Interview with NM
Rising Star
NM
Released from jail
December 2005
Marital status
Single
Sexually abused
From 6- to 12-years old
Abused by
Family member and mom's boyfriend
Physically abused
From 18- to 28-years-old
Abused by
Boyfriends
Domestic violence survivor
Since 2003
Assisting program
House of Ruth
Goal
To complete my addictions counselor certification and to continue to grow on a personal level.
Quote
"We really need to take time to learn to love ourselves and take care of ourselves."
One Woman's Story of Overcoming: Interview with a victim
Interview with EL
By: Tracye Payne Wilson
If you met her, you would never suspect that EL was once a victim of domestic abuse. She is a self-assured woman. She has done the hard work needed to get better and today is experiencing all the joys of having done that work. She maintains a fierce protectiveness of her own personal boundaries, spiritual well-being and emotional fitness. EL spoke with Tracye Payne Wilson on July 30, 2007.
TPW: How old were you when you married?
EL: I was 25-years-old.
TPW: How did you meet your husband?
EL: I met him when I was 16-years-old. He was a friend of a friend. When I first met him I didn’t like him at all.
TPW: So what happened to change that?
EL: He just kept hanging around and eventually he grew on me.
TPW: How long did you date before getting married?
EL: We dated for nine years.
TPW: If you dated him for nine years, the relationship must have been good.
EL: No.
TPW: How was it not good?
EL: It started out good. He was really good to me. He would buy me things, take me out, do all these nice things.
TPW: What happened?
EL: Well, he started cheating on me and I knew it, but I was so in love with him and I loved the idea of being in love so I overlooked it.
TPW: How far into the relationship were you when he started cheating?
EL: Probably about two years into it.
TPW: Did you confront him?
EL: Yes, and of course he denied it, but I wanted to be with him so badly that I acted as if I believed him even though I knew he was lying.
TPW: I know you were young, but did this in any way change the way you felt about him?
EL: I was hurt, but I was just so in love with him. I was just stuck.
TPW: Considering your age at the time, this must have been one of your first serious relationships.
EL: Yes. I had dated other guys before and had actually been . . . he was not the first person to abuse me but he was the first person to abuse me emotionally and mentally. I had been in a physically abusive relationship before.
TPW: At what age were you in the first abusive relationship?
EL: I guess I was around 15-years-old.
TPW: That’s awfully young. Did you share that with anyone at the time?
EL: No, because I thought that this guy was so in love with me and was so jealous that he had to slap me around to show that he loved me and he didn’t want me to go anywhere or have any friends because he was just so in love with me. I was totally caught up in believing that it was love.
TPW: I especially think that many young victims think the way you did – that they may, in the beginning even be flattered by what they see as the reason for the abuse. Some women don’t seem to realize that hitting is not an expression of love.
EL: Part of me was ashamed that it was happening and part of me was, like I said, I felt that this guy really loved me. I would sit by the phone waiting for him to call me. I couldn’t even leave the house for fear I would miss his call or visit. But to go back a bit – before I was in a physically abusive relationship, I was sexually abused as a child. I think that contributed to my part in allowing the behavior to continue.
TPW: How so?
EL: Not really understanding what love was, what inappropriate touching was, what verbal or emotional abuse was. I didn’t know what any of that meant as a result of being sexually abused as a child and not ever having told anyone that I was being abused by a close family friend whom my parents trusted. While this was going on I believed that if I told my dad, my dad would kill the guy and then have to go to jail so, my thought was that I had to protect my father. Because of this I was continually being abused and started to act out.
TPW: I can see how this could happen, because in earlier years there was no information readily available for parents that could help them understand what certain inappropriate behaviors exhibited by their children might mean. Today, there is information everywhere – television, radio, signs posted on public transportation.
EL: I would steal food and hide it in my room. I didn’t know it then but I know now, that doing that provided a safety net for me in that I could remain in the safety of my room, not having to venture out for food and run the risk of seeing my abuser. But, when my dad found out what I was doing he would spank me. Of course, at that age I didn’t understand the reasons behind this behavior so I just took the spankings and never said anything.
TPW: My guess is that you wouldn’t have said anything even if you did understand your behavior because, as you said earlier, you needed to protect your dad. The insight that you possess now sounds like you may have sought some therapy in your adult life to help you confront and deal with your issues of abuse.
EL: Yes I did. Another thing that I understand today is that my eventually becoming involved in drug abuse was my way of protecting myself and suppressing the feelings and memories that I had about being molested and physically abused. The memories and emotions were so powerful that it didn’t matter how much I used (drugs) or drank. I could no longer suppress those horrible feelings.
TPW: Was your boyfriend/husband using drugs as well?
EL: He was. I was using before him. The first drug I used was alcohol. I had my first beer with a family member at 15-years-old. When I drank that first beer, I remember thinking, “Damn, this is what I’ve been looking for.” It took away the pain, it made me feel so good.
TPW: How old were you when you got married?
EL: I got married when I was 25-yearsold and only stayed married for 18 months.
TPW: So, you dated him for nine years, married him as a grown woman, knew him pretty well because you had dated him so long, and then split with him in 18 months? That’s pretty amazing. It’s rare that a couple as young as you two would stay together that long under the best of circumstances. How did you come to get married?
EL: One of the things that happened was that my ex-husband went to prison for selling drugs. While he was gone I dated several guys who were drug dealers. My ex-husband was incarcerated for about 16 months. In the beginning I would visit him but then I started separating myself from him and dating these other guys. Toward the end of his sentence he started writing me asking me what was going on and why I hadn’t been visiting him. When he was out-of-sight, he was out-of-mind but when he started writing me again, those feelings started to kick up again. The day he came home I went with his mom to the bus station to pick him up and he was really surprised to see me. We talked and tried to rebuild our relationship. Of course, I was thinking that he had changed. Before he went off to prison we were living together and women would call my house for him. All this stuff was going on, and I knew it was going on (his cheating). He had even given me gonorrhea but he had me so twisted that he could tell me the sun was shining when I knew it was raining and I would believe him. It was like there was this connection that I just could not let go of. So, when he came home we hooked up again, and he asked me to marry him. I said, “Yes.” I knew he was no good for me. Everyone knew he was no good for me but I was so in love with the idea of getting married that I said, “Yes” anyway. We got married and it was downhill from there.
TPW: When you got married had he stopped being abusive?
EL: He was still abusing me verbally and emotionally, quite a bit. He would put me down, verbally. He acted like he was going to hit me once and whatever I said, I can’t remember now, but it caused him to not do it. He never tried to hit me again but he abused me in so many other ways – emotionally, mentally. He would talk down to me, the cheating pretty much right in my face, he wouldn’t allow me to drive. He was so controlling. When I got to work each day I had to call him. On my way home I had to call him. What I later found out was that he was cheating on me with someone right in my own home. So he had to keep tabs on my whereabouts.
TPW: Of course, the last thing he would have wanted was for you to come home and catch him.
EL: All this was going on toward the end of the relationship. My dad would call me every day and ask me, “Where’s your husband?” I would never know where he was, so my dad would comment that he didn’t understand why we even got married because my husband never spent any time with me. I pretended I didn’t know he was cheating, but I knew. It’s that sixth sense we have (sighing).
TPW: Women almost always know. So, he never physically abused you?
EL: No.
TPW: It’s unfortunate that so many women don’t equate the verbal beatdown with being abused.
EL: They don’t and I will tell you this – if I had a choice I would have preferred that he physically hit me rather than to mentally and emotionally abuse me.
TPW: Why?
EL: Because my self-esteem became so low. It was so hard for me to get back everything I allowed him to take from me. I was so down on myself. I didn’t think I was pretty. I didn’t think I was worthy of anything better. I didn’t go anywhere. I would just stay home all the time. I would only be around my family and when I was around them I would pretend to be happy. I’m telling you, I felt so low, so depressed and so alone.
TPW: You never shared this with anyone, not even your best girlfriend?
EL: I didn’t share it with anyone until I was 100% sure that he was cheating on me. I kind of lost it when I could no longer deny that he was cheating on me with another woman in my bed. I cut up all his clothes. I tore up the apartment. I was in an awful state. I called my best friend and told her what had been going on. She came to get me. This is how sick I was – I went with her to her house and I stayed there for two days. In the meantime my husband called my dad and asked where I was. He pretended to be very concerned about me because he said I had torn the apartment up. He already knew where I was but he never called there or came to get me. My thinking was so messed up that my thoughts were, “How dare he not come and get me? What is his problem?” So, I went back home and endured the abuse for a while longer.
TPW: How were you finally able to make a decision to leave?
EL: When I found out from my sister-in-law (who only told me because she was mad with my husband) that the woman he was cheating with was pregnant and she lived next door to his mother. I was so angry and hurt with my mother-in-law that I confronted her and she denied knowing anything about it. When I confronted my husband he looked me in the eye and accused me of being paranoid. It came to a point where we both were actively using. I had a government job and he had a pretty decent job. I was giving him my half of the rent money but he was never paying the rent. I was lying in bed one day and he must have thought I was asleep. I heard him on the phone with the landlord saying that the reason the rent wasn’t paid was because I was using drugs and spending all the money. When I confronted him, once again he denied that I had heard him say that. I was starting to wonder. Was I crazy or hallucinating or something? Should I continue to believe this man? I decided that I just could not continue to live with this man anymore. I was broken, I was beaten but I knew I could not live there anymore. I called my dad and he told me to come home.
TPW: It must have been a hard choice for you to make.
EL: It was, and even after leaving him I continued to see him for at least another year.
TPW: That doesn’t surprise me because I’ve heard other women tell a similar story of not being able to stay away. Please tell me your reasons for not being able to make a clean break?
EL: I was still in love with him. I was still in love with him and I could not let go of the idea of this man being in my life. He had been in my life the better part of my teenage years and most of my 20’s. He was under my skin, in my blood, I could smell him. When he would call I would get so giddy and excited. But at the same time I didn’t like him. I just couldn’t let go. It was scary.
TPW: After you left him and went to your dad’s house were you still sleeping with him? During this time was he trying to convince you to get back together with him or was he satisfied with the arrangement as it was?
EL: Oh, he was very satisfied with the arrangement as it was because by then the other woman had given birth to his baby and he was living with his mom so he had nowhere for me to come to. He could come to my dad’s and stay with me for several days and then he’d go back to the other woman. It was so crazy because I knew about the woman and the baby but I just couldn’t let go. The worse feeling in the world is to hate someone but be in love with them at the same time.
TPW: I’m sure on some level you must have felt badly about yourself being in such deep denial – knowing the truth but continuing to suppress it because it was so unbearable to you that you couldn’t deal with it. What finally got you to the point where you could totally sever your ties to this man?
EL: He stole something from my father and when he did that it was just the last straw. He could violate me, he could disrespect me, but my father – no. At that moment, when I realized that he had stolen from my father, I knew I had to get back the item. When I did see him and was able to get it back I was so angry I told him not to ever come back to my dad’s house. He continued to call but I refused to see him. I was still using at the time. I started using when I was 15-years-old, I didn’t stop until I was 30-years-old. I stopped seeing him but I didn’t divorce him right away because I still wasn’t finished with him. I got clean (quit using drugs) and a year later he went to treatment and got clean. I had an apartment and job, a new life and up he pops.
TPW: And you thought you’d give it one more try, right?
EL: You know it. I started allowing him to come over. I started sleeping with him again. I remember the first time I slept with him and he asked me, “Who else have you been sleeping with? I can tell you’ve been with somebody.” My timid response was, “Nobody. Nobody. I love you.” What insanity! Thank God it was short-lived. After about six months he started lying to me. My family also found out about me seeing him and they were questioning me as to why I would make the same mistake. They were worried about me. One day I was standing on my sister’s porch and I started crying. She came out and said to me, “I know why you’re crying and he is not worth it. Don’t lose everything you’ve accomplished. He just isn’t worth it.” At that moment it was as if a light bulb had come on. I realized that she was right. When I got home that evening he called me and I was able to tell him not to ever call me again unless he was calling to ask for a divorce.
TPW: So, what happened?
EL: About a year after that he called to say he had the divorce papers drawn up. He came to my apartment with his lawyer and I had a friend come over to give me some moral support. We went to have the papers notarized and when we were done it was the best feeling in the world. I looked at him and there was no love, it wasn’t about I hate you. He was just someone I used to know. At that point I really realized it was over and I was able to begin to take care of me. This meant going to therapy to talk about all the things he had done to me . . . all the things that I allowed him to do to me.
TPW: I know that you’ve been celibate. For how long?
EL: A l-o-n-g time, years. After divorcing my husband there was someone I was sleeping with and he was someone from my past who really taught me how a man should treat me. He is a really good guy but because of circumstances we couldn’t stay together. But, I’ve been celibate for along time – for so long that I don’t even want to tell you.
TPW: Well, I’m going to ask you to tell anyway. This is an anonymous interview and I think you sharing more about your celibacy will be very encouraging to our readers. It has been my experience working with the population of women that I work with, that while they are in prison so many of them say things like, “I can’t wait to get out of here to have sex.” I will tell them that there are other, bigger issues that they might want to address and maybe you’ll want to take the time to learn to know yourself and learn to love yourself because often the women don’t know themselves. You touched on it earlier when you said that you were just so infatuated with your boyfriend. I’ve asked women in the support group that I facilitate who were in bad relationships, “What is it about him that you are so attracted to?” Their response will be something as frivolous as, “I just like the way he dresses.” So will you please share with us how long you’ve been celibate.
EL: Eight years.
TPW: Wow! That is very impressive. What caused you decide to become celibate?
EL: I think the first thing was that I did begin to love myself and I had to take some time out to learn who I was. I did this by going to therapy. The first five years that I was clean, that is all I was - was clean. I had not dealt with the things that had brought me to addiction. When I had almost five years, all the emotions of my entire 30 years of life began to spill over. Just not using was no longer enough. I had to then begin the recovery process. I woke up one day and I started crying and I just could not stop crying. I wasn’t numb anymore so I had to deal with being abused as a child. I had to deal with the abuse from my past relationships as well as the abuse that I had inflicted upon myself.
TPW: So, it was the pain that motivated you to seek help?
EL: Yes. I went to therapy and I stayed in therapy for five years. It didn’t take me five years to deal with that stuff, but it took me a long time to heal from all of it. And, as I said, during this time I was having sex with this great guy but also in doing that I learned to love myself.
TPW: That self-love you were developing is evidenced by the fact that you were able to let go of that guy.
EL: I was able to make the decision to let him go because I knew he could not make a commitment to me. I would say that in the last eight years I’ve been alone because I haven’t met anyone who is worthy of me. I’ve met guys but it was all about sex for them. I haven’t found anyone to court me, to date me, to get to know who I am. Yes, it gets a little lonely sometimes but I’d rather be by myself and deal with a little loneliness than to settle for being with someone just because I want to have sex. Because sex. . . sex is not that big of a deal. Especially if it’s sex without love – then it’s just sex. I want to be in a healthy relationship . . . have someone to make love to me . . . get to know them mentally on an intimate level before any of that happens. I meet guys all the time but most of them are married or in a committed relationship. There is no way, after having been through all that I have been through, that I would ever settle. I will die a spinster before I settle for less than I feel I deserve.
TPW: Hearing you talk about this great guy you knew and let go — it all sounds so bittersweet. I admire you for being able to let that go. It sounds like it was a healthy relationship and he was a good guy. You must have felt like, “If this was another time and place, you would be the one.” But to have enough self-love and courage – because I do believe it takes courage to let go when it feels so good.
EL: Ooooh, it does take a lot of courage.
TPW: I met a young woman, 21-years-old, who has a 14-month-old daughter by a guy that is 10- or 12-years-older than her. One day, the guy pulled a gun and shot at her. He’s very controlling and she’s so young. I’m sure it doesn’t take much to control her because she has such stars in her eyes when it comes to him. She stayed away from him for about two weeks but refused to take out a temporary restraining order (TRO) against him. She went back to him. I asked her to please be careful. She got very angry with me for simply asking her to take care of herself. She was offended that I would imply that he, who had already shot at her, might harm her. It saddens me that any woman would be so fearful of being alone, that she would continue to subject herself to that kind of degradation and abuse. I just wish that all women had the courage that you have shown, to be able to say, “You know what, I’m worth more than this and dude, if you can’t treat me better then you need to move on.”
EL: It’s about wanting to be loved so badly by someone that we are willing to accept anything. Now, that’s not the case for every woman . . . it’s a process, because none of us walk into abuse with our eyes wide open. It’s definitely a slow process. It kind of reels you in . . . .You aren’t abused in the beginning and by the time you realize you’re being abused you’re so far in that as long as it took for you to get in – it will take you even longer to get out.
TPW: Yes, it always starts out very subtly and the apologies seem so sincere in the beginning.
EL: My abuse began so young and it took so long for me to learn how to love me. But what helps me is that I have some really good girlfriends in my life. I have a family that supports me. Those days when I’m feeling like, “Oh my goodness, I just want a man,” I pick up the phone and I call someone and tell them what’s going on. It’s just not that serious. It will pass. Do I believe that there’s someone out there for me? Yes, I believe there is. It just hasn’t happened yet and I’m not going to make it happen. I don’t need to go to the club to find a man. The bottom line today is that I love me to death! I really, really do. I try to do as much as I can to take care of me mentally and emotionally. If something happens today and I need to go back to therapy, I will run to therapy because that’s what saved me before and it will save me again. There’s an NA [Narcotics Anonymous] cliché that says, “You’re as sick as your secrets.” I know that to be true. If you don’t tell, it gets worse. And I know, a person can have an emotional breakdown and people will be wondering, “What the hell is wrong with her?”
TPW: What would you say to offer hope to those women who are “suffering in silence” or who soon will be because they are ignoring all the signs?
EL: I would say that there is hope out there. It’s not going to be easy. It’s a process. It’s hard work to recover from being abused. It’s hard work when you are afraid to open up and allow someone in to help you. It’s hard. But, there is help out there and whatever you are in you can get out. If you just tell one person . . . and even if you don’t get out of it right away . . . just to have someone to talk to. . . . to tell them how you are feeling . . . what you need help with today. Because a lot of times, especially with women who are living with their abusers, it is hard for them to get the help they need because their abusers are so controlling. They keep up with everything the woman does, where she goes, when she goes, who she goes with. It’s really, really hard but if you just let one person in – one person you can trust. When you’re ready, there is help, you can do it!