My Abuser Almost Killed Me

Leaving an abusive relationship is hard, but you can do it.

Abuse Starts Slowly

The problem with abusers is that they don’t hit you right away. They wait until you trust them, love them, and can’t live without them, and then they start hurting you. People on the outside who ask why she stays, why she can’t get away from him, don’t understand the emotional enmeshment that abusers seduce you into. They convince you in the moments where they aren’t hurting you that they help you…that you can’t “do this” without them, that you need them…that you love them.

It’s even harder when everyone who doesn’t see the abuse thinks your abuser is simply wonderful, the life of the party…they love spending time with your abuser, so you show up. When you and your abuser invariably get into it, you’re the psycho bitch. You’re the asshole. You’re the problem. It happens in such a way that you can’t even really remember what happened, and as your abuser has written the script, you think maybe I am the asshole, and you are so ashamed that you shrink further and further into yourself and become less and less of who you ever were, someone the “you” who existed before the abuse wouldn’t even recognize.

Self-healers tell you to journal as a part of self-evolution. I was journaling, and nearly every entry was about my abuser. It was pathetic. I couldn’t help but think of how David Sedaris journals about interesting people he sees or meets; I thought of how narcissistic I must be to constantly think and write about this relationship with my abuser, how to fix it…how to get away, if I’m being honest. I knew it wasn’t healthy.

I wanted to leave, but I didn’t know how. We’d been together for so long, how could I possibly handle life and the trauma I’d been through, the trauma my abuser had seemingly been my only constant companion through, without him?

I know it seems silly to keep calling him “my abuser”, but it helps to frame it this way. To call him anything else…lover or enabler or supporter or companion…softens him. Of course there were good times. Oh my God, there were good times, and if I remember those times too fondly or often, I’d be fucking around with him again…I’d unblock him from my life and think, “It won’t hurt to hear what he has to say,” or, “It won’t hurt to talk to him. Maybe we can just be friends.”

I’ve tried that…and when he comes back, even if he’s careful at first, the abuse starts back, and every time…he’s angrier and more violent. His black words fill my head like squid ink, until all I can see is self-loathing.

He made me want to kill myself. He made me forget everything I’d ever been grateful for or hoped for or that I was surviving for. He immersed me in my shadows; the dark sides of my personality’s tentacles ensnared my goodness, and I became wholly disconnected. I would’ve relished death.

The last time was really the last time. I’d been spending less and less time with him and only around friends so he wouldn’t try to hurt me, but I now realize there aren’t any circumstances where we should be together. Bad things happen in the shadows.

You don’t realize until you really get it that an abuser will kill you and all of those good times and positive things you saw in them…that was in your head, and your abuser…doesn’t really care. If they did, they wouldn’t hurt you. It doesn’t matter who or what your abuser is; walking away is on you, and it’s so hard and it’s so scary.

In moving forward and fully removing him, I’ve found the hard part isn’t that I miss him… I really don’t. I’ve hesitated to write this story because I have no idea what the future holds. All I can say is that there does come a time when you leave and you know it’s the last time.

I’d tried to leave my abuser many times, so I know that this time really is different. I also know that when it comes to leaving an abuser, you often try to leave several times before you actually do. I’ve been contemplating ending it for years, but I didn’t have the courage until I realized just how much he was willing to take from me. He would have killed me if I stayed.

Is He Hurting You, Too?

I think it’s important and empowering for me to say who my abuser was. I realize that’s not always apropos, but in this case…I think it’s okay because chances are, he’s hurting you, too. It’s alcohol.

Alcohol was my toxic, abusive relationship. It started out the same way it started for everyone…fun and euphoric, but like every narcissistic and all-consuming and needy partner, alcohol gradually insisted on showing up everywhere. Alcohol became a roommate. Alcohol wanted to join me in the bedroom. Alcohol promised fun and relief. When I endured major traumas…my son dying and then my husband dying and then everything that ensued, alcohol was a constant, and I believed the lies. I felt so lonely, and alcohol was there to dull all of the sharp edges from my pain.

Alcohol is so normalized. He wants to be there for your 21st birthday, your rite of passage into adulthood…your college graduation…your wedding day…your birthday…your child’s birthday…your date night…your sex life…your parents’ deaths…your first hiring…your first firing…good or bad, alcohol wants to be a part of it, and maybe at that beginning you, like me, were genuinely having fun and alcohol was only part of it, but there came a time when you couldn’t imagine having fun without alcohol. You were excited about the event because there would be alcohol, an excuse to drink.

Maybe you’re a millennial mom, too, and you were thoroughly seduced by the pseudo empowerment of the mommy wine culture and you had a glass or two (or a bottle) every night to take the edge off. Yes, we do work hard. Being a modern mom is hard as fucking fuck, but what makes it harder is the crash and the jacked sleep from those intoxicating “chill me out” glasses of wine or whatever every night. It’s hard AF to break a habit and overcome an addictive behavior, but if you’re even remotely sober curious, then you know that alcohol — any alcohol — interrupts healthy sleep patterns and that it takes 24+ hours to recalibrate and detox after even one drink.

At the time my husband died, I was already sober curious, not content with the disrupted sleep and also concerned with just how much mothers were drinking. I know alcohol caused liver damage and could be fatal. I had read about how many women were quietly dying of alcoholism and yet the majority of the rhetoric (barring firm warnings from the CDC and other government entities) perpetuated “research” claiming that “a glass of wine is like an hour at the gym” and “wine is good for your heart”!

Any health benefits from wine or beer are negated by the presence of alcohol, which is just flavored and sugared ethanol. Ethanol…the shit you use to fuel your car, which can and will fucking kill you if you drink it directly.

I already knew this, but losing my husband gave my abuser the power and authority to swoop in as the companion that wouldn’t leave me. My abuser made me believe he was the only one who understood my complex grief. My abuser was the only one who felt sorry for me when vestiges of my life before death burned to ash. I was fucking distraught and primo fodder for being all consumed by the abuse alcohol reigned down with impunity.

Only a few things saved me…I’d started going to therapy shortly after my husband died. I genuinely wanted to get my life back, somehow. I wanted to be healthy and present for my children. I had already done the research on alcohol, so I wasn’t harboring any illusions that the toxic relationship I’d allowed myself to be sucked into was in any way beneficial. At first, when it got really bad, when I could no longer hide the abuse (I’ve always been high-functioning), I knew it had to end, but I just didn’t have the energy to do the work, the very real and hard work it takes to heal.

But I did; I’m doing it. It’s an ongoing journey, but I’m doing it.

If I can do it…so can you. It’s always hard to leave an abuser, but it is doable, and whether your abuser is alcohol or another human, I can tell you from experience that the abuse will escalate, and eventually, he will kill you whether through depression and the infliction of suicide (as was nearly my case) or organ failure and cancer and disease. Every day you stay is another chip away at your precious life, and he doesn’t deserve you.

This story was first published on my Substack, Surthrival. Sign up to receive emails there, and follow me on Medium. I share deeply personal stories about grief, trauma, substance abuse, addiction, and healing. I analyze our lives as stories and look for connections that bind us as human beings and as interwoven self-healers.