My mother was a speed freak, a cokehead, a tripper, a user, a tweaker, a drug fiend, a snowbird, a druggie, a freak, an addict.

As a sometimes severely paranoid tweaker, she would often wake me up at all hours of the night to help with whatever bizarre idea had grabbed her attention. Sometimes she demanded that I help her comb the carpet for hairs from the women she was convinced my stepfather was cheating on her with. Sometimes she wanted me to help her scrub window sills and doorknobs with a toothbrush to remove fingerprints that the people that were spying on her were trying to collect. Sometimes she would just rant and rave utter lunacy until I fell asleep sitting up in my chair.

The thing that was the craziest, by far, were the nights she wanted to go dumpster diving. There is a particularly acrid smell to garbage dumpsters, even the ones that don’t have food or liquid waste in them. It stays in your nostrils, and clings to your hair. The feel of cold, slightly gummy metal under my fingertips, the smell in my nostrils, and the peculiar, otherworldly gleam of sodium vapor lights, along with the manic, stomach-churning demands of my mother to “dig a little deeper” are forever seared into my memory.

I hated when she woke me up to go rummage through the dumpsters of her favorite strip mall stores. But I was desperate for her love, and terrified of her anger, so I always went. I was willing to do whatever she asked, because even that was better than not having her attention at all.

I did not have the words for how degrading and humiliating I felt, each time I climbed the side of a dumpster and jumped in. I could never tell my mother how very much it hurt that she used me to root around in trash for items that she thought were valuable, because her paranoia and instability would rear its ugly head and she would lash out at me. She was a master manipulator, using guilt and anger to trump my fear and disgust, to get what she wanted from those garbage bins.

I don’t often think about those nights.

But if I happen to walk past a dumpster, and the smell is just right, I will suddenly be filled with bone-deep anxiety. All of the visceral memories come flooding back, even if just for a few brief seconds. I can feel the sticky, damp metal. I can hear the odd, tinny echo that rebounds while sitting deep inside a dumpster. I can feel the quick burst of adrenaline when I couldn’t grab the edge to climb back out. I can smell that awful, cloying, bitter smell that always seemed to get stuck in my nose and cling to my clothes.

And then, just as quickly, its gone. At least until the next time I smell that smell.

photo credit: http://mylifeofcrime.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/domestic-violence-my-story/

How is it that we sometimes come to be involved intimately, as adults, with people who continue the cycle of abuse we suffered as children? How much of it is our own making, and how much of it is that of our partner having a sort of radar that seems to seek us out in the midst of a crowd? This mutually effective knack for finding someone that provides satisfaction for our individual emotional wound, is astonishing.

Once upon a time, I was a girl that swore I would never let a man hit me. I would never let anyone treat me the way my stepfather treated my mother. As a child, I watched him hit her, push her around, sit on her in a closet, and scream just inches away from her face. I also suffered his wrath myself, frequently getting spanked, smacked, thumped, shoved, flicked, and whipped with his belt. With all this chaos and violence around me, I promised myself deep down that I would never be like her. I would never just sit back like my mother and let someone terrorize me and my children.

Life isn’t always as clear-cut as that, however.

In fact, it’s quite complicated when you are in the middle of that kind of relationship. For those of us that suffered not only childhood sexual abuse, but also physical and emotional violence, we grew up with a twisted, destructive model of partnership. We did not see examples of healthy anger, conflict resolution, and forgiveness. We saw hatred, hostility, defiance, cruelty, and pain.

The people that commit domestic violence (DV) against their partners (I want to be clear that DV is not committed only by men against women) are generally careful not to express the physically violent side of their personality until they have developed the relationship to a point where there is an aspect of security to their aggression. Often, partners will not hit or strike until after they are married, or have separated their partner from friends and family.

My first experience with DV was as a junior in high school. I was 16, and had just found my first “bad boy” boyfriend. He was a high school dropout, he smoked pot and other drugs, he drank, and he was….exciting. I was swept up and away by the way he fixated on me, how he acted as though I was the only girl in the entire world, and how he said he would do anything for me, anything to protect me. It was something I had never before experienced, but desperately wanted: Love, unconditional, fierce, protective love. Of course, his love was none of those things. It was possessive, angry, jealous, and harsh. It was punishing, destructive, and controlling.

We dated for a long time, nearly a year, before he laid a hand on me. He began by getting more and more physically controlling: he would grab my arms roughly, yank my hair, hold my neck tightly, and grab my knees and thighs hard enough to leave bruises. He became more jealous and accused me of flirting with other boys while we were apart (we lived about an hour apart from each other). He grabbed my upper arms and shook me until my head snapped. He pressured me into sexual activities that I wasn’t comfortable with, but didn’t feel I could say “no” to. He pushed me, shoved me, and occasionally kicked me.

But he never hit me.

And that is what I held onto. For some obscene, twisted reason, I felt that I was not in a violent relationship because he never actually struck me with his fists. It truly did not occur me to think that he was abusing me, all because he never smacked my face, or punched me.

Therein lies the problem with many violent relationships. We learn to lie to ourselves so completely, either because it is how we have coped, or because we have taken in what our partner has told us over and over, that we cannot see the truth of our situation. We have accepted that we deserve this behavior, for whatever reason. When we do finally see how far it has gotten, we are often so enmeshed with our partner, that it seems there is no where to go.

Some people say, “just leave,” but as anyone who has been in that kind of relationship knows, it is much easier said than done. Everyone has a different reason for leaving, and you may not know what that is until you reach it. I agree that even one incident of violence is one too many, but I also know how very hard it is to end that relationship.

I finally ended my abusive relationship, after some friends asked me about bruises they could see on my arms and my neck. I had practiced the lie I would tell when someone asked, because this time I couldn’t hide the bruises, and my friend cut me off mid-sentence and asked if my boyfriend had hit me. I defended him, and started to say that he hadn’t actually hit me, and  as the words poured out of my mouth, I was silenced. I realized what I was saying, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. The look of pity and horror on my friend’s face was gut-wrenching, and though it was humiliating, it also gave me the courage I needed to break up with my boyfriend.

He did not take the break-up lightly, and harassed me for a few months. He showed up at my school, and at my house unexpectedly. He called at all hours of the day and night. He sent me letters and notes. I managed to stick to  my conviction, and refused to go back to him. It was easier in my situation because we lived so far apart, which gave me more strength than I may have had otherwise. But I refused to give in.

My goal in writing this blog today is twofold. First, if you know someone that you suspect is experiencing a violent relationship, talk to them, be there for them, don’t let their partner drive you away. You may be the only connection that person has to the world when they finally do decide to leave. Second, if you are the person in a violent relationship, you deserve better. You. Deserve. Better. You are not a punching bag, you are not deserving of this pain, and you are not someone’s doormat to be walked all over.

Enough is enough.

I have included a couple links to information and resources regarding domestic violence. If you need help, please call the hotline below. There is help, there is hope, and you have options.

http://www.thehotline.org/

http://www.domesticviolence.org/