This picture is eery to me. I’m smiling. But there’s nothing there behind my eyes. I don’t know where I was, I don’t know who I was with, I remember nothing around this picture. It’s like looking at a stranger. I recognize those jeans and that jacket, but that’s the extent of it. I know that it’s me, but only like you know a baby picture is you because your parents have told you that it is. And because I at least look like myself physically.
I’ve since learned this was from a BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministries) weekend retreat my freshmen year of college. There were two retreats that year, and turns out I went to both. I don’t actually know which retreat this was from. I sent out a message to some people I remembered having known from BCM days asking if they had any pictures of me, and this was the only one I got back.
Part of my healing journey was finding out how much of my life I’d lost. I’ve always prided myself on how good my memory is, so this was a shocking part of my journey. I had no idea of all the memory lapses, because how do you know what you don’t remember? About 9 years ago, I reconnected with my mentor from that year, the BCM intern, and we became friends as adults in completely different stages of our lives than we had been all those years prior. We now live 2 minutes apart, but that’s another story of healing for another time. As we reconnected, she would bring up memories, conversations, trips, mutual friends, and I’d look at her like a dear in headlights, like she must be talking about someone else. It took awhile for both of us to piece together the truth…her to realize that I really didn’t remember, and me to realize the extent of the memory loss caused by my trauma. Over time, she has given me pieces of myself back, memories she has of me that I don’t have. Sometimes it even becomes a joke now, I call her to tell me something else about me that year. It’s been such a beautiful gift to be able to get some of those pieces back, but it’s also extremely disconcerting to realize all the memories of me people have that I don’t. Some days it’s completely maddening to not remember such big chunks of my own life. Some days I’m terrified of who I might have been, what I might have been like. It's terrifying to just not know.
This picture, if I’ve put the pieces together enough, was from a retreat in October of my freshmen year. I know now that it was a weekend at a house near Myrtle Beach, perhaps North Myrtle. The only memory I have of that entire weekend is getting out of the backseat of a car. I don’t know who I rode with, I don’t know who I roomed with, I don’t know a single other thing about that trip other than a piece of an image of getting out of a car and seeing a house. I was actually so confused I hadn’t realized there had been two retreats that year, because what little I had had melded together into one in my head. So this might even be from that other retreat, which I have a few more memories of, but still very few.
* * *
I'd just ended it with my abuser for good. That time on my terms. When I got to USC for my freshmen year, he seemed to be everywhere I hung out. We had many of the same friends. This was not planned and certainly not expected. USC is so large that I hadn't expected to see him at all once I moved to campus. He, too, was thrown off guard by seeing me so frequently, but he quickly adapted. He wouldn't even speak to me, he pretended I didn't even exist, to the point that it was awkward for everyone. It was maddening. I absolutely didn't know how to handle it. So I thought I could "fix" it, and I went back to him, by my own decision. For 6 terrible, horrible weeks.
This is a part of my story I've had the hardest time forgiving myself for. I always thought it negated what had happened months prior. Why would I go back to him? Through a lot of hard work and counseling, I've learned a lot. I've learned a lot about how to give my past self grace, forgiveness, compassion. I've learned that it's very common for abused women to go back to their abuser. I've realized that I was trying to "fix" it. The prior year, he'd made all the decisions, including when it started and when it ended. If I choose when it started this time, I felt like I took some of the control back. It took a long time to realize that making himself available to me again was all part of his plan, and I was still a chess piece. He couldn't control me if he wasn't in a relationship with me again. I had started talking to all of his friends, telling them what he'd done to me, who he really was. I was ruining his reputation, and he had to stop that. So by making himself available to me and me getting to "decide" to go back to him, he was able to gain back the control. He was able to silence me again. Really I was just falling right back into his plan, the entire time thinking I was getting some control back.
It was different that time, but it definitely wasn't for the better. I had to agree to his "rules" from the start. No dating my freshmen year or he'd walk away, no drinking. Just as a start. Those weren't things I wanted anyways, so they didn't seem like sacrifices. I didn't realize that I should have walked away when the "rules" started again. He also promised what had happened the prior school year wouldn't happen again.
He'd taken so much from me months prior, that I went into it the second time making myself completely available to him. I felt like it gave me control, or at least prevented him from controlling me in that way again. This also meant he'd lost power over me in that area, so he then had to find other ways to gain power over me. At first he wanted me to stay the nights with him, like nothing had changed (despite prior saying that wouldn't happen again). Then right after I turned 18, out of the blue, when I asked to stay the night, he admonished me, "Why would you ask that? You know I have a girlfriend. You can sleep on the couch or go back to your dorm room." The rules had changed again. When he had wanted me, my "no" was not ok, but when I wanted him, suddenly he vomited shame on me. My wants were bad. I was bad for having them. I felt crazy. I felt disgusting in my own skin. I tried to completely shut down my desires. Even now I fight the feelings that my desires are bad.
His emotional abuse escalated quickly. The rules changes all the time of what was expected of me. For the first week or two, he was sweet, and it felt blissful, but of course that didn't last long. He stopped answering my texts or calls or IMs. He said I was too needy, he was too busy. He wanted me to be around him, but he stopped acknowledging my existence. I would spend hours sitting next to him or near him while he played Magic the Gathering with friends or while we went to meals together with our friend group, and he wouldn't so much as make eye contact with me. His girlfriend would sit on the other side, being given the same treatment. His friends would walk into the room, he'd get up and make a point to go over and say hi and hug them, but when I came in, there was no acknowledgement. When they left, he'd happily tell them bye. When I left, there was no acknowledgement. When I finally could get him to talk to me, I asked why he wouldn't hug me anymore. He'd asked me what I'd done to deserve a hug. Tell me that I'd pissed him off somehow and didn't deserve a hug. Physical affection in any form became a reward, a reward that, once I wanted it, I was never worthy of.
Despite acting like I didn't exist, he was always watching me. I was always doing something wrong, and he would make sure I knew it. Everything was all or nothing to him. I either did everything he expected of me, or he would threaten to never speak to me again. But I never could get ahead of what it was that was expected. Just as examples, one time I sat next to another guy in our friend group at lunch, and he claimed I'd been flirting, although I had not been. I got in big trouble for that. He wouldn't listen to my explanations or what I had to say for any of the things he'd claimed I'd done. He would just decide what had happened and berate me for it, no matter what I said the truth actually was. Another time I comforted a guy friend in our group who had just broken up with his girlfriend, and he asked me how I could hurt the ex-girlfriend like that. All I'd done was sit on the friend's futon with his head barely touching my leg. With the door open. I was furious that he was so verbally abusive to me for that, and I finally started getting some fight back in me. I asked how that, something so innocent, was hurtful to that guy's ex-girlfriend if what he had done to me, something much worse, wasn't hurtful to his girlfriend. That did not go well for me.
It got to where I would start doing something to tick him off (that wasn't hard to do) just to get him to speak to me and acknowledge my existence. All while he became more and more emotionally abusive in response to everything I did or didn't do. It was explosive and extremely wounding to me. But around his friends, he kept up his persona. The explosions always happened when no one else could witness them. He wouldn't dare ruin his reputation.
I was on his territory that year, and I started finding out who his friends were, even outside of our mutual friends group. I started asking questions behind his back, trying to find out who he'd been before I knew him, what things he wouldn't want anyone to know. Over the course of time, I found out about at least two victims before me, two others while he was with me, and (later) at least one after. Those are just the ones I know of. He custom crafted his abuse for every one of his victims. His girlfriend at the time/then fiancee/then wife/then ex-wife was the only one not kept a secret. He always had some explanation for his friends if they thought something seemed off between us, and they always just took his word for it and left it alone. I was most definitely a secret until I decided I wasn't keeping the secret anymore.
When a high school friend of his told me how my abuse had played out, without him having any reason to know (my abuser most certainly had not told him, and I had not yet either), it stopped me cold in my tracks. He knew because the pattern was the same pattern my abuser had used on the younger sister of one of their mutual friends in high school.
Suddenly I realized I was not a person to him. I was a pattern. It all fell into place. I was done. I had to end it for good, on my terms. By my choice that time, not his. I started telling friends, building an army around myself, an army that would help me get away for good. I knew he had too much power over me still to end it in person. I knew a phone call similarly would give him too much power. So in the year of 2003, I ended it with him over AOL Instant Messenger. ADbsnchic to PorshLover.
I gathered friends in my dorm room (while my roommate somehow slept through it all) to give me support and help me see through his lies, and I started the conversation to end it all, and it almost immediately went badly. He spit venom. He spewed lies. He swore his love for me. He told me no one would ever love me as much as he had. He claimed there must be another guy I wanted to be with, because all he asked of me was that I didn't date that year. He said I would just go have sex because he'd also told me that wasn't allowed. He said I just wanted to start drinking. But that time I was ready for his words. That time I'd heard it all before. That time I had friends who wouldn't let me fall into his traps. He swore he would never speak another word to me if I ended it, but I knew that was coming, too. That had terrified me prior, but I couldn't let me stop me anymore. It was done. It was over. It was over because I DECIDED IT WAS, not him. I felt EMPOWERED.
And true to his promise, he never spoke another word to me. We stayed in the same group of friends for the next 3.5 semesters, until he left USC, he never spoke another word to me, and hardly ever made eye contact. At first, when I would walk into a room where he was, he would walk out the other door. It became obvious, like a show, an attention getter. He would explain to his friends that I was such a morally reprehensible person that he could not even share a room with me...because he was so morally superior to me and I was so morally corrupt. Or he'd tell them that I was having sex (another lie) and he couldn't be even around people who were having sex before marriage because of how wrong he felt that was.
Finally his friends told him that he wasn't making a point, he was just making himself look like a jackass when he left. So he stopped leaving when I was around, but he kept his promise to never speak another word to me, in person, over IM or email, or on the phone. To the point that he would even do things like whisper to the friend sitting next to him to ask me to pass the salt and pepper.
Within days of ending it with my abuser, I finally told his girlfriend everything. I knew my time was short before she would have to cut me out of her life, and I thought she deserved to know the full truth. She had known some things prior, but she was stunned and furious to learn the missing puzzle pieces I gave her. She blamed me. She also confronted him, he denied it, and she told me to leave her alone. She couldn't keep both of us in her life anymore, and she intended on marrying him, so I was the one that had to go. It was something I'd expected, but losing her hurt much more than ending it with him. I then spent a lot of years trying to "fix" how she'd been hurt by trying to get her to end it with him. I thought if I could keep them from getting married, it would protect her from more pain and "fix" the pain I felt I'd caused her, as I also continually blamed myself. She married him less than 2 years later. But we'll get to that...
* * *
The next days, months, weeks, and years include a lot of memory loss. As time went on, the memory loss became less, but it was very severe at first, I've since learned. Everything around the trauma is clear like it could have happened last week, but outside of that, there are friendships I have no memory of, places I have no memory going, bible studies and churches I have almost no memory being a part of, just on the larger scale. It's even more pronounced on a smaller scale. Much of the first 2.5 years of college are a blur, and I wasn't drinking or doing drugs. The last 2 years of college are much more clear, but there are still areas of my life then with no memories. To this day I don't know if I was actually disassociating, or if it was just memory loss from the trauma and the severe depression and anxiety that came along with it. I know I would have bouts of derealization, where reality doesn't feel real, and I'd feel completely detached from my surroundings, but I don't think I ever truly disassociated. The psychological terms and explanations don't really matter now. What matters is how learning about my memory loss helped me truly understand the impact the trauma had on me, because my body was doing whatever it could do to survive. And being able to learn things from those missing years has been such an unexpected blessing.
"When a narcissist can no longer control you, they're going to do their best to control how others see you." - coachelizabethshaw (Instagram)
"Gaslighting is a manipulative tactic where a mentally healthy individual is subjected to conditioning behavior so that they doubt their own sanity. The target starts to believe that their perception of reality is false. The narcissist may simply deny saying something didn't happen when in fact it did, telling you that you heard wrong, or lie about an event or situation. Over time a victim starts to think they are confused and going crazy. They come to rely more and more on the narcissist to keep them right." - Anne McCrea from Narcissistic and Emotional Abuse, Shattering the Illusion
"Gaslighting is exhausting. It is pure crazy making. You don't know if they don't understand, so you try fifty different ways to explain what you meant. Then they circle back to the beginning like nothing was said at all. Nothing is ever resolved and it's constantly word salad. They avoid anything that makes them take any accountability. They focus on some random thing you did or didn't do. And by the end of it, you have no energy and you feel defeated, especially years of this makes you feel hopeless and exhausted. This is abusive and wears people down." - Maria Consiglio @understandingthenarc (Instagram)
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