Sometimes events happen in life that change everything. If these events happen to be traumatic, difficult, or trying, the healing process can be quite extensive. One year ago, July 14, 2018, was my traumatic event and I am forever changed because of it.
My on-again, off-again boyfriend of a decade assaulted me. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. He continued to punch and swing until all I could see was blood. At some point during the attack, I realized that I was missing my front tooth and I started screaming. I thought he was going to kill me right there on my kitchen floor. Once he decided he was done beating me, he grabbed my phone, threw it in the toilet, and ran out my front door. At the time, I did not have a car and my phone was my only lifeline. He knew that. I knew I needed to get to the hospital. I grabbed my phone from the toilet, ripped off the case, threw it in a bowl of rice and prayed that it would still work. There were water marks all over the screen and it was barely functional. The only app I could click on was Facebook messenger and the only person I could click on was whoever was “active” in the center of my screen. I was fortunate that the person my phone allowed me to contact was available and also happened to be a longtime friend of mine. Without hesitation, he came to my house and took me to the ER. I was so fortunate in that moment to not be alone. To him: Thank you for being there for me. I will never forget it.
One year later, the majority of my injuries are healed. Mentally, I still have hard days or low days or sad days. Those types of days are becoming fewer and fewer. Physically, I am still missing my front tooth. I’ve had multiple invasive procedures and have spent lots of time at the dentist office. I’m on the home stretch at this point, but day to day this process feels like an eternity.
The point of sharing this story isn’t about the day of the assault or about my past – it’s about the journey of this last year and the most important lesson of all: To know your worth. The photos below are graphic and I don’t mean to offend anyone but I think it’s important to share the whole truth and raw reality. If you don’t know your worth in an unhealthy relationship, as I didn’t, you could eventually fall victim to something like this.
I was fully without my front tooth for the first week. (No flipper / retainer to hide the hole in my mouth.) I had multiple stitches on my inner and outer bottom lip. My gums were purple. My face was bruised and sore. I had a gash on my forehead. My lip was so swollen and cut so deep that I barely had feeling in it. I struggled to drink out of a cup and had a hard time with a straw because of the numbness / stitches. Eating was a challenge for weeks, even months. Smoothies, mashed potatoes, mac & cheese… eventually as I healed more, I could cut up normal food in small pieces and eat almost anything. However, eating in public is still challenging for me. It’s hard to eat gracefully with the flipper in my mouth and it’s embarrassing to take it out in front of people. Sometimes, I am brave and I pop out the fake tooth and dive into a cheeseburger.
It was hard to be around people for a long time and I found myself covering my mouth when I talked. My friends would try to cheer me up and get me to laugh, but I quickly learned how to smile with my mouth closed. It was a huge hurdle to let go of the idea that: I let him steal my smile. I was known for that smile and now it was gone.
Managing those first few weeks was a challenge. I felt ashamed, embarrassed, confused, depressed, and lost. I started to question everything about myself and my life. My confidence was gone. People always say “follow your heart” and I felt like my heart had kept me in a relationship that constantly tore me down and made me feel like a shell of myself. I was now battling the notion that I couldn’t trust my own heart.
My job let me work nights while I healed and all of my coworkers were – and continue to be – amazing to me. They have given me space when I’ve needed it, listened when I was ready to talk, and have watched me heal and blossom into myself over the last 12 months. I am extremely blessed with their support and encouragement.
You find out who your support system is when you’re faced with a traumatic event like this. I have been overwhelmed in the best way with the people who have been there for me. Friends that I used to view as acquaintances have stepped up and shown me more love than I could have ever imagined.
My family has been there for me without hesitation from the start. I will be forever thankful for the unconditional love that we all share.
My best friend – my soul sister – I don’t know what I would do without her. Even states away from each other, she has never been anything but loyal and loving and most importantly, honest with me.
In addition to seeking the support of friends and family, I started seeing a therapist weekly. I don’t know if it was sheer luck or meant to be, but I owe so much of where I am now to her. When you spend so many years hiding the truth and managing everyone’s impressions of you, it’s difficult to switch gears and put it all out there. She never once judged me and she provided me with a safe place to unload and share anything and everything. I take my time with her very seriously and, because of that, I have gotten so much out of our sessions together. I’ve read every book and article she’s recommended; I’ve kept a daily journal; I’ve set goals and I’ve actually achieved them! You get out of therapy what you put into it and I can honestly say it’s been one of the most rewarding things to ever happen to me. To her: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me rediscover myself, let go of so much pain, and look forward to the future with confidence and determination.
When you’re coming out of a decade long relationship that had several low points, it’s very hard to stand on your own two feet and accurately identify all of the bad habits that you learned. You start to realize that over time you became numb to things that would be automatic red flags for most people. For me, verbal abuse became something I was accustomed to. I knew I was strong enough to handle it so I just let it happen and prayed one day it would stop. What you don’t realize in the moment is that even if you are “strong enough,” words chip away at you. They erode your self-esteem. They make you insecure and eventually you’re so used to hearing them that you start to believe their meaning. It’s challenging to try to rebuild self-esteem when you’re walking around hiding a missing front tooth. For several weeks I couldn’t even look in the mirror. I was so mad at myself for allowing him to do this to me.
Two months after the assault, I reconnected with a man that had been a fun friend for a few years. He asked me on a date and at the time I felt unattractive, unstable and just all over the place. I decided to go on the date anyway and I was honest with him about what I was working through. We ended up connecting instantly. I went on to date this man for the next several months and I will remember for the rest of my life what he did for me and all that he taught me. He taught me to believe in myself. He taught me that I am stronger than I think I am. He taught me to accept love from a man and a puppy. He taught me the importance of laughing every day and how to relax and not be on constant alert. I brought a lot of odd relationship habits to the table. Things I assumed were normal, I quickly realized were not. I am forever thankful to this man for teaching me so much about myself, about love and about family. He opened up his home and his world to me and I will always be grateful for that. It was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. To him: Thank you for your patience with me while I battled through nightmares for weeks on end. Thank you for calling me beautiful when my mouth was full of stitches from surgery and I could barely look at myself. Thank you for loving me when I was still figuring out how to love myself. Thank you for sharing a piece of your big heart with me. I will always love you for all of that and so much more.
So much of healing from abuse is accepting the fact that the healing doesn’t happen overnight and you have to go through stages of letting go. For some, it’s hard to let go of the person. To whomever needs to hear this: There is no excuse for a partner to physically, emotionally, or verbally harm you. The second it happens, remove yourself. Once certain lines are crossed in an argument, it sets the bar lower and lower for the next argument. If a relationship lacks mutual respect, it is not worth investing your time and energy into it. Again, know your worth! For me, the hardest things to let go were the bad habits and ideas I had clung onto for so many years. I was so conditioned to prepare for the worst-case scenario because often I found myself facing that exact scenario. I was living in constant survival mode. When you live with this mentality, it’s extremely difficult to move forward and view the world from an objective stance. I believed everyone around me was a threat and anyone trying to get close to me would probably end up hurting me. Those ideas are not only untrue, but also unfair to the many people who were not the man that assaulted me – yet I was treating them like they were on his level. Habits are hard to break, but not impossible. As you continue to let go of old baggage, whether it be in the form of people or ideas, you realize how much lighter and fulfilling life can be. The most important part of letting go is to realize that nothing happens on a linear timeline. There could be five really amazing days in a row where you feel on top of the world and like things are finally all coming together. Then you wake up on that sixth day feeling like you are back to square one. It’s important not to let those types of days discourage you but instead give yourself grace and continue forward.
There will be a whirlwind of emotions coming from all directions. Sadness, anger, regret, blame, self-deprecation, depression, and sometimes even hysteria will be present. Healing from abuse of any kind is a long process. It is crucial that you face each of these emotions, allow yourself to feel them and when you are ready, address the root of where they came from. Often times the surface reason for these emotions is only a small part of the cause. I had a very difficult time not blaming myself for what happened. I kept thinking, “if only I respected myself enough to leave this relationship years earlier” or “why did I give up and not defend myself?” It is normal to have these feelings at first. In my opinion, it is even healthy to have these feelings. What isn’t healthy is allowing them to linger and start to create even more layers of abuse; only this time coming from within yourself. At this point, one year later, I still wonder why I didn’t leave that relationship. I still sometimes wonder why I had so little respect for myself that I would allow someone to treat me less than I deserved. What I don’t wonder anymore is whether it was my fault. I blame myself for a lot of things in my life – that’s just who I am. This scenario was especially difficult for me to let go. I replayed it in my head over and over again. I had nightmares about it for weeks on end. I over analyzed every detail trying to find the exact moment that I screwed up and caused things to be so bad. Eventually, after many books, journal entries, therapy sessions, chats with my support system and time, I realized that no matter what I did that day – I couldn’t have prevented this from happening. It wasn’t the first time he physically abused me, it was only the worst time. This time, without a front tooth, I couldn’t hide it from anyone anymore. Perhaps that was my biggest blessing. It freed me.
My advice for anyone who currently finds themselves in an unhealthy relationship or is freshly removed from one, is this: be your own advocate and don’t hesitate to ask for what you need. It will be very clear in the beginning who your support system is. If people you trust offer to be there for you, let them. Sometimes our inner circle knows what we need better than we do. Seek help if you need it. Whether that help comes in the form of counseling or reading a book or needing company – seek it out! Anyone who knows me knows that I do not take medicine. I was offered a prescription for anti-anxiety / anti-depressants in the immediate aftermath of the assault. I chose not to use them because I knew I would be OK, but if you need an extra boost at first to keep yourself safe in your own mind – take it! I will also reiterate here that finding a counselor that you feel comfortable with is a game changer. It was new territory for me and I was very nervous at first. As you develop a trust and comfort with your counselor, dig as deep as possible into the causes of what made you susceptible to an unhealthy relationship in the first place. The answers you find probably date back to way before you even knew your abusive partner. We can only break the cycle if we face it head on. YOU CAN DO IT.
Presently, I am happy. I feel more like myself than I ever have. I know who is in my corner and I know where my weaknesses and strengths lie. I know my unhealthy tendencies and I am still actively working to break those habits. Although I feel better now than I ever have (even without a complete set of teeth in my mouth), I still have a long way to go in this healing journey. There is no timeline. There is no deadline. As long as you are moving forward, you are headed in the right direction and that is all that matters. We all deserve happiness, respect, trust and fun in a relationship. If even one of those are missing, it creates an unbalanced scenario that can quickly escalate into something unhealthy. Take inventory of your life and who you surround yourself with. The impact of the people around us shape who we are. Knowing your worth makes these issues very visible. When you don’t know your worth, it’s easy to fall victim to a very lopsided and unhealthy dynamic.
I’m not an expert. I’m not really anything other than a woman who has a story to tell. This is what I have learned in the last year and this is what has turned my life around. There is hope for everyone. If you are reading this and you feel that you do not have a support system or anyone that you trust to turn to – you have me. I have reached a peace with my situation and I am more than happy to listen, offer advice or encouragement. At the end of the day, we are all WORTHY of happiness. Never ever forget that.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 (1-800-799-SAFE)
Local Domestic Violence Hotline (Lancaster, PA): 717-299-1249
July 14, 2018 