Domestic Violence Month – Janie’s Story Part 2

** names and some details have been changed to protect the victim.This is at the request of the person who gave us this story. Everything you’re about to read is true.

This is the continuation of Janie’s story. Thinking she had survived and she was better off now, she turned right back around and ended up in another abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend. This is common among abuse survivors, they are more likely to end up in another abusive relationship or become a victim of violence again. Janie still fights with herself trying to convince herself what she suffered was not abuse. She still has people who do not believe her or have told her because the men in her life only laid hands on her a handful of times that it wasn’t domestic violence, but what Janie suffered is valid and it was domestic violence. This is the rest of Janie’s story:

“Three years after I moved back to my home state and two years after my divorce was finalized from my ex-husband, I met my ex-boyfriend through a dating app. I was lonely, and wanted to find my ‘happily ever after.’ At this point I still didn’t want to be a single mom. I didn’t want my mother’s life. I wanted someone to love me because I didn’t feel loved. I thought my ex-boyfriend was the answer to all of that.

“Very quickly I moved into his house, because he said it would save us both money if we shared one house. He was fine with me working and going to school; it meant more money for him. At first, it started with us splitting all the bills. He would tell me how much was needed for the month, I would give him that much, and I would keep the rest. It was a great system. I got some school money back and a good tax return. So I was going to buy a Van, because between the two of us, we had five kids. I had three, he had two, and we needed a bigger vehicle. He convinced me to put his name on it too, because I would get a better car payment.

“Eventually, he said we should share one bank account. So all of my money went into this one bank account, and he would give me money to live on. He was giving me an allowance from my own money that came from my paycheck. When I got home from work I didn’t get to sit down. I had to come home from work and immediately start making dinner. I literally had to walk into the house, put down my purse and go in the kitchen and start making dinner. We all had to sit at the table and he got served first, then the kids, then me, and if he wanted seconds, I had to stop eating and serve him,. Sound familiar?

“My ex-husband used to like to show me off like a prize. He’d want me to dress sexy. He wanted people to see his sexy wife, and if I wasn’t comfortable in something he didn’t care. He wanted people to see me as he saw me – a prize. My boyfriend wanted me in a bag.

“If I dressed remotely sexy or if my shirt was a tad bit more low cut than usual or if my jeans were a little tighter than usual, he used to ask me who I was dressing for. Why was I trying to attract other guys? I was with him, it was not appropriate to be showing off my body. He said I was acting like a slut. If I put on makeup (which I never wear) he would ask why.

“One time I wore this shirt that was a little bit more low cut than I normally wear and he previously made a comment about it being low cut. When we got home, he said, ‘I told you, I hated that shirt, you can either take it off and throw it away or, I’m gonna cut it off you.’ I took it off and I packed it away in the bottom of my drawer. It took me two years after we broke up to put that shirt back on.

“He always mocked my weight and the way I looked. I had become a little heavy after having my kids. That happens as you get older, but I didn’t think I was super heavy. When I would weigh myself, he would stand behind me and look at me and say, ‘Getting kind of close. Remember, if you reach 230 pounds, I’m gonna break up with you.’ I still don’t like weighing myself in front of someone else.

“I have a mental illness, as you can imagine after everything I suffered in my life, and while we were together I tried to kill myself. It became one of the things he used to throw in my face all the time to make me feel bad. He would remind me of that constantly, tell me that I was crazy, tell me that he was still with me even though I was nuts, that he could have left me when I tried to kill myself and nobody would have blamed him.

“After I tried to kill myself, my counselor recommended that I start journaling. I kept it on my side of the bed under the mattress. I found out later in the middle of a fight when he bought up something that I had written in my private journal, that he was reading what I was writing and using it as a weapon to hurt me. I told him ‘I can’t believe you read my journal’ and he told me ‘There aren’t secrets, you don’t get privacy, I’m allowed to read whatever I want, including your phone.’ I didn’t journal for over five years after that because the journal no longer felt safe or secret.

“When we would have fights, he would tell me everything that was wrong with me. Every reason he should have broken up with me. He would throw the things that I told him in confidence back in my face. When he would have his outbursts and the fights got really, really bad, I started going into myself and I started saying a mantra that I used to say when I was married to my ex-husband. It was how I would deal in the moments when the abuse was happening, I would say, ‘just keep your mouth shut, just be a good girl, he’s always right. Just keep your mouth shut, just be a good girl. He’s always right.’

“Not too long after I tried to kill myself, he convinced me that we would be better off if we started living in two different houses, that it would be cheaper. We moved in together because it was cheaper and now suddenly living apart was cheaper, but I believed him. So I started looking for a new place. The night before I was to move out, we had a huge fight and he pushed me down on the bed and tried to hold me down. So I punched him. He broke up with me.

“Once again, I wish I could tell you that was the end of it and I slowly recovered and moved on. But it wasn’t. For several months he strung me along making me believe that we were going to get back together, telling me he still loved me. He told me now that he was living on his own, things were so hard and he was struggling financially and didn’t know how he would pay his bills. At that point, things were going pretty good for me. I was back in school and I had some school money coming in and my job was really good at the time and I stupidly gave him some money.

“I hate myself for it, because I found out later that he told some people that I was so in love with him I’d give him anything and he liked using me.

“The end finally came when we had a really big fight. During an emergency, I asked him to go pick up my daughter and bring her to a friend. He brought along his new girlfriend – someone we knew nothing about. In front of my daughter they began kissing. I told him that was inappropriate and he lost his mind. He screamed a bunch of things to me, about me, and my kids.

“About a week later, I suffered a health crisis and passed out behind the wheel of my car. My car had to be towed from the scene, even though there was no damage and nobody was injured. The authorities called my ex-boyfriend because the insurance was still under his name. My new insurance wasn’t set to take effect until the next month. That made him the insured party. He told me he was going to get the car and bring it back to me and told me to trust him. I did, and he didn’t bring it back to me. He kept the car. Even though both of our names were on it, I was told he had a right to keep it. There was nothing I could do. Because of this I lost my job, which caused me to eventually lose my house. And I basically lost my children when I had to call my former in-laws and ask them to take custody of them because I was facing living in a car. In the end, he left me with absolutely nothing, just like my ex-husband. I did eventually get my kids back. It took me several years to rebuild my life. I’m still rebuilding it.

“There’s so much more abuse that I suffered from my ex-husband and my ex-boyfriend, but it would take up a full page. And there are some things that honestly, I’m not ready to deal with. Some things that I’m still struggling to come to grips with. I don’t date. I don’t get in relationships. I probably never will have another relationship – not because I don’t believe in them, but because I have no faith in them. Can you blame me when my only two true relationships in my life were abusive?

“I find it hard to fully trust people. I’m always worried that everybody’s going to leave me or mistreat me. I have complex post traumatic stress disorder. I have been told on several occasions that what I dealt with was not real domestic violence because I wasn’t hit all the time.

“What I want the world to know is that abuse doesn’t have to be physical to be violent; that non-physical forms of abuse can cause just as much damage. People who suffer from non-physical forms of abuse are more likely to die by suicide, but they they still are at risk for death by an intimate partner. Just because it is not physical does not mean that there is no violence.

“My one request to the world is that if you take anything from my very long story – whether you are a survivor who got out, whether you know someone who is a survivor or know someone is currently in an abusive relationship, whether you yourself are in an abusive relationship – you are not alone. You are not to blame. It is not your fault, there is help and you can get out.”

Elizabeth Graves lives with way too many animals and not enough sanity. She is passionate about the arts, especially theatre.  And she enjoys any reason to dress in a costume.