I was in an abusive relationship with a man named Dwayne
See: The Malignant Narcissist Has One Dead Giveaway in The Bedroom
from October 2013 to May 2015. The beatings began in July 2014 and I was nearly beaten to death more than once.
People asked me why I didn’t “just leave”. Dwayne usually beat me because I was leaving. He’d attack me while I was physically walking out the door. But there’s another reason I didn’t “just leave” Dwayne — the shock of surviving each beating.
Many of us go into shock every time we’re beaten. My beatings never felt real as they were happening. Sometimes I didn’t even feel the impact of being slapped or kicked in the stomach until much later. Only when Dwayne strangled me did I feel something on the spot.
The only reason I could believe any of this was happening to me was because of the sobering moment that always came when I was left alone with my reflection.
…
I unintentionally developed a “beating” routine.
It started after my second beating, where Dwayne attacked me from behind as I was heading toward his front door to leave
- him
- his house
- and this relationship
He grabbed my ponytail, yanked my head back with enough force to pull me off my feet, dragged me back into his room before throwing me across the floor.
Afterward, he fake-cried and pretended he would call the police if I wanted him to. I said nothing because I was too shocked to speak. He never called.
The first beating seemed so minor that I brushed it off as “not a real beating” until this happened. It was the 4th of July. Dwayne shoved me into a dresser and I got a concussion after my temple hit the edge of it.
I reasoned that it “wasn’t a real beating” because “it was just a push”. I later learned that many abusive relationships begin with a shove or a push — when the abuse becomes physical.
(Think Ron and Sam of Jersey Shore fame when Ronnie shoves Sammi away from him on the boardwalk in season 1. You can watch the clip here. The push happens at 1:19)
However, after the second beating, while he was fake crying, I just went numb and went to the bathroom. I locked the door behind me, and looked at myself. This would become a habit that progressed into a routine I developed after every beating.
…
Step 1: Go to the bathroom and lock the door
I needed to hurt privately and I needed to deal with the denial and physical reality checks by myself.
Step 2: Face Myself
I would stare at a battered reflection, trying to digest that it was not the reflection that was beat up — it was me.
Step 3: Inspect my wounds to see how much damage he did
As the beatings worsened, this step fused with step 2 because there was no way to hide the black eyes, busted lips, and choke marks on my neck.
Step 4: Play the only two songs on my “beating” playlist
These were the two songs I turned to for comfort after every beating; I put them in a playlist.
The first was always:
1.Elle Varner’s — Little Do You Know
Which perfectly summed up how isolating the experience was.
Directly after was:
2. Elle Varner’s — See Me Tonight
Elle sings about not wanting anyone to see her in her current state physically. I knew the feeling. I let this one play when I got to the next step once I was safely away from the mirror.
Step 5: Get in the shower (wash the blood off and clean my wounds)
I would try to wash the beating off of me and use the music to comfort me because I needed the music to help me cope and get the tears out. Watching the blood hit the shower floor while my playlist filled the room would be the reason I could finally cry.
Step 6: Take Bendaryl to put myself to sleep
I went back to the bedroom as Dwayne watched some YouTube video or anime (if he wasn’t already asleep) and took some Benadryl to make myself go to sleep.
(I remember taking eight after the final beating and still being unable to sleep more than 30 or 40 minutes. I didn’t even realize I could’ve killed myself.)
I took these pills to try to sleep through the anxiety and the physical pain. Going home never felt like an option for three reasons:
- Dwayne was a two-hour commute from home. It was too far and too dangerous to travel at 2 a.m. when he’d beat me up (Luckily, his father would get home from work around 4, so I was safe to sleep because Dwayne would never hurt me while he was there; Dwayne feared his father.)
- Sometimes, I was in too much physical pain to leave.
- I was protecting my mom. At the cost of my own life, I wanted to shield her from the pain of seeing me like that. It is the biggest reason I never went home.
Alternate Step 6: Go to class
Sometimes, I had school and had to hurry up and clean myself up before heading to class. Yes, my boyfriend had just fucked me up — but I still needed an A. One beating happened directly before my Final exam.
I raced to class in the city with blood on my shirt and took my test. My professor saw my busted lip; I told her about the beating right before Dwayne arrived. She later spoke with campus security. Nothing came of it; the semester was over.
But I got an A.
Step 7: Wake up like nothing happened — knowing it did
I would wake up feeling like I got hit by a train and unable to deny the reason why. This was my process of coping with the abuse. This was me “handling” it.
…
I used to think my response to my own experience of domestic violence was bizarre, now it all makes sense.
I struggled to believe I was a victim of domestic violence, not only because I could not believe it was me but because I kept surviving these beatings. When they worsened, I dissociated because I could not believe this was now my reality.
I knew this was real but I could not believe it was me — but it was. Those moments in the mirror sobered me up.
I needed to stare at my bruises after every single beating to slowly come to a point of acceptance that this was, in fact, my body that had been battered and bloodied.
He was killing me.
You read it in a book or see it on television and in the movies; You hear about it in a song or word of mouth-but it is different when it is you. It is always different when it is you.
Now, I’d become the characters in the books I read and the movies I watched; I had become one of those tellers of the stories I heard from so many women I knew. I was one of them now. My routine was how I was able to make myself believe it.
…
©Linda Sharp 2024. All Rights Reserved.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash