A Convenient Little Lie

I was up all night. She needed for someone to listen. She was desperate. She was lost and she hadn't told anyone else what was going on. She was finally letting it out.

My girlfriend is super cute. I call her the bombshell. She's smart, funny, super big heart. She will bend over backward to help you. She loves her mother and her mother drives her crazy. She just wants to be loved for real. She's been in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship for the last 6 years.

It brings up all my craziness from 1993, the year I started a new business, got a divorce, bought a house, the house burnt down and I was with an abusive man that I figured would kill me by the time I was 34, just like my mom.

Abuse is a family disease. It runs in my family. My aunt was murdered by an ex-boyfriend. My mom was murdered by my dad. I figured it was my lot in life to be murdered by my boyfriend, too. I mean, who am I to be any different.

My childhood home was abusive. It was normal to fight in front of the kids. During dinner. After church. My parent's room was downstairs and it was dark and scary. Strange bumping and cries were heard outside the closed door. We never talked about the bruises. We never talked about the drinking glass that was hurled at my mom so hard that the glass embedded in the wall behind her.

When I was in third grade we left. It was the middle of the school year. I was 7 and I was her best friend. I was the one who distracted and diffused his anger. She told me that he had strangled her and threatened to kill her. I love my mom more than anything and I hated this 210 pound monster that smiled as he pulled the belt from his waist. I had fantasies about sneaking into their room at night. While he was asleep I would take my baseball bat and smash his head in before he could wake up. I had to be quiet and I had to have good aim. And I felt deep shame about those thoughts because he was my dad.

Instead of going to school that day, we left. We packed the green Volkswagen bus and, looking out the front window, she cried for the three days we drove to my grandmother's house. I remember laying in the back of the darkened bus, my brother and sisters sleeping around me. Road noise, streetlights flashing above my head and the sounds of my mother sobbing.

She stayed for the kids. At least that's what she told herself. It's a convenient little lie. It takes away all responsibility.

It took her another year to get up the courage to leave. A year of therapy, a year of getting a job and a year of admitting she was in an abusive relationship.