Two years ago today, on my 25th birthday, I was in a very different place in my life.  Chris and I lived in a basement apartment and he worked nights, so I was also on a nighttime schedule; I slept from 10am til 4pm or so.  I was not working, having been fired from my bartending job in July, but I kept in frequent contact with a coworker from there — we’ll call her Alyssa. Her bleached blonde hair tumbled down to the middle of her back, naturally wavy although she kept it straightened.  She had huge blue eyes, a slender figure, and a smoky voice; people either thought she was incredibly beautiful or not attractive at all.  I fell into the former category.

Those who fell into the latter saw the things I did not: her sunken eyes, her too-thin face and frame punctuated by the bony jut of her hips and shoulders, and the straw-like texture of her hair.

Two years ago on my birthday, something happened that made me see those things.

I sat at home as Chris worked, $80 in my pocket, and I itched to go out and celebrate.  Alyssa and I had gone out clubbing before and had a blast — she was, unexpectedly, a quiet partier, more content to sit and observe, while I went out on the dance floor to get down & dirty.  I had nothing else planned, and so I called to see if she wanted to go out.

When she answered the phone, I knew something was wrong.  She spat out something about fighting with her husband, how he had hidden her new jacket so she had broken some of his new KISS memorabilia — honestly, the two of them squabbling like children was nothing new, and the two of them mistreating one another’s material possessions was pretty common as well.  He treated me nicely enough — he was a very charismatic guy — and I figured that their marital difficulties were theirs to deal with, not mine to judge.

I recognized the signs of potential abuse, but when I asked her about it, she insisted that he’d never hurt her, they had a baby together, of course he would not do that, he never laid a hand on her because she’d kick his ass if he did, etc etc.  So I stopped asking.

That night, she came to pick me up.  She was upset, her head hurt, she was tired — she had a thousand reasons to want to go back home.  I begged her just to go out to dinner with me and see if that helped.  We had nachos and a drink apiece and she decided she just wanted to stop by the house to kiss her son goodnight. Fair enough, I figured.

When we got there, the fighting began in earnest.  He told her she was dressed like a slut, that she didn’t need to look good if all she was just hanging out with me.  She said she wanted her new jacket back, because it was cold outside.  So on and so forth, as I sat in the living room with their son who stared at the television.  Eventually she came storming down the stairs to sit beside me.  “I’m going home,” I told her.

She begged me to stay, begged me to take her out.  She said she had a friend on the way who would be our designated driver so we could get plastered and forget all about men.  And because it was my birthday, because I needed her companionship, because I couldn’t abandon her, I said alright, I’d stick around.

Her husband came downstairs, all smiles for me.  I shuddered.  Alyssa said we should go sit out in her van and wait for her friend to arrive, and as we walked out, her husband launched into a harangue against her about how she looked, how she talked, how she acted.  He said he’d call her mother and tell her how many drugs Alyssa was taking.  She had tears on her face as we walked outside, her still not wearing a coat.  When I asked why she didn’t have anything with long sleeves on, she said he had hidden everything.  When I asked why she put up with this, she said he wasn’t normally like this.  I knew she was lying, but I felt like there was nothing I could do.  Her abuser had left us both powerless.

Their son stood peering from the glass front door, staring at us.  Throughout the whole ordeal he had been silent, like he always was, every time I visited.

Her husband stood in the kitchen, at a window, talking (or pantomiming) on the phone, gesturing viciously out at Alyssa, sneering and smirking.  “He’s talking to my mom,” she whispered, “he’s telling her everything.”

“He’s faking,” I told her, “don’t let him fuck with you.  There’s no one on the phone with him. He wants you to go inside, but you need to stay here with me.”

“That’s my baby in the door, he needs me.”

“He needs you in one piece.  Stay here.”

She reached into the back of the van and picked up something.  I don’t know what it was, but it was heavy, and it was on a cord, and she flew out with it in hand, screaming as she swung it, smashing it against her husband’s Camaro parked in the driveway beside us.  Four or five times she smashed her husband’s car, and finally she looked up at him, looking out at her.

He hung up the phone.

She raced back into the van with me and locked the doors, but left the window open.

“Roll up the window and ignore him,” I pleaded, as he came storming out of the house.  I knew that face.  I knew that look.  He wanted to hurt her.

Too late, she realized the same.  She was rolling up the window as he reached through it, seizing a fistful of her hair, and next thing I knew she was shrieking, I was screaming, and he was hollering, “DO YOU WANT TO DIE, ALYSSA?  DO YOU WANT ME TO FUCKING KILL YOU?”  He was shaking her head back and forth, up and down, slamming it against the frame, against the window, and I scrambled against his hands, trying to get him to release her.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I remember screaming.  “Let her go!”

He finally did, throwing her head away from him.  “I’ll fucking kill you if you come back home,” he said.  “Remember that.” And he walked away.  He never once acknowledged me.

She was sobbing, rubbing at her head, pulling away handfuls of blonde hair in clumps.  I had no idea what to do.  I remember wishing that I had a cell phone to call Chris.  I did not once think of calling the police, just my husband, because he would protect me and hold me and take me away.

We didn’t talk, I just held her close as she cried.  Finally, she looked up at her house.

Her son stood in the doorway, witness to it all.

—

On that day, two years ago, I was a victim as surely as they were.  To this day, I blame myself for not being more proactive; as a mother, the thought of the environment that child lives in makes me nauseous.  I should have called someone to get him out of there.  I should have called the police against her husband.  I should never have sat there mute and powerless.

Yet I did.  Because I am intimately familiar with being a victim of a violent man, and it’s entirely too easy to fall back into that mode of just protecting one’s most basic self, just staying quiet and hoping that the abuser will simply walk away without hurting you too much.

Silence is a tool of abuse.

Today, I share my story at Violence UnSilenced.  Today, I refuse to be ashamed of what happened to me.  Today, my 27th birthday, my first as a mother, I have an obligation to myself and my family to speak out, to drown the shame in a sea of support and love.