Down the rabbit hole (continued…)
Stage three: the introduction of verbal and physical violence. His depression and anxiety led to the diagnosis of more severe mental illness, and my sentence to care for him became indefinite. His nicknames for me evolved from the sweet words of adoration to very creative combinations of pejorative expletives. Small explosions at the dinner table criticizing the dinners I had cooked after work grew into temper tantrums where food would get thrown into walls, then objects would get thrown, and then furniture – and then me.
For an entire year after he moved in, I was attacked approximately two times per week every week, until the end. It was always worse the weeks he had gone on drug binges. One of the conditions of his diagnosis was paranoia, leading him to stray from guided recovery under the care of medicine to self-treatment with narcotics. During that year, I had sustained a sprained wrist, dislocated ribs, a broken finger, a broken toe, whiplash, concussions, smashed cheekbones, a torn ACL, and more black eyes and bruises than I could possibly count. His violence intensified creatively as he grew interested in strangulation and drowning in his attempts to silence me.
Stage four: escalating violence and aftermath. The aftermath always included his profuse apologies, declarations of undying love, cheap flowers, love notes, and sobbing pleas not to leave him alone in his sickness and fear, for if I did he would certainly take his life, and most certainly take mine, because he loved me so much he could not live in the world without me, and didn’t want me to live without him. He would profess that I was the only person on Earth that could help his troubled soul mitigate life and comfort his paranoid delusions. According to him, I was the only person who had the open mindedness to understand that his illness was the real monster, not his inherent being “I have a good soul,” he would shout.
He would argue that, if I abandoned him that I would be a hypocrite being that I’m a person who had such a progressive political view and history of helping those in crisis, and that he would be sure to inform my community of “who I really was” should I attempt to leave.
Stage 5: the final step; to kill the victim. It was March 22, 2011. I remember because it was my birthday. I had gotten used to the attacks, and the unsuccessful attempts to throw him out by this point. It was too dangerous, I was too tired and broken, and after all, he did have all my money that he swore he would pay back “soon” that would be difficult for me to earn back as an international student in a foreign country. In addition, I didn’t want him to make good on his threats to tell my coworkers and the activist community with which I was working his distorted reasoning for attacking me, for how would I maintain respect? Besides, I was told that since he had claimed our relationship as a common law marriage on his taxes, he in fact had equal rights to the home, and, regardless of his lack of financial contributions, he was entitled to reside there, even after hypothetically being released from incarceration, should I decide to take that route.
So that day, at work, I received a phone call from the HR managers at the company where he claimed to have obtained a new job that he had supposedly been working at for the last few weeks of our relationship. They wanted to know why he had not shown to work in two weeks, and wondered if he intended to return. So, I left work on an emergency basis, and arrived to a situation of chaos that would change me forever.
After hiding all day, he finally called me at nine p.m. He told me he wanted to apologize for ruining my birthday and had a surprise for me. I was to pick him up from the Greyhound station, and from there we could pretend like nothing happened, and just celebrate my birthday. In a haze by this point, I arrived at the bus station. There he appeared before me, intoxicated, and smelling awful. He had that crazy look in his eyes that he always got just before he would reach for my throat. So I told him it was over, that I could no longer take it. That he had effectively ruined my life, taken all of my resources and left me literally broken, broke, and disillusioned. I figured it would be safe, being that I was in public, that there was a line of people behind me waiting to board the bus, and that I was just in the parking lot across from the police station.
He grabbed on to me and proceeded to drag me through the streets to a parking lot at the end of the dark quiet road. Screaming and kicking I went. No one tried to stop him. No one even seemed phased by the situation. Everyone kept their eyes on their cell phones, and he dragged me away. No one called the police. In that parking lot, he hit me in the face so many times that my blood was dripping off the bag he was using as a weapon. He wrapped his hands around my neck and began to strangle me so tightly that I could no longer breathe – or scream. I remember thinking how unjust it would be for my parents to have to live with the knowledge that I had been killed via strangulation in a parking lot. For whatever reason, he let go – just for a minute – so I ran for my life. I could not run faster than him being that I could barely breath and was bleeding profusely. He would catch me and grind me into the ground with his feet and his fists. Finally, with asphalt and rocks buried deep into my skin, I managed to run back to where the people were. Still unfazed, they stared at me with disgust, but no one asked me if I needed help. In fact, no one talked to me at all despite the blood and the handprints on my face and neck.
I had escaped being killed. Unfortunately, however, I had not escaped much else. This incident was not the end – it was just the beginning of a cycle of re-victimization I was soon to face, and am still dealing with to this day. Charges were laid by police. I became a prime witness in a case of “extreme” domestic violence – a member of victim witness protection. I was fired from my job, and asked to leave from the organizations I volunteered with on-campus. I was required to withdraw from my grad program, ostracized by my community, and prevented from returning home, as my place of residence became a crime scene. All the while, he was on the run, a fugitive of the law, running from incarceration from charges of violence (eight in total), and from the debt he had accrued under my name.
The process of re-victimazation has left behind a new stigma and stereotype for me, another set of hurdles and expressions of marginalization that I may be facing indefinitely.
The question, “Why didn’t you just leave?” is one of the most common phrases of re-victimization spoken to those of us who are survivors. This is simply just a societal ignorance, though it remains unacceptable and in need of immediate attention.
Despite this article being my own personal story, the truth is, I am not just talking about myself. I am talking about you, the reader. Because, if it is not you the reader who has personally experienced some level of abuse, it could possibly be your mother, your sister, cousin, best friend, professor, barista, bank teller, postal worker etc. It may not be as “extreme,” but it may be on its way to being. As it is, one in four Canadian women (as reported) will go through their own story of violence and abuse in their lifetime. This number may include more, considering that a lot of cases go unreported.
This is what it is like falling down the rabbit hole. Yet, as intense as it was, it is nothing in comparison to what its like being on the other side of the looking glass – the processes of re-victimization that occurs after the fact. It’s a world full of madness both interpersonal and systemic.
This is what it’s like #beingauroragoryalice.