hear me echo
i enter my testimony into the abyss
my life includes traumatic experiences, and this writing will depict various types of domestic violence and abuse. the sharing and visibility of these truths feels like an important part of my healing journey. if you choose to read on, please do so with care.
i married the first woman i fell in love with. i’m almost embarrassed to have started this with a sentence that sounds like a clickbait title or a grabby soundbyte, but it’s true, and i can’t think of any other way to say it. a few days after my nineteenth birthday, on the rooftop of the apartment building we had just moved to, we had a small ceremony with our friends and my cousins. we wore white, exchanged handmade rings with engravings, and said vows.
a few weeks before that, she choked me in our bed for almost 30 seconds, because i told her not to call my little sister – who was fifteen at the time – a bitch. this would not be the last time she put her hands on me, nor was it the first.
how long after i fell in love did i begin to fall in grief?
there are many reasons i don’t talk about my ex-wife very often. one is because of how isolating it is to realize that the gravity of the situation is most often downplayed – intentionally or not – because she is a woman, and because she is white. another is because i do not know if i am capable of speaking about the harm that came to me without simultaneously running to her defence. this will serve as my attempt.
we were together for a total of four years. of those years, we were married for one and a half. when i give people a neatly packaged, watered down recitation of our relationship, they always ask me why i got married in the first place. sometimes i lie and say that it was for some sort of trivial or unsubstantial reason. i suppose i do that because i’m embarrassed to say that it was for the boring reason most people get married: i loved her, and i thought we would be together forever.
interestingly, it took a while for that to change.
i don’t think i truly began processing the abuse until i told someone about it. i won’t go into any detail about the first person i told – they aren’t really in my life anymore, and haven’t been for some time – but i will take this moment to express a deep and genuine gratitude for the quiet role they played in showing me that something else was possible. i don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to figure that out if it wasn’t for you. thank you. i love you.
i’m not sure why this hadn’t occurred to me before (or maybe it had), but telling someone made me realize that my relationship wouldn’t be able to survive if these truths were brought to light. i would be putting everyone who cared about me in an impossible position: they would either have to betray me by acting as though this horrifying news was inconsequential, or put me at risk and isolate me further by demanding that i leave, and/or being obvious about their disapproval. i decided that wouldn’t be fair. i decided that i would have to choose between leaving or staying quiet – i couldn’t just do neither.
there were about 6 months of silence before i made the right choice.
a few months ago, i was discussing all this with a friend, and our conversation led me towards this memory.
the backstory bullets:
we determined that the worst abuses i suffered were when or immediately after my ex was drinking
we agreed that her drinking was a problem and that i was being harmed badly as a result of it
she told me she would stop drinking
she did not stop drinking
i told her that i did not want to force her into anything and that if she felt she could handle alcohol in small and infrequent doses, i would trust her judgment
she stopped drinking as frequently, but the strength of the connection between her abuse and her drinking did not diminish
i looked up the definition of alcoholism and realized that drinking to excess can count as alcoholism, even if the drinking is infrequent
we revisited the conversation about her drinking, and i shared my findings with her
she told me she would stop drinking
she did not stop drinking
instead, she bought and drank alcohol when i wasn’t home
instead, she drunkenly lied about buying and drinking alcohol
instead, she drunkenly lied about hiding her alcohol purchases and consumption
instead, she drunkenly lied about lying.
she woke up the next morning and apologized for lying.
she told me she would stop drinking
she did not stop drinking
the story bullets:
my little sister had a dance recital
i went with my (then) wife, and my entire family, including my grandparents
we planned to go to a music festival after my sister’s performances
i only saw her drink one drink, but by the end of the recital she is so drunk that her words are as humid and messy as her hair and makeup
i am praying my family does not notice
my family invites me to a dinner to celebrate my sister’s performance. i tell them we had planned to go to the festival, but that i would think about it.
my wife asks if i am ready to go to the festival. i tell her i’m not sure, and ask her to go wait in the car while i go to the bathroom.
i can see that she is angry about this. she knows that i’m going to tell her i don’t want to go, but she doesn’t cause a scene, which i appreciate. she goes to the parking garage and waits for me in the car.
while i am in the bathroom with my mom, she calls me 13 times.
my mom asks me if i need to pick up, and asks me if everything is okay.
i tell her that everything is fine, and that we just disagree on whether to go to the festival. my phone rings a fourteenth time as i leave the bathroom.
i meet my wife in the car in the underground parking garage. she is in the driver’s seat, so i sit in the passenger seat.
i tell her that since she is drunk, i do not want to go with her to the festival. i tell her i’d like to go for dinner with my family instead. i offer to drop her off with her parents, who live(d) 15 minutes away from mine.
i repeat myself calmly as she screams.
i quietly pull my phone out of my pocket and open my voice memo app. i hit record. i still have this recording. it is almost an hour long.
she drunkenly accuses me of hating her. she tells me i am showing how little i care about our relationship by refusing to go with her to the festival. she toggles between screaming, crying, and pleading – sometimes performing a special mashup of all three.
she begs me to go with her. she begs so well i almost cave, but i don’t. i can’t bring myself to. i want to rest. “no baby”, i tell her “i’m sorry but i’m not going. i’ve made my mind up”.
she turns the car on faster than i can blink.
i begin to panic.
my voice shakes as i tell her that she’s drunk, and ask her not to drive.
she speeds up to 80km/hr in the underground parking garage and heads for a cement cylinder pillar.
i scream in terror and beg her to stop as i realize the horror of the situation.
as she continues to press down on the gas, i accept that i will die here.
my eyes swell with tears. my life does not even have time to flash before them.
a meter from the wall, she slams on the breaks.
my head bangs on the dashboard as the car stops, the front bumper inches away from the 10 foot cement cylinder.
i unlock the doors as fast as i can and try to steady my panicked whimpers into deep breaths.
i demand that she get out of the car and remain silent. i threaten to break up with her if she doesn’t. i don’t know if either of us believe the threat, but it works regardless.
i drive to my parents house, and i realize i’ve missed dinner. i get out of the car and walk towards the front door.
she tells me she’s going to take the car downtown to the festival alone.
i tell her she is too drunk to drive.
she argues with me, and tells me that i can’t tell her what to do.
i am too tired to argue back. she takes the car.
when my mom gets home, i crawl into her bed with puffy eyes, and tell her everything.
after i told this story to my friend (in slightly less detail), she asked me if i had ever heard of a book, called “in the dream house”. the short answer is no.
she nodded slowly, but encouragingly, and said “i really think you should read it”.
as you may have guessed, it is a book (a brilliant, brilliant book, by carmen maria machado), about surviving a long-term, committed, lesbian relationship, involving alcoholism and different types of domestic abuse.
allow me to finish this entry by sharing the part of her prologue that inspired it.
“how do we do right by the wronged people of the past without physical evidence of their sufferring? how do we direct our record keeping toward justice? this writing is, at it’s core, an act of resurrection. memoirists re-create the past. they put themselves and others into necessary context. they braid the clays of memory, perception, and fact together – smash them into a ball, and roll them flat. they summon meaning from events that have long been dormant. they resuscitate the dead. i enter into the archive that domestic abuse between partners who share a gender identity is both possible, and not uncommon, and that it can look something like this. i speak into the silence. i toss the stone of my story into a vast crevice; measure the emptiness by its small sound.”
i enter my testimony into the abyss. hear me echo.