The abuse I endured as a child made me feel unworthy. The sexual assault from the men who wanted to hurt me made me feel unworthy. The domestic violence I lived with made me feel unworthy.
I was 17 when I met my ex-husband, he was in the military, and I was desperate for someone to love me. He knew how to charm everyone around me, all my friends and all my family. He knew just what to do to make them love him and feel comfortable. He made it appear that he was the doting boyfriend that cared about me deeply and wanted to take care of me. He would show everyone how gentle he was with me and how much he loved me.
When I was 18, he asked my dad for permission to marry me. I knew that it was going to happen and wanted to be involved with the conversation. He yelled at me in front of my parents telling me I needed to stay in the other room. That was the first time they realized what type of person he was. He proposed on my birthday, the whole day all he did was criticize me. I overlooked it though. I was in love. When I called my parents to tell them, they were not happy for me. They did not share in the joy that I felt. In planning the wedding, my mom threatened to cancel it multiple times. Looking back now, I think she was aware of who he was and did not want me to marry him. He was getting sent to Japan on orders and I wanted to be with him, so I married him quickly. Within a month of getting engaged I was married. We went on vacation to see his family a month later. That trip was the first time that he hit me. We were getting ready for a family party. We got into a fight over how I looked, and he told me how disgusting I was. He was screaming at me and when I yelled back, he slapped me across my face. The look in his eyes after he did it was something you never forget. He became apologetic and kept telling me how sorry he was. Told me I just made him so angry. The next day I tried to talk to his aunt about what happened, I needed someone to talk to me about it. She told me to “keep my mouth shut”, he was a marine and I needed to make sure I did not ruin his career. She told me it was my fault and that I should not have “mouthed off”. In that moment I realized how alone I was. I never told anyone again after that.
Once he left for Japan and I was back in the United States until I was able to go, I realized things were not as perfect as I once thought. He left his laptop with me and asked me to go on it to do something, once I opened it, I was flooded with images of women that he had been talking to. I was overwhelmed by the images and could not understand why they were there. I ignored it anyway though. I was too much in love. I did not want to lose him. While he was gone he began to criticize my body and tell me that I needed to lose weight. He bullied me into it and after hearing his aunt tell me that if I wanted to keep him, I needed to lose weight even though I was at a healthy weight, it made me feel like I had no choice. I started going to the gym and lost enough weight to appease him. I already had an eating disorder that I suffered with and that made it worse. It manifested into something worse. When I got to Japan, he finally thought I was beautiful. I was good enough in his eyes. He was proud to show me off finally. He was glorified when his friends told him that they wished they could be with me. It made me feel like I was nothing more than an object. My anorexia got worse, and it got to a point where I became so sick, I was almost hospitalized. He wouldn’t let me eat so much as a slice of bread. If I wanted to eat anything I had to do it when he was at work because if not, he would bully me about it or simply not allow me to eat it. When we would go to a restaurant, he would order whatever he wanted but expected me to have a salad. I was not allowed to have anything else. This continued until I passed out and was told that I needed to gain some weight back. He was angry. One morning I was awake before him, and his phone was in the living room. It started ringing and I thought it might be work calling for him, so I grabbed it to take to him in case it was. When I picked it up it was messages from multiple other women. He was sending them pictures and receiving pictures back from them. He tried to explain his way through it but when I told him I did not believe him, he told me if I was thinner, he would not have to talk to other woman. If I was a better wife, he wouldn’t have to talk to other women. He did not think I was good enough.
He hadn’t hit me again at this point. Only insults so far. And then it changed. I burnt dinner that night. He threw it against the wall and told me that I was stupid and couldn’t even do the bare minimum. He yelled at me to clean up the mess. When I was on my hands and knees cleaning it up, he kicked me. While I was on the ground clutching my stomach, trying to breathe, he came over and picked me up off the ground and threw me against the wall. He began to hit me in my face repeatedly. He didn’t stop no matter how much I cried for him to stop. I begged him to just stop. It only made him hit me harder. He threw me down on the floor and shoved my face into the broken glass and food. Continuing to yell at me to clean it up. He walked out the door afterwards. I stayed on the floor for a good amount of time, just crying. It only continued from there. The abuse got worse. He would slam me into the floor and run my face against the floor, it was a very thin carpet with concrete underneath. It felt more like I was being slammed into concrete than anything else. I had cuts and bruises all over my face, my arms, legs, and back. When his friends would come over, they would see my face and at first reacted to which I told them that I fell. But soon enough it became normal for them to see it. They never asked questions. There were times that he would throw me into our bedroom while they were over and beat me while they sat in the living room trying to ignore it. No one ever came to the rescue to help. They all ignored it and kept the policy of what happens in our home stays in our home, and they are not going to interfere. The abuse got worse. He began to strangle me. He would tell me that he was going to kill me and strangle me until I passed out. When I woke up again, he was always gone. He wouldn’t come back for hours later and would tell me how sorry he was and that it wouldn’t happen again. That was also when he would take me shopping and let me buy whatever I wanted. He threatened me that if I left, he would kill me, but then would tell me in the same breath that no one would want me. I was fat, I was ugly, I was disgusting, I was worthless, and the words went on and on.
One of the times he beat me, I had a breakdown and needed to be taken to the hospital. They diagnosed me with bipolar 1 and I started medication and therapy. During one of the sessions the therapist asked me if I was being abused. I told him no. I was afraid. I did not want to ruin his career and feared what would happen if I told him. I did not think that anyone would believe me. I kept it to myself and told him that nothing was happening. I think that everyone knew differently. I think everyone around me knew that I was being abused. He isolated me from friends and family. Wouldn’t allow me to work and manage the money to where I was not allowed to have any. I was completely cut off from everyone around me. I couldn’t have social media and I couldn’t talk on the phone without him monitoring who I was talking to.
One morning, he strangled me. His purpose was to try to kill me. I was afraid of what he was going to do, and I wanted it to stop, I closed my eyes and pretended that I had passed out. Once he left for work, I immediately called a close friend and begged them for help. They took me to the military police station and tried to help me to tell them what was happening. They told me that they could not help me. I left feeling like no one could stop this from happening. My friend helped me to get divorce paperwork and to begin the process of filing for divorce. He also helped me to get a ticket off the island and help me get back to the United States. That same day I left with nothing more than a suitcase and the clothes on my back. I left everything else behind. I came back to the states, and I had heard from him, but I chose to ignore him and knew that I was finally safe. I felt like I could breathe again. I had to begin the process of finding a job finally and finding my own place to live without relying on him which he made me rely on him so heavily. The more I ignored him, the less he would contact him. Once he came back to the states the divorce process really started. He was finally able to go to court with me and I was able to try to put this behind me. When we went to court, he acted like his charming self and showed me the nice side of him again. Made me feel like he had changed. We did not speak about what happened and I did not report it. To this day I have not told anyone about what happened to me besides my current husband. One day after court he told me that I should come to his house because he had some of my belongings that he thought I would want to have. I reluctantly went there and was waiting for him to bring me my stuff that he claimed belonged to me. Instead, he beat me worse than he ever had. He said I made a mockery of him and that I deserved everything that he was doing to me. Every punch, every kick, every time he had his hands around my throat. He kept telling me that he was going to kill me, and no one would even care that I was gone. That he would get away with it and no one could help me. I ran out and escaped. I never looked back again.
It has been 6 years since the last time that he beat me. I escaped. I lived through the most horrific events of my life. I was a survivor. Let me scream that louder for the people in the back. I’M A SURVIVOR. It took many years of therapy to learn how to cope with other events in my life that triggered me, but it took my own work to work through what happened to me. I made it my mission to help other survivors. I decided to go to school and got my bachelors in human services and criminal justice. I am now working on my masters in social work. My specialty is trauma and crisis intervention. I wanted to help other victims become survivors. I started working as an advocate for my local domestic violence women’s shelter and was able to help numerous women and children through their own situations. I will never stop fighting for other survivors and fight for a change. I want everyone to leave their domestic violence situation and become a survivor and know that they are worthy. We are not what happened to us, were the fire that burns bright amidst this storm. We do make it through. We survive. We thrive. And we conquer everything they said that we couldn’t have.
