hallowspirits:

missmentelle:

Abusers don’t come with warning labels. 

Abusers don’t hit you on the first date. They don’t write “I will humiliate and belittle you” on their Tinder profiles. They don’t wear “I break things to intimidate my partner” t-shirts. People don’t get trapped in damaging relationships because they saw an abuser coming from 20 yards away and decided “I’m going to date that person anyway”. That’s not how any of this works. 

In the beginning, abusers can be some of the most thoughtful, attentive people you’ll ever meet. They’re obsessed with you; that’s what makes them so toxic and deadly as time goes on. Abusers buy you flowers. They remember your birthday. They remember to text you “good morning” and “good night”. They listen to your problems, confide in you and share silly inside jokes. They can keep that “loving, doting partner and best friend” mask in place for months or years if they have to. 

So the first time they scream at you or hit you, you don’t see an abuser. You see your best friend, your confidante, the person who brought you soup when you were sick and always laughs at your stories about your nutty coworker. You tell yourself they just had a bad day. Maybe they were tired, sick, hungry, or under a lot of stress. You know them. You’ve made a life with them. And they’re so sorry and so ashamed of what they did. This isn’t who they are. 

And so things go back to back to normal for a while. Wonderful, even. This is still one of the best relationships you’ve ever been in, even counting that one incident. You go back to date nights, cozy nights in and 5-hour-long conversations that feel effortless.

And then it happens again. 

And you still don’t see an abuser. You see the person who means the most to you in the whole world. You decide that maybe they’re just struggling. Maybe they have mental health issues. They’ve told you every horrible thing that’s ever happened to them as a child, and maybe it has something to do with that. But either way, they’re not an abuser. Not yet. They’re just a person who needs you more than ever. 

Then things are good for a while. Then something bad happens. Then it’s good again. Then it’s bad. Good. Bad. Good. Bad. And every time it happens, it gets a little harder to get out. The time you’ve invested in the relationship goes up, and your self-esteem goes down. By the time you realize that, yes, the person you thought you knew is an Abuser with a capital A, you’re in deep. You’re a frog that stood in a pot of water so long it turned you into soup before you even noticed it was getting a little warm. But you didn’t ask for this. And you certainly didn’t know it was coming. 

We have this image in our heads of what abusers must look like. We picture brawny men with low foreheads and stained white tank tops, screaming at their wives while they drink beer in front of the TV. We think they’re like wildlife, as if we could spot them with the help of a guidebook and know to stay far away from them. But they’re not. Abusers can be anyone. They can be female. They can be accomplished. They can be well-groomed. Queer. Politically far-left. Politically far-right. Artists. Athletic. Charitable. Intelligent. They can come from any walk of life, any spot on the gender spectrum, any religion, any background. It’s not the abused person’s fault for not spotting them – they can’t always be spotted. It’s the abuser’s fault for abusing. 

This makes me want to vomit because so much of this is what happened to me. He bought me flowers just because. He took me to nice restaurants all the time. He made every meal and paid so much attention to details. He wanted to spend every moment with me and would bring me food and coffee at work to surprise me. He told me about how his mother was raped by his father’s best friend. And that that guy still comes around because his dad didn’t believe her or didn’t care. When that man came over he asked me if he looked like that guy because he’s always suspected he’s the product of that rape. He looks nothing like his dad yet his brother is the spitting image. He felt guilty because he blamed himself for the death of his aunt and I felt for him because I felt guilt about my brother’s.

I was concerned about his behavior, but I never thought he’d hurt me. The warning signs never registered that I could be at the end of his rage. When he was in college he got in a fight that resulted in his teeth being knocked out and replaced. He told me it was because he was defending someone. I later found out from friends that he would get drunk and just fight people at the bars. They never warned me after introducing us.

He told me all of his exes were crazy and told me horror stories about them. I later found out from friends that if he got into an argument with a girlfriend he would verbally abuse them by calling them bitches, whores, or cunts until they broke up with him. They never warned me after introducing us.

One night we went bar hopping with two of his friends and decided to continue the night at his house. I drove him and his friends drove in a truck behind us. The bar is not far from his house, a five minute drive tops. Within that time he noticed that someone was following us and began freaking out and yelling out the window. I thought he was just joking with his friends (dudes are always aggressive with their dude friends and I really want to know wtf that’s about). As I start pulling up to the house he jumped out of my moving vehicle and ran towards their still moving truck to pull them out and beat them. It took me screaming at him and his friends refusing to get out of the truck for him to realize that those were his friends. I dismissed it as him being too drunk, but that didn’t sit well with me and I talked to him about it the next day.

I thought I could fix him. I thought he had been so deeply wounded by family events that no one had ever nurtured him. I told him he couldn’t call women those terrible names and that he needed to work on his aggression. He agreed with me and I could see how terribly sorry he was. We went out later that day and a friend’s step-mom pulled me aside and told me he wasn’t a good person and that I should stay away from him. But she didn’t tell me why. She just repeated over and over that I should stay away from him. But I didn’t listen because she and her husband have always wanted me to date their son and I was so jaded by the years of that bit that I didn’t realize she knew something my friends weren’t telling me and was trying to save me.

All it took was being busy with school. All it took was telling him that i couldn’t come over because I had to study for my college midterms. All of his words of how wonderful it was to be with someone who was working on a degree and didn’t expect him to pay for everything meant nothing. He said he understood and that he would miss me. And then he went to our friend’s birthday party a few blocks from my house and told me to come. I told him my answer was the same. I needed to study. And then he texted me over and over and over again until I finally told him to leave me alone so I could study because I couldn’t keep being on my phone. And then he called and called and called. I finally answered and told him I was serious and that I would speak to him the next day.

He walked to my house without asking if it was okay. He kept knocking until I let him in. I was so angry that i unlocked the door and then marched my ass up the stairs to my bedroom because if he had to be there then he would damn well sit silently and watch me study while I fumed. When he came to my room he began sobbing and telling me he thought he was going to lose me. At this point everything all clicked and I realized I was in danger. No grown adult starts sobbing and thinking they’re going to be dumped after the first night your girlfriend doesn’t hang out with you. And they don’t come over to cry about it after being told to let me study.

He was crying so hard that snot was dripping down his face. He was pacing my bedroom in front of the door and I knew I couldn’t get out. I felt the energy in the room change. I tried to tell him to go back to the party and started internally panicking because I realized that no one knew he was there. No one knew. He left the party and walked to my house. There would be no car parked in front of my house. My neighbors, who were two friends of mine, wouldn’t know. His car would still be at our friend’s house. They wouldn’t have realized he left the house party. I could die and no one would know he did it. I tried to stay calm and diffuse the situation using soothing tones and trying to unnoticeably back away from him. He kept sobbing and blaming me for making him think he wasn’t enough and that he didn’t know what I wanted from him. That he had never dated anyone like me and was pleading me to tell him if I’d like him more if he had more muscles or if he had tattoos. He was shaking and pacing and sobbing and getting louder and louder. I kept reassuring him and trying to tell him that our friend would be upset to find out that he left the party.

And then he pushed me. And his hands were around my throat and I couldn’t break eye contact with him. That was the scariest moment for me. I looked into those blue eyes and saw nothing there. I have never seen anything like it. There was nothing behind there. And I was accepting that I was going to die. If a giant man could knock his teeth out and he still didn’t stop swinging then there was nothing I could physically do to make him stop. He started begging me to promise him that I would see him the next day and I could barely say “okay” before he let go. His face completely transformed. He was so pleased. And he made me tell him that I promised to see him the next day. I promised and he immediately walked down the stairs smiling. As soon as I heard the front door shut and then the porch door I sprinted down the stairs and bolted the door shut. I don’t know why but I immediately called my best friend who is a marine that lived across the country. With my back against the front door I began sobbing as soon as I heard his voice.

I told him everything that happened and he told me to lock every window and to barricade my door just in case. I fell asleep that night with both my cats locked in my bedroom with me and all of my bedroom furniture pushed against the door just in case he came back. The next morning I went to grab my mail and saw a box of poptarts with a note tucked inside sitting on my stoop. He had come back. He had tried to get in. He wrote that he was so sorry and that he loved me and that he would never do that again. That he wanted to see me wearing red lipstick again because it was his favorite. He ended the note telling me that he would never stop. He would never stop trying to get me back. He would never stop. I was so overcome with nausea that I vomited in my garden. I texted the note to my marine friend and he told me he’d handle it. I never heard from him again, but he has to this day still showed up to every event I’ve been invited to by our mutual friends.

It got to the point that I finally told that entire group to fuck off because they obviously didn’t believe me when I told them what happened. Either that or they just didn’t fucking care. The last straw was one of their weddings and they knew he was coming and didn’t warn me. They made me sit in the same room as him, let him come to the dance floor every time I went out, let him walk by my table on his way to get drinks. They knew and they let him near me. They put me in danger. I was lucky my husband and a friend that actually believed me and cares were there. They surrounded me at all times and at one point my husband kicked a chair at him to keep him away from me.

So to all of my loved ones and friends, it doesn’t matter what you think should have been done differently in the face of abuse. Your opinion does not matter. Abusers don’t look abusive. They don’t act abusive. They don’t tell you that they’re abusive. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not true (in my case my friends DID know he had issues and didn’t warn me and still didn’t believe/care). Just be there to help victims. And if you’re friends with someone accused of abuse you best fucking dump them. As Terry Crews said, “Abusers protect abusers…the thing you serve is also the thing you gotta eat.”