No One Believed Me, But I Know the Truth
You Almost Killed Me. This Is What Happened. I was just characterized as a crazy woman who was lovesick for a man who did not want her.
Author's Note: These are from events that transpired when I was barely 27, I wrote this two years ago. Content Warning: Shows Photos of Assault
For context…
https://neurodivergent.squarespace.com
is a private, password-protected website I created several years ago to document concerns regarding the way I’ve been treated, despite being a survivor of domestic violence. The site contains detailed screenshots, documents, and personal observations outlining the circumstances as I experienced them and the lack of justice I received.
Additionally, this short video offers a visual and narrative introduction to the motivations behind this post: TikTok – @vaytauk.
Our fathers knew each other.
I helped your mother clean out her closet when she was moving to a new house. I could see she was a world traveller and a woman with interesting stories to share, how I longed for that life. To just be free and travel. Indefinitely. She loved gardening, she had a humongous agave near the front porch that was a smoky charcoal blue and green.
What was I supposed to do when she invited me over for dinner one night? Say No? You were there in all your fresh debonair glory; a facade I saw fall apart too little too late. It was early June and the sky was a glowing orange pink. Mistakes in love seem to be common this time of year around here, the great recycling as I call it jokingly. Don’t ask me what that means. Everything is enveloped in the lustful aromas of summer, an intoxicating filter that doesn’t let you think clearly.
You offered me a fancy IPA with deer antlers on it and looked me up and down like I was your next meal. Little did I know that token seemingly innocuous offering was simply your poison of choice, not a beacon of hospitality. Your friends were there, a few of my old friends were there, your mom made steak and potatoes.
Crispy lemon asparagus. Strawberry shortcake made from angel food. A few fireflies made their way into the living room as we migrated inside when night fell. The bugs were not bothered by “Off” in this crook of the Shore, it seemed. It all felt so aligned in that moment, maybe it was the presence of your mom that put my guard down. It’s just family and friends, totally innocent right? Maybe I was just hoping I’d met someone special.
You are special. But your demons overpowered and gave way to chaos. Red flag after red flag and I still ignored it. Our dads were colleagues, your siblings were awesome, surely you were too? What a dumb assumption to make. I was so wrong. You treated me like the spare part of gum people save for the moments when they’re going inside a store for a few minutes, and want the smell of tobacco coming from their dried out mouth. In secret, you shared personal stories with me you said you’d never told anyone before. I doubt you remember. All I could see when I saw you was the first moment I felt my heart swell with love for you, eating greasy pizza from Famous in Chincoteague after running on the beach with a kite like two blissfully shielded miscreants. I didn’t want to see how you ignored me in front of “friends” and treated me like a stranger. All I wanted to see were private moments listening to the local radio station music hour, while baby dragonflies landed on our noses. All I could see were your sparse but sharp assertions about my wounds, like Frida Kahlo. I thought you were my Diego. What. A. Fool.
I was ruined by the power of my own false narrative, the one that believed you loved me, and in the end it was my own damn fault. I guess I was a fool for believing the words you told me instead of seeing the bigger picture. I don’t feel love any more after what you put me through. I even made a playlist about it as an SNL character as part of a therapy exercise. Sadly, it’s hidden now as Soundcloud makes people pay for anything more than 12 tracks. It was all about men like you and the women they hurt. I wish people who know you who then try to contact me realized that the mere association sends me spiraling. Just living in this area sends me spiraling. I have come to the conclusion the universe does not want me to move on. It literally will not let me move on.
As time went by, the unhealthy dynamic became worse and so did your disease. I don’t think I ever saw you sober, but you were so good at hiding that I didn’t know until later. I feel sorry for how pathetic you are in this state. I feel sorrier for me for being stupid enough to think you loved me. Then more red flags, not only were you a closeted alcoholic but also a “free loser” aka you just screw anyone who comes your way and then say it’s universal love dude. So be it. But you had a son coming, with a woman who was a hardworking health professional and the only time you supported her was when your mother forced you to, because you didn’t love her. You were 36 years old. All I can say is I forgive you because I know you’ve been through a lot of pain but the resulting narcissism was truly beyond what I thought capable.
It got worse, the hot and cold, the double life, the “one day I’ll treat you nicely, so sweetly and do everything to make you feel like we are truly connected and having fun, then the next day let me treat you like shit and make unkind remarks about the size of your thighs” kinda deal. Months passed like this, dotted by a few memories I hold dear but also discard with disdain because they were never sincere. There was a mask of inebriation dampening any hope for clarity. That is the insidious nature of alcohol, it ruins people.
So insidious that one night in October, two nights after you voluntarily visited me where we had a peaceful nice night, you almost killed me. You had a gathering at your house and I realized most o the females there were “on your list”. The values I thought you had just by association with your family, a stupid mistake on my part, were pretty much nonexistent. You didn’t really care about helping people or being a good person, how could you? You were sick. Are.
In all honesty, a selfish playboy who didn’t want to grow up. I drank, rather gulped, two glasses of wine and said something you didn’t like, throwing myself into the line of fire by those actions. We stood at the porch door, of which there was a steep set of steps with a concrete base and loose gravel at the bottom, about fifteen levels in all. You looked at me with hazy red angry eyes, and I glared right back at you.
I stomped my foot, you pushed me down a flight of stairs.
I don’t remember much after that because I fell backwards directly onto the base of my skull. I remember the moment falling backwards, it was slow motion then black. It was fight or flight. Fear and pain pulsed through my body. I don’t remember much except yelling and screaming. I felt a kick to my back when I was still curled up on the ground, crying with my hands over my head in the fetal position. I could feel warm blood in the back of my neck. Someone was pinning me to the ground. All I could hear was ringing in my ears.
Panic ensued. Someone had pushed me down a flight of stairs and then kicked me in my back with so much force it knocked the wind out of me. I have pretty amazing fight or flight instincts, for many reasons. But I felt like I was in a warzone. I vaguely remember around, trying to make sense of anything around me.
I knew I was outnumbered, most of the people were on the back porch playing music while drinking, having no idea what was going on….except a few of his “buddies” who came out to join the fun I guess. I felt another kick, and then someone’s hands around my neck who then slammed my head to the ground again. One of the people there—someone I went to college with—posted a picture online weeks later. It showed her riding around on a golf cart with her new “BFF,” the guy who did this to me, captioned: “The Shitty People Club.” Were they proud of how little they cared? Was it some kind of statement, choosing to side with him—instead of the same girl you knew whose friend group you strangely latched onto, even though you were two years older when I was just a freshman? Was this some lingering grudge because I went to prom with your ex in high school?
That’s the thing about small worlds: punishment can be subtle, quiet, and usually comes from other women who believe you crossed invisible lines. Alienation becomes the consequence. The gossip starts behind your back, but its sting lands right in your chest. The consequences range far more than loneliness.
These were the same people who worked at the local newspaper—before the new one came along—who made sure every negative story about me got published, while quietly erasing the good ones from before college. Funny how the archives still exist for other people, just not for me.
I’ve come to realize that some people only want something to do with you when there’s a light in you they can steal. And once that light fades—or you stop letting them manipulate it—they turn on you. They discard you, betray you, because you no longer serve their curiosity or control. Because there’s nothing left.
The next thing I remember is someone lifting me, what was hours later, onto my bed then leaving. It was that one high school friend. He saved me. I don’t think he realized how bad it was, because he probably just drove me home drunk like all those people did.
I had a few concussion from high school sports and a bad fall from a ladder when I was working in Wyoming, but nothing compared to this. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back of my mind. The next morning I open my caked eyes and immediately realize “I can’t move”. I was alone. The beams of light streaming through the rundown wooden interior of the 18th century styled cabin I was renting revealed fleck of dust suspended in the air. I breathed them in, and the pain came flooding back in again, especially my lower back and neck. My thighs had two huge bruises on them, and there was dried blood from a big gash on the back of my head. The worst part is looking in the mirror and being scared at the image looking back. I see my lip busted with a trickle of blood running down the side. My right eye is swollen shut & purple. I begin to cry. Then I begin to throw up clear fluid. I later realize at the hospital, after seeing a really nice doctor, that this was cerebrospinal fluid.
Alone and panicking I vacillate between fear, anger and immense pain so bad I feel I can hardly breathe, did I mention the two hours of vomiting clear fluid and dry heaving? Finally I call my friend Faith, an EMT, and call 9-1-1. After drinking stale orange juice and throwing up some more, they finally came and I was brought to the hospital. I do the CAT Scan, the consultations. I was estranged from my family at that point, it wouldn’t have mattered who I called. I am alone when I face the news that I have bruised kidneys, a head injury and a laceration on my cornea. Give it some time, rest for ten days with no light or screen time. This will take some time, he says.
I forget that earlier that day I write a completely naive and childish FB post calling “him” and his buddies out, all I said was you should feel ashamed for what you did to me. It was a dumb thing to do, but I didn’t know how else to process. I had poor coping skills back then, I’m still working on them now. I also don’t hang out with people like that anymore, even if they come from “good families”. Association does not mean anything to me anymore.
I sheepishly went back home to my parent’s house because I was too afraid to sleep alone in that creepy old house two hours away. I didn’t feel comfortable with anyone else doing that kind of healing and recovery in their space. I guess what I said got him worried because in the greater twist of irony, a police officer barges in the room where I’m trying to recover to serve me a restraining order from “him”. He was trying to get back at me for damaging his reputation by sharing what he and his goons did to me in public. Narcissists don’t like their covers to be blown. Of course, all his buddies backed him up and I was outnumbered. I was just characterized as a crazy woman who was lovesick for a man who did not want her. After being brutally beat up and dealing with a head injury I still feel the effects of today, I was the one portrayed as a psychopath.
I felt so ashamed. Did I really spend my entire middle & high school sacrificing my time to get perfect grades so I could attend my dream school of William and Mary just to end up like this? Wasn’t I supposed to be helping people with my education, not being part of the problem? How did I get here?
Later, as the story develops he retracts his restraining order and tries to weasel his way back into my life. Breaking his own word, he calls me before Christmas begging to come over at 4 am to “talk”. I acquiesce, because at that point my boundaries were abhorrent. Some people are like cocaine to your system. He was one of them. A short high with a long hangover that eventually kills you. Cardiac arrest, decay and failure. His games begin again when he comes over, driven by his peon friend since he he’s had so many DUIs he can’t drive anymore. I didn’t know this then, I just thought he was really eco friendly and liked to ride his bike everywhere, and that carpooling was his preferred method of convening. What a sucker I am.
His apology for hurting me so much, emotionally and physically, sucks and he still manages to find a way to gaslight me and make me feel like it’s all my fault. Did he really come here just so he could add me back to the rotation of his lazy Susan of women to choose from? Did he not fully understand the gravity of what he had done to me? Did I?
I remember at that moment, in the damp cold before Christmas, how I could literally feel the empty suck of his presence. A deadweight. Like a dementor from Harry Potter. I always attributed that feeling to my own self, thinking it was me, but it was not. Oh hell no it wasn’t.
The link was broken.
We didn’t speak for what felt like a long time, only it was just a few weeks. I cut him out completely and tried to recover, move on and feel better.
Weeks later, he randomly shows up to my parent’s house and parks his Subaru in the field outside the driveway. He is intoxicated.
I realized then with heartbreaking clarity, in utter full force, what a dangerous person I had allowed into my heart. Memories of our “romantic” drives together peel away into the ugly truth. They were not fun and innocent. I was his passenger when he was rip-roaring drunk, only to let me know that fact when we were halfway through our destination and he was hitting 90 miles per hour on the backroads. He enjoyed seeing me scared, it was funny to him. I guess he thought drunk driving wasn’t a crime or dangerous. Why did I ever get in the car at all?
He would laugh and speed around the backroads, enjoying the fear he put me through and I allowed it, ignoring my suspicions each time when he would declare with complete deadpan confidence “I haven’t had anything to drink in weeks, Ive been going to AA, you know this, come on get in I have something to show you.” He knew how to fool me.
I had memories flood to me when I had to stand before a judge when he decided to revoke his own restraining order against me, only to humiliate me in front of an entire court room by detailing very intimate aspects of our relationship. “Oh yes you’re honor she would show up all the time to the house to shower, uninvited.” Oh, you mean the time I took a shower after we went to the beach, and I needed to wash the sand from my feet, because you asked me to?
He had a way of twisting everything, EVERYTHING. A memory to the beach I cherished, cheapened for a means to an end: proving he was right. Salt and sand of a beautiful day reduced to he said she said childish bullshit he used as a weapon to fortify his own narrative and save face, for whom? I do not know.
Here we were months later in the middle of February and he was drunk, laughing on top of his car shouting he could be there because the car was his property and he was on top of his car, not the earth. My sister and her boyfriend came out to tell him to leave as he yelled at me “to come down from my ivory tower”. They told him to leave. He slurred something rude and then got into his car, we thought it was over.
Two hours later, he wandered into my parent’s garage, opened the door and walked into one of the bedrooms. Black out drunk, hiding behind a door. My mom is very meticulous about her house, she takes pride in its cleanliness. She brought in a set of fresh sheets and almost fainted when she realized there was a man just chilling there, for no reason. She yells for my dad. Sheepishly “he” comes out and says hey hey don’t worry it’s just me, you know my dad! Everyone is alarmed. He then lunges for me and pushes me. What happens next is a blur. My parents leave, go upstairs and are making phone calls to his parents, who they know. I run to the attached cottage, where he follows me and more chaos ensues. I then lock myself in the laundry room. After waiting 15 minutes, I emerge.
I come upstairs, in disbelief. He is there ranting and slurring, “Come on” he says in my direction. “Let’s run away together and get away from all this bullshit, I think fate brought us together so I can save you.” He snarls at my father, treating him with zero respect. Not a happy drunk by any means. Later I found out he destroyed my bedroom, broke many items, urinated everywhere prior to disappearing.
Here he is a grown man who has already wreaked so much havoc in my life with hardly a second thought, always falling back on the excuse of “I had trauma in my life, that’s why I drink, you wouldn’t understand.”
He darts into the cold of the night, I am in subfreezing weather searching for him; worried he will die.
He disappeared for four hours that night. Drunk in the cold. Scaring everyone, my dad refusing to call the cops because “he knew his dad.” I am out there in the dark and cold, looking for someone who didn’t deserve to be found . I briefly search the cottage, where I have been trying to recover, and find that it has been ransacked. All the contents strewn aside, mattress flipped over, and my lamp is broken. My sacred space I was using to heal from the emotional and physical injury he had put me through half a year before was flipped upside down in a whirlwind of drunken slop, like a pig in a mud pen. My equilibrium, already fragile before I met him, shattered once again by the feeling of being trapped.
This must be how the devil works, I think to myself as all of my family is now searching for him.
I wish I had never been brought up Catholic, it taught me to see the world, from a young age, in a very polarizing way. It was like brainwashing.
I feel angry that the set of card I was dealt with on the inside were so crappy. But I digress, because there is always something to be grateful for.
Finally, my dad caves and we call “his” dad. His “friend” of 20 plus years arrived to help with the search and finally around 2 am in the morning we find him stumbling back into the yard, lips blue, eyelashes crusted with ice. Why did I spend four hours shouting into the darkness for him, when secretly I wish he would never return.
That was the last I ever saw him. And the results from that one night were more devastating to my life than I care to admit.
As much as I want to empathize with his pain, what about my own? Was I really a victim of domestic violence, I mean…didn’t our families know each other? Yes, I should’ve never allowed him in my life, but he played all the parts, good and bad, so well. The heart is a weak instrument when we mistake the rancid cycle of dysfunction for connection, maybe even love. The part that makes me the saddest was being physically harmed, and then construed as the crazy one. Justice is hard to find when the facts and evidence are blurry and based only on word of mouth. What’s even sadder is my story is not the only one, doesn’t even come close to the extent of violence others have been subjected to, but I had had my fair share in this life and enough was enough. For some cosmic reason, there was a pattern stemming from childhood of toxic patterns, and this was just another manifestation of an unhealed wound that I don’t think anyone is truly equipped to handle, let alone write research papers about but they do.
They always do.
My head still has intense migraines every now and then, from the day. I still get angry when I remember the story he and his friends made up, “she was just drunk and fell off the porch.” Nevermind the other bruises, busted lip, and black eye. Never mind the neck brace I had to wear for a season of fall and early winter. I’m lucky it wasn’t worse. People have died suddenly from head injuries, a waitress actually died from slipping on the job and banging her head really hard on the ground. It’s not something to take lightly or dismiss. Look at what happens to NFL football players after repeated TBIs, they literally go crazy and have anger/emotional problems for the rest of their lives, sometimes devolving into an aggressive degeneration and even death.
Nevermind the man hands that strangled my neck in a testosterone driven frenzy. That’s the last time I’ll be hanging out with people who hang up deer heads on walls , with buckshot rifles by the door, who ride the coattails of their family name but live in disgrace by way of night and cheap libation. Fuck them.
I accept responsibility for my role in being oxygen to the fire, but I refuse to relinquish my right to say Fuck You. Thats on resave in the library of my brain forever. Lesson learned, never forgotten.
If you made it this far, thank you for holding the time and space to read this experience of mine that the writer in me needed to share. Maybe it will help you to feel less alone, or remove yourself from a bad relationship.