Courtney
Editor’s note: February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month. If you or someone you know is a victim of dating violence, please get help.
When I was a freshman in high school I dated a guy who was several years older than me. I was pretty innocent at the time, but he was very physically aggressive and I found myself giving into his wants constantly. He would occasionally throw me down, choke me, or be generally aggressive. There was always an implied threat of violence. I remember times of hearing, “I’m gonna kill you” while being choked. I always had that thought in the back of my mind about ending it. I would always tell him to leave and he would leave town for awhile. During that time, I felt brainwashed. He kept telling me again and again how much I needed and wanted everything he was doing for me, and how I was asking for it. I believed him when he said he was truly sorry and that he would never hit me again. He would buy me things, take me out, and always promise me that he loved me and it was my fault for the violence. Even though he claimed he was violent because it was my fault, I know it isn’t, violence is a choice. And he was 100% responsible for his actions.
I then remembered all the good times when we weren’t fighting. It was those periods of time that made me reconsider. I always took him back; I was afraid of doing anything in fear of ruining my reputation. Who would believe me? Everyone thought he was the sweetest, most caring guy around. He was my best friend. I couldn’t imagine losing someone after living with them for three years and just moving on after all of the memories we made. How would I deal with all the questions and the whole town? Everyone had finally accepted me in that school, and I started to feel comfortable. Only after moving out and leaving everything I knew, did I truly start to think about leaving him for good. But I had no choice to leave. I would be left without a place to live, no transportation, and I would have lost everything I had worked so hard for. I truly believed I couldn’t survive on my own without him.
Occasionally, he would get really angry when I didn’t want to sleep with him and I would end up crying and screaming for him to leave me alone in peace while I slept on the couch. He never did and always tried to get me back in the bedroom either by vocal threats or physically dragging me. After one of these episodes, he ended up dragging me into the bedroom while I screamed at him to leave me be. He grabbed me and said to listen to him while covering my mouth as I was screaming for him to let me go. Before I knew it, I was on the floor of the closet crying with my back bleeding. It was after this episode that I grabbed the keys and ran for the door before he could stop me. I ended up driving for hours at 1am and sleeping in the car. I didn’t know what to do. Ultimately I went back, realizing I had nothing and was helpless.
In those last few weeks of our relationship, I feared for my life. While showering I would fear him sneaking up on me and hurting me. I started dreaming about him killing me. One occasion, I read an article about a high school couple. Where the boyfriend ended up murdering the girlfriend, Lauren Astley, after she broke up with him after his abuse. While reading it, I related to it and started thinking about my relationship. That’s when I knew I couldn’t leave. I was too afraid to leave. Even though I finally broke free, it was not easy. After parting from him, I was still hurt emotionally, physically and financially by him. No one will ever know the truth, and I will be viewed as the bad guy. It seems like I’ll never rid him from my life. I had to give up my dream of attending UC Davis, and am now moving back home with my parents. He ruined my life entirely. Looking in the mirror, I still see the scars left behind from him. I do feel blessed to have experienced it at the time I did. I now know that I deserve better and not to put up with that kind of behavior from any man.. And I know that I do have support after all, and the four years of abuse have showed me that I am strong. Much stronger than I once believed.
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Denni
How can anyone live through the the pain and write about it ? For me it isn’t easy even after all of these years. It has been 31 years since my entrance into the world of the living. Because for me, the years of pain and panic were dead years. And even now as I write this, thoughts come into my mind of maybe it was just a tad bit my fault. That somehow I was a small cause of the brutality that I lived through–and I do mean lived through.
I was a lucky one. Really lucky. Because right up to the bitter end I just didn’t know if I could make it one more hour or day.
When I met and knew I was going to marry this guy, because he was so charismatic, I thought that there just might be something wrong with him. Nothing major, nor anything that I couldn’t help him correct. We were going to help him together. (All in my mind, you understand.)
Everyone liked him. Or so I thought. And not everyone liked me. Or so I thought. And there is where it all begins.
I am inferior, dumb, stupid, lowly, disgusting, ugly, sick and how about cancerous to top it all off ? There is more that came from HIS inferior mouth and mind but why go over it all ? You know what he said to me, what he called me. Anyone who has ever been in my position knows very well what he said and thought. You know whom I’m talking about. All of you reading this. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it ? This is a first for me after all of these years and I can feel the anger and tears coming up inside of me. They are there. Still there after all of this time. Does it ever go away? Maybe it never should so that we can help others who don’t really know how to get out.
Without writing a book here I can tell you that I was so abused verbally and physically that when I got divorced I was mentally the same age as when I got married. And I was sick on and off for all of those years. Emotionally and physically. This person, beast, man, sick person, you name him. He is like all the rest that we all know and fear. Hate? No. I don’t hate. I think he is pathetic. To do what he and many others have done to us for so many years of our lives. But we didn’t allow them to take our whole life. We got out somehow, some way.
He embarrassed me, humiliated me, hit me, beat me, beat me, beat me, and beat me more. I think maybe he really enjoyed it in some sick way. Even though he told me how sorry he was each and every time. He dragged me around the house by my hair, pulled it out, spit on me, threw things at me, poured food on me, kicked me, and beat me again.
Everything in the house had to be perfect. Only perfection was accepted. Except for him. He was NOT perfect. His clothes had to be ironed. And they had to have a perfect crease and look perfect. The house had to be spotless. No spots. And I couldn’t go out to any kind of enjoyable event or when I got home he would do that thing again. BEAT me. You get the idea. I was under his control. Always. And I better know it. Or else. He would do that thing again. Beat me. Oh that word. It is always there, isn’t it? Will it ever go away? Yes, when we leave. And that’s what I did. Eventually. I got out. And would you believe that almost to the bitter end he really really did it again? I mean all out just BEAT almost everything out of me. Almost. But I did get out.
We can all get out. I did. You can too. You must. Not just for yourself but for everyone else involved. Children and family. All of us. It is like we are all one big family. We understand. Even when you think no one else does, you know we are here. We want to help. We can give you support.
Please don’t let whomever it is do to you what was done to me and others like me. We are too important. Others need us. We can help. We can do it.
I today am a grateful person. I have much to be thankful for. And I have accomplished many things. Join me. Be the person that you can be, too. It was hard but I did it.
Thank you so much for reading this.
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Anonymous
I can’t remember a time when he was nice to me. It was always more than a big brother picking on a little sister. I had that with my oldest brother. I knew what that felt like. It didn’t hurt and leave physical and emotional reminders.
He would look at me with pure hatred in his eyes. You’re so ugly. You’re so fat. You are stupid, why do you even do that?
I was told these things on a daily basis. Told how stupid I was, ugly, fat, how no one would ever love me. Told that the only thing I would be good for is my big mouth pleasing one of his friends. It scared me.
I am 13 and on the phone with a friend. We are giggling and making plans for meeting up with boys later in the day. He storms in and tells me to get off the phone, he needs it. I tell him to wait a minute. The mere act of me telling him to wait sets him off. Before I know it, the phone is ripped from the wall and thrown at my face.
We are driving home from school. His license has been suspended (again) so I am driving. He is mad that I am driving. He sees my Led Zepplin tape and asks where I got it. I sense I am on thin ice here, he is going to blow at any moment. I tell him my friend gave it to me. He sneers at me, throws the tape out the window of the moving car and tells me to stop being such a Poser.
Our parents are out of town for a week and it is just the two of us in the house. Our youngest brother has been sent to stay with some friends. I wish I had been too. Or that my parents would have taken me with them.
He throws a party and I lock myself in my bedroom. The doorknob rattles and a couple tries to come in. They are drunk and most likely high. I tell them to leave and they do. I breathe a sigh of relief and turn my music up higher. I need to go to the bathroom but don’t want to leave. I go to my parent’s room to use theirs. I walk in and there he is, on top of his girlfriend, having sex. It is the first time I see it and is an image burned into my 15 year old brain. I stumble over my words and run to my room in fear. I know that I will pay for that innocent mistake.
My brother was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Telling me daily I was worthless, ugly, dumb, not worth the air I breathe. I lived in fear of him. For as long as I can remember, I have lived in fear of the repercussions of telling my story.
My Mother knew. Her guilt did not allow her to do anything about it. She turned her eye so as not to see what he was doing to me. It was the family secret and still is. No one but he and I knew the abuse he doled out on a daily basis.
I am 34 and am still ashamed that I let it happen. Ashamed that I let it continue. Ashamed that I have let it have such an impact on my life.
He is now married with three daughters. My heart aches for those girls. I fear what he is doing to them. I fear that he is tearing them down the way he did me. I fear that they will never know how wonderful and special they are. I fear that he will destroy them the way he tried to destroy me.
I fear that no one will be there to tell those girls that they are wonderful, special, perfect, sweet, smart, and worth so much more than they will ever know.
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Auntie Jill (by @OhJennyMae)
[Editor's note: Today is the 7th Annual It's Time to Talk Day, sponsored by Liz Claiborne Inc.'s Love Is Not Abuse coalition. We wrote more about that over on BlogHer today, and encourage you to do the same in your own space. Here on Violence UnSilenced today, OhJennyMae is speaking out in honor of her Auntie Jill, who no longer can.]
My favorite aunt, with the chuckling laugh I can still hear so many years later. With the strawberry blond hair and freckles on her fingers and toes. She wrote like my mom, but neater since it was right-handed. She was one of my favorite people of all time and she was gone before I ever had the chance to truly know and love her like I should have done. Only a child’s heart knew her. Only a child’s heart was shattered when Aunt Jill was beaten down to her final breath through disease and drug abuse, words and stones. The disease wasn’t her decision to make. She was dealt the disease. And although her rebel’s heart traded insulin for heroin, the words and stones hurt the worst.
The fifth of six kids born to my grandparents, Jill marinated in the early 70s when hard drug use was easier to get in small-town America and the kids in bell-bottoms were looking to score more than ever before. And with hypodermic needles already part of her everyday life, she had one less thing to procure before she would shoot up.
She married Uncle Ronnie in the front yard wearing a sundress and rubber platform sandals. He accessorized with his feathered hair and Fu Manchu. they loved each other so, but their rampant drug use wasn’t helping either of them. She took steps to walk away and their double-helixed downward spiral ended with divorce, his death from cirrhosis, and her pathway to a second and much more dangerous marriage.
Steve was good. He doted on us kids. Treated her right when we were around. Made her happy. It wasn’t until after the tux and many-buttoned wedding dress came off that his gloves came off, too. He became possessive. Like an animal. He was good enough to be oh, so terribly bad. He knew when to put on the charm and he could light a fire in his eyes quick as a whip.
While cardiac arrest may be written on the dotted lines of her death certificate, her heart had given up long before. Her heart stopped when he strangled her, broke her ribs, twisted her leg to breaking, broke into my grandma’s house to beat her, and killed her dog. When he made the decision to overpower her and beat her down with his threats of never seeing us again, she gave up. She gave in.
In the end, she was just a shell of the former aunt I knew. Not the aunt who would make a bowl of cookie dough and let us eat as much as we could stomach. Not the aunt who would let us sneak a sip of peach schnapps when we stayed over. Not the aunt who would giggle with us under the covers as we read Garfield together. Not the aunt that never let her addictions and afflictions get in the way of her love for us kids.
He did that for her and took her away.
Do we know that she didn’t take care of herself? Yes.
Do we know she could have changed numerous times before her diabetic body gave out? Yes.
Do we give a shit? No. Not in the least.
She is not here for a multitude of reasons, but his beating the crap out of her is the thing she couldn’t control. He took her from us when he beat her down to nothing. He took the pen from her hand and he rewrote her story.
I just hope that you have the strength to rewrite your own story so your niece doesn’t have to write the ending because this is not a story I wanted to tell. I love my Jilly, but I didn’t want to name my daughter after my dead aunt. I want Auntie Jill and I’d rather my baby was named after someone else, anyone else. I want a different ending for me and I wish the same for you.
Aunt Jill by @OhJennyMae on Violence UnSilenced
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@OhJennyMae writes at www.OhJennyMae.com.
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