I'm A Survivor

I started dating "Brian" the summer after my sophomore year. I had seen him around school during the year, and I even dated two of his friends, but nothing happened until we both ended up at a mutual friend’s birthday party. We met and started dating on Friday, June 13^th. The date should have been a clear indication of what was going to come the next five years.

I had just gotten out of a two year relationship not long before. My first boyfriend was only physically abusive once, but most of the time he was just a jerk. He would say he would come over and never show up. He was constantly cheating on me, once with my best friend. He was always lying. One day he slammed my head into the fridge, threw me on the ground outside, and tried to throw me down the stairs. I called the cops and ended up getting a protective order against him. He was the worst “first boyfriend” to have. I was so insecure and my self esteem took a huge hit during those 2 years. I wanted to find someone better but I lived in a small town so I thought my chances were pretty slim. Then I met Brian and thought my luck had changed…

Things were pretty serious right away. He told me the first few days we were dating that he didn’t want to have sex until he was married, or at least for 3-4 months. I don’t remember exactly how the topic came up, but just 5 days after we started dating he told me he wanted to have sex. I was really hesitant at first, but I caved. It wasn’t my first time, but I still felt really guilty about how soon everything had happened. But I really liked him. I figured we would be together for a long time so eventually this would happen. I had dated some real “winners” before and I thought Brian was different.

The next month and a half were probably the best of my life so far. We were together all the time and had such a great time. Even though I was only 16 at the time, I honestly thought I had found the person I was going to marry. I even wrote in my journal that if I had met Brian five years later, I was SURE I was going to marry him. Life was great!

Then we had our first fight. We were at a lake with his friends and a couple of mine. I was talking to his friend who I had known a couple of years. After awhile Brian stopped talking to me. I would go over and try to talk to him or hug him, and he would jump in the lake and totally ignore me. As we were leaving I pulled him aside and asked him what was wrong. He got so mad! He told me to just keep flirting with his friend and why even bother talking to him. I told him I was sorry I made him mad, I never meant to upset him, and that he knows I care about him. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “I don’t get mad. I get even.” Basically he told me if I ever did that again he would find some girl and hit on her right in front of me. I felt horrible that our first fight was my fault. If I hadn’t talked to him so much then we wouldn’t be fighting. I knew that if I kept it up then I would lose him forever. Or, at least, that’s what he made me feel.

Things were touch and go the next month or so. I would say something and Brian would just freak out on me. Everything was my fault, and somehow I was always the one who ended up in tears. Brian told me that he didn’t think we should have sex anymore and that I should stop taking my birth control. I stopped taking the pill, but we didn’t stop having sex. Brian refused to wear a condom because he said it didn’t feel good and it hurt him.

School started up again in the fall, and we were doing pretty well. Life wasn’t a fantasy, but I was still happy. The last few weeks of summer I started feeling really sick. I would get really tired in the afternoon and everything I ate made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t think anything of it until one morning in class. I was in a computer class when I started getting the worst cramps in my life. I was doubled over in pain and could barely breathe. The short version of the story is I had a miscarriage. I never went to the doctor but I knew that was what happened.

Later, I tried to tell Brian about what had happened. I thought he would tell me that everything was okay, that he cared about me, and no matter what he wouldn’t abandon me. I wish that was how it happened. He sat looking at the TV, while I was crying telling him what happened, and all he said to me was, “Why should I care about this? It’s your fault you stopped taking your birth control.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Those words hurt me more than anything that could have happened. My heart was broken.

A couple months later Brian decided he didn’t want a girlfriend and broke up with me. Did I mention it was 11 days before my birthday? I was devastated! I thought everything that happened was my fault and all I did was wallow in self pity. I would see him around school with his new little girlfriend and every time my heart sank. I hated school. I hated seeing Brian with other girls. But most of all I hated NOT being with Brian.

I was still close with his family and one night I was at his sister’s house playing card games. While I secretly hoped Brian would show up, I still ended up speechless when he actually did. I dropped my cards mid-hand and made up some lame story about why I had to leave. Just as I was getting in my car Brian came out telling me to come back in. I knew I shouldn’t go back in, I knew I should have gotten in my car and driven away. But I missed him so much and just wanted him back, so I followed him in the house.

We got back together that night and stayed together the next 7 months. I really thought that the second go around would be different. Things had changed and I thought things would be better. Nothing had changed. Nothing was different. Things only went downhill from there.

We were constantly arguing about something and I always felt like I was walking on egg shells. Every time we would fight he would tell me it was my fault, and I believed him. He would get so mad if I even talked about another guy, including my best friend of 10 years! He only approved of two of my girl friends because he said the others were all “bad influences”.

I was at every family event of his, but if I even asked him to come to my Dad’s with me, he would get all defensive and telling me I shouldn’t make him do things he didn’t want to and would refuse to go. He hated when I watched my baby nephew because he said my sister was taking advantage of me. He called my mom a bitch whenever he had the chance. If I would start to tell him about my day or tell him something went wrong, he’d tell me to shut up and quit complaining because that’s all that I ever did was complain.

A few times I would try and talk about his drug and alcohol use. He would smoke pot all the time and get so drunk every weekend he would throw up and not remember anything from the night before. I wasn’t into those things so I always ended up being the one that took care of him. Whenever I would suggest he cut down or quit altogether, he would get so defensive and so angry. “Why are you always hatin’ on me? Why are you always trying to change me? Stop making me do things I don’t want to do!” was what I heard over and over again. There was nothing I could to try and change the situation.

I was always self conscious about my weight and what I would call my “Buddha belly.” Brian would tell me that I was beautiful and if anything I needed to gain 5 pounds. But then he would tell me that if I gained more than 5 pounds he would tie me to a treadmill, put a cookie in front of my face, and make me run it off. He would try and play it off like he was just kidding around, but it still felt like a slap in the face every time he said it.

When my junior prom was around the corner, I asked him if he would take me. He would rather be caught dead than go to prom so it was a big no. I made plans to go to prom with my long time friend, but when Brian found out he freaked! He said I could go, but if I went with my friend then he would have his ex come over while I was at prom. Brian ended up having his wisdom teeth removed the day of my prom, so I spent my prom night watching him sleep, getting him fresh gauze, and keeping him current on his pain medication. Like many other teen's prom nights, this was something I would never forget.

My stress level was through the roof after this! I couldn’t sleep at night, so all I would want is to sleep during the day. If I ate, I would want to throw up. I started having horrible anxiety attacks because (again!) Brian didn’t want me to take my depression meds. I even went to the ER once because I was having such a bad anxiety attack I could breath. He would scream at me all the time over the littlest things and then yell at me when I would start to cry. I could never win.

Finally after about a year of dating I had enough. I finally built up the courage to break up with him and headed to his house. I broke down the second I went into his room. I started sobbing so hard I could barely talk. I tried to tell him how much I loved him and how hard this really was for me, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. All we did was fight and nothing ever made him happy anymore.

He looked at me and said, “If you want to do this, then you’re going to come up to the mountains with me and watch me shoot myself.”

Brian's favorite hobby was hunting and fishing and being outdoors. He owned probably 10 different types of guns and I had personally seen him kill rabbits and birds and an elk. I knew he could do this if he really wanted to.

He had a small bowl on his dresser that was full of bullets. I begged him not to do anything and started crying even harder. He walked over to the bowl and grabbed a handful of bullets. I jumped off his bed and ran over to him. He pushed me down on his bed and I went to grab his shirt to stop him.

He turned around and head-butted me as hard as he could right on my nose.

I felt my nose and it hurt worse than anything I had felt. There was blood coming out and nothing I could do to stop it. Brian pushed me down on his bed again and head-butted me again on the left side of my face. He was so mad his whole face was shaking.

I don’t remember exactly what happened after this, but we did stay together for another month or so until Brian decided I was too controlling and things just wouldn’t work out between us.

Now is when I wish I could say our story was over, but in reality it lasted the next four years.

During my senior year we would date off and on. We never dated more than three months at a time, but things never got physical again after that day in the summer.

In the spring I started dating a new guy, DJ. Brian was trying to get with me, but I never told him about my new boyfriend. I was too scared. I had no idea how he would act or what he would do. I knew I would get called every name in the book, but I didn’t want anything to happen to the new guy.

One day I was at lunch with DJ when Brian called. I ignored his call and within two minutes he called me over 10 times. He left all these “urgent” voicemails, the first few screaming at me and calling me a whore, and then ones asking why I was with my new boyfriend and why not him, then others telling me to never call him again.

DJ had just dropped me off at my house when I saw Brian drive in front of my house. I called him and asked what he wanted. He was irate! He said he knew I was dating DJ and he knew I had been with him and he was going to kill him!

I jumped in my car and followed Brian to DJ's work. Brian stormed into his work looking for him and looking for a fight. Thankfully DJ wasn’t at work yet, so nothing came of it, but I was terrified of him after that.

Soon the school year ended and before I knew it I was off to college. I was only 3 hours from my hometown and I could go home whenever I wanted. A lot of my friends were out at school with me so I was never alone, but I felt so lonely. Things with DJ and I didn’t work and I was heartbroken. So what do lonely girls do? They go back to their ex boyfriends. I would flip-flop between Brian and another ex I had for the next few years. Always feeling alone and always looking for someone to fill the hole in my heart.

Brian and I did date again for about 4 months right before I graduated. We were still hours apart, but things were going really well this time. We didn’t fight as often, and when we did we would talk things out. There was no more screaming, no more name calling, I felt like I was in heaven! I had to leave the country for a couple weeks for my sister’s wedding. I tried calling him one day from a pay phone at the bottom of South America, and he told me to call him later because he was busy with his friends and hung up on me. I checked my voicemail one day and heard Brian's voice instead of my own. Somehow he had gotten into my account and changed my settings and erased some messages he didn’t "think I needed."

My sister was having a reception in our hometown with all of our extended coming for the event. I told him this was something really important to me and I wanted him to come. He refused. The old Brian was back in full force. “Why are you always trying to change me and make me do things I don’t want to do?” There was no way of changing his mind.

I went to the reception by myself and just sucked it up. Later that night Brian and I were driving around and I started to mention my friend and her boyfriend. I don’t know what happened, but Brian suddenly snapped. He started screaming and yelling and his face was shaking again. He was so angry he punched his steering wheel, leaving the wheel turned and his knuckles bloody. He pulled in front of my mom’s house and screamed at me to get the fuck out of his truck. I tried telling him to calm down and let’s talk it out, but he wouldn’t listen. I was so mad that I jumped out of truck and went to slam the door.

His exact words were, “Slam it and its over.”

So I didn’t slam his door. I closed it ever so softly, walked over to the back of my car, and kicked the bumper as hard as I could. Even though I was wearing tennis shoes, I knew the second my foot make contact with my car that I had broken something. I hobbled into my room and took off my shoe. Already my foot was red and staring to swell.

I had to stay the night at my mom’s house and miss a day of work and school the next morning. I went to the doctor first thing and, just as I suspected, my toe was broken. There was a break right below the joint on my big toe, and nothing they could do about it. My “prescription” was to tape my big toe to the next toe and wear hard soled shoes. The doctor told me that she could guarantee when I was 50 I would have arthritis in my toe.

I don’t know why, but that hit me so hard! I couldn’t believe that because I got pissed one time at my jack ass boyfriend, I would be in pain for the rest of my life. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Brian wasn’t any help at all. He kept telling me it was my own fault for getting mad and to stop looking for sympathy. He ended up driving me back to school because I couldn’t, but the trip was miserable. I was in pain, but didn’t dare say anything to him. He stopped to smoke pot and I just wanted to be home. We didn’t really talk because we were both still mad at the other one.

About a month later the relationship ended (again). That was the last time we dated seriously. Over the next year or so we would talk and talk about getting back together, but I would never let it happen.

Brian was all about being “the man of the house”. He would tell me time and time again that he would never let his wife work more than 20 hours a week because she had to be at home with the kids, with the laundry done, the house clean, and dinner ready whenever he got home from work. He was the most racist person I have ever met. He would constantly say rude remarks about every race of people different from his own. I hated when he would talk like that and his response was he could say whatever the hell he wanted and no one would change him.

Sometime after graduation I moved to a different state and got a job at a rape crisis center. I had to complete crisis intervention training and part of the training had survivors come and share their story. A woman came in to share her domestic violence story. At the time I was talking to Brian, even though we weren’t dating. The first part of her story was sad, but nothing I could relate to, but as her relationship progressed I realized that all the things he said to her were things that Brian had said to me at one point in time.

Again, I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. It was like I was looking into the future. This woman could be me if I had stayed with Brian.

I couldn't tell you when exactly I knew I deserved better than this life Brian was promising. Over the years I had dated a few people in between Brian, and somewhere along the way I realized I was worth something. I realized I was a good person and I didn't deserve to be treated this way. I wanted, and more importantly, deserved to be treated well and with respect. It was an amazing feeling to finally be able to say that to myself and believe it.

Now I give presentations to high school students about dating and relationship violence, and at the end of every presentation I tell them my story. I tell them it’s like an addiction. Sometimes you get into relationships that you know are bad and bad for you, but you keep coming back for more. Like a drug addiction, normally you have to hit rock bottom to realize how bad things are and that you want to change your life. It takes a long time, it's not easy, and many times you'll want to give up. But once you get rid of your abuser and you're happy with your life, it's the best feeling in the world.