Gabby Petito is the Exact Reason We Need to Keep Telling Our Emotional Abuse Stories.

My heart was in my throat when I originally wrote this almost two months ago. I felt just as shaken up as I re-read it today. I originally wanted to start writing this before Gabby's body was found. Before Brian Laundrie disappeared. Before her death was ruled a homicide.

I wanted to write this after I only watched a small portion of the bodycam video that was recorded on August 12th. Because it brought me back to my own memories that are difficult to relive.

I've recently read many stories from women who have been the victim of emotional abuse stepping forward and talking about how familiar Gabby's story looks and feels. How triggering it is. How gutwrenching it feels to see her in that video and understand exactly how buried under manipulation she was.

It's maddening to watch her abuser blow it off. And while I place no blame on the officers, I can't help but wish there'd been someone in her life that would've recognized the signs and saved her. Because she was too far in to realize how far in she was.

I've been there, too.

A Small Snippet of My Story

Almost exactly three years before that bodycam video of Gabby was recorded, I spent the entire night of my birthday being verbally attacked by my abuser. We were three hours from home, in his vehicle and I was fully dependent on him to get me home. He attacked me because I showed a slight sign of annoyance that we'd spent two hours that evening walking around Walmart after he suddenly needed to buy a new knife for himself. On my birthday. How dare I not bow to his utter and complete selfishness when finding a new knife became more important than the birthday dinner I'd been looking forward to (which…shocker…we never made it to.)

By morning, he'd convinced me I was the guilty party. He'd reminded me how he'd gone out of his way to plan this wonderful birthday weekend for me, and here I was being selfish. \

After hours and hours of blameshifting throughout the night, I finally gave in and accepted it all. As we sat at lunch the next day, I couldn't eat. I was so wound up in emotional turmoil that I just stared at the table  -  trying not to have any reaction that might trigger him  -  while he sat eating joyfully as if nothing had happened.

When a waitress came by and sat a piece of chocolate cake in front of me and said I looked like I needed it, I panicked inside knowing he'd be angry that people had noticed my despair. At the table, he joked with the waitress. "It's her birthday weekend! How did you know?" But as soon as we were back in his truck, he attacked me for how much I'd embarrassed him. I sobbed the entire 3-hour drive home and then he gave me the silent treatment for days because I had ruined his weekend. I believed it was my fault.

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Watching Gabby blame herself in that video - saying it was her OCD that had caused the argument, I can't help but wonder if she actually had OCD or he'd just convinced her she did. I see the brain fog she's in because she can't reconcile the person she wants to believe Brian is with how he's behaving. So the only thing she knows to do is blame herself. This is called cognitive dissonance and it's a tool that abusers use to gain control.

In that same video, watching Brian joke around and act completely calm and innocent makes me want to vomit. I can see how he's reading the officers because he's learned how to display himself in whatever way it takes to get away with what he's doing. Manipulators are such convincing showmen. But he never showed a single ounce of empathy for her. Didn't anyone there find that odd? Because I want to scream when I watch it. These are classic signs of an abusive relationship!

But if you don't understand the signs, it's easy to explain away.

This is why we must keep speaking about emotional abuse!

We, as a society need to all become better educated about emotional abuse so that we can recognize the signs and sound the alarms for our loved ones (and ourselves) when things don't seem quite right. Will they listen? Maybe not at first  -  however, I still believe we need to do our part.

New stories are now reporting about Gabby's friends coming forward to discuss the dynamics of Gabby and Brian's relationship. A friend, Brian Mutala, is quoted in the article as saying,

"One minute, they'd be all over each other, the next minute, he'd be like, 'We're fighting,'" Matula said of relationship when they were teenagers in Long Island, New York. "They always had some drama."

It breaks my heart to read these words. This is a classic sign of a toxic relationship. The article goes on to quote other friends saying the couple had "the highest highs and the lowest lows." Which were the exact words I used to explain my relationship while I was in it -  and it was my desperation to get back to those highs that kept me in it. Because I didn't understand what trauma bonding was, or gasligting, or cognitive dissonance. I only understood that I loved a man and believed he loved me, too. It was only through reading article after article about narcissistic and emotional abuse that I finally started to understand what was going on.

Gabby never had that chance. And no one around her saw it, either.

We need to keep sharing our stories. We must do it.

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There are too many monsters out there. As my ex used to proudly say, "Some people want to catch the world on fire, simply to watch it burn." He probably stole that line from some movie I've never seen and called it his own, however  -  he was right. He was talking about himself. He was talking about the thousands of others like him out there who feed on kind and forgiving hearts. They hide under the guise of charisma and handsome faces but they are driven by shame and they will destroy anything that reminds them of it.

If you've been through it  -  talk about it! And if you don't know the signs, educate yourself. Please. How many more women (and men) dying at the hands of an abuser will it take before we start taking emotional abuse more seriously?