This post describes domestic violence. If you need help right now: National Domestic Violence Hotline 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. In danger right now, call 911. In the Northwoods, Tri-County Council’s 24/7 line is 1-800-236-1222.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I am not writing a PSA. I am writing the night I drove myself to the hospital with my face split open and told them I tripped over a dog.
The blood was hot.
That is the part nobody puts in the pamphlets. When it starts coming, it is warm. Not movie-warm. Actual heat on your skin, soaking the front of your shirt, hitting the floor in little drops that keep going after you think they should stop.
We had a little mirror hung on the wall so the toddlers could look at themselves and freak out. The drops went across that mirror. All the way to the bathroom. I turned the corner and looked down, and my youngest had a spot of it on his cheek. He was barely walking. Maybe two.
I said oh my god. Out loud. To nobody.
Then I drove myself. Seventeen stitches. I told the staff I tripped over a dog and hit a glass table. He was texting the whole time. You’re not calling the cops, are you? You’re not calling the cops, are you? I texted back no. Everything’s fine. I’m just gonna get this shit fixed and come home.
And then it was like nothing happened.
That scar was not new. Years before that, he had punched me in the face and put my tooth through my lip. The night with the blood on the mirror, he hit me in that same spot. It ripped open. A jagged tear down the side of my face. He did not hit me with the mirror. The mirror was just there. I noticed it because the blood had reached it.
I had hit him first that night, with a pair of baby jeans. I am not cleaning that up for you. By then he had me so spun out that I looked like the crazy one, which is the whole point when you live with somebody who has those traits. He was trying to leave with the kids. I said no. I swung a pair of jeans. He split my face back open.
I went to work like that. More than once. On auto control. Trying to figure out what to tell people about my face. Eventually I stopped inventing it. I told them my husband beats the shit out of me. I know it’s stupid. I know I look stupid. I am still here to do my job.
If you are in it, I am not going to tell you that line fixed anything. It didn’t. I stayed.
Domestic abuse is not one kind of story, and mine was not clean.
The first real relationship was high school into my early twenties. He had the anger. He was the aggressor. I fought back. A lot. Verbal. Emotional. Cheating. And the domestics. I called the cops. We went through the system. It was bad every time, and it did not end the relationship. I stayed in that for about ten years.
When I finally left, I did the thing people warn you about and I did not hear them. I had already been talking to somebody else online while I was still in it. My dad had just died. It was 2008. I wanted somebody to love me. We went on a date, drank, spent the night. My ex found out and kicked me out. I moved into a 10-by-10 shed in the new guy’s parents’ backyard. Then my own place, which did not hold. Then his place. Then ours.
He was charismatic. Sweet. Attentive. A six-year-old daughter. A family that let me in. Every article I have read since calls that love bombing. I could not see it. I was grieving and dysfunctional and freshly out of one bad thing, which is not the same as being ready for a good one.
The first time it got violent, it was not a punch. He threw a can of orange soda. It exploded in the kitchen. Window, table, walls, floor. Orange and wet and sticky. Then he pushed me around. Then he said, “This is where it starts. It never ends.”
He was telling me the rules. I heard it as a warning. It was a permission slip he wrote for himself.
We lived in a trailer park. At night I would run the length of the trailer turning lights on, because we did not really have curtains, and I thought if the lights were on somebody outside could see him beating me and help. Then I would turn them off. Then on. He chased me. I got knocked down. Grabbed by the hair. Dragged down the hallway. Gotten on top of. Strangled.
That relationship ran, on and off, from 2008 until 2015 or 2016. Pregnant. Babies. The fights. The leaving and the going back.
Here is the part the awareness-month posts do not like. I did not pack a bag and walk out because I had finally had enough. I reached out. I emailed his probation agent while he was in meth psychosis. He had domestic charges from the fights. His probation got revoked. He went to prison. That is how I got out. It was not neat. It was not a movie ending. The door opened because the state opened it.
My kids were little. They remember pieces. They are older now, and the effects are longer than I understood when I was just trying to get through a night. The effects on me are long too. I have a marriage now that is violence-free. We fight. We do not fight like I might die, and we do not fight like I need a plan for the kids if I do.
I am not writing this so you can clap for the survivor arc. I am writing it because October shows up every year and the posts get soft, and soft did not help me.
If you are in it, I get the knot. You know you should leave. You do not want to leave. You know you need to go. You know you might stay. Your brain and your heart are not on the same side, and nobody on the outside can untie that for you by telling you how obvious it looks. It did not look obvious from inside the trailer with the lights going on and off.
What I can tell you is the smaller thing. The blood is hot. The text messages while you are in the emergency room are part of it. The story you tell the nurse is part of it. Going to work the next day on auto control is part of it. Calling it stupid, calling yourself stupid, is part of it. None of that means you are too far gone to get out. It means you are in it.
I got out messy. Progress was still progress. It counted.
If this is your night, or close to it, these are the numbers I wish I had trusted sooner.
If you are in the Northwoods, 54568 and the towns around it, Woodruff, Arbor Vitae, Minocqua, Boulder Junction, St. Germain, Manitowish Waters, Lac du Flambeau:
Tri-County Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault covers Forest, Oneida, and Vilas Counties. Shelter, safety planning, legal advocacy, restraining-order help, medical advocacy, emergency transportation. Free and confidential. The shelter runs out of Rhinelander. The Eagle River outreach office is closed right now. They are doing mobile advocacy, so call. Do not drive to the courthouse expecting a walk-in.
24/7 crisis line: 1-800-236-1222
Office: 715-362-6841
3716 Country Drive, Suite 6, Rhinelander, WI 54501
tricountycouncil.org
Lac du Flambeau Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault Program, Benase Equay Wakaigan. 24/7 crisis line, on-call advocates, emergency shelter, restraining-order help, court accompaniment.
24/7: 1-800-236-7660
Office: 715-588-7660
P.O. Box 67, Lac du Flambeau, WI 54538
If it is happening right now, call 911. Vilas County Sheriff is 715-479-4441. You can also dial 211 for Wisconsin resources any time.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788, or thehotline.org.
You do not owe anyone a clean exit.
Belle
Progress is Progress
.png)
