Dos años más tarde ...

My mom's got a point. "Even physical wounds would have healed by now," she says, while urging me to fix the two-year-old hole in my wall. When the event first happened, I was too ashamed to go to the leasing office to have them fix it. Then, I thought it served as a powerful reminder of what I left behind; I'd look at it in my moments of weakness.

But now it's just a downer.

We brainstorm ways to beautify it. I could ask the office to fix it, but that creates other complications -- namely raising awareness that I have an undeclared (feline) roommate. I could stick a photo there but that seems pretty random in the general scheme of my apartment's decorations. My mom sent me two pieces of art from Colombia a few months ago that I hadn't hung yet because they had gotten lost when I held them up on other walls. I decided to start with one. Tonight seemed as good as any other to take the bull by the horns and say "Hasta la vista!" to bad memories.

Before:

After:

Much better, no? :)

Summer's last gasp*

August is a melancholic month, haunted by memories of poisoned love. Romantic beach vacations gone awry. Threats uttered as his fist broke the wall. Terror, humiliation, the death of a relationship that has become my all. The heartbreak of his departure.

Trapped in my fractured reality, I've come to dread the way the sunbeams slant across my wall. They are the bars of my emotional prison. No other time of year do they cut into my apartment so drastically as in August.

His presence hangs in the air like stale cigarette smoke. Everywhere I look there are reminders that it wasn't just a bad dream: his ticket stub from Rome to D.C.; the can of men's shaving cream in the bathroom; a forgotten sock in the corner; the coffee-can-lid-turned-ashtray choked with cigarette butts.

Echoes of his words taunt me daily, sadistic remnants of the past. How long will they be my roommates? How many more sun-triggered flashbacks of despair? How much longer will I walk zombie-like in limbo between the hell of being with him and the ache of being without him?

*Time warp: I'd thought about writing this before but I needed distance to capture the emotions. It was written present-day but it's set in 2008 or 2009.

Unexpected milestones

It's funny. The experience of healing from trauma happens first in transitions from minute to minute (when it's all you can do just to breathe and put one foot in front of the other), to hourly, daily, then week-long and monthly steps away from the pain. 

Somewhere along the way, the memories that used to smother you disperse and -- if you're like me -- you start to focus more on the possibilities of Life than on what you were fortunate enough to leave behind. But it's days like today that snap me out of complacency and pseudo-amnesia to note the pervasive problem that affects millions in the USA alone, not to mention every other country around the world.

Shattering the cliched belief that domestic violence is a 'personal' problem to which one should turn a blind eye or deaf ear, a story broke this morning about a 37-year-old man in Albuquerque who shot dead two people and injured four more (among them his girlfriend) before turning the gun on himself. This is not an issue that is contained by the four walls of a home. It spills out onto our streets and into our workplaces. It often leaves the victims homeless (usually mothers with children, jeopardizing her ability to provide for them and their chance at an education). The cycle repeats itself with the nasty subtext that many who witnessed the horror as a child become perpetrators themselves, spawning new generations of abusers and the subsequent ripple effect across society.

The second event was the widespread reporting of a recorded abusive rant that was allegedly Mel Gibson threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend. The audio speaks for itself, but there are a few points worth noting:

• an abuser usually feels like the victim ("you see what you make me do?") 
• an abuser feels entitled and under-appreciated ("I deserve ...")
• an inflated self-image is usually paired with an excess of insecurity
• the problem is always with the other person
• the abuser criticizes anybody in the victim's support network to isolate the victim; the abuser may base criticisms on the way family members or friends fall short in loving the victim, according to the abuser's perspective, or on perceived lack of morality, pedigree, etc.
• Sample argument recycled from conversation to conversation: "You don't have any friends. I am your only friend and you treat me like ____, which is why you deserve to be treated this way. And if you were smart you'd see that the way I'm treating/hurting you is for your own good."
• the abuser can swing between provocation and efforts to silence (taunting/bullying the victim and then snapping when he/she speaks out) 
• abusers are unable to manage their anger, yet seek to use it to control others

I was hesitant to listen to the clip, unsure of how I'd react to returning to the past. While my heart breaks for the women who are still caged by rage, I was reassured. I could hear the attacker's words and with a knowing nod -- instead of teary eyes or a racing heart -- note in myself a healthy level of detachment. While the rant took me back to the tumult of years past, it also accentuated the peace (and welcome silence) I have savored since leaving. May all those who feel trapped find a safe and healthy way out.

A particular playlist

... springing from a conversation with my sidekick-in-crime (not pictured :-]). She's doing awesome things in other women's lives and she reminded me how widespread an issue relationship abuse is. Here are my top picks for women weighing their options or trying to pick up the pieces of their hearts and lives after leaving: 

1. Remember That by Jessica Simpson
2. Stupid in Love by Rihanna
3. Spotlight by Jennifer Hudson
4. Cold Case Love by Rihanna
5. There's More to Me Than You by Jessica Andrews
6. Survivor by Destiny's Child 
7. Fighter by Christina Aguilera
8. I Get Out by Lauryn Hill

Peace and love --m.g.h.

Fighting wrong with right

Special spotlight on Ne-Yo's efforts to fight relationship abuse by presenting a healthy model in his new song called "Heroes," which you can download for free at Macys.com/Ne-Yo. For each download, the clothing line Alfani will contribute $1 (up to $50,000) to support the RESPECT! Campaign.

See him perform it on Letterman (and remember the song sounds better in download version, so get a version at Macy's website, spread the word and pat yourself on the back for boosting a good cause!)

Processing pain

I've never identified with Eeyore. While I feel for him and always hope I'll get to see him having a good day, his negativity grates on me.

My parents raised my sisters and me with an appreciation for empowering oneself and rising above any difficult situation (both of them are political refugees and lost everything only to adapt and rebuild in three countries).

Which is why I hope that those of you who know me can appreciate the distinction between my self and my blog. Scanning the list of titles to prompt my memory of posts, I realize there's a lot on here that's sad, bordering on angry, and working from being victimized to becoming a survivor. I've used this space as a way of reclaiming my voice through the haze of disorientation and pain in the wake of major life changes. I've also dedicated a lot of real estate to domestic violence for healing purposes but also in hopes of raising awareness on an issue that is often kept safely in the shadows with justifications like "It's personal," or "It's just between them." The truth is it's a public issue and it's between all of us because on many levels our society permits it (and will continue to do so until more dialogue and ownership takes place). [dismounting soapbox]

It can be uncomfortable to face the rawness in these situations and disconcerting to see someone's heart laid bare (unless you're an artist who strives to do that as well), but I hope that you'll continue to take this journey with me. If you know me, I hope that you'll also set these soulful struggles within the greater picture of who you know me to be. If you don't know me, well, I hope that my writings resonate and move you on some level. If they give you greater clarity on some situation in your life, I would consider my time on earth a success.

I will continue to write through the process of healing, and embracing the transformative effect of pain. Looking back at legendary artists' lives, I can't help but notice that few, if any, led easy, happy lives. But they found solace in their pain with the opportunity to channel that into self-expression and into leaving some kind of legacy (although most died before earning the public's appreciation).  Studying their lives has motivated me not to run from the painful moments but to surrender to them instead.

"I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable."  (--Anne Morrow Lindbergh)

Missed opportunity or understated success?

In this day and age, there's now such a thing as "digital dating abuse." The Family Violence Prevention Fund set up thatsnotcool.com to educate teens about unhealthy texting patterns, violating your partner's email account or social networking page, and/or pressuring said partner to "sext" or take nude pictures.  Here's the pitch:

Your mobile, IM and online accounts are all a part of you. When someone you're dating is controlling, disrespecting or pressuring you in those spaces, that's not cool.

I think it's a great idea and a laudable cause, but I wonder how many teens will get drawn in by sock puppets. That kind of mascot worked brilliantly for Fandango, but those are movie tickets and this is abuse. Maybe I'm wrong and the lighthearted nature will ultimately hook more teens and increase the viral component. But I think FVPF and the Ad Council missed the full potential of the campaign by packaging it in gauze, and risk alienating themselves from the demographic by trying too hard to be cool or treating them like kids.

Death Row

I can't imagine what it must be like less than 24 hours before your family member is scheduled to die; the current of emotions that must seize you. I can imagine even less what that's like for a victim of domestic violence whose ex-husband is up next.

Mildred Muhammad is in that position now. Emerging from the shadowy years of her marriage to the D.C. sniper, she has used the discussion on her ex-husband's crimes and punishment to draw attention to the millions of families victimized by violence at home. I can understand that she might feel relief at the thought of her greatest threat going to the grave. But with her children about to lose their father -- and, however frightening a character he may be, he still is their dad -- things get more complicated.

I'm at a place now in my healing where I'm beginning to be able to recall the good memories of my nearly five-year relationship without shuddering at the impact of it. But those fleeting moments of remembered emotion -- contentment, joy, affection -- leave me with confusion sometimes and awe that despite having been in grave danger, the mind is still able to preserve and recall positive moments relating to that person.

I wonder if it's like that for women with years of an abusive marriage behind them. Do any positive memories get folded between the PTSD flashbacks and nightmares? Or is it only a steady stream of anger, disillusionment and a desire to erase their spouses from their past? As the clock ticks closer to 9 p.m. Tuesday, will Ms. Muhammad be remembering the good times that brought them together initially? worrying about the impact of his death on her children? or praying for the victims' family and envisioning the world without him?

UPDATE: John Allen Muhammad died Tuesday at 9:11 p.m. in Virginia. Here, his wife mentions how she and the children are dealing with the emotional aftermath of the execution.

Rihanna speaks out

When this story broke in February, I was at work fighting for professional composure to hide the emotional rawness that creeped to the surface as I learned more details. Rihanna's trauma gave me flashbacks of my own, being only seven fragile months (what seemed like seven minutes) into trying to pick up the pieces of my shattered self. I had already tried to walk away at least six times by that point, with one final (successful) attempt awaiting me 7 months in the future.  But the only thing I felt that day in February was transported back to the fear and panic of August 2008 -- surviving the verbal abuse, humiliation, intimidation and rage that left a hole in my wall and in my soul.

I never fixed the wall. I made a choice to leave it as a reminder of what I escaped from, what would have been waiting for me in the future. The hardest thing about emotional abuse is that it's experienced in your mind. You don't look in the mirror and see a black eye. There's no police report detailing the ways he's hurt you. As soon as the attack passes, you're weaker but you deny it, you spin it, or you believe his insults. The punctured wall proved my fairy tale had become a nightmare. It was a matter of time before he aimed for my head.

Having said that, I made the same mistake that Rihanna talks about. The wall should have been my wake-up call, and it was for a good 9 months. But I let the lingering feelings of love and his pleas and promises woo me back to lethal ground. It took a death threat for me to come to my senses.

**My favorite quotes from this interview:

"I'll say this to any young girl going through domestic violence: Don't react off of love. F' love. Come out of the situation and look at it third-person and for what it really is and then make your decision. Because love is so blind. It's so blind. "

"I am strong. This happened to me. I didn't cause this. I didn't do it. It happened to me and it can happen to anybody; and I'm glad it happened to me because now I can help young girls as they go through it."

A spoonful of statistics

Part of my healing process and transition into advocacy has been learning more about abuse, abusive patterns, abuser profiles, and the frequency/results of abuse as captured in statistics.

Most studies or synthesized numbers are from the '90s, which is frustrating, but still offer a glimpse into the wide impact of the destruction.

Here are a few that jumped out at me from a summary (PDF) posted on Stanford's Sexual Assault & Relationship Abuse Support & Prevention website: (emphasis mine)

• Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the USA -- more than rapes, muggings and car accidents combined (Surgeon General, United States, 1992)
• A woman is beaten every 9 seconds in the USA (Family Violence Prevention Fund Report, 1994)
• According to the Center for Disease Control, a woman is in nine times more danger of violent attack in her home than on the streets.
• In 1993, 3.9 million American women who were living with their spouse or partner were physically abused, while 20.7 million American women in the same living situation suffered emotional or verbal abuse (The Commonwealth Fund, 1993).
• Over 50% of the women killed in the USA are killed by male intimate partners or ex-partners (Journal of the American Medical Association, 1992)
• Approximately 50% of the homeless women and children in the USA are on the streets because of violence in the home (Joseph Biden, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Violence Against Women: Victims of the System, 1991)

Reading the warning signs of an abusive relationship broke my denial. It was the first time I reconsidered my loved ones' doubts as something worth considering, and not an attack on the man that I loved. It started the long process of breaking away, even though I went back and forth for months on whether those warning signs might apply to my situation (I felt that since we were intercultural, the signs might not be the same for us, and I explained away a lot of the red flags)

The next month, Redbook happened to highlight emotional abuse ("Invisible Violence") in their October 2008 issue. A loved one recommended I read the article, which hit me profoundly again with the similarities between my situation and other women's relationships. I kept it beside my bed and read it for strength each time I tried to call things off with my ex, only to be talked into staying and convinced that I couldn't trust my perceptions (or loved ones).

I found the Power and Control Wheel online in the final days of our relationship and was stunned by how accurately it portrayed -- in all but two of the segments -- my experience. Shocked that a stranger who knew nothing about either my partner or myself could grasp everything that I had known for the last few years, I relinquished my rationalizations. Surrendering to the truth was the next step.

Caged

August 19, 2008:

Pay attention to the cuss words
and the fist-fractured wall
Don't look past the blame heaped on you
For beneath its weight you'll fall

Have you quickened your response time
to appease and deflect rage?
Is a 'sorry' always on your lips?
Do you feel locked in a cage?

Can you adjust to the idea
of a master puppeteer
who pulls the strings to move your limbs
but makes sure your head is clear?

Have the insults grown more frequent?
Has respect been gagged and choked?
In the dynamics of the moment
have his macho thoughts been stoked?

Do you have the space to think?
Does he listen when you speak?
Or does he degrade your sense of self and pride?
Into your journals does he peek?

How much of you has slipped away?
How much of you is tied in knots?
You've turned yourself inside out
to be a glamorous robot.

How much longer do you have
before your life ends with a blow?
Heed my warning to you now:
Protect your life and go!

Phantom

September 28, 2008:

The slap of his words still stings
like the first time he spoke them
each time I remember

The onslaught of insults, the untold tantrums
leave colorless bruises -- deceptively invisible,
with no shades to gauge my healing.

The violation of space -- both physical and mental --
makes my blood boil anew,
kept in check only by the fear he's trained into me

Repressed anger, constant confusion, severe self-doubt --
these have become my closest friends,
standing in for loved ones who have been pushed away

Each day I awake
my prison walls constrict ever tighter around me
I struggle to break free, aching to use my droopy wings
yet paralyzed by doubts that they will even work

His words -- like puppet strings upon my mind --
coax me to stay and twist the fight out of me
I am limp but for his commands

I float ghostlike through my day,
His criticisms echo in my head
I sit beside you on the subway
I work one cubicle away

I am victimized by senses
I am neither heard nor seen
The abuse is not black and blue
Its essence has no proof

***

I wrote this to capture the turmoil one goes through; the fact that we bump up against victims every day who are hidden in plain sight; but also to speak to the frustration that the severe harm inflicted by emotional abusers is not valued equally as a shove or a punch in the legal system. I recognize the challenge to prosecute without physical evidence but I also feel that society gets the false message that emotional abuse isn't 'that bad.' Piling injustice upon injustice, perpetrators understand that if they don't lift a finger, there are no consequences.

Better off without you

Your words and your actions don't line up
I'm sick of the mind games and guilt trips
I've had some fun
I've learned a lot
But I know this now:
I'm better off without you

I've felt so often like I'm tiptoeing through a mine field
Trying to do everything right but you still blow up at me
I'm sick of being scared
And blaming myself for it
I'm better off without you

So I'm packing my bags
With photos and memories
I'll keep the good with the bad
For when I'm feeling shaky without you
Gotta keep my head on straight
And find myself in my own space
This is my declaration of independence.

Life goes on; I can't wait for this next chapter
I've faced stuff in the past
And I've learned my own strength
I'm gonna resurrect that girl again
Who smiles in adversity
And screams to the wind:
Is that all you've got?

You can't keep me down
I'm cutting myself loose
You've made it easy to do
With your lies and abuse
I won't stand for it anymore
I finally know my own worth
And I'm better than that, yea
I'm better off without you.

October 12, 2009

Fading to black

September 21, 2009

You. You who denounces Islam
who clucks his tongue at the treatment of Muslim women
who prides himself on being shaped
by centuries of civility
You are my burqa.

You cover the curves of my spirit
that distinguish and set me apart
those colors of my soul
you black out with your oppression.

How is your misapplied sense of honor
different than the Taliban's?
Your jealous questions and penal code
stifle me like a dark robe in the summer.
They isolate me and leave eye contact
as my only connection to the world.

Learning to love myself again

Written as lyrics with no melody in mind. Any artists out there with ideas, let's chat.

It's been awhile now
that I give your words
more weight than mine.
But I've reset the scale
and I'm walking away with
tears I won't be cryin'

I need to protect myself
Respect myself
Learn again who I want to be
It's been so long that
you've had control
I've redrafted dreams
and tried to edit my soul
It just won't work (and)
now it's time for me
to love myself again

I gaze in the mirror
and try to see
the girl long ago
that used to be me
the confidence, sparkle
and firm sense of mind
I've taken back my life,
it's a matter of time
'til I love myself again.

-September 25, 2008

The hangman isn't supposed to say 'Ti amo'

October 13, 2008:

Your fist never hit me
and yet your words
left stab wounds in my soul
as you twisted the blade
in every sacred corner
in every hope and dream
without mercy.

I did not know it at the time
but you had employed me
to build my own gallows
You had a noose around my soul;
I had only to build the platform and frame
from which I'd hang

I came close to laying
the finishing touches
of the structure
that would kill my spirit
that you had designed
and packaged in words of love
and I had naively trusted
handing over the keys to my heart

For years you whittled down
my scrappy resolve
Did you choose me because I was strong
and challenged you?
Or was my strength
an accessory you hadn't ordered
but accepted as part of the package?

I underestimated your hypnotic power
and overestimated my ability
to protect what was sacred,
to survive the siege on my soul
to keep track of how I was changing,
dying slowly.

Your "guidance" brainwashed me
Your expectations drained me
Your mockery humiliated me
Your anger frightened me
into a wide-eyed schoolgirl.

For a minute, I believed
the fault was all mine.
That you were all good
and I was all bad.
I passed over the ways
you had wronged me
because you had convinced me that
I had lost the right to speak up.

But since when is a relationship
only one person's criticisms toward the other?

There are times I've wondered
if there's not some way to work it out or save it
but then I ask myself:

Aren't you more alive now than before?
Aren't you more 'you' than before?
Aren't you less scared than before?
Aren't you more at peace than before?

Would you want to live with
the noise in your head?
the fear in your heart?
the insecurity and emptiness in your soul?
shuffling your feet to his drum beat
instead of dancing freely to your melody?

Breaking Free

Written September 29, 2009:

Jealousy was the guard dog that kept me in your cage.
You said it was there for my protection;
I knew better.

Fear was my prison diet -- flavorless but substantive;
enough to sustain me but not to give me the strength to escape.

Fits of rage were the prison wardens you sent to discipline me --
if I stepped too close to the bars or gazed too long out the window.

Guilt trips you used to clip the wings of my free spirit.
It's hard to fly when you're looking down all the time.

Isolation was my cellmate.
How else could I have believed that nobody could be trusted?
that nobody cared enough to come for me?

Lies were the shackles that kept me chained to your blame.
In my distorted sense of reality, I welcomed the chance for 'penance.' Only later I realized I shouldn't have carried the load in the first place.

But your penal system imploded from within.
The prison break was on your watch, beneath your nose.
Carried by family and friends, the truth set me free.

Being a voice for the voiceless

A primary reason I pursued journalism was to be a voice for the voiceless, to be an instrument of representing those viewpoints that are not held by officials or agencies but are the reflection of daily life that gets swept under the rug. A hope, too, was that in holding up the mirror to society that glimpsing our reflection would spur needed changes and shed injustice layer by layer.

One of those areas that I feel is routinely undervalued but unfortunately widely experienced is domestic violence. Having just finished a fantastic read -- A Thousand Splendid Suns, which I highly recommend to everyone, I was left with this thought:

Tragedy is when a child's heart must be broken so his mother's body isn't. Tragedy is the malice and neglect that break and defeat too many women across the globe.

More on this in future posts.