Four years ago today I crawled into bed, completely exhausted, and desperately hoping to escape from the recent incident of psychological abuse. Whenever the abuse happened, it felt like my thoughts and emotions had been put into a blender. Everything was all jumbled until I could no longer sort out what had really happened. “Was he right? Was it actually all my fault?” Usually, he’d follow me around the house, relentlessly trying to get his version of “the facts” drilled into my head. This time, he was silent as he entered the bedroom where I had gone to escape. At least when he was talking, I didn’t have to be afraid of physical harm. It was when he went silent that things could get even more serious. Lately his behavior had become increasingly erratic and unpredictable. Between abusive episodes, his silence was deafening. The only sound in the house were his boots, heavy on the hardwood floors. He had been suicidal for the past two months, and I feared that if he was willing to kill himself, he might also be willing to kill someone else. I glanced up for a moment when he walked in, ashamed of my tears and afraid of my utter vulnerability in the face of so much anger. He stared back at me, his eyes cold with hate, for what seemed like hours. Even after I glanced away, he kept staring at me, silently making his point that I was as worthless as a bag of dog poop. Never out loud. Just the silent, contemptuous, unfeeling glare. It coursed through my entire being as if he had given me an injection of shame. Just when I thought he was finally done with me for the night, I heard the door shut. Just weeks before, he had cornered me in our bedroom, raised a hand to me, and I had narrowly escaped by pushing past him toward the open doorway. I brushed the memory aside and thought of the kids instead. I never slept with the door shut because if I did, I couldn’t hear them if they needed me in the night.
Concerned, I tried not to panic and asked softly, “Why did you shut the door?”
In a voice hot with intimidation, he growled with authority through clenched teeth, “It needs to be shut.”
I brushed it off, too exhausted to put in the energy to fight this most recent rule that he wanted me to follow. After all, I was good at following rules. I always have been. I drifted off into a fitful sleep.
At 2:00 am, I woke up in a sudden panic. Everything inside of me screamed that I was not safe. I hushed my inner turmoil and told myself I was just overreacting. I tried to focus on the present. I had to go to the bathroom, but I found myself paralyzed. I was afraid that the sound of me opening the door when he said it needed to be shut could trigger physical harm. Was he out there waiting for me to break the rule? What kind of punishment would await if I broke the rule? I told myself once again that it was just my anxiety, but I grabbed my 9mm and tucked it into my pajamas just in case. I froze. That was when it hit me: I could no longer keep living here, afraid to leave my own bedroom to go to my own bathroom in my own house without arming myself. It was not supposed to be this way! That was the moment when I knew I had to get out.
As I read these words back to myself about that day, I have to fight hard against getting sucked into the vacuum of imposter syndrome. “At least he never hit you,” “at least he never called you a bag of dog poop,” and, “What kind of a crazy person is afraid of a closed door? It wasn’t even locked!” “Some DV survivors have permanent scars on their necks from being strangled. You never even came close to experiencing something like that.” “You weren’t in any REAL danger.” “That judge who granted your protection from abuse order was just soft. And so was the entire panel of higher court judges when it was appealed. You just got lucky.”
I am learning the hard way that these things are far from true, yet they are also an indicator of the validity of the abuse. Psychological abuse is something that you simply cannot fully grasp until you have experienced it first hand. Psychological abuse does leave bruises, but they are left where no one else can see them. This kind of abuse can happen right in front of an entire group of people, and none of them will even notice. It is often silent, perhaps spoken in a gentle manner, or maybe in jest. Yet, it is insidious, and it is incredibly isolating. If others have never noticed the abuse happening, it is very unlikely that they will believe the victim. Exposing psychological abuse came with one loss after another as people took sides with the one “falsely accused.” I was shamed and cast out by so many people I thought were my friends.
Anytime a victim has bruises on the outside of their body, you can be sure there are bruises on the inside, too. I am gradually coming to terms with the fact that it was okay for me to flee from psychological abuse before it became physical. I have heard countless other survivors say that the psychological part of the harm was far worse than the physical. I have been helpless on the floor, wishing he would just kick me hard enough to make the pain inside visible to the outside world.
That is not my life anymore, because of 2:00 am on June 5, 2019.