Confession

I struggled for a very long time with this paper, and still am while writing it–on what a significant topic could be that I haven’t already gone into deep details about on my blog. Then, a friend of mine posted on Facebook about her story and encounter with DV and what that meant for her and her life.

She talks about her trauma pretty openly, advocating what I advocate: we need to normalize talking about abuse so other survivors feel less alone and like they can talk about what they’ve been through. This post specifically was for October–which is domestic violence awareness month–right after September which is suicide awareness month. I think both these months are incredibly important and valuable to have especially for victims of abuse.

Back to the post my friend made, she posted photos after her most vicious assault from her partner–the father of her children. Not only did she post the photos–she explained the entire story from start to finish in detail. 

It’s absolutely horrible. It’s terrifying and no human being should have to endure what this beautiful person has gone through. 

Her abuse was six years ago–around the same time as mine–so I find myself seeking solace in her a lot when I need to talk about trauma and why my body remembers things around the same dates it happened before I even know what day it is–I feel connected to this woman. I feel a bond with her that I don’t share with anyone else; we’re not the closest friends, we met once at a concert and have stayed in touch through Facebook only. Yet, I have told this person more about what I’ve been through than most of my closest people.

So, in the sake of October being Domestic Violence Awareness month, I will share some small details from my own trauma on the off-chance that it helps another like this woman’s story helped me. 

According to the CDC, about 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime. About 1 in 3 will experience some sort of sexual violence in their lifetime as well. For men, the statistic is still too high: 1 in 7 men will experience domestic violence in their lifetime and 1 in 6 men experience sexual violence in their lifetime. This is too common of an issue.

I have made some arguments throughout my past writings that mental health issues are a major result of these statistics–specifically chronic depression and the appearance of BPD in those who experienced childhood trauma. There is also the cycle of abuse: the repetition of what was done to someone on another person; something that is common in abuse victims regardless of intention. Sometimes I wonder whether the abusers in these situations are plain evil, being affected by a mental issue of their own, or maybe continuing a cycle.

And to be honest, someone else can solve that issue–I have very little sympathy for abusers and even less patience. I choose to believe they’re just plain evil 90% of the time.

Moving on, I experienced abuse in a multitude of different manners. Luckily, I don’t find them to be extreme but they have impacted my life and greatly impacted my relationships. My mother has been emotionally abusive for years. I have two therapists that believe she has BPD or another personality disorder of some type–one of which is very close to her. I have endured different forms of emotional manipulation throughout my life but yet could not recognize abuse when I entered an abusive relationship at sixteen.

I had never had a real relationship before, my mom was pretty strict on dating–and I didn’t really go on a real date because I had never dated someone who could drive and had a car. The person I was dating was seventeen so he had already had his license and car for about a year. 

He first love bombed me–spoiled me with gifts and told me how beautiful I was and how amazing I was when we hadn’t even been officially dating. Within a couple weeks of us dating, he told me he loved me on “accident” but then continued to say it. I didn’t say it back because I wasn’t sure I felt that way towards him–again, we’d only been dating a couple weeks.

He then laid on guilt. Telling me I was hurting him by not saying it back, explaining in detail what it was doing to him. I didn’t know what to do about that, so I just said it back. If I didn’t say it over the phone because someone else was nearby and I didn’t want them to hear me say “I love you” to someone I had been dating for a couple weeks at sixteen–he would become explosively angry.

This was not unlike what my mother would do as I was growing up. If I did anything that upset her or was wrong in her eyes, she would do the same things–she’d lay on guilt and if that wasn’t working, she’d become explosively angry.

As a sixteen-year-old naive girl, I had no clue that I was being manipulated. This was how the person I was dating was trying to have control over me.

Fast forward to him wanting to explore sexual relationships with me, a sixteen-year-old who knew nothing about that, I told him I wanted to wait. He did the same things he did with the “I love you” situation by laying on guilt–describing in detail how I was hurting him–and if that didn’t work, he became angry. I eventually just gave in.

At one point, I started shutting down when he became angry or did something I didn’t like because I didn’t know how to talk to him–and, as an adult, I realize it was because I didn’t feel safe.

At some point, he locked me in his car in my own driveway and lectured me about how shutting down was unhealthy and that I needed to fix that–he kept me in his car for over an hour. My mom was blowing up my phone asking why we were just sitting in the driveway and I was too scared to answer her. 

My mom would explode in anger if I ever looked at my phone while she was talking to–and especially yelling at–me, and I was worried my partner would do the same because there were parallels to the relationships–so I didn’t answer her. That made her angry at me. I was in a hopelessly lost and lose-lose-lose situation and wasn’t even aware of it.

There’s so much that had happened with this partner in the span of six months. It was a short situation but it did all the damage it needed to. I felt in my gut something wasn’t right and dumped him on a random day–but I wasn’t really ready to break up. I was in love with him in a weird way–he was my first real relationship and because love had only been conditional for both my mother and this first relationship, I assumed all relationships were like that.

It took me a lot of therapy and a lot of time to realize that is not normal. 

It took me over a year to realize I had even been abused or assaulted.

This isn’t abnormal for teenagers to enter into these abusive relationships and not know–there needs to be more conversation about what abuse looks like and how to look for it. The pressure and applying guilt would have been a huge red flag for me now–as an adult who has experienced it. If someone with less experience underwent that, even as an adult, it might seem normal to them. That’s why this is so important to talk about. 

Although the relationship only lasted six months, he tormented me for several years. He ended up dating someone new only a few months after me–and made her obsessed with me. She would stalk my social media; and we ended up working together when it came to light we both knew a lot about each other before ever actually meeting. It was actually really disturbing. I was aware of her because one, she was a fresh junior in high school while he was a freshman in college and I was worried about her–and two, because he made sure to reach out to me and let me know that he found someone better.

While I was still in love with him and trying to heal and move on–which he was aware of. She was aware of me because he compared her to me every chance he got, brought up stories in detail to her, and so much more. He used me as a weapon against her if she wasn’t acting right. I don’t know a lot about their relationship other than what she told me when we worked together for a few months, but it seemed as though he was doing worse to her than he did to me. 

Abuse, domestic violence, assault, and more needs to be talked about more. There needs to be awareness of it and precautions used especially for teenagers entering into relationships for the first time.

It’s time to normalize these conversations–but the question still remains: how?