Being Silence: my DV survivor story - part four-

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.

Like a turtle I pulled inside myself. I locked myself away. I became afraid of my own shadow. I had faced my own demise, and lost many people that I loved along the way. Most of the time people experienced me smiling, because I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing. I’m usually good at being in the moment, and forgetting everything else too, but on the days when I haven’t been able to forget, people have experienced me quiet and withdrawn. They have experienced me with a straight face, unable to laugh when they laugh. Unable to connect where they connect. Solitary. Isolated. Alone.

During the last few months of the turbulent years I was in the abusive relationship, I started falling for someone I'd met through work. I fell head over heels for him, but I wasn't over my ex yet, and after all the lying and cheating, I was not willing to taint things with someone new by crossing the line before I was completely sure the other relationship was over. The last time I ever saw him in person was around Valentine's Day.

I hadn't been losing my temper in my life anywhere near as often, but that night I did. I went from zero to one hundred so quickly, I shocked myself. I told him to leave. I didn't want to act like that anymore. We wrapped up the last of our paperwork over email, and that was it. Five and a half years of madness faded into the backdrop of my life.

I entered into a casual relationship with the man I had fallen in love with about a month later, but unfortunately I was not at all ready for that. I was still too unwell from the abuse I had sustained. I still had too many residual effects from the meds I had been on, and I was too unstable emotionally.

I still hadn't found a diagnosis that made sense for me. The BPD label had left me shrouded in shame. I heard the way people talked about Borderlines. I heard about and experienced the medical stigma that can result from a Cluster B personality label. I was constantly treated like I was exaggerating when I sought help for the medley of health problems I had developed in that relationship. And that problem carried on for years, and left me unable to get the help I needed for legitimate health concerns.

I was back working at the gym, and I loved it. There were two women there who gave me the impression they didn't like me, and took a fancy to causing problems for me there, but outside of that, it was, and still is, the best job I've ever had. It suited me in a multitude of ways. I liked the work. I liked the variety of being able to move between physical and mental tasks, but most of all I loved the sport, and I loved the people. The big problem for me was that I hadn't moved past the suicidal ideation. Even with the separation, I still felt off. I still felt confused about what was wrong with me.

In my opinion, a woman in the gym, overstepped her boundaries in a serious way when she drafted an email with my name at the bottom. When I saw the poorly written copy, I was angry and offended. After an argument with the boss about it, I gave my notice. Unbeknownst to him, I was also really worried that I wasn't going to survive. It took about a month to train for that job, so I figured by leaving, and training someone new, I would not leave my boss hanging, in the event I didn't pull through.

At that time, I had a date selected. No one knew that. I kept it entirely to myself. When I

phoned the helpline, they asked for safety reasons, if I had a plan. That, ironically led to me making one. I had decided that if things didn't get better by that day, I would end my life. I grappled with those feelings really intensely for a long time. I kept going entirely for my kids. That had been the case the whole time. My kids were, and still are my motivation to do, and be well.

When I left the gym, I decided to go back to the university classes I'd had to quit for financial reasons. I was hoping I would be able to get a grant or a loan going forward. There was a class on the Holocaust that I'd been trying to get into, and I got a spot. I was thrilled because it was being taught by one of my two favourite professors. I was thinking about going back to class full time, and I figured out that if I took exactly four extra classes I could achieve a double major in Psychology and English. However, life had different plans for me because halfway through that semester I wound up back at the gym.

My son was still working in the gym at the front desk and he had been reporting a lot of stories about angry clients who were having troubles with their bills. He was getting really frustrated taking the heat because the mistakes belonged to the new manager, not him. At the same time, one of our major school clients contacted me and asked if I would be willing to step in and help with their classes because they were getting nowhere with the new manager.

I repeatedly asked the new manager if he needed any help. I was still training there, my son worked there, and most of my closest friends were a part of that community, so it was no problem for me to stop in and help until he felt he had everything well in hand, after all, I had gone through the same thing. The difference was, I reported my mistake to the owner who told the previous manager so they were able to fix it with minimal disruption. In his case, he told me over and over again, he had it all sorted, everything was good, and he didn't need any help. That did not turn out to be accurate at all.

During my university reading week, ironically the new manager was going on vacation, so he asked me to cover for him. I needed the money, so I agreed. Within hours of my first shift back, I was crestfallen when I opened up the file cabinet drawer and found a massive stack of papers that looked like someone had hastily tossed them in there. I started shuffling through and found a major issue. The deeper I looked into it, the worse it got. I was so conflicted about how to handle the situation, that I asked my university professor for advice.

He asked me if I cared about the people in the gym. I said they were like a second family. He said I needed to tell the owner what had happened. His words were echoing my instincts, so I let the owner know. Over the next few days, I found that the issues I had discovered were impacting twenty-five percent of our clientele. People were angry. In a place where the phone rarely rings, I was getting several calls a day regarding the problem I had discovered. Several people expressed their relief that I was there looking into it. It felt good to be acknowledged in a positive way by the people I cared so much about.

The owner and I talked at length about the issues, and we agreed that I would come back as manager. For some reason, he also kept the other manager which led to a lot of confusion and some conflict, but it was his gym, his choice. Officially I was manager again, while my replacement was demoted to assistant manager, so I started to think outside the box about ways I could make that work to the gym's benefit. I started a marketing plan in a file for the owner with a full risk and reward assessment for each suggestion I made.

The owner and I had a handshake agreement about how we were going to work together to restore the gym, as it had been a tough few years with the management change and the recession. The numbers on paper proved I had kept things steady, but we both wanted to bring in more business to get the numbers up. My finances were a disaster after I broke up with my ex, and if that wasn't sorted out soon, my kids and I would lose our home, so I was highly motivated.

Unfortunately, I only got to experience one month of reprieve between the traumas I'd survived in my toxic relationship, to a trauma I didn't even see coming.

There was a big tournament that the owner was going to with a couple of his fighters. I was nervous about it, because the woman going was one of the two who had created drama for me before, but the owner and I seemed to be on the same page, so I tried not to worry too much. Things were moving rapidly in the right direction back at the gym. I had been able to sort out the entire problem and turn things around so that we were able to move forward again. The manager who had run the gym before me, was good enough to help me with it over the phone whenever I got stuck. Together we set things back to right, and I told the owner the good news.

But something had changed. When the owner came back from his trip, we fought for several days in a row. I was so blindsided, all the progress I had made mentally, slipped away. And I reached my limit. I was accused of being unprofessional with women; the owner was bypassing me and giving jobs that would normally be mine to the assistant manager again; when I had to take my dog for emergency surgery, I was accused again of being unprofessional even though I had asked someone to cover the two hours I was gone.

I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, and the fights were triggering me, so I quit out of frustration. I had purchased new clothes to wear to meetings I was planning only the day before. I had been hoping to spend the next ten years working there. After I quit the first time, I realized how much I loved it there, even with the problems, so I was hoping things would work out long term that time. I saw it as a second chance.

The day after I quit, the owner told me to return my keys on threat of police involvement. I was so flabbergasted I hopped in the van with my son, got a speeding ticket on the way, and found the owner with the new manager together in the office waiting for me. The new manager stood silently while he watched me lose my standing in the gym for something I hadn't done.

I was so confused I didn't know what to think. I wracked my brain, trying to think of some way I had offended the owner to the level of the reaction he was having with me, but I couldn't figure it out. I had been working almost around the clock on improving things in the gym as per the handshake agreement we had made only a few weeks before. I didn't know why he was so mad at me.

I started shaking profusely. I had several keys on my keyring. The one for work was thick and hard to remove, especially since I was shaking so bad. I was backing down the hallway, and the owner was walking toward me, pressuring me to hurry up with the keys. That's when I disconnected from reality. One minute I was staring at my boss, the next, he became my ex standing there in front of me, making no sense, mad and demanding. I didn't know it at the time, but I was disassociating. In my panic, I shouted "Fuck off..." calling him by my ex's last name.

The owner and I both froze in place for a second. The look of shock on his face pulled me back to the here and now, while another friend, seeing how distraught I was, told the owner to back off so I could get the key off of the ring as he was asking me to do. In the end I gave him my house key. I was having a panic attack, and I needed to get out of there. I asked him to say goodbye nicely a bunch of times, but he remained stone-faced and silent. I tossed a bag or something too hard and it slid across the counter onto the floor. Everyone was watching in silence.

I was walking shame that day at the gym. I've never recovered from that event.

That evening I got my answer. Someone had told the owner I was planning a takeover of his gym. I don't know why he believed that. It didn't even make logical sense. None of the fighters would have wanted me to be their coach. Most of them could run circles around me with their skills. People came to that gym, specifically to train with him, because he is a master in his trade. What's more... there's no way I would've ever betrayed him. I felt deeply that he had been instrumental in saving my life. And the job had provided me with safety and purpose.

His sister phoned and told me never to come back, and that I was banned for life. She sounded so disappointed in me. I told her it wasn't true, but the damage was done. Someone had made up a whopper about me, but I was the one who had lost my temper. Things likely would've turned out very differently if I'd had a handle on my emotions. In my hurt and confusion, I had sent the owner about twenty angry texts in a row, so I made it easy for whoever wanted me gone. I experienced that whole situation as an utter injustice.

However, as silver linings go, one significantly positive thing came out of that experience.

When I lost time during the public spectacle at the gym, my memory of the rest slipped away too. My friend was good enough to help me recall what had happened. I was laying on the floor near my fireplace weeping in front of him. The gym had been my safe place. The owner was my safe person. My friend talked me through the entire thing. I was even more distraught than I otherwise would've been, because up until that point my fight responses had been reserved for my ex. Even after everything I'd gone through, I couldn't believe I'd lost my temper in front of everyone like that. I was completely humiliated and ashamed.

I decided to go to the university bookstore, where I spent eight hundred dollars on psychology textbooks, then to Chapters where I spent a couple hundred more in their self-help section. I needed to know what the hell was wrong with me, and if my doctors and therapists weren't able to answer my questions, I was going to answer them myself. I found my answer in the first book. Every symptom, line by line. I had them all. It even talked about how my condition is frequently mistaken as BPD. I didn't have normal PTSD, that's why it was never a perfect fit. I had CPSTD.

The c stands for "complex." Fitting. It was the first time in over three years that I didn't think I was going insane. It was the first time I lifted the cloak of shame and peeked out from beneath it. I don't know if I will ever be able to restore my mental health to what it was. I've gone through a bunch more traumas since then, and those new traumas stacked on top of the ones I hadn't yet healed from, folded me inward like a paper with a note inside that isn't meant to be seen.

CPTSD isn't just a mental health issue, it literally alters your brain. The amygdala becomes over-active, leaving you in a constant state of high alert. Your hippocampus, losses function, leaving trauma memories unprocessed such that they feel fresh and raw, even when they happened years ago. And your prefrontal cortex becomes less active, leading to an inability to easily calm elevated emotional states and triggers when they happen.

To put it in another way, imagine that feeling you get when you watch a scary movie, and it's that scene where the music is haunting and you're not sure when the villain is going to pop out and make you jump, but you know it's coming soon. You're on the edge of your seat. You're holding your breath in anticipation. Then it happens... BAH!!! but instead of that whoosh of relief once the scene has played out and the excitement is over, you don't stop anticipating the jump. And it's like that everyday. Only it isn't a movie.

The relationship I was in turned out to be highly dysfunctional. Both of us brought our own unique issues to the table. I had the texting, ranting, harassing problem. It's up to him to acknowledge what he brought. We spent eight and a half years in a mostly on, but sometimes off, tumultuous romance. We are both highly passionate people with strong personalities, so we butted heads a lot. I'm sorry for my role in how things went between us. I consider him the love of my life, and I learned a lot from that love. Things didn't work out between us, but I don't regret the good times I spent with him. Even so, I had to make the hard choice to walk away, because the fighting was too much. I think he felt the same.

Over the next several years following the event at the gym I went through a lot. My CPTSD got so bad after I lost access to the gym, I dropped over twenty five pounds in only a couple of months because my stomach was so tied up in knots I couldn't eat. I went to the short stay unit once more, which turned out to be a big mistake. I felt entirely misunderstood by one of the doctors I saw, which added to my trauma. My regular therapist helped me work through what happened in hospital. Of all the therapists I saw, she was the one who helped me the most. I appreciate her for that.

I developed anemia as a result of the weight loss, and lost a lot of my hair. Most of it came back, but my iron dropped again so it's really thin now. I've written before in other blogs about some of the losses I sustained, so for anyone who has read the other blogs please pardon my redundancy. After the gym I was so isolated, there were only two people who were there for me on a day to day, week by week, basis. Almost everyone else dropped out of my life. Some, for reasons I could understand, others not so much. I withdrew from the rest. The owner and I talked, and he learned that I was not in fact trying to steal his gym, but things were never the same between us after that.

Whoever told that lie has to live with themselves.

I was a stay at home mom for years, so that was the only good job I'd had on my resume, since before I'd had kids, and I was not able to find an equivalent job to replace the one I lost. I found part time work, but it was not enough to sustain us in our beautiful house, so my kids and I pulled together and we managed to keep it just long enough for my daughter to graduate, then we lost our home. I took that loss really hard.

I cried behind my hand watching my furniture being carted out by random buyers from our posts online. As a child we moved so often I never truly had a sense of belonging. That house and that neighbourhood represented the first time in my life I truly felt I had a proper sense of home. Add to that, I was forced to become an empty-nester all at once when my kids were only eighteen and twenty. They handled the transition wonderfully, and got a place together which eased my mind considerably.

That winter, living in a new town where I didn't know anyone, and isolated beyond belief during COVID lockdowns, my dog got cancer and had to be put down. She died in my arms, literally wagging her tail until her last few seconds. Seven months later, a woman who was like a second mom to me died of a sudden heart-attack. Not long after that one of my closest friends, was brought up on serious criminal charges. He was like a cousin to me, but I couldn't support him through it, so I made the hard choice to let go of the friendship.

The man who caught me when I fell, during the first month after being thrown out of the gym; the one who had talked me through the night until eight in the morning; the man who held me, and smiled at me, and comforted me, and invigorated me intellectually during a time when I was so desperately broken hearted it hurt just to breathe-- that man... ended his own life. It's hard to find words to describe how hard that hit me. I didn't know he had been suffering so deeply. I wept bitterly over the news. If I had known, I would've done everything in my power to be there for him, as he had been there for me.

Then my dad died. My kids and I drove all day to get there in time to say goodbye, and when we arrived, I was the one who had to make the choice to take him off the meds that were keeping him with us. My mom was too distraught to let him go. I couldn't afford to attend his funeral but I wrote the eulogy. I had a frozen shoulder, lost my job, and had to temporarily close the little gym I'd opened on my own, all in the space of three months after he passed.

Someone I really liked and cared for betrayed my trust in a serious and extremely hurtful way. I was gossiped about. I was ostracized. I was bullied. I kept getting knocked down, but I kept standing up again too. My net worth reduced by a massive amount, and in the end, I lost my second home, and everyone I had come to know and love in that town too.

I think I was exhibiting unconscious signs that I was wounded and carrying shame. I was easy to exploit because I was pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction from how I had been before. I had been losing my temper in such embarrassing ways, I hid my reactions almost completely in the new town. I still had a few big drama moments, but mostly in private.

I'm sure I had micro-expressions, and I know for a fact that certain things I said and did when I was trying to avoid letting a fight trigger go off led to gossip and misinterpretations about me. I can see how they would think I was being rude by turning away. I wish they would have asked me, or told me I had offended them, because it was not my intention to upset anyone. I also made the mistake of confiding in the wrong people without understanding the intrinsic connections between those who had known each other for years. I've always been somewhat socially awkward, but the isolation I lived through made it worse.

After five years of striving to find my place in the community, trying to make a living that covered my basic bills, and trying to heal my wounds, I had no good options left, so I was forced to put my second home on the market almost five years to the day I had lost the last one. I had to leave. Again. Move number twenty-eight if my count is correct.

The echoes of my past were everywhere in the present. A woman at work didn't like me. Same as before. I kept getting reports from co-workers regarding things she had said about me. Same as before. She was well loved by most people there. I liked her too before she started complaining about me. Almost everyone took her side.

The truth was, I had her back. I was not her enemy. She had confided a secret in me, and I kept it to myself, and tried my best to support her. It didn't seem to matter. One on one bullying is no fun, but at least you can fight back. When an entire group of people start to ignore you when you walk into the room, or stop talking when you approach, that's a fight you'll never win. The only self-respecting choice left is to leave the place where you are not wanted.

Eight years after I'd had to leave the home gym that I loved so much, I had to close my own gym. Another echo. I'd lost the only job with wages that had been enough to live on, and my home in quick succession before, and now it was happening again. The parallels were astounding. I had to say goodbye to the kids I had come to think of as extended family. I absolutely loved my students. All of them. They each brought their own uniquely special qualities to class. It was such a joy and pleasure to watch them develop their skills. We had so much fun together, and I couldn't be more proud of them all for how hard they worked.

I dropped the ball while I was losing my second home. I behaved irresponsibly and I let the kids down. I wasn't myself in class, and I think they could tell because everyone's emotions were running really high those last two months. I'm sorry for that. They deserved better from me. On the up side, I was able to sell my gear to the owner of my home gym, so I know it will be put to good use, and that's something.

I hadn't been as mentally ill as I was going through the loss of my second home since years prior. All my suicidal thoughts and feelings came back full force. I was barely functional. I'd never fully recovered while I was in the new town, but I'd had some good times in my little place there. I was starting to like it. I wanted to stay. I tried to stay, but I ran out of money.

When I arrived in my new run down house, I fell into a grief-heavy depression, the likes of which I've never experienced before. I pushed away the remaining three people who bothered to talk to me in any regular fashion. Every time we talked, I was going through a new hardship. I had nothing positive to offer, and I found myself constantly feeling defensive about the validity of my experiences. I felt stupid and foolish. I felt like a social pariah living in exile.

I became silence.

I went days without speaking to, or seeing even one person.

Breaking the spell meant going to town for groceries, then I was right back into total isolation. I spent every holiday including my birthday alone, all year. My kids came to see me when they could, but it couldn't be very often because I live almost five hours away now. One friend made the trip. Other than that, I haven't seen anyone from back home, and that has been brutally hard. There are more sad tales to tell, but they are so squashed together at this point, they aren't worth mentioning.

I am not speaking lightly when I refer to the experiences I've laid out in this blog series, as torture. That's how it really felt. Acknowledging it publicly, is not a grab for attention. It is the fact of what I survived. Lies, once told, can take on a life of their own. When my ex chose to tell that one stupid, foolish lie just to keep himself from having to experience a few moments of discomfort-- as he told me later was his excuse, he set off the butterfly effect that robbed me of my health, my autonomy, and a big chunk of my future.

And I lost my ability to trust myself.

But I am not a quitter. I am not one to give up when I have the bit between my teeth. My story isn't over. I'm not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination, however, I am writing again. I published my first book, and I have more on the way. I started recording again and I can't wait to share the music my team and I have been creating. I stopped inhaling weed via smoking completely, and reduced my cannabis use to only candies on an as needed basis to help with CPTSD flareups and DDD (Degenerative Disc Disease) issues.

I gritted my teeth, and submitted to trying again to get my health issues dealt with, and I have since found a nurse practitioner who has validated the reality of what I've been facing alone all these years, and God willing, that means I will have a chance to restore at least some of my health.

If you've made it this far, thank you for taking the time to absorb my words and read my story. It has been hard for me to share about this. Super hard, really. It scares me in some ways. I've been threatened before that if I tell the truth, there will be consequences for me to face. But the fact is, staying silent also comes with consequences, and those consequences have grown too heavy and oppressive for me to live with anymore.

Writing certain scenes in this blog series, made my heart beat so hard, I had to stop and take a deep breath before I could continue. It is far from easy sharing such personal information, but I have been living in shame, and when you're hiding the truth of who you are, you lose the good parts along with the bad. I've been afraid to sing or laugh or play, lest someone try to take it away again. That is no way to live. It is inauthentic and I want to be who I really am.

None of us truly know what the future may bring, or how long we have left in this life, so I'm doing now what I should've been doing all along... putting it in God's hands. I'm stepping out of my own way, and surrendering to the process He has planned for me. I'm trusting Him to "guide my paths," and bring me through the brambles, back into the light.

In the end, all any of us can do is our best. When we mess up, we can take ownership, learn from our mistakes, and do better the next time-- and when we do that...

Redemption becomes possible, even for someone like me, in my opinion.