Why I Stayed

Untitled Part 1

Jay himself, after the dust had settled, asked me if I'd gotten to talk to "real" abuse victims, and if I felt silly for making such a big deal about how he'd treated me. To this day, he does not see himself as an abuser. He never asked why I stayed. He stated matter-of-factly, "If I was that bad, you would've left years ago. You wouldn't have put up with that shit."

And for a long time, I agreed with him. I believed there must've been part of me that really wanted it all to happen, maybe just on a subconscious level, because I felt I deserved it. For this reason, I never sought therapy. It wasn't until the events of 2019—when I began writing this—that I gained some clarity on my history with him. He's right, I would never put up with that shit now, but I'm not the same person as I was back then. He was lucky to get me when he did, because at any other time in history, I would have nothing to do with him.

I was never a perfect girlfriend, so I don't want to suggest that I was completely blameless in anything that happened between us. Nobody deserves to be abused, but it's unproductive to say that I always made rational decisions and never instigated arguments. I understand that memories are just our brains recounting the last time we remembered it, like an endless game of Telephone that eventually becomes distorted. These stories as honest as possible, while I acknowledge that I do not have a photographic memory and things are naturally going to be biased. My memory is good—I've been told it's better than most—but it's not infallible.

Most of my memories involving Jay play in my head like a reel of film. I know the story and I feel an emotional connection with the characters, but it doesn't feel like I was physically there. I remember how I felt but I no longer feel it. When I tell these accounts, people are often surprised at how detached I am from the reality I lived. Because I've never been to therapy for my trauma, I've never been diagnosed with PTSD, but I know that this is a common symptom of abuse victims. The only way to live with the past is to compartmentalize it and set it aside until it's not part of everyday life. I think people expect—maybe even want—me to break down or hear my voice crack with emotion when I talk about my experiences. Even during these episodes, I barely felt anything. I've always been an emotional person, but abuse has a way of turning it off. In abusive situations, the wrong emotion, or even the wrong amount of emotion, can be dangerous.

I want to make a note about the vocabulary I've decided to use. The person inflicting the abuse will be referred to as the abuser (obviously) but the person on the receiving end of the abuse is a little trickier. I don't like to be called the victim, and many people I've talked to don't like to be defined by their experiences either. "Survivor" implies that there was a physical danger, but many forms of abuse are psychological and emotional, and I don't want to make them seem any less important. There's already too much prejudice and guilt around reporting abuse, so implying that it's not abuse unless a life or physical wellbeing is being threatened is counterproductive. While I don't call myself a victim in real life or define myself by that word, that's the word I'm using for this project.

I'm sure Lisa thought she'd asked a reasonable question. If I hadn't already been asked the same question by countless others in the decade up to that point, perhaps I would've exclaimed, "How could you ask me that? Do you have any idea what I've been through?" But in fact, I've asked it of myself for years, and the best way to answer it is to write a whole damn book.

August 2000

I don't remember the first time Jay hit me. It must've been relatively early in our relationship, so I would've been 19 or 20. Knowing myself as the people-pleaser/situation-fixer that I was back then, I would've written it off so thoroughly as a misunderstanding, a one-time incident, that today I have no idea when or why it happened. I certainly wouldn't have told anyone about it, so I can't ask anyone if they know.