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From Weakness Comes Strength: Part Two

My Personal Experience with Domestic Abuse

By Anne & AnamesaPublished 6 years ago 18 min read
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If you haven't read my "Part One," certain references used throughout this Part Two will be confused. I suggest reading Part One to understand this part fully. However, a small recap: I was bullied horribly in 8th grade, so much so that I decided I wanted a fresh start somewhere else and chose to go to a catholic high school a few towns over. I lost many friends, stopped eating, and was extremely depressed. Going into high school, I was entirely anxious, but wanted to make a good impression on what would hopefully be new friends and become a happy person again.

The start of high school was everything I wanted it to be. I made the cheer team, made tons of friends, and started to become healthy again. I didn't think dark thoughts anymore, I genuinely had an appetite, and for the first time in what had felt like forever, I didn't feel the smallest ounce of sadness.

From the time I started my new school, I on and off would speak to this boy in the grade above me. He was nice, and we would often have deeper conversations than I did with all the other new friends I had made. I never thought too much into it, but did develop a connection with him being that we would talk about serious things in our lives and that he essentially was the first person to really get to know me at my new school. However, come winter, that friendship went on a hiatus. I couldn't tell you why, just because I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure that means it was nothing significant.

A few weeks after we stopped speaking as often as we did, a new boy started giving me attention. He was also a year older than I was, but seemed to be more friendly with the teachers. I always thought he was sort of obnoxious during lunch period — he was always pretty loud and constantly cracking jokes at other people.

As we got to know each other, we quickly entered the "talking" phase. If you don't know what the "talking" phase is, it is basically what would be referred to as dating way back when (no actual commitment, getting to know each other). I was taken back by how quickly things got serious, but I figured that's just how it was once you got to high school.

I quickly felt as though I could open up to him. I told him all about my bullying experience the year before. I explained every comment and insult people made to me that cut me to my core. He really seemed to have genuinely cared.

Within a matter of weeks we were an official couple, and every day we would spend hours together after school waiting to be picked up by our moms. He would constantly hang out at my house and with my friends. He seemed so normal.

Let me give a quick bit of information: this relationship only lasted six months. Everything you continue to read happened within the six months of the relationship or the first few months following after.

I slowly started to notice that some of his behaviors did not seem acceptable of a boyfriend to do to his girlfriend.

Around our friends at lunch, he began to make jokes at me, using the insults I told him the people who bullied me said. He would exploit my insecurities of my weight and breakouts, using them as punch lines or a way for him to gain control over what I was doing. Of course, I didn't notice this at the time.

I distinctly remember one day at lunch, coming back to our table with one of my girl friends and placing my tray down before I sat. He looked me in the eyes and said, "Jeez, Anne, with the way that tummy has been looking, you're really okay with eating that?"

I instantly threw out my food and sat down, quietly ignoring how hungry I was. I felt as though if my boyfriend is pointing out that my stomach is bigger than it should be, then he is just being honest and I shouldn't eat as much. This lead to me only eating one small meal a day and working out excessively for the next four years. I would skip breakfast, lunch was only apple slices with pretzel sticks and a snack pack of hummus, and I would just pick at whatever my mom made for dinner. I had cheer practice three days a week, and only the other days I would use YouTube videos to work out in my bedroom.

Anyway, my weight was not the only thing he would make fun of. He would relentlessly tease me for my skin. I had more breakouts than most, but certainly did not suffer from severe acne. I had opened up to him once about how people who bullied me would tell me to "buy some ProActiv to fix my face," and how much that hurt me. For whatever reason, he thought that this would be a great joke to make, at lunch, in front of a whole lunch room. No one laughed besides him, but I was still beyond mortified that he would repeat a comment I told him in confidence, and told him this comment while explaining what the people who bullied me would say. I don't know why I brushed it off and never called him out for using that against me, but I wish I did.

This was not the only time I regretted opening up to him about being bullied. He began using more and more of the comments other people made that I told them to use against me. Eventually it escalated into him blackmailing me to be the person he wanted me to be — he would threaten to turn everyone in the school against me; to make them bully me the same way kids from my town did just months prior. I was terrified. He turned me into his puppet. I wouldn't have believed him, but a girl he was close with hated me from the moment I said I was interested in making my hair blonder, because "she was the only girl who could be blonde" in our school (even though she wasn't to begin with) and the guy she liked was one of my friends and had called me cute once; she had made it her mission to talk bad about me to anyone who would listen. I figured he would team up with her to make everyone hate me. Looking back it was a stupid thought, being that the friends I had made there were genuine people who wouldn't fall for stuff like that, but I was terrified to be tormented again.

The blackmailing and name calling continued for months. Then he started something new — he would pick something random to get mad at me about, break up with me, threaten to make everyone hate me, then tell me he was kidding. I specifically remember one time when I was at a family party, he got angry over text at the fact that I didn't ask if I could bring him. He told me I was ashamed of him and wanted to keep him from meeting extended family members, then "broke up" with me for "being embarrassed" of him. He said he was going to tell everyone in our school that I was talking bad about all of them to him, and tell them the things people used to say to me so they would do the same. I hid in the bathroom for at least an hour crying, feeling petrified of what he would do. Of course I begged him not to end things out of fear of what could happen at school, and after over an hour of complete terror for me, he finally admitted he was joking. I was relieved, but this happened several more times and each time I felt the same fear. The way this played with my emotions still affects my stability in relationships and friendships to this date.

One day he came over and I had been wearing sweatpants. We planned on just watching a movie and hanging inside the house, so I didn't see a need to get all dressed up. Well, he wasn't a fan of that. He scolded me for wearing "sloppy clothes," and told me I needed to start asking for permission and clearing my outfits by him first before I could wear them. According to him, it was an insult that he would "go out of his way" to spend time with me for him to show up and see me wearing "sloppy clothes" and "not even attempting to cover my acne." I forgot to ask his permission about wearing sweatpants once after he said this, and it led to me getting screamed at for being disrespectful. He had me so wound up on asking permission for what I wear when I saw him that I did this in the relationship I had two years after. I didn't even notice myself doing it until the other guy had pointed it out. Even when he did, I tried to justify it, to which he responded, "why would I care what you decide to wear? Wear whatever you feel comfortable in." It took me several months into this new relationship to break that habit.

What I was wearing was not the only thing I had to ask permission for. I had to ask for permission to hang out with my friends, to text my friends, to like posts on Facebook, and what I could order when we went out to eat (even though I always paid for us both).

He always had extremely obsessive behaviors. He swore we were going to get married, picked out names for our future children, and would freak out anytime someone questioned what he was saying, given that we were only 15. He didn't like me spending much time with guy friends because he didn't want me to picture a future with a different guy. He would even tell me how he would kill himself if I didn't marry him.

In the last month of our relationship, things amplified. He would show up to my house unannounced almost everyday, and would threaten me if I didn't come him immediately. One day, I was at work with my mom at the school she worked at when he had decided to come over. He accused me of being with another guy, and had threatened to break the sliding door on my house, steal my dog, and let him loose somewhere in his town (which is not a good neighborhood). I made up some excuse to leave and ran home.

When I got back, he was sitting in my yard, demanding I let us in the house. I didn't take keys with me, both because my parents did not allow me to be in my house with a boy when they weren't around and because I was honestly scared of what he would try to do to me. Of course, he threw a fit over this, but I eventually got him to calm down.

At the time we had a trampoline in our yard. We hung out on there for a while, and he was in a pretty good mood. We were jumping for hours, and I had forgot to answer my friends text from earlier. I had plans with a group of my girl friends to go out to dinner that night, and they were texting in our group chat about what time we were going, etc. I also received a text from one of my guy friends I had grown up with (one who this boyfriend of mine had also become friends with) asking if I wanted to hang out with a group of our friends in town that night. I felt bad about not answering them for so long, so I finally responded to confirm plans with the girls and tell my guy friend we could maybe hang out after dinner.

I was immediately screamed at for looking at my phone and actually answering my friends. He called me the c word, a bitch, selfish, told me I was a rude hostess for not giving him my "full attention." He got off the trampoline, and I told him to finish his fit and talk to me about why he was angry after he had cooled down.

My brother has always been a big baseball player, and we had a "Hurricane" by Derek Jeter machine in our yard for him to practice hitting. He had been swinging at that, presumably to get his anger out for me answering my friends. I leaned up against the deck, looking through my Facebook feed, waiting for him to calm down and talk to me. I was always very anxious when he was angry, because I always feared he would get everyone to turn against me or start screaming at me all the insults I tried so hard to forget about.

As I was scrolling through Facebook, I was suddenly struck in the face. I only remember looking down and seeing blood pour from my face. It dawned on me that he had just broken my nose, with one of my brother's metal baseball bats.

I screamed at him, "You broke my nose!"

He began to panic, saying he didn't mean to break it. He took off his shirt and put it under my nose. "You can't tell your parents," he said over and over.

He called his mom to tell her what happened, and I heard him say, "Mom I don't know what to do, I hit her with a bat, I broke her nose!" She responded by telling him to make me lie so he wouldn't get in trouble.

Of course, he told me if I didn't tell people I fell getting off the trampoline that he would make my life a living hell. I was scared, now more than ever, crying hysterically. I wasn't crying about the pain of my nose, either.

"If you would've just paid attention to me, I wouldn't have done that. Do you see what you made me do, all because you have to be a selfish bitch?"

Foolishly, I went along with his lie. Even in the hospital, I was too afraid to tell anyone the truth. I had to get reconstructive surgery. My cheek bone had broken and was poking through one of my nostrils, the bridge of my nose was completely shattered, and the middle piece of my nose was completely to the right. I couldn't breathe properly, and had to get surgery within a few days of the event.

On the fourth of July, the day after my surgery, he showed up at the fireworks in my town. I was there with my cousin, and he managed to find us in a sea of people. My cousin noticed a group of our friends that we hadn't seen in a while. One of them was a boy. She got up to go say hi to them, and when I stood up to go with her, he had pulled me by the arm and forced me to sit down. I hit the concrete bench so hard my whole nose rattled.

My parents weren't home yet by the time the fireworks ended, so my cousin and I decided to walk home (we had similar routes). She was with one of our other friends, and we all began to walk home together.

As we approached a park near my house, he insisted we cut through it, and separate from my cousin and our friend there. I didn't have much choice, considering he had death grip on my hand and I was nervous that if I tried to argue with him, he would hit me again. As we walked through the park, he pulled my into the dugout on one of the little league fields. He pressed me up against the wall, holding me at my shoulders, screaming at me. Screaming that I better keep my mouth shut about my nose, screaming that I ruined his life, screaming that I disrespected him by just standing up to greet a friend who was a boy. I don't remember if I had texted my parents where we were, but my dad showed up in our family van to pick us up, and I had never felt more relieved in my life.

I waited until he was away at camp and I was away on vacation to breakup with him. I was too nervous to do it at home. He proceeded to leave me 52 voicemails, as did his mom and brother. In one voicemail his mom was screaming, calling me a bitch for hurting her son. He had told them I broke up with him for not answering my texts to him right away, which was obviously not the case. However, I stuck through it and made sure to get him out of my life.

While I thought this was the end of things, it was not. I had finally told my parents the truth after finding out he wasn't coming back to our high school. We filed a police report, and told school officials about the incident so they could keep him off of school grounds should he try to visit.

About a month after filing charges, he showed up to a football game (I was a cheerleader). My mother had warned me he might show up after overhearing one of his friends say he was coming. By this point I had told my teammates and my friends that he broke my nose. When he showed up, my cheer captains warned me that he was standing at the fence right in front of me, to not get alarmed when I turned around for a cheer. Knowing he was there sent me into a panic. I suddenly had trouble breathing, I was shaking, and my eyes welled up with tears. I was in shock that I had to see him.

Guy friends of mine had come onto the field telling me not to leave for the bathroom or say hello to my family at halftime until they came to get me. Apparently he was telling his friends he was going to find me at halftime and "publicly call me out for the lying whore I was." It felt surreal that this was happening. When halftime came, my guy friends literally formed a circle around me to walk me to my parents. I was shaking, and walked with my head down. Teachers saw me pass and pulled me aside, assuring that they wouldn't let anything happen either (they knew about what happened too). My friends escorted me back on the field after as well.

On my 16th birthday, I woke up to screenshots of his tweets, all saying things like: "16 years ago today, God's biggest mistake was born," "this is the day Satan came to life," "anyone born on this day should kill themselves." But that wasn't the worst thing to happen that day — his mom had showed up to my school, demanding to speak to me about why her son wasn't my escort or even invited to my Sweet 16. I had to be kept in a classroom passed the last bell, my teacher couldn't leave either, and I wasn't allowed to leave the room until my mom was able to get me. I had cheerleading pictures that day, which were being taken outside, and the same guy friends who escorted me around the field the day he showed up to a football game walked around the school to make sure the mom wasn't around and even stayed to stand outside around me in case she came out. When my mom finally arrived, I was escorted to her car by a guidance counselor.

The last incident to happen was him egging my house with a guy who had tried pursuing me earlier that year (whom I told I couldn't get involved with someone else so quickly after what happened) and a guy they were friends with (who I was also once friends with, and even set up with a girl friend of mine who still date to this day). The boy who tried pursuing me admitted everything to me, and this was added to the court file.

Ultimately, he received no punishment for breaking my nose or harassing me months after. While this does still upset me, I am just relieved he finally kept away from me.

I will forever appreciate my friends who comforted me through everything, my family for their support, and my guy friends who protected me endlessly (and who also play large roles in Part Three).

I hope in sharing this more people will share their experiences of domestic abuse. I hope more people can recognize that what they are dealing with is domestic abuse and can seek help. While this was a tough experience, I am grateful that it has made me more aware of how people can take advantage of you, no matter their role in your life, and regardless of what they tell you, these type of people do not really love or care for you.

Coincidentally, a lot of my guy friends at college belong to a fraternity, Delta Tau Delta, whose philanthropy is centered around ending domestic violence. They support The Center For Family Justice, to which you can make donations to here.

I am so fortunate to be surrounded by people who support such an amazing cause and fight to end domestic violence. Please support!

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About the Creator

Anne & Anamesa

blogger, content creator and mama

find me on socials: @anamesa_anne

Proud Zillenial

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