happen, and especially if you are completely enamored with the person. That is when it is dangerous. That is when you might want to check your own level of denial and especially if your partner makes you feel like you want to cry more than you do not.

And not only your partner, but parents, siblings, cousins, "friends," coworkers, your pastor, your teacher ....ANYONE IN YOUR LIFE can become an abuser if you are not aware of the things that you have heard by certain others and WHY you keep hearing it out of them, why these people see what is happening by others in your life, and others who you are meant to love and trust so much, and vice-versa.

My story is like anyone elseʻs

But not everyone is strong enough, or brave enough to tell their own right away.

I know, for real - bravery is a thing that is needed for healing. Brave is something that we do not realize we really are until we are gone from the violence. We find out what we survived.

We cry, sometimes for long periods afterwards, not because of a feeling of failure, but, because it has been such a long time since we felt peace that it takes a bit of time to get used to it.

It is hard to believe that you have been through this, might still go through it. It is hard to believe that you feel so caught and stuck and just completely immobilized.

That was a VERY long time ago for me. I wonʻt say how long because the amount of time it took for me to get past it all seems like a blur. It was a few years, to be sure, but, in that time I learned more about me and what I was NOT....and it is not a bad thing.

We get told, when we are in that situation, a whole lot about what we are not, but the one thing that we are never told is that we are not required to stay where we are not truly cared for, not required to stay just because a marriage certificate, for some religions, weighs more than the safety, the sanity, the soul of a person, namely a woman, caught in the throes of violence.

Any violence, including verbal, especially verbal.

Then there is spiritual abuse - using someoneʻs beliefs against them will get a person sent straight to my Momʻs Godʻs Hell. According to my memories - her God does NOT mess with people who harm the innocent, and namely harm the innocent because they, themselves, have not yet come to terms with the violence that may have happened in THEIR lives while you were not part of it yet.

I gotcha - I have been there and I have done that and I have heard everything that anyone who has NOT been there has said.

I know the anger of being misunderstood. I know the pain of feeling like no one will ever understand (but we do).

I know the confusion felt when suddenly the people who were once there for you are one day not - then, you start hearing the stories about how it was that you were somehow the reason, and all that does is make you feel like you did when your abuser began the madness.

One day, you get tired of being tired of it all, and you begin to rebuild the one thing that you thought you never would...strength.

And then suddenly, the combination of strength AND bravery become the thing that, little by little, the world begins to see, begins to notice.

You will know, for real, that you are becoming stronger when the day comes that you are able to tell the world that once upon a time, a long time ago, there was this person you were and you went through a lot to become the one who you were meant to be, who you were told you were never going to become...and you look in the mirror, and there you are.

Older.

Wiser.

Stronger and braver.

It was NOT easy.

It wasnʻt.

It had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with finally choosing what was more important to me...peace, quiet, or, tolerating more and more just so that I would not have to called a failure by people who could NEVER EVER have made it through ANY of what I have survived, VERY WELL, and without THEIR specific support.

They were the very ones who told me I could depend on them.

I still canʻt.

Honey, the only person you will come to realize is your savior is you, no matter what anyone else tells you - only YOU get to make the choice to live your life.

I am here to tell you that it is possible, that it is a challenge, that you are the only one who will be able to get you there (yes, with the help of therapists, supportive loved ones, and an unyielding spirit of becoming free from the past).

You did not one thing to deserve the abuse.

As one of those professionals. I am here to tell you that you can, and you will escape.

Professional what?

Escapee, thatʻs what