For More Than A Year, I Didn’t See Myself As A Domestic Abuse Survivor

It was just a bad relationship. A toxic, overly dramatic one. That’s the story I told myself. Except I haven’t been able to sleep with a guy for two years. And for the first seven months after we broke up, after I was finally allowed to leave, I couldn’t write anything about sex. And I love sex. I write about sex for a living.

The social workers came.

They asked about how I was.

And I answered.

But I couldn’t answer in a way that mattered.

Because when it was fresh, it was just a fog.

A big “what may have happened to me.”

And I couldn’t pin him down.

Even though I told the DV advocates taht I wanted to do something to make sure he wouldn’t do the same to other women.

Even though I knew it was what happened.

Because those nights, when I had the question whether he was abusing me, I reached out to DV hotline, and they answered me directly that yes, it was abuse.

And my words were supposed to be clear.

Except it didn’t.

The social worker came back with “inconclusive” for the investigation.

And there goes my story.

But I know something happened to me.

Maybe it was when I told him to stop during sex, and he didn’t. And I lied there like a corpse, just to be penetrated and used over and over again.

Maybe it was when I had already broken up with him three months before I was even allowed to leave.

When he showed up at where I lived again and again, knocking, knowing that I had to come out because I had to go pick up my kid.

When he promised me he’d come at a certain time then told me he couldn’t because it was either his mom or his friends who needed them. Every fucking time. And I felt like shit. The girlfriend who overreacted.

Or when he told me that I was easy because he had sex with me so easily.

Or maybe it was when he asked me if he could go to a festival, and I said yes, then he rechecked for hours, only to show me a picture of girls in bikini, so that I could say no, and there it was, me, being so overly dramatic.

Or me, saying, it was like a rock concert, and he saying, if you’re gonna be like that, I don’t trust you.

Or when he went through my phone just because he was supsicious of me talking to some other guys or fucking them behind his back, but in reality, he had been with me every single night.

Or when he treated me like shit because he believed I had been fucking other guys.

And when I tried to say the truth, it didn’t seem to matter.

I was erased from the story.

It was his addiction, his trauma, his hallucination, his withdrawal, and I was just… an easy girl.

And how did I get so bad?

I never wanted him to meet my kid, but he moved in with me. I wanted to break up after three months, but I was trapped in that relationship for six.

And I couldn’t even function right. I couldn’t even think straght. Because the next time I saw someone having a normal big fight, all i could feel is I’m back there again, trapped and alone, against my will.

And I can’t stop it from happening to me.

No the fight didn’t scare me.

The silence does.

Because I know what it means—it’s the fucking silence before storms. Every time I try to relax, something has to go wrong.

And I can’t even trust peace.

I can’t trust freedom.

Because it always ends in the same way.

So tell me again I’m not a DV victim.

He didn’t fuck me up.

What happened to me wasn’t a crime.