By Survivor Shawn
I am a victim of Domestic Violence. Beginning in the month of December of 2020, I took it upon myself to seek a relationship on a dating site for Facebook. It was a new feature offered by Facebook, so I gave it a try since it was free. Not knowing what I was in for, I sought out a woman by the name of Rebecca. She was just over 40 years old and she was single with one teenage daughter. She lived nearly an hour from me, but distance wasn’t relevant. We immediately spoke on the phone and met for the first time shortly after. She was radiant, beautiful, and her hair was stunning in my eyes. The short meeting lasted mere minutes, but the second date placed us into my bedroom and the relationship began quickly. The first several months were great as I was living in a 2 BR condo with my 2 Weimaraner girls, aged 1 and 2 respectively. We were a close-knit family and I never had the opportunity to garner children. My pups were my kids these days and I we welcomed Rebecca rather easily. It all began going south when in the first several months, Rebecca demanded I move in with her or she would leave the relationship. I had fallen hard for this woman, so I chose to abide by her demand and move in and cut my lease. It would be one of the largest mistakes I would make in my entire lifetime.
Once I moved in to her place in July of 2021, my life was over. Rebecca began strangling my freedom by hacking into my emails, my phone, my life. Cryptic as this sounds, I saw elements of her strange and erratic behavior daily. Rebecca was one of the worst cases of anxiety I had seen in my entire life. One day, she would be smiling and having a alot of fun, and at the snap of a finger, she was raging mad and accusing me of cheating on her. Relative to what you may believe, I was faithful to this woman, yet her accusations were psychotic. Eventually, her anger and a bottle of vodka would create the worst scenario in my entire life. She began drinking heavily one evening and without recourse, Rebecca began beating me viciously upon my head and body. I laughed it off because this 5-foot nothing woman was attempting to dent my stature as I stood there. She would leave marks on my face for the world to see, but my laughs created a worse mistake.
“Rebecca, you hit me one more time, and I will have the cops here picking you up and taking you to jail”. That sentence caused her to freeze because she was arrested several years prior for beating her last boyfriend. It most likely saved her from a visit to jail, but it was far from over. Later that evening, I lay on the couch with my puppies as I began to suffocate with a heavy presence upon my chest. My eyes awoke from the darkness and a 3d image of a metal barrel stared back into my left eye. Rebecca was sitting on my chest in her underwear and pointed a revolver at my head. Attempting to pull the hammer backwards, the noise woke Samantha (my Weimaraner), and she began to viciously go after Rebecca. Grabbing the gun with her teeth, she managed to dislodge Rebecca’s grip, while Madison comforted my face by laying her head upon my neck. Both my girls were protecting me, and Rebecca suddenly awoke from her rage. Dazed, confused, and delirious, Rebecca picked up the gun off the floor and began walking towards the hallway and upstairs to her room.
I was sure I was about to be executed, but my dogs saved me. Believe it or not, the next morning’s apology arrived hard and fast. Rebecca was sorry and begged me not to leave the relationship. I was at my wits end and I decided to get an apartment and move. Despite my anger, I loved her and she promised she had no intention of murdering me that night.
That night would become a year old before I decided to move away for good, thanks to an episode of 48 hours. There was a story resembling everything I went through before and the perpetrator looked exactly like Rebecca. I couldn’t believe it and after the story aired, I had no intentions of staying in the abusive relationship. Years of enduring fights, false accusations, control, fear, caused me to finally wake up and move on from the catastrophe I planted myself in. I would move out quickly and never look back on this horrific nightmare. Within weeks of my departure, Rebecca grappled another victim and is now doing the same to him.
