When Your Life Becomes a Headline Pt. 1
I tell stories for a living,
Let me rephrase that.
I share stories for a living.
I usually write in a short form, 600–1200 words, but if I needed to I could use 600 words just to describe the way sunlight speckles a woman’s face as she cooks a meal for her family under the tree behind her house after spending all day begging for less than a dollar.
My spelling and grammar probably leave much to be desired. Someone has to keep the editors in business. Its one of the many flaws — that at 31 — I’ve finally learned aren’t worth the stress.
I’ve never been good at the technical aspects of writing, and for the longest time I thought that meant I couldn’t do it. So many people had to tell me my thoughts were worth reading, for me to even put them to paper. The fact that writing is now a large part of my job still makes me laugh ever time I sit down to do it.
But I digress.
I share stories for a living.
If this is the first you’re hearing of me, you need only know one thing. Respecting human dignity, and NOT defining someone by the ONE story of their life that I share is my guiding principle. If you’re a long time friend or fan, you already know this. I talk about it all the time.
When I went to Haiti for the first time in 2012 I felt a call to share their stories. Something was very wrong with the way it was being done. I wasn’t a writer or a journalist of any kind at that point, I didn’t really know what to do different. Still I felt like I could do a better job.
But you’ve heard that all before.
Then I skim over 2012 , 2013, much of 2014, where my career suddenly appears. If you’ve seen my about me video you might have a slight idea why, but even that was vague.
I share stories for a living.
I refuse to allow my stories to define a person by a single — often tragic — event in their lives.
… Because I’ve been there.
… Because my name was on the front page — above the fold.
… Because I was a headline and no one gave a FUCK that I was a real person.
And until today, only one account of those years exists online.
I’m not here to “set the record straight”. I’ve moved on with life.
But I am here to add to that story. For the last 4 years I’ve allowed ONE story to define me. Internally I’ve let it go, but externally, I’ve lost clients, I’ve lost friends, I’ve made dumb decisions based on how I think everyone perceives me.
4 years ago, on this day my life changed forever.
Leap day, February 29th.
I’ve made my peace with many birthdays and anniversaries since that day passed… but this is the First February 29th. I didn’t expect it to phase me, but it has.
And I know why.
Its not depression, its not even sadness over the man I lost. Its almost celebration and joy. Its looking back on this day 4 years ago, and knowing that I’m now strong enough to do something I couldn’t do then.
I’m strong enough to share my story.
I share stories for a living.
Yet I’ve never been able to speak mine.
It’s a long story. And there details that only God, a Priest, my Counselor, and my Future Husband will ever know. But I start today.
Leap day 2012. Started just like every other day. My husband was late getting home from his overnight shift. We fought, as usual, but something was different.
That’s when he told me about the affair. ‘B’ was everything he had ever wished for — apparently. At the very least she wasn’t me and that was good enough for him.
It knocked the wind out of me. He’s a sex addict. For 4 years he had been putting just enough effort into faking recovery to make me think there was progress. To keep me clinging to hope. I knew addiction behavior, it escalates. An affair was inevitable, but to hear him say those words sucked the life out of me.
He sat on the bed and I knelt in front of him. I knelt in that one spot — with my head on his lap- for what seemed like hours. I could feel each fiber of the carpet on my knees. It was like sandpaper. It hurt, but I was too afraid to move.
I wish I could go back and tell that girl to get up, hold her head high, and walk right out that door.
But I was afraid.
At that time, I didn’t share stories for a living.
I told stories.
I told stories to stay alive.
There’s a good chance that by telling this story, my ex-husbands family will make it their mission to destroy my life and everything I’ve worked for. But I’m tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop, of living in fear of them.
They will never apologize to me.
They will never accept that what he did was wrong. That what they did is wrong. They will never stop blaming me.
For the last 3 years of my life I’ve lived 5 miles away from them. Giving up my church, my friends, business opportunities to avoid them.
I’m done pretending like they own this town and I don’t have a right to be here.
This is MY hometown. This is where I’m from. I did nothing wrong, its not my life that should have to change.
My Ex told stories too; like any abuser does. Like most women in my situation I began to believe them, and I began to tell them to myself.
Long before we were married my family took my Ex in. Outcast by his own abusive family, he played the victim well. He was with my family often. We would sit with family and gossip about my mother. She’s always been the easy target. In abusive relationship after abusive relationship, mixed with drugs and alcohol, she never got it together.
I heard it all,
“Why doesn’t she leave” and the thousand different ways people can say “She must be stupid”
I knew what my family thought about women who ‘let themselves get abused’. My Ex never missed an opportunity to remind me.
“Its your fault” he would say. “You started it, I was just defending myself”.
And I believed it. The longer it went on, the more I believed it.
That was the story he told me.
It became the story I told myself.
I would rather it be my fault, than have to admit I was some kind of ‘stupid’ victim.
From that moment my Ex had complete control. He had complete control of me, and complete control of the Narrative.
The stories I told kept me alive.
They survived guns, they justified financial crisis, they made me feel like more than just a human sex toy.
Flash forward to 2012. I fought for our marriage. It was the right thing to do. Even though I’m now glad its over, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself If I gave up. Fighting for it is what I needed to do.
I wasn’t so much fighting for “our marriage”, at least not the one we had. It mostly sucked. But I was fighting for marriage in general. For the marriage we could have had if he had been willing to put in the effort. But he wasn’t, he never was, and no one can hold a marriage together on their own.
Two months passed.
I thought we were trying to fix it. He was just playing me. Convincing me to put my car in his name, that I didn’t need my own separate bank account yet, getting his ducks in a row while I waited in the dark, making sure he had a head start, making sure ‘B’ really was going to leave her husband for him.
He finally filled for the divorce.
I had no story to hide behind. No story prepared.
I remember asking him. “what am I supposed to tell people?”
While it seems like a logical question on some levels. I truly meant it. If he didn’t create a narrative for me, I didn’t know what to say.
I needed him to tell me what the story was, what the ‘truth’ was. I was fighting so hard for something I believed in so much, that divorce didn’t fit any narrative, other than the truth. I was hurting so much, the truth was a story I couldn’t even tell myself.
One night in May he came over to get the last of his stuff from the apartment. I went into that night resigned to what had happened. Hurt, and angry, but determined to be strong enough to leave the door open to possible reconciliation in the future. As cool and collected as I was when he arrived; that night quickly spiraled into the ONLY thing in my life that I regret.
I noticed there was equipment missing from my office. When I asked my Ex about it he swore he didn’t know. His phone kept buzzing. He kept checking it. I don’t remember how I ended up with the phone — I probably grabbed it — but I started reading his texts messages. I was just about to quit, because I knew it wasn’t right, when I saw a message regarding the missing equipment. His sister in law, had possession of it. She knew it was mine. She knew he had stolen it from me.
I was loosing everything. My future, my marriage, my husband, my best friend. He had already emptied our bank accounts, I had nothing. It was the straw that broke the camels back, and I fixated on it. I made him call her. I made her bring it back to me before I would let him collect the rest of his stuff. It was a little irrational on my part, sure. If I could go back and do it again…. I would just let it go.
He hung up the phone with her, screamed at me and threw me to the ground. I stayed down. In all the times I ever thought he could kill me, I’d never seen rage like that in his eyes.
Eventually he left to take something to his car, I locked the door, he tried to use his key to get back in, but I braced myself against the door and he couldn’t. He stopped and called the cops. I sat on the floor of the closet and closed the door. When the officer arrived, he asked to come in and opened the door.
I was still sitting on the floor of the closet. Between sobs I remember saying, “please don’t let him hurt me again”, and the officer responding that he wouldn’t, he was “just trying to get his stuff”. I had learned long ago, there was no use trying to get a police officer to help you. You’re just as guilty to them. I sat in my apartment in the dark and listened to my Ex, his sister-in-law, and the officer stand out side and laugh.
That was the last time I really saw my Ex. That was my last chance for us to part ways, not as friends, but at least as two people who could move on. Had we had that chance… my Ex likely wouldn’t be in Jail today. I had so much to say, and her actions robbed me of that opportunity.
Thats an unfair thing for me to say. The truth is, so many actions, by so many people, leading to that day created a perfect storm. In my weakness of that season of life, I needed someone to blame. She became that person that night, but later circumstances would only cement those false ideas.
After that day I tried to get my Ex to talk to me. But he wouldn’t.
I simply existed for the next several months.
Four months later I found myself in Haiti. I returned to find that my Ex had final divorce papers served to an address he knew I didn’t live at, In an attempt to have me not show for the hearing.
I got a continuance.
In December I met a coworker of my Ex’s who played for me audio he had recorded on his cell phone. It was a recording of my husband offering $15,000 for a hit man to kill me, and drawing a map of my house.
The police arrested my Ex on charges of Conspiracy to Commit Murder. A Class A Felony. He was offered a pretty sweet plea deal… but he refused to take it. Even though he was caught on tape, he swore he didn’t do it.
That took over my life. For Two years my life revolved around court dates, and restraining orders.
I thought hearing my husband, the man I loved for 12 years, say “I want that bitch gone”… would be the hardest day of my life.
But the worst was yet to come…
