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Sparkle (5)
The fact is stark but surreal, and I often have to remind myself that it is actually true, that I was once involved in an abusive relationship.
The details are not important. What matters is that I was in the relationship for a very long time, that I was a teenager when the relationship started and a grown-up in my late 20s when it ended. What matters is that, had anyone else come to me and recounted the kinds of things I was enduring, I would have told them unequivocally that they needed to leave, get out, run far far away. Maybe what matters most of all is that I’m out.
But as difficult as walking away was, it was only the first step in the process of making myself whole.
A lot of attention is paid to the external injuries inflicted by abuse – the bruises, the broken bones, the concussions. What often goes unremarked upon is the way abuse corrodes your insides, how it eats away at your confidence and your spirit until you are little more than a husk of your former self.
I sometimes think of my experience as stepping into quicksand. The harder you fight, the deeper you go, until you're up to your neck in shifting sands and can't get out. Sometimes I think of it as being in a room with a fire that sucks up all of the oxygen, leaving me scrabbling for gasps of air that will let me survive. The Beheld’s Autumn, when she guest-blogged at Feministe, described it as a fog:
The fog of abuse ensured that my emotions, instincts, and principles were muted; every ounce of energy I had went into my relationship and keeping up the general appearance of sanity. Had you somehow been able to land my healthy, normal status-quo self smack-dab into the worst of my relationship, I’d have gotten out immediately. That’s not how abuse works, of course. Abuse is gradual; abuse is systemic. Abuse changes you; abuse reduces you. Abuse took the me out of me.
It’s not easy for anyone, but it’s particularly difficult when you've staked much of your identity on your adamant belief that men and women are of equal worth. How do you square that belief with your reality, which is that you've hitched your wagon to a man who believes asking questions is the same as disrespect, and that disrespect is a violation punishable by violence?
When I left, I was haunted by something that bears a strong resemblance to post-traumatic stress disorder. I ground my teeth in my sleep and woke up with my jaw aching. Several times a week, I slept, only to face nightmares of humiliation and pain. My anxiety attacks subsided, but they were replaced by the certainty that I would come back to my apartment one day to find him hiding inside my shower. Mundane household chores reminded me of things he said or did, and I’d find myself curled in a ball on the floor, screaming silently into my hands.
At first, I turned to the same things that had provided me with relief while in the relationship. Alcohol, cigarettes, weed – all of these had reliably eased my nerves when I was in the midst of that emotional hurricane. They smoothed over my jagged edges and helped me sleep. But they wouldn’t do for the long term. Not if I wanted to get past bare-knuckle survival and if I wanted to learn how to thrive.
So I went for my first run. My boyfriend, who is now my husband, was a recovering alcoholic who had taken up marathons in his quest for wellness. I wasn’t an alcoholic or an addict, just someone with some bad habits, but the parallels between our lives and the self-destructive choices were unmistakable. So when he spoke of the way running had transformed him, I listened.
One day, I laced up a pair of New Balance trainers, put on a pair of shorts and a tank top, and headed out for a short run with him. I made it all of a block before my tar-clogged lungs and my weak calves started screaming for mercy.
It would have been easy to quit. No one would have blamed me.
Instead, I kept trying. Brian kept encouraging me to go a little further, to push myself a little harder. Sometimes I felt wretched, all sweaty and sore and clumsy. Sometimes I threw up. Sometimes I put off my runs until the sun was high in the air, and then I used
