Becoming Rage: my DV survivor story - part one -

By, Alisa Yardley

WARNING: This blog series contains graphic accounts of things that some readers may find upsetting. It is intended for mature audiences, and contains depictions of domestic abuse, sexual violence, self-harm and suicidal ideation. Reader discretion is advised.

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words and deeds may break your brain, and that’s what happened to me. 

I met him in a self improvement program. He learned things about me before we even went on our first date. 15 years on, my life is irrevocably changed--unfortunately not for the better. The losses I sustained have altered the trajectory of my life in ways I couldn't have predicted. I stopped smiling as much. I stopped laughing with the careless abandon I felt before. I stopped singing just for the joy of it. The light went out of my eyes. My health began to fail. I became angry. Then I became aggressive. I was like a wounded animal, cornered and fighting to survive. I felt like I was losing my mind. In some ways, I was.

The parts of myself that remained intact---injured and disfigured, but intact---were my ability to adapt, my desire for truth, and my integrity. I was able to find meaning through writing. And I studied. A lot. I took my lemons, squashed the shit out of them, and turned them into knowledge. Every lousy experience I survived became a part of my education. I had to rediscover who I was in the shambles of my imploded world. I had to decide how I wanted to show up, and in some ways, more importantly, I had to decide how I didn't want to show up.

We went on our first date in the summer. It was awkward. The conversation revolved around my problems, which left me uncomfortable and embarrassed. The first date convinced me I wasn't interested in a second one. But we were on that journey of self improvement together. We attended the same events. We started to know the same people. When we saw each other again a couple of months later, we laughed together. We shared an inside joke, and we started seeing each other. That was mistake number one. I ignored my previous feelings, gave in to my loneliness, and got involved with him anyway.

I have strong boundaries around monogamy when it comes to physical intimacy, so when we moved our relationship forward I made that clear, but I was making another mistake. I was hurrying things along too quickly. That was on me. His lies were not. The first time I caught him lying to me about another woman, I ended things. I wished him well and took myself to Banff for the weekend to get over the loss.

Not long after, he convinced me to give him another chance, claiming that he needed me. I fell for the line, and within hours he was back to his games. I felt duped, but I stayed. And he lied about other women again, and again, and again, after that. At least one per month. Over the holidays while he was away, there were at least three more that I found out about. He hadn't fully cheated on me, but he constantly blurred the lines between what was okay, and what was not. The lies were never okay. The lies never stopped coming.

A crucial relationship red flag for me, is when behaviour changes in the person who's being harmed. We're so frequently told what to watch out for in our partners, we aren't as often reminded to observe what's happening in ourselves. I was becoming incrementally more and more angry. At the beginning, that anger looked like me venting to friends, ruminating, and stressing over what was going on behind my back. I was becoming jealous and untrusting. I was losing my temper. My reactions were clear signs the relationship was unhealthy right from the start.

Another major red flag in the early stages, was the fact that he refused to introduce me to any of his friends or family... for months. If he had done so, I'm confident we would've gone our separate ways much sooner, and without all the ensuing drama. Meeting them would've shone a light on the massive differences between us, and we could've let go right away. By the time I met the people in his life, I was already in love with him, and he was living with me and my kids---unbeknownst to his family, for well over six months. Everyone in his circle was fed the same lie. People in my life saw us as a couple.

Because we met in a personal growth setting, I made space for his ongoing idiosyncrasies. When he awkwardly bragged about his father, I chalked it up to him really loving the man. When he behaved immaturely, I reminded myself he was younger than me, and needed time. When he drank to the point of alcohol poisoning, I told myself he was fallible like I was, and he was working on himself, like I was. I believed him when he said he would do better... the first hundred times.

Those problems while being frustrating and upsetting, didn't have the power to harm me too much. I became the team leader of the three month goal setting program we both joined. During that time I found he was nicer and more attentive when people were there, so I constantly invited people over so we wouldn't be alone as often. Here's the thing... this man was considered by almost everyone to be super sweet, helpful, light-hearted, and funny. That's how I thought of him too for the most part. Even when he treated me poorly, I blamed myself because I couldn't match up the pieces of the puzzle, that was him.

I have to admit that when I finally did meet his friends, I didn't like most of them. I found them to be immature and rude. They drank excessively, and behaved like entitled kids, becoming rowdy to the point of being asked to leave establishments on more than one occasion. His family was not as rowdy, but in many ways they were just as bad. Every event I ever attended with them included copious amounts of alcohol.

I tried my best to get along with them at the beginning, and it wasn't too bad with his family at first. There were lots of things I liked about them, but they didn't want me there, and you can only be rejected so much before the dislike starts to become mutual. Beyond that, in many ways, I blamed his parents for how he acted. I felt strongly that he had been spoiled into his entitlement. The thing is, regardless of how you were raised, we all have an obligation as adults to be respectful members of society, and there are plenty of ways to learn that.

Because I grew up seeing the negative effects of alcohol use, it's never really been my thing. I drank once in a while, but not much. Witnessing the behaviour of his family and friends, I started asking my own friends if I was being too hard on them. Most people agreed I was not. After consulting with a medical professional in my search to understand, it became clear to me that my partner's drinking rose to the level of alcoholism, and I had two young, impressionable kids at home. Their dad liked to drink too, but he was responsible about it. He didn't drink and drive. He didn't behave poorly, and I don't think I ever saw him drink to the point of illness.

My partner at the time, was the opposite. He told me that his father told him it was okay to drink and drive if you weren't going far - so he did. The one time I asked him to be the designated driver, he drove us home drunk. I found out when we got home that he had been drinking all night too. We fought about his drinking a lot. I told him in no uncertain terms that he was no longer welcome to bring his lousy drunken behaviours around my kids. That's when he pushed me for the first time. He wasn't physical often, but once is already too much, and it happened more than once.

I was training in MuayThai at the time, so I was used to sudden pressure, and I treated the push momentum like a kick in the gym, running backwards several steps to avoid falling---then I yelled at him. Loud. I don't recall exactly what I said, but I'm pretty sure I asked him if he was stupid. The house was mine, and he was living in it, so I kicked him out. I don't remember how that resolved, or why l let him come back, but I do know he excused his actions by telling me that's how he handled fights with his little sister when they were kids. And I do remember him saying that he would never quit drinking for me. Ever.

When you're in a toxic relationship, most of the time you're doing normal things, like watching movies, going out for dinner, looking after the house, playing games, or whatever you enjoy together. The bad things don't happen everyday. Especially not at the beginning. In our relationship, the lies and traumatic moments happened on average once a month. Over time that space began to shrink until it became bi-weekly, then weekly, until we fought more than we didn't.

There came a point after a particularly bad event when I stopped asking him not to hurt me, and started asking him not to hurt me so often. I told him I needed time between injuries to heal myself. Most of the injuries were mental, and they don't heal the same way physical wounds do. When a person is relentless in their desire to manipulate, gaslight, and lie, they are controlling your reality in ways that are insidious, and cause you to start doubting your own perceptions.

I started to develop extreme anxiety around events that included his friends and family because he had a distinct pattern of making poor, and reckless choices when he was around them. One night after disappearing for hours, he came home with bite marks on his face, arm and chest, allegedly from play-fighting with his friend's fiancé. Another night he got into bed, oblivious to the dried blood all over his arms and legs. He said he'd fallen on his way into a bar.

Another time, he was so drunk he thought he was making out with me, but in reality he was making fish faces in the air. That same night he fell and hit his head on the side of his bathtub, hard. (Not good for someone with a history of severe concussions.) Then he threw up red wine, all over the bathroom. It looked like a crime scene there was so much red vomit on the walls and floor. Then he wanted to be intimate. I told him no, and he passed out.

During the first two years, he told me he wanted to marry me so often it felt more like a dangling carrot, than a true desire. I asked him repeatedly to stop teasing me with the idea if he wasn't ready, but he still kept saying it, so I set a timeline and told him to ask for real, or leave it alone completely. He asked. Then he said he only asked to shut me up about it.

Things took a significant turn for the worse once we got engaged. His family was against it. They were right, but for all the wrong reasons. They made it about me. They were calling me a gold-digger. They were wrong. Their son was the one digging for gold. And he got it. But that part came out later. Our engagement party was a disaster. He left with his friends while we still had guests. My friends responded by staying with me until he returned, then ushered out the door in silence when he finally did.

He tried to convince me for some time that my friends didn't really like or care about me. He used to say 'based on results' whenever he wanted an insult to stick. He also told me my being a writer and singer was too hard for him, so he gave me an ultimatum with three choices: go to school, get a normal job, or "I will leave you." I picked school. And things got worse anyway. I wasn't recognizing what was happening to me for the abuse that it was, and I began acting out.

One day, my doctor told me to have my partner on stand-by in case I needed to go to the hospital double quick. I was pregnant, and there were some concerns. After I told my partner, he turned off his phone and went to watch a golf tournament all day instead. I was forced to confide private information to people, before I was ready, because I wouldn't be able to drive myself, so two friends, my brother and his girlfriend, took turns throughout the day keeping an eye on me. I was completely humiliated, scared, and devastated at his callousness, all at the same time.

That was the night I changed. When he finally called, he casually asked me how my day was going, acting like nothing was wrong. I lost it. I started yelling at him, and swearing at him, then I hung up on him. He called back. I did it again. This went on until he got home, and the fight continued. I told him over and over again to stay away from me. I was in a rage like I had never experienced before that point. I needed him to back off, and give me space to cool down. He wouldn't listen. He refused to take me seriously.

When we were fighting, sometimes he would put his face right against my face, with our noses side by side. The first couple of times he did it, I found it so weird and disarming it stopped our fight, and led to us laughing. That night, I was not in the mood for his weird jokes. He had abandoned me and our unborn child for no good reason, then acted so cavalier about it, I was completely disgusted. He tried to press his face against mine again and again until I was backed almost against the wall, then I slapped him---one, two. One slap on each cheek. And he finally backed off, and I was left shrouded in shame, and blaming myself.

One of the worst experiences of my life, turned out to be a blessing in disguise because had that pregnancy worked out, we would've been at loggerheads about how the child should be raised, and no child deserves to be born into that kind of chaos. The day it happened, he was on his best behaviour. Two days later he told me never to bring it up again.

Two months later he reneged on his agreement to let our next trip be just for us, and about us. He pushed me out, invited his friends instead, and told his mom I was trying to infiltrate his boy's trip while I was laying in the fetal position, crying right in front of him. He told me he needed a break because seeing me traumatized was too hard on him. It didn't matter to him that I too needed a break. It didn't matter to him that he was breaking his word. It didn't bother him to scapegoat me with his friends and family. He was only concerned about himself.

After that, I knew. This was abuse. I was not in chains, but I was trapped. I could've walked away at anytime, but I was in love with him, and that love held me in place. He had been harming me for two years straight in such underhand, insidious ways, I knew it wasn't going to stop. And I knew I wasn't going to be able to get out on my own anymore. I was a leader in my life. I didn't know who or what to turn to. I was too embarrassed. And the bad times, were just beginning. The first two years, had been the nice ones...