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I chose not to give Liam the specifics because he’d made it apparent how fragile his temperament was these days and I could already feel the tangible change in the air and the way his body had stiffened even with the prelude to the event.
So no, telling Liam about the broken nose, fractured ribs and sprained wrist would do nobody any good. Though there was no good here anyway.
“I broke it off,” I said, not mentioning that me breaking it off consisted of threatening him with the gun my brother bought me, but I never used. I didn’t press charges, even though that went against everything I believed as a feminist. About punishing men who believed their right was to hurt and control women. Men made women fear breaking up with them because a heartbroken man could turn into a monster in a moment. Women shouldn’t have to take the fears of a man’s fragility, turning them into a punching bag.
But this was a world of ‘shouldn’t have tos.’ So women did.
And my reaction to having this kind of violence turned toward me was exactly the opposite of how I thought I’d react. I wasn’t sure if it was fear that stopped me from reporting him at first. It was emptiness. It was an exhaustion of carrying around all my inside trauma. Maybe there was a sick part of me that liked having the outside trauma to match. Whatever it was didn’t make sense. Damaged people rarely make sensible decisions when the world damages them even more.
I continued staring at the door as I carried on with the story. “After I broke it off, I started seeing him everywhere. My coffee shop. Grocery store. Then outside my bedroom window at three in the morning. I got the restraining order then.”
Whatever had stopped me from reporting the initial abuse disappeared with his face at my window at three in the morning. I knew then it wasn’t going to be over when my bruises faded and my bones healed. It would only be over when Marcus had repaired what he considered I’d done to his masculinity. And men like that healed their sense of self by destroying women in all the ways they could.
The police weren’t exactly helpful, but I hadn’t expected them to be since I’d waited to report the crime. It was another ‘shouldn’t’ I was faced with in a short amount of time. The men and women that were tasked to protect us shouldn’t throw judgment and doubt in the face of a woman looking for help when walking through the doors took more strength than taking the initial beating.
The journalist in me wanted to write a story on it. But the world already knew this kind of thing happened. It was too normal for us all. And I didn’t have the strength to tell my own story.
“I should’ve known better than anyone that a piece of paper did nothing against violence,” I said, remembering how light and flimsy the paper felt. “But then again, I felt naively safe in my home, even from him. I had a sense that if anything was going to happen to me, it’d be over there, in that horrible and deadly war. Not amongst the mundane.”
My mind went to the day where I heard Liam’s mother scream from down the street. I’d been hanging out the laundry.
Mundane.
“But horrors happen among the mundane most of all,” I whispered. “He broke in. While I was in the shower. So I didn’t hear him break the window. My neighbor did. Probably the only reason I’m alive. It was very apparent he’d come to kill me.”
The police found what I liked to think of as the ‘serial killer starter kit’ when they responded to the call.
He had rope, duct tape, a hunting knife and a handgun in a backpack he’d left in my bedroom. Along with latex gloves.
He hadn’t been wearing them when he attacked me in the shower, I guess maybe he panicked, or got too excited when it became apparent how helpless, and naked I was.
I shivered, Liam’s embrace had suddenly become very cold, the air very still. He hadn’t spoken the entire time I relayed the past like it didn’t belong to me. But it didn’t. It belonged to him, even though I didn’t want it to be that way, he claimed my past, my present and whatever was going to make up my future. Regardless of what happened between us, he was a scar on my soul.
I liked that I was cold, though. Because the memories of those moments were scorching hot, with him sweaty, the water scalding, slippery. My body temperature rising with panic and terror.
The promise of rape hit me harder than he did in those moments.
And then, like in the movies, right before the deed was done, the door was knocked down, uniformed men with guns burst in, saving me from the worst of the trauma.
