For Anna

Awhile ago my little cousin bravely spoke out about a former relationship that turned abusive and she asked if others would follow her and do the same.  She was compiling stories for a book of testaments to loss and pain and strength.  I remember reading her inspirational Facebook post inciting her friends to reflect and send her their stories of emotional and physical abuse for this collection.  I read her post in my sweatpants from my boyfriend-at-the-time’s couch while he was in the other room melting Velveeta and Rotel for queso.  Bill Maher was on tv, Leo was snoring at my side and I was burning my favorite candle – the one Teresa gave me.  My breath caught in my chest as I read and reread her post.  She possessed such strength in conviction that sharing our stories was in equal parts cathartic and relatable; that it was something to ease our collective suffering.  It wasn’t just that I was proud and maybe somewhat surprised to hear that my beautiful little cousin had survived through an abusive relationship and was now spurring her own movement.  It was something else.  Shame and envy fleeted through me before I could even recognize them – before I could firmly shut each one out.  In that tiny moment before my brain could catch up to my gut – I realized I wasn’t living my truth.

Instagram Nation has since begun shunning the notion that all life on social media should promote Pinterest-ism perfection and cronuts and fleeky eyebrows.  Instead, we’ve exchanged these high-isms for something a little more raw.  Showing the broken parts and the ugly times when your mascara is coating your lady mustache more than it is your 4 remaining lash extensions is now en vogue.  And to be honest, it irks me.  The polished posts often tell a journey of heartache through a handful of carefully crafted, vague sentences – complete with emojis and hashtags.  They weave a neatly packaged tale that always ends on a positive outlook or with an anonymous quote and an accompanying photo of the author running through seagulls on a beach from 2 summers ago.  It feels wrong.  It feels guarded and contrived and trite and I’ve absolutely avoided sharing my own versions.  Which is why I found such beauty in my cousin’s efforts to ask for the pain outright.  To call on us to speak on our shame and own our truths sans filter.

I was in a relationship with a man I was crazy about.  We crafted our own world of mashed potatoes and Motown music and Sunday night HBO.  We cared and listened and tended and loved each other fiercely.  It was all the things.  You already know.  I feel no need to go into the histrionics of my obsession and of the safety I began to attribute to our emotional home.

It was quite early on in our story when we experienced a traumatic life event together.  One that left me broken and grieving in stormy ways I was vastly ill-prepared for.  He was able to skirt the pain of the situation – and although he gave his best effort to appease my raging confusion and hurt, he too was ill-prepared for the aftermath.  And so it began, small at first, with little verbal digs at my inability to cope or to pull myself out of my depression or put on a face and go out with his friends at-will.  New Years Eve was spent crying and screaming.  It was the beginning of the end and through my grief I was unsure of my stake in the blame – and so I took the burden and became apologetic for his shortcomings.   I was called a baby daily and mocked for showing any emotion ever.  I soon spent a large portion of our lives together apologizing to him and shrinking myself and tip-toeing around to avoid confrontation – although it always managed to find us.

One February evening we went out with friends of mine and midway through the night he abruptly left the bar because I had somehow upset him.  When I went to find him on the sidewalk to appease the situation, he got very close to my face.  I watched as his face contorted and his jaw locked – a look repeated so many times in the course of our relationship that I began to sense it even before it showed itself – like some instinctual survival mechanism.  It was a look that I both feared and felt so very personally responsible for.  A look that rattled my bones and broke my heart.  That particular night he told me that I was pathetic and pissing him off and that he needed some space.  When I didn’t leave, he began yelling and pushing me.  Pedestrians passing by on Valencia Street slowed down to watch – and I made eye contact with a man who mouthed “are you okay”.

When he finally fled the scene my friends and strangers gathered me up as I sobbed. A woman I’d never met hugged me, looked me knowingly and gravely in the eyes, and told me to run from this relationship.

But I didn’t take her advice for quite some time.  Instead I clung on.  I clung on even when I was hiding in his kitchen, laying in pain on the floor after a physical altercation while he calmly lit a cigarette in the other room.  I stayed through all the “I’m sorry but you make me do this” speeches.  The many many many of those.  I clung like he was my last chance at love – the deluded version of love I created in him.  The power he never had, I gifted to him openly.  I believed in my worthless status and I needed his disgust and his bitterness to survive as this new persona he built for me.  I caught myself in the reflection of a kitchen appliance – shaking, hyperventilating, collapsed – and I thought, “how the hell did you get here”.  You – the woman who takes risks and succeeds and always demands more.  Who has gotten everything you’ve ever wanted all on your own.  How are you the same woman.  The next day I was on the bus home and a woman across from me signaled for me to remove my earbuds.  When I did, she asked if I needed help.  Confused, I followed her gaze to my arms.  There, on each arm, had formed two distinct handprints in bruises.  His fingers were each individually and clearly branded into my flesh.  When I returned home I photographed them.  I had the opportunity to do so three more times before our relationship finally ended.

It’s funny how untrustworthy and slippery memory can be, though.  For so long I still revered him in some ways as Big Love.  As my person.  And then, months later I saw him while I was on a run in the Marina – he too was running and I recognized him from some distance.  This was the first time I spontaneously witnessed him in the wild after our sordid and violent final goodbye. My whole body tensed as I propelled myself forward as fast as I could, praying he wouldn’t see me.  I shuddered and flinched and wanted to retch up the very idea of him.  His face no longer made me feel at home.  The thought of his touch made me queasy.

It’s been a year.  It’s been a year and I’ve just now started to come back to life.  To see and hear and notice myself again.  To live vibrantly like I once did.  I don’t believe myself to be a victim.  Because I very much volunteered to stay.  It was a necessary lesson for me.  A lesson that does not make him a monster.  He’s a man I loved fervently for a host of reasons that still live inside my being…reasons that were sometimes so quiet and tiny while other times all-consuming and roaring.  Reasons that had nothing to do with us at our worst – and somehow, inexplicably, for everything that had to do with us at our worst.

I don’t have a clever way to wrap this up.  I don’t have an emoji or an after school special-quality quip tied in a bow.  This is just a story.  And the person who you know me as today is a product of this particular one, but also of many many many other stories as well.  Stories both heartwrenching and beautiful.  This is a piece I happen to be working through still – but only a piece.

Thank you to my amazing cousin, Anna, for empowering women to share, and in doing so, obliterating shame.