October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Seeing all of
the posts on Facebook of pictures with ribbons and hotline numbers to call if “you
or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence” hits me really hard every
year. It isn’t that I only think of it during the first few days in October,
when everyone is suddenly rallying behind foundations and talking about the
major issue that is domestic violence, I think about it every single day. I
think about it when I see a women wearing foundation and blush caked onto her
face to cover up bruises, when I see a woman with layers of clothing on in the
summer, when I hear a “man” disrespecting his wife in the grocery store, when a
co-worker of mine tells me her husband calls her stupid and says she wouldn’t
be anything without him. Warning signs are everywhere but often looked past. I
think that domestic violence has definitely been talked about more in the past
few years than it ever has, but still not enough. So many disgusting, volatile
things go on behind closed doors. Things people who haven’t gone through domestic
violence would never even think of in their wildest nightmares.
But it’s simple, right? Just leave. If a woman, or a man, is
getting abused…they can leave. What idiots. I mean, who would stay with someone
who beats them?
This misconception gets me every. single. time. Yeah, in an
ideal world, the very first time a woman is smacked across the face or a man is
screamed at (emotional/verbal abuse is still abuse) and told he is worthless
for this or that, they would leave and the marriage would end and everyone would
live happily ever after. This is a pipe dream. Things do not always work that
way. What about the mother of six children who doesn’t have income of her own
because she’s at home every day breastfeeding, cleaning up toys, making meals
from scratch, helping older kids with homework, bathing everyone (sometimes
forgetting herself) and making sure they all have the love and encouragement
they need and cannot get a job of her own? Her husband is the provider. No
matter what she does it still isn’t enough and every single night when he gets
drunk, she gets knocked around. How does she leave? She thinks, no matter what,
I will never be able to support myself and these children alone. If I go to
shelter, they’ll be taken away…so she stays. She stays and she gets mistreated
but she doesn’t let the kids ever know. She stays until one day he punches just
a little too hard and it’s a little too late and she’s dead and no one ever
knew a thing because she was too busy trying to be strong for everyone else to
save her own life. Right? She could have left? Wrong. She had no family, no
place to live, she had a man telling her he had the power. Mind games, you see?
The abuser plays tricks until the person he/she is abusing has no semblance of
clarity anymore.
Or what about me? I mean, it isn’t exactly a secret anymore,
is it? What was it? I think two or three years ago I shared a blog post of some
of the abuse I encountered and how I am doing with processing everything still.
So people know. It happened to a girl in Mazon. Oh lord, who would have ever
though domestic violence and abuse could form in a tiny town where nothing ever
happens? Mazon, the safest place in the world. Leave your doors unlocked and
let your kids walk around until midnight, nothing happens there.
I didn’t have children. I had a family I could have went and
lived with to get away from my husband. There was physically nothing holding me
back from leaving him. I stayed though. So that’s my fault right? Wrong.
Such a common misconception. That a woman is dumb for
staying with someone who abuses her. It’s taken me a long time to even be
semi-vocal about the things that happened to me, but if it can help anyone, I’m
fine with sharing it. I will say it again, if you have not gone through it, you
won’t understand why someone stays in a marriage filled with domestic violence.
Let me try and explain to the best of my ability.
I never had much self-confidence or self-worth growing up. I
have absolutely no idea where this stemmed from and I cannot pinpoint it back
to a single issue or complication I had. The lack of confidence and self-worth,
at that time, was just part of me and my personality. So, when I was 18 and a
guy told me he was in love with me and wanted to marry me, I was all in. We had
been fighting before he proposed. He threatened to quit his job at Walmart if I
didn’t come see him on his lunch. So I did, and he left work for the day and we
got to my parents’ house, where we were living, and he didn’t get down on one
knee, he didn’t have a ring, but I said yes anyways. So that was how that
started.
He was in the Army Reserves and I never expected him to hit
a woman, but he did. Time and time again. For the entirety of the almost four
years we were together. It started with shoving me onto a bed and before it was
all said and done I had been shoved, slapped, punched, kicked, choked, spit on,
etc. None of those things have stayed with me. Do I still flinch if I’m caught off
guard? Yeah. Natural reflex. But I don’t have bruises or broken appendages or
cuts or scrapes or physical signs of abuse on me anymore. What people don’t see
or talk about quite as much when it comes to domestic violence is the emotional
abuse. The emotional abuse stays with a person much, much longer than any
physical abuse does. The emotional abuse is what makes it hard to sleep at
night, it’s what makes getting back to the you that you used to be so
difficult. As much as I, and probably anyone who has gone through physical
and/or emotional abuse, hate to admit…it changes a person. It doesn’t matter
how many therapists you see or how many times someone else calls you beautiful
because the damage is done. The mind is a funny, complex, never-forgiving
thing. It stores the worst pain in the world and allows it to creep up from
time to time, just when you least expect it.
So when my ex-husband told me that if I ever left him he
would kill my family, I stayed. Because he had already warped my mind enough
into thinking he had every single ounce of power and I had none.
When he said I was worthless, nothing without him, I
believed it. Even though the bastard worked making 8.50 an hour and couldn’t
even support himself, let alone me, I still believed that I was nothing without
him.
When he would choke me until I was blue in the face, when he
knocked out two of my teeth and hung them on our bedroom wall in a Ziploc bag
(and claimed not to remember doing it) but then cry about how sorry he was, I
would forgive him. After all, he wasn’t going to do it again, he promised.
The mind can be a terrible place to be stuck in, and I was
stuck. I was worried my family would be killed if I left. I was so incredibly
far removed, emotionally, from everything, that I believed every single thing
my ex-husband told me. And maybe people will see that as weak when they read
this, I don’t care. These were the worst years of my life.
So anyways, when he told me horrible things would happen if
I left, I stayed because I never wanted to cause anyone else the pain I felt. I
loved my family too much to let them suffer. I had too much pride to admit I
was being abused. Because I was Tori, and I was strong and I was funny and I
was intelligent and I didn’t cry in front of anyone, and I certainly didn’t
allow myself to be abused.
I didn’t want to be that girl. I didn’t want to be looked at
like I was damaged.
So I stayed. I stayed for a long time and I just dealt with
what I had to deal with to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone besides me.
So when you hear about a woman or a man who has been
physically or emotionally abused, don’t say “they could have left if they
wanted to.” You do not know what they
are going through behind closed doors. You do not know what has been held over
their head or how their mind has been twisted around tiny bits of false hope
and change. It isn’t black and white and it isn’t as easy as people claim.
Children or no children, family or no family, nothing makes getting out of an
abusive marriage or relationship easy.
I’m not sure what ended it for me, but one day I woke up. I
was working midnights at a hospital and I got home and I slept for a long time
and I woke up and he wasn’t there. I laid in my bed and I thought, “is this
going to be my life for the next 50 years?”
The answer was no. That was not how I wanted my life to play
out. It took months after that to get out of the marriage, but I did do it, and
that’s where I’ll end my side of things.
Unfortunately, many people do not get out of abusive
marriages/relationships. I suggest, instead of judging people for why they
stay, start bringing awareness to the different avenues of help that are
available to people in these abusive relationships. We, as a society, need to
continue to educate ourselves and bring forward new avenues of relief for those
suffering in these situations.
