This is far and away the hardest part of my story to tell. To date there are only a handful of people who know it at all. And nobody has ever gotten the whole story. I can't promise you will either, since there is little chance I will remember everything in the correct order. But I will do my best to tell you everything I can.
I wanted to wait to share this story, but I realized that all of the other stories will hold a bit more weight if this one is known first. So, even though I have no idea in this moment how this is going to go, here is my story. This is the story about the night I was almost murdered.
There are so many reasons I kept this story to myself. I will start with the elephant in the room. I did not want to tell anyone, because despite the fact that he tried to shoot me, I did not leave him. I did not tell the police, and I did not tell the doctors when they asked what had happened. I was shot at, in my home, by my child's father, and I did not do a damn thing about it.
How do you explain that inaction to someone who has never lost themselves to another person? How do you look a sane person in the face and tell them the worst of your trauma without implying that it is your own fault because you accepted it? After all, if we were at the point where we recognize that the situation is also our fault for allowing it, we would no longer be in it. There are so many complex factors at play when we are looking at what victims are thinking when they refuse help and stay in situations that are dangerous. I want to try to help you understand what the mental state of someone in this situation is like.
First of all, nobody continues dating an abuser. None of our stories start with, "On our first date, he gave me a black eye, and raped me.". Nobody enters a long term relationship with the person that is going to murder them. I am not claiming, like some, that these people intentionally isolate their victims from family and limit their resources. It does happen. But it happens on a subconscious level. My abuser did not wake up one day and tell me that I could not have friends. Instead he did this . . .
Suddenly traveling to see my good friends was too expensive, or we always had plans that stopped me from going to see them. He was jealous of any time I spent
with anyone else. He didn't mind acting like an ass in front of my friends to make them not want to come around. Those he could not chase away, he slept with.
He suggested we have one vehicle to save money. The vehicle he had to take to
work during the day (leaving me stuck home) and also had to take at night when I
worked, so he could cheat, and know I was where he left me.
I did my own part by complaining about the same thing to the same people for so
long, they stopped caring at all. When people spoke against him, I ignored it, justified his behavior, or stopped talking to them, if they didn't get tired of the game
and stop talking to me first, that is.
One by one, I lost every connection to the real world that I had. I did not have parents to keep me in check, I did not have a strong support system that taught me I deserved better. I did not have somewhere I felt was a safe place to go. By the time this night happened, my father was dead, my mother was certifiable, I had no friends, no money, and no back up plan. I needed him to survive. My daughter needed him for a place to live. By the time this happened, I had managed to allow him to bring me to the point where I had no choice but to stay. I had no phone, I could not call someone even if I had thought there was someone to call. I had no job, no car, no money. My only option it seemed was a shelter in a shitty city where the only life I would build would be from walking to my shitty job to pay rent on a shitty studio in a shitty school district all by myself. And no way to get there even if it did sound better than the house we were in where yes, he abused me but some days he was nice and my child had a room, and a good school, and a father. At least, that was my logic then. I know now that "logic" is not the right word for what that was.
So I never told anyone. And the longer I never told anyone, the worse it was. Because the crazier it was to be with someone who tried to shoot you. I mean, you certainly can't tell anyone when you are still with him! That makes you crazy, right?? It is so easy, even now, for me to see that and say, "well, if you can't tell people what he did, should you be with him?", but the brain has an amazing way of shoving the obvious to the side, doesn't it??
So, I sat on my story. After all, my daughter had no idea, she was asleep two floors above me. And in my mind, he never abused her, so why should I take her away from him? I was in denial of a very dangerous fact: it was only a matter of time until he did.
I do not even remember what we were fighting over that night. I usually don't, because it is usually something petty. There were the standards: money, women, him just being mean. But this time, I don't remember what caused it. I remember flashes of the night. Bits and pieces in no particular order. It was November of 2013, 3 days before Thanksgiving. It was night time. He was drunk. My daughter was asleep upstairs.
We did our laundry in the basement, and I remember going down there during the fight. At the bottom of the flight of 11 stairs, there was a 90 degree turn and three more steps. When you got to the bottom and looked straight ahead, to the right was the back wall of the basement, which stretched to the North wall. To the left and behind you was the South wall. Against that wall, past the stair well was a washer and dryer, past that, the automatic garage door was along the front wall, and though it was a storage area, there was some clear space to do the laundry and walk in and out of the garage door when it was open. This space is where most of the fight took place. The harder I think of it, the less I remember, or maybe, the more I realize how much I forgot. There was no gun in the room when the fight started. That I know. I do not remember how I got there, but I remember being on the floor. Laying on the floor on my stomach. I know it was him, being physical, but I have absolutely no memory of how I came to be laying on the floor. I could not get up. I remember that. I remember him walking away, and going up the stairs. I remember laying there crying, and unable to get up, and thinking of what I was going to do next. I don't know how long I was there, but he came back as I got up.
When he came back he had a shotgun. My drunk abuser came down the stairs with a loaded shot gun.
In that moment, I became 12 times more likely to die that night.
He took the gun and smashed me in the head with it. I don't know if it was the butt, or the barrel, but from behind, he took the gun, and hit me so hard I fell to the ground again.
.
Some of the things I do remember I never have told anyone. This is one of those things. I don't know why, but I always wanted to keep this one to myself . . .
He took the shot gun, and stuck the barrel between my legs. He held it there while he told me it was loaded. I remember exactly how the pressure felt. The hard metal of the gun, the pressure against my body as I registered the fact that his finger was the only thing keeping me from being shot in the most brutal of ways. He sat down eventually on an empty red milk crate and laid the gun on his lap as he called his mother.
He called his mother.
He called his mother and told her he was going to kill me. From Florida, she sat on the phone listening to me cry for help. Listening to her son tell her that he had a gun and was going to kill me. He was telling her to say goodbye to me.
She phoned a friend. She phoned a God damn friend who lived down the road and asked him to check on me. By the time he got there and knocked on the door and just left when nobody answered, it would have been too late, even if he had bothered properly checking.
This part I remember much more clearly. After he hung up, I somehow got up off the floor and crawled to the garage door. I sat up with my back against the door, too afraid to try to open it while someone sat on a milk crate 5 feet away from me with a loaded shot gun aimed at my face.
I don't remember what was said. We sat there for a minute in this pose, on the edge of becoming yet another in a series of statistics I was racking up that night. Staring at the gun was too much. Looking at his face was not an option. I pulled my knees up, rested my elbows on them, and held my face in my hands as I looked at my knees, wondering what was next. I'm sure what seemed like minutes took mere seconds, but eventually, he got bored with my silence.
The sound I remember most from that moment was the sound after whatever words were spoken. The sound after he decided my life was worth nothing. The sound that came after he decided he was the one in control of my life, and death.
Shots Fired.
It is an odd sensation to be deaf and to hear something at the same time. I was deaf, he was speaking but I heard nothing from him. The only thing I could hear was the ringing in my ears. Do you know the sound movies play after someone gets shot? The high pitched ring that seems to come from a vacuum sealed space? It sounded EXACTLY like that. Just, for the record, that is one effect Hollywood nails. The sound you hear after someone launches a bullet at your head.
I remember the smell. Hot gun powder. It filled my nose adding to the sensory overload that would become the latest cause of my PTSD and psychogenic amnesia.
I remember looking at my hands, and seeing blood on them. This was by far the most confusing part. How in the fuck did this guy just shoot me, and I am here registering that I have been shot? I see the blood trickle down my chest and I sit there in my stupor. I have no idea what was going on with him, and what he saw or did not in those panic filled seconds. I looked at my hands, at the blood, and felt my head, looking for the source of the blood.
I remember looking at him and saying "You fucking shot me?!" as I ran up the stairs and to the bathroom, the whole time wondering how I was functioning when I had clearly been shot in the head.
Fortunately when I looked in the mirror my person was in tact. By the grace of God that night, he did not actually shoot me in the head. Clearly what had happened was shrapnel inflicted, or so I assumed.
Shooting at a person must have a grounding effect on a psychopath. Because suddenly the scum bag who just took a shot at me was so concerned about what had happened. He wanted to see the damage, so he could downplay it. But there was no way to downplay the blood, and the goose-egg-size lump he left on my head when he hit me with the gun.
Get this, I went to the hospital. I had to. I clearly had a concussion and needed medical attention. I do not remember if it was that night or the next morning, I'm sure my medical records do, but he did take me to the hospital.
I want you to think about that. My abuser was so sure of his control over me, he knew I would not even tell the doctors what happened. And he was right. I lied. I told them I had wrecked my four wheeler and hit my head. Had I gone to a better hospital, had I had a more concerned doctor that day, the truth would have been undeniable. But, we did a head scan, and I was diagnosed with a concussion and sent on my way.
Did you know that some bullets aren't made all of metal? Did you know that some bullets have a red plastic tip? Did you know it is possible to have a piece of plastic lodged into your head while getting your head scanned and it could be missed completely?
Well, now you know all of those things.
When I got home, I finally decided to wash the blood out of my hair. It was dry, and smelly and matted to my head. So I went to the bathroom, the same one I ran to after being shot at, and started picking through my hair. On the left side of my head, after picking out a particularly difficult knot, something clattered into the sink. It was the red plastic tip from the shotgun bullet. My heart stopped. I can, to this day, point directly to the spot behind my temple the piece popped out of. There was a tiny hole there, and for a while a scar I could feel with my fingertips. I wonder if there is a tiny scar hiding under my hair. The unseen but visible reminder that I was in fact just lucky to be alive.
I did not leave that night, that month, or even that year. It would take another 3 years before I would finally move out of our shared home, and some time after that to finally remove him from my life. The day I left, I left because he hit me in front of our daughter. Although, if you ask him, he did not hit me. He will use this sentence like a priest uses a crucifix during an exorcism. Hold that sentence out for examination and protection, the truth within what it does not say. Wordplay becoming a tool in his constant need to deny accountability. Because he did not hit me. He instead picked up a dust pan and threw it at the back of my head. My daughter watched as her mother hit the floor and blood started dripping down my neck. There was no denying this one when I looked at her. This was the moment.
This was the moment I directly taught my little girl what you do or do not accept from a man. I could stay, and she would then have no other choice but to think that this behavior is acceptable. I could not take that future guilt. The guilt that would have come when her first boyfriend laid hands on her and I would know that I was the one who should have taught her better.
Or I could go. I could call a friend and pack the clothes we needed and take my kid and go. So that is what I did. I took my kid, and what I could fit into my friends trunk, and I left. I would like to be able to tell you that that was the end. That I got in that car, got custody, got away and never entertained his bullshit again. But that would be a lie, or a fairy tale. The truth is much harder. It took another year and a half to get him all the way out of my life. But this was my start. I moved to the same town my friend lived in, I sent my daughter to the school in that town, and my sister gave me a loan to help get my own place. That was in 2016. It would not be until 2018 that I would start the disconnecting and healing process. But leaving an abuser is most often not a big, one step event. Much like losing yourself to them, you must reclaim yourself a bit at a time. Only until you have done that, and removed your abuser from your life, can you start to heal. Even broken up, my lack of detachment stopped me from healing and realizing how tragic my situation was. So long as your abuser is an influence in your life, you will never see the full extent of their damage. When they are finally gone, the part of your life they stole takes on a different shape. It becomes a chapter in your story, rather than the setting.
The feeling that comes over you when you look back at something like I went through is hard to describe. When I think of my time with my abuser, I see it as a period in my life, it is dark, sad and angry. When I think of how life was when living with my abuser I am dumbfounded. It shocks me how little the constant anger shocked me. When I hear him speak now, I hear anger he does not even notice. I pick out nuances of his sentences and see them for what they are. They are examples of how much his anger is a part of him. How much his damage is just who he is. He does not notice that when he "tells" someone to do something he should instead be asking them to do it. He does not realize that snapping and cursing at people over trivial matters is unacceptable. Once, while on the phone with my daughter, he was so verbally aggressive with his mother in the background it made my daughter cry. I was so torn in that moment. I was so angry at him for being like that around her. I was angry that he could not even control himself for a phone call. But on the flip side of the same token, I was so happy and proud that the behavior was so shocking to my little girl that it upset her. I saw that she inherently knew that it was not how a person should behave. And in that moment, I was nothing but thankful that I survived long enough to teach her that.