Hidden, In Plain Sight. The First Time.

Don't dismiss what we tell you, preferring to believe what is easier to believe--what is not so ugly to accept. Please decide it is not okay, not our fault, not something we have caused to happen. It is in them--in each abuser--the ability to abuse and to cross such lines, believing they are justified in their actions.

Almost a year and three entries later, I have clearly neglected the important task of telling my story, although my story is not about me. It is about the sad truth that there are so many like me, and that we seem to remain hidden. We are hidden in plain sight.

We’re your neighbors and your friends. We’re your family. And we’re too ashamed for you to know how we live. Until we can’t take it. Then we tell you. And so often, you don’t believe us. And sometimes that’s the worst pain of all.

I remember the first time the police came to my home. It was late and he was drunk. These visits would take place too many times in the years to come, although mostly when Rick was sober. I didn’t know. Maybe I should have.

A man had touched me inappropriately in a bar. VERY inappropriately. I handled it. Rick was not beside me when it happened. He learned what had happened but never said a word to the man, which I believe he regretted. I believe he felt like less of a man that I had handled it and he didn’t. I was glad he didn’t--he was drunk and it would have been ugly had he tried. Rick’s friend was there and ensured we quickly left the building. It was over and I wanted to go home.

But the anger got inside him, and that anger grew. On the way home his anger escalated into rage, he screamed and he called me the ugliest things. He demanded I take him back to the bar and he threatened me if I didn’t. Of course, I would not.

Almost home, he demanded I take him to get some food--Taco Bell-- his favorite late night meal. Perhaps, I thought, it might calm him down if I took him. And this had become my objective--to remain patient in the face of his rage, and to find a way to calm him down. Food in hand, we headed home. I noticed he had removed his seatbelt and insisted he fasten it once again, but he refused and his anger flared upon my insistence. In defiance and retaliation, he lowered his window and tossed the entire bag of food out the window, which contained a burrito supreme with my name written all over it, which I also happened to be craving by this point. Now I was unhappy too. My patience was slowly diminishing.

I will admit, I reacted, after everything that had already happened, after twenty extra minutes of driving to reach his food of choice, late at night, with the man I loved raging in the seat beside me, screaming names and accusations and obscenities of the ugliest kind. Without saying a word, I stopped the car and hit reverse. I pulled over and got out to retrieve the bag of food from the place it had landed. I unwrapped and opened-up a large burrito, exposing it’s filling and tossing it directly onto his lap, face down to maximize the mess.

He was apparently too shocked and too drunk to process what I had just done quickly enough to react. I was sober so my reaction was expeditious, and I am no fool, so I quickly removed the mess from his lap and tossed it far out of reach--I was in no mood to become a matching set. I drove home and did not say a word. I was done talking. He was not.

He demanded I take him back to buy more food, but I kept to my direction. Finally we arrived home, at which time he disappeared upstairs and I was grateful not to hear and see his anger--it was trying. Then I heard the start of a car and watched from my front window as he drove away. Fear ran through me, soon turning to anger that he would, once again, choose to drive in such a state.

I could not bring myself to leave until I was certain he returned home safely. Thirty minutes later and round-two of Taco Bell in hand, he returned and sat down at the kitchen table to devour his meal. I quietly slipped out the front door with the suitcase I had packed while he was gone, no particular destination in mind. I am certain he must have heard me pull away but I did not look back. Just minutes of driving and I was pierced with the thought--my grandmother’s china. My grandmother’s china. I did a u-turn and headed home. A feeling of relief came over me when I entered the house to see my precious heirlooms still intact, perfectly placed, looking far too lovely for such a night.

Loud noise came down the stairs. Then so did he, with a look on his face that told me something. I ran up to find the room that contained my grandparents furniture completely destroyed. My first thought was confusion as to how he accomplished such destruction in such a short time. The two antique sleigh beds that my sister and I had slept in as little girls--that had been oiled and cared-for and kept beautiful for more years than I had been living, were in pieces.

Deep marks covered white walls in places where fine wood had been slammed up against them before being turned upside-down. The content of my dresser drawers were dumped and thrown around the room. The drawers were tossed across the room, landing in random places. The hand-carved backing of my great-grandmother’s chest of drawers was ripped from its body. Every item from every surface was thrown around my room, smashed and tossed and broken, even those items carefully placed on the beautiful dressing table my grandmother used when she was a little girl, which had been left to me, and which I adored. It too no longer stood, but instead lay on the floor in pieces.

Every drawer emptied and tossed onto the pile of clothing and wood and mess. The rounded mirror, which moments before had been affixed, had been ripped away and rested somewhere in the rubble. Pieces of ceramic flower pots lay on the floor, smashed, after the contents of soil and plants had been intentionally dumped and spread across my clothing that had been emptied from my dresser and pulled from my closet. He destroyed the one place in the house that was allowed to be mine. He had destroyed every bit of it. He had done so because I had left him.

I saw what he did and I screamed in anger. Over and over I screamed. It was loud inside my head and I remember my whole body shaking it hurt so much to see what was left of my family‘s memories, and to know the man I loved so deeply had done this to me. It had all been so precious. In this moment I hated and feared him in a way that was overwhelming. He was someone else. I ran down the steps, toward the front door but I was not fast enough. He caught me. I would not be leaving.

I remember being dragged into the kitchen while I screamed and tried to get loose. I remember struggling and flailing and moving my body in every way possible, trying to get free from his grip, but he was strong. I remember being held down. I remember my wrists being pinned with his hands. I remember my body being pinned down by the weight of his body pressed against mine. I remember his face in my face. I remember the smell of liquor so strong I was breathing it in. I remember crying and screaming and begging him to let me go. I remember his rage and his screams.

I remember lying on the kitchen floor and sobbing when he let me go. And I remember the sense of helplessness that seemed to be everywhere. It was inside me. It filled the room and became the air. It traveled through the streets outside my home like oozing tar, thick, suffocating and inescapable.

I went to the phone and called the police as I sobbed hysterically. One officer came to our home. By the time he arrived, I was terrified he would take Rick to jail. I was terrified and angry with myself for calling because I loved this man more than I had ever loved anyone. What had I done? It was a mistake that would ruin the life I believed he and I were supposed to have together, with children and family and all I had envisioned for the rest of my life.

I was at a crossroads, unexpectedly and unprepared to make that kind of choice in a split second--the kind of choice that would change my life forever and destroy everything I thought my future would be. I told the officer it had all been a misunderstanding--that I had been upset about my furniture but he never touched me. We talked and Rick calmly confirmed my story. The officer left.

I used to wonder why women didn’t tell. And for the first time, I understood. It was not a lesson I expected to learn, nor was it one I wanted.