Survival is the only option.

Here's the thing you need to know about abusers: there's no look to them, there's no visible identifying trait they all carry that makes you recognize what they are upon seeing them. In fact, most of them, you'd never guess what they do behind closed doors based on the life they forwardly present.

Mine was a charmer. He could walk into a room and instantly you'd feel this amplified electricity. His laugh was a hearty one that was paired with a signature hand over his belly and throwing back of his head. It filled whatever space he was in, reverberating off of the walls and into your skull, drawing out joy from the depths of your soul. He was the type of person that could make friends with anyone and everyone--something to which I felt a magnetic draw.

I remember the night that he charmed me. It was a late night of drinking with friends. He had this whimsical sense about him. His attention was carefree, frivolous, and wavered between conversation with his friends, bar games, and me. I wanted it to be on me. So badly I wanted it to be on me. I remember searching for ways to draw his attention. I wanted this man who was so effortlessly fun and free to teach me how to be that way. To save me from some monotonous life that I'd grown accustomed to. To uncage me.

I must have willed this into existence or made an impression on him because within the next few days he started showing up at the lunch shifts I worked just to chat. Then, eventually, to accompany me for my after-shift drink. We'd chat about our relationships, about how we weren't satisfied with where we were in our lives, our dreams, how we felt we were settling. We forged this connection and when I looked into his eyes, it felt like the only true thing I had at the moment. I got lost in those eyes and in them discovered the brightest stars; a web of constellations illuminating the path toward the future I envisioned with him. I saw a whimsical, adventurous life filled with deep belly laughter and us working a room together, surrounded by our friends and family. I didn't want to let go.

It wasn't long after that we were together. We left our respective significant others and tended to the kindling that ignited our passion for each other. Our love grew quick and strong. I became infatuated with it. Reliant on it. He made me feel like I'd cease to exist with out it. But as time passed, the person who once uncaged and freed me became my captor. The longer we were together, it grew more and more apparent that his charm was a farce. I watched it slowly chip away like the patina on a decaying statue. And as that patina cracked and fell, piece by piece, it was revealed to me the true nature of the person I was with.

It took a lot of time and personal growth to get to the point where I felt the strength to leave my abuser. While I was in it, I was able to keep my abuse a secret and hide it away while projecting this idyllic version of what I wanted my life to be. It's so easy to get caught up in romanticizing things that aren't at all romantic, or even healthy. When, in reality, my experience with abuse operated on a vicious cycle that spanned years. At first, I thought I could change him. That if I loved him h ard enough, his temper and control would melt away. So, I lived my life for him, one that was honed and crafted to be so small and shrunken that it wouldn't trigger his rage.

I feared my abuser. I feared his temper, his judgement, his reactions. I feared how my success might feel for him, how it might emasculate him. I was scared of his opinions of me and noticed that every time I let myself slip free from the cage he put me in, I was met with criticism that was spat at me with such venomous disdain that I could feel it like pinpricks on my skin.

Gaslighting was his best weapon. It was so torrential, so severe, that it rushed like a flash flood into my brain, taking the truths I thought I knew to be evident and making them collapse under its weight like landslides, shifting the geography of my mind to the point that, even now, I do it to myself. My entire perspective on right and wrong was constantly brought into question. You can only be belittled and berated so much until you start to believe it. Things that were absolute truths to me became so hazy, so blurred that I lived in this space of constant uncertainty. When you don't have your bearings about yourself, it's easy to become the target of abusive manipulation.

If I tried to leave, he did everything to stop me. He removed my ways of contacting anyone by taking my phone and hiding it. He'd use his own body as a physical barricade to prevent me from leaving our home. He was much larger than I was and had a menacing presence. It often was easier to let things escalate knowing that immediately after would be the apologies and the honeymoon period. If I tried to stand up for myself, his agitation only amplified. This is usually where the violence began. I got good at hiding evidence of his violence. I spent time learning to cover bruises. Learning believable reasons to excuse myself from social events with my family and friends. I blamed our dog's strength and my clumsiness for a number of concussions, including the time I sustained soft tissue brain damage from a particularly violent outburst. I remember my abuser telling me that he thought I enjoyed having marks on my body from him, that I loved being a victim. And there were points in time where I was convinced that he was right, that maybe I was being too sensitive. With every instance of abuse the goalposts for mutual respect and a baseline of safety were moved further and further away until they disappeared altogether.

It wasn't the first time that he hit me, but it was the first time I tried to escape. I don't remember what we were fighting about, but when he pushed me and I fell, the back of my head crashed into the hardwood floor with a heavy thud and I saw stars. Not unlike the ones I saw in his eyes the first time we kissed, but this time they were surrounded by a blackness; this deep, impeding darkness that washed out my vision then washed over the rest of me like a tidal wave. I felt it seep into every nook and cranny of body, this feeling of drowning, this feeling of dread. It took a hold of me and ripped me apart from the cracks in the foundation on which my humanity was built and I crumbled.

It wasn't until I felt his fingers, tangled into my hair, twisting and pulling as he dragged me across the living room floor that I realized what was happening. I lost myself among those stars. I was floating untethered through space in this idealized version of what my life was supposed to be. But it wasn't. It wasn't any of those things I'd dreamt. And I was quickly losing my oxygen, my lifeblood, my courage, my wonder, my sense of self, and it was being replaced by the fear that was growing ever more present in my veins. It's a harrowing realization that the person you agreed to spend the rest of your life with has no qualms about physically harming you and making threats against your life.

This time when I looked into his eyes it wasn't a carefree whimsy I saw. There were no constellations glistening and dripping with charm. It was that blackness like a ravenous hunger. He looked at me, his eyes full of rage, as if he was going to devour me. He was the apex predator and I was the prey, fighting to get away, struggling to maintain a grip on survival.

I felt a panic in the depth of my gut and I imagined that this must be what a gazelle feels in the moments before a lion sinks its claws into her haunch. Primal fear is the great equalizer. The moment a living thing feels as if its life could be taken from it, all bets are off, and they instinctively do whatever they can to protect their existence. I wiggled and writhed and somehow I freed myself from my lion's grasp. I lunged for the door and managed to open it, screaming, "Help," at the top of my lungs with such voracity that with each outburst I felt a burning rising in my throat.

I didn't know it then, but I do now. I am a dragon. I have a fire in my belly screaming to be freed. A truth that has not been spoken. A life that needs to be voiced in the hopes that it saves maybe just one other person from experiencing their undoing.

For almost nine years I gave my abuser more grace than he deserved while he gave me none. I protected him without protecting myself. I shrunk myself, my voice, my personality, my relationships in order to protect him. I conflated control with love. I looked red flags in the face and chose to ignore them because I believed in the good even when it ceased to exist. I chose to protect my abuser's reputation rather than myself, my body, and my mental health. But through that experience, I've realized that nothing will destroy me. Not even him. And as much as I don't want to let my traumas define me, they've become part of my existence. The effects on which they've had on me are now ingrained in my DNA and something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. It's blanketed every bit of my being as if it's lava and ash bursting from a volcano, violently smother all life that's within the vicinity of its eruption. He was my Pompeii.

But from razed grounds grow the lushest forests. I won't be silent. I will speak my truth and my words will spread like seeds, propagating a sense of empowerment among those that hear them and together we will grow dense like a jungle, engulfing all of whom we grow upon. A league of survivors, branches and vines intertwined creating a web that protects us from anyone who dares to cross us. And in that and through sharing our stories we will find our strength and encourage others to find their own.