Dismissed True Stories

Girl You Gotta Go: My Story PT 2

• The Survivor Sisterhood • Season 2 • Episode 3

Share episode

Send us a text

In part two of her personal story, Elissa shares the fuzzy, traumatic memories of life in a trailer with her abuser and how she eventually escaped with just a laundry basket of clothes and her toddler.

• Experiencing dissociation during abuse, creating mental "safe places" to escape
• Living in an unfinished trailer that reflected her broken relationship
• Developing a "food wound" through mealtime abuse and trauma
• Finding validation when a friend witnessed abuse and said "girl, you gotta go"
• Leaving during a moment of clarity rather than after a dramatic incident
• Choosing homelessness over abuse, sleeping in her car at Walmart
• Managing PTSD, flashbacks, and healing in the years since
• Building a new life and relationship based on healthy communication
• Finding healing through community and connecting with other survivors

If you're looking to leave an abusive situation, shut out the noise even if just for five minutes a day, listen to yourself, and do one thing daily just for you – that one percent of self-love can change everything.


National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233 OR text begin to 88788

Join the Sisterhood! The Survivor Sisterhood

Come join our community of survivors who are looking to meet someone just like you! See the behind the scenes work that goes into the sisterhood non-profit business, discuss DTS episodes, and of course find your survivor sister.

🔗 Follow Along:

Ready to share your story? Send me an email with the main talking points of your experience and I'll reach out to book an interview.

dismissedtruestories@thesurvivorsisterhood.com

Give DTS a 5 star rating! It helps this podcast reach other victims and survivors who NEED these stories! Help us find each other, help us heal, and help us find safety. Love you, mean it.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to Dismissed True Stories. It is part two of my very own story today. Where do we even start? I guess with the fact that when I uploaded and released part one of my story last Friday, there was such a mixture of emotions At first I was like what in the hell did you do, girl? Followed by some shame and embarrassment and then some relief that I was just out in the world, and then finally a sense of pride, and that took about two to three days to fully process digest, if you will and at the point where I'm okay that this is out in the world now. This is out in the world now, like I shared in part one.

Speaker 1:

My therapist always told me that telling my story is part of my healing journey, and I'm finally at that place now. Almost what? Three years later. She also said to me that putting it out in the world like this is also releasing its power that it has over me and the heaviness that I carry with it as well. I'll be making so much more room mentally and emotionally for the work that I do for my own happiness, for whoever else comes in my life, whatever else comes in my life, and that's a really awesome feeling to have.

Speaker 1:

I want to give an additional trigger warning before we get started. I do cry again. What do you know? I told myself before coming back that I was going to be completely transparent about the way that I heal and the way that I feel. I think that is very important when it comes to all of us who are leaving some of the most difficult, confusing times of our lives, and one of the main reasons that I started advocating to begin with was because I felt so alone in my healing. I constantly told myself the lie that I was the only one dealing with survivorship the way that I was and feeling the way that I was the only one dealing with survivorship the way that I was and feeling the way that I was, and that's not fair, because I'm not. I've learned since then that I definitely was not, I am not and I will never be. It's not an original experience. We all struggle. I guess I just want to touch on the fact that telling this part of my story it's really this part is really hard for me for a number of reasons, but mainly because I just I don't remember a lot during this time and, like I said, I am writing down these new memories that are resurfacing, like. I have a very hazy one that popped up recently of me running outside in my slippers in the dark, hiding in someone's shed while my ex drove around, and I remember seeing his headlights, but I can't tell you why that was happening. So it's just things like that that are starting to resurface and come together that I just can't quite piece together yet. On that note, let's get into this. You've waited a week for part two, if you're coming back, thank you so much just for being here, for sharing. I see you rating, giving me the five-star reviews. I truly do appreciate it, more than you know, but I think that you'll learn after listening to part two how much I truly do appreciate you. So let's just get into it.

Speaker 1:

Part two of my story when we move into the trailer, this is where things start to get really, really fuzzy for me, and I've always kind of said that I'm not ready to tell my story because I don't remember and this is the part that I think I try to block out, the thing that I just don't remember a lot from this time, lot from this time, and I know that I've shared on social media that I would disassociate a lot when things started to get bad. I would picture a light switch in my head and I would flip it like on and off. And when I would flip it on, I would imagine myself as an old lady, probably in my eighties, sitting at a red two-person kitchen table and I'm drinking my coffee in my little nightgown and my son walks in as a grown man and he's coming to spend time with me and I would see him light up and smile when he would see me. And it was just me and my little Cape Cod house and I was just at peace and things were quiet and like that's where I would go. And I think that's why I don't remember a lot, because I just started making up an imaginary place that felt safe to go to. Oh God, this is hard, this is hard.

Speaker 1:

So I started doing like a lot of work cosmetically on this trailer. It wasn't exactly like it was nice, but it wasn't what I wanted and we had talked about, you know, doing some upgrades and so I started ripping things out based on what we had agreed upon. Um, there was just so much, so much future faking here. Um, I, I remember at one, one point we had ordered carpet and new floors and it was the day before install and he had asked me to call the company and cancel because he had changed his mind. He would work on a project one day and then let it sit for months until he decided to pick up his tools again. Nothing ever got finished.

Speaker 1:

We lived in a shell of a trailer, but it was empty inside. We didn't have any floors. We had plywood floors. We had insulation hanging out of the walls with no drywall to cover it up the doors to the cabinets to cover all the dishware gone, no furniture. It was a visual. It was a little literal visual representation of how that relationship made me feel broken inside and desperately in need of some tender, love and care.

Speaker 1:

And the projects that we did work on together. They were absolutely terrifying, like most of this kind of work I'd never done before. I'd never done like DIY. I'd never hung drywall before done before. I'd never done DIY. I'd never hung drywall before.

Speaker 1:

There's a first time for everything and there should be a learning curve allowed, right, but he would scream at me during these projects because I didn't know what to do. He would scream at me until I would absolutely sob because I wasn't doing something in the correct way or I didn't know. Once he actually threw a hammer at my head and he missed, thank god, but nearly and it was because he was installing a dishwasher and asked me to go to Lowe's for him to pick up a part. It was like this little washer or something like little tiny part and I did not want to get it wrong. I was so nervous and lost. I remember pulling up like YouTube videos, trying to make sure that I was like making the right decision. I had asked some guy that worked there and I was like begging him to tell me that it was correct, like please give me this word that you're correct. And I even told him. I was like listen, I can't go home with the wrong part. Like he's going to be so mad at me if I go home with wrong part. And this guy looked at me and this is like this is not his fault, like we. I agree the community needs better education around abuse and domestic violence, for sure. But he looked at me and was like if he needs it so bad, then you tell him to drag his ass into the store and come get it himself. And then the guy walked away from me and I think it's just because, like, people don't understand, people don't understand, but I remember watching this guy walk away feeling so small and so scared to go home.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, I'm not going to be able to like tell you the things that happened in the trailer in chronological order at all. Like I tell you, I'm just going to tell you some random things that happened because I just, I just don't remember. Things are extremely fuzzy for me, like I said. So there were. I just remember, like this is the point in time that I tried to leave this relationship. A million times, more times than I can even count. I would bounce around from a friend's house to a boss's house, to hotels, and even like opting for sleeping in my car overnight just so I could get away from him. But ultimately, the things that he would always tell me like oh, you'll never make it without me would play on repeat in my head and I'd go back with my tail in between my legs like a broken and little lost puppy. And every time I would go back, things would get worse.

Speaker 1:

And it was there in the trailer where I learned how to listen to his footsteps to determine if his walk toward me meant danger, and at this point we usually slept in different bedrooms, which was welcomed by me, honestly, because it gave me the space from him that I so desperately needed. And during this time of sleeping separately, I started a journal that I hid under the mattress in my bedroom, and I remember writing in it this entry that said this place is like a jail. Everything I do is monitored. It's just four walls in a bed and I'm scared of the warden that walks around this place at night, scared what he will do to me if I so much as breathe the wrong way. At least the food is good, and that's only because I make it. Yeah, I compared my relationship to being in jail, but at least the food was good.

Speaker 1:

During this time, I found my escape in gardening and yoga, which, thankfully, he never seemed to have a problem with, but I think it was because I usually did those things outside and from the outside, looking in, like to our neighbors. Like our trailer looked great, and if the neighbors saw me doing yoga out in the yard, they'd probably assume that I was healthy and happy and it was all a show and he was the fucking director. I'm just. I just feel more and more grossed out, saying these things out loud, but I know that it needs to happen. So one of the biggest wounds that I still have is what my now fiance and I refer to as my food wound, and it was the thing that always, always, made me so vulnerable to his torture, because multiple times a day he could find new ways to punish me because I'm making three meals a day, sometimes snacks, and he would use that to abuse me. He would shove my face in plates of food and hold it there while he whispered something in my ear, he would throw plates and break them, yell at me if something was too salty.

Speaker 1:

One time, after leaving the relationship, one of the many times, I stayed for a few nights with a friend and I had made the decision to go back around five o'clock in the morning one morning because our son was so sick, he was constantly throwing up and he had been asking me to go home. He kept saying you know, like I, just, I just want to go home, mom, I want my bed, and it was breaking my heart to see him that uncomfortable and just wanting you know his quote, unquote comforts. And so I decided to go home and when we walked in the trailer he was still up at 5 am with that friend that supplied him drugs talking in the kitchen. I knew he hadn't been to sleep. It was obvious. I immediately knew, just by the way he looked at me, that I was in for it.

Speaker 1:

And this is the incident that my son calls the burrito fight. He frequently references this fight. He still remembers. So I had stopped and grabbed my son a breakfast burrito on the way home just to see if he would keep something down, because at this point in time breakfast burritos from McDonald's were his favorite food of all time. So I was like okay, let's just see if he eats this burrito. So we walk inside the trailer, we sit down, I arrange the breakfast burrito in front of my son to see if he would eat, and my ex comes over and grabs the burrito out of our son's hands, walks over, takes that burrito and smears it all down my hair. And then he took a glass of juice and poured it over my head. Then he went to the pantry, crumpled up a bag of chips and dumped that on my head as well.

Speaker 1:

And I remember my son watching this and he's crying for me Like mommy, mommy, and that's all I remember. I can't tell you what happened the rest of the day. It's blank. I've got nothing after that, and that's how most of my memories tend to go. I can remember bits and pieces, but not the whole thing. A lot more of the same kind of memories.

Speaker 1:

I remember getting to the point where I always felt like I needed to be on the phone with someone because I couldn't handle being alone with him. I always thought that I was going to die. I would take my phone, I would hide it under a pillow. If he was around, I would have my mom or my sister on the phone. I would just ask them to listen and looking back, I can't imagine what that was like for them.

Speaker 1:

And one thing that I tell myself from my own story that is so important to convey to you is that intimidation tactics are 100% abuse. I didn't realize this at the time because he used to pretend to hit me with things, but he would stop right before hitting my body. And, of course, like I never saw this as abuse until a friend watched him at a party pretend to hit me in the face with I believe it was a tennis racket and after he walked out of the room. She pulled me aside and looks me in my eyes and said the sentence that gave me all the permission I needed in the world to get the hell out of there and wake up. She looked at me in my eyes and she says, girl, you gotta go. And that was like all the validation in the world that I needed. Somebody else saw it. It wasn't just me. I could never get anybody else to like admit that that's what they saw. I needed someone to validate me because this entire time I was thinking I'm crazy and I'm just like making him into a monster that he's not, because that's how everybody else made me feel. That's how he made me feel she saved me. She saved me.

Speaker 1:

So one of the biggest reasons that I started this podcast was because I wanted to give survivors a safe place to share their stories, to be seen and heard and for, maybe for the first time ever, validated, just like me, because that was the first time I was really seen, because that was the first time I was really seen. I was seen and that was the thing that allowed me to shift from confusion to anger and anger. Girl. Anger is the thing that will eventually help you leave for good. I promise you, you get angry enough. You're going to walk away forever, and that's what you want. I know that's what you want. You want to be able to make them the monster in your story because they 100% fucking are.

Speaker 1:

My mom always told me that one day I would wake up angry and that would be the day that I'd walk away forever. And I shit you not. That is exactly how it happened. It happened exactly like that and I thought that I would always. It was always going to take like some big blow up fight. Maybe he would hurt me too badly and first responders would be the one to like help me get out. But no, this morning that I woke up, I just woke up over it all. He didn't even do anything to me that day, but I woke up, took our son out in the yard and I just couldn't get myself to come back inside the house.

Speaker 1:

He drank, he did drugs. I knew at some point he was going to pass out and he did. And when he did, I went inside. I grabbed the clothes out of the dryer, threw them in a laundry basket, buckled in my toddler into his car seat and away we went and I never went back. I started over with a laundry basket full of clothes and we slept in my Jeep. We slept in my Jeep until I finally found a roommate to move in with. But you know what? I left that shell of a fucking home, that lie of a life, and I left it for something greater. And it's so sad to me that something greater was sleeping in my car, in a Walmart, but it was because it was safe.

Speaker 1:

And we know that that's not nearly everything that happened, because how in the world? I'm already like what at eight pages on this document. How in the hell do I fit it all into eight pages? Like there's just no way. I feel like that's just like. What we talked about today is like skimming the surface, and I'm already 53 minutes into recording this podcast. But we have to start somewhere right.

Speaker 1:

So I left, I worked three jobs, I chose homelessness over abuse and I rebuilt my life from nothing into something. Was it hard? Hell yes. But would I do it again? Hell yes, there's just absolutely no way that I wouldn't. And now, in my healing journey, I'm engaged. Dude, holy cow, that just happened last week. It's crazy to think about everything that I just told you here today and then think about how far I've come. I'm not even the same person. I don't even recognize that person that was in abuse anymore and that's like I love her. I love her so much she was the strongest version of me but like I really can't feel her anymore, unless it's in a moment where I'm really triggered. Um, and I, I still have those moments.

Speaker 1:

I have been clinically diagnosed with PTSD twice, cptsd once, and yes, you can get a CPTSD diagnosis, even though it is not like recognized on the. What is it? The DSM-5. I'm on a medication, went on a little medication journey for a while, trying to find the best thing that worked for me. Yay, prozac. Love you like a sister and that's because, once I entered my relationship with my now fiance he is my safe person person I really worked on myself.

Speaker 1:

When I left, I deleted social media. I only focused on working and paying off my debts, which, by the way, I had over $10,000 in debt. When I left, I focused on being a mother. I focused on my own healing because I knew if I didn't heal myself, I couldn't help heal my son, and I fully believe that because I put so much work into everything, like I knew what I had to do when I just did it and I know that because of all that work and because of all that healing that I did, that I attracted the man that I have now. I wouldn't have been able to handle this caliber of healthy communication and relationship without going through the pain first and acknowledging it and sitting in it. And this man, like I said, he is my safe person.

Speaker 1:

And because he is my safe person, my brain has allowed me to start remembering some things, which is very active, the end of August through the beginning of October every year, and during this time I have flashbacks and panic attacks, and it's weird because they look different every time. So when I first started having these flashbacks, I wouldn't remember what I saw coming out of them. My fiance would tell me that I would scream and I would cry a lot, and the only way that he could get me to calm down thank the Lord for this man he would play meditation, music and I would come out of it and it would take me a while to calm down afterwards. I don't know about you, but when I have these flashbacks my body hurts and I am exhausted. Afterwards it's very draining. And then finally I had a flashback where I remembered.

Speaker 1:

And then finally I had a flashback where I remembered what I saw when I came out of it and that is a outline of him. We were in our son's bedroom at the time, because I remember in the flashback I stare at the wood paneling on the wall and I can see the blinds. The sunlight is filtering through the blinds and the curtains on the wall, which is the curtains that my son had in his bedroom at the time and I just remember staring at the rays of sunshine on the wall. And he comes in and he beats me with something on my left side, in my rib area. He beats me with something long and I can't tell if that is a baseball bat or a golf club because it's literally just an outline, and my therapist tells me that that's pretty common in flashbacks to only see because, like, my brain is still protecting me somewhat and it's like in a series of like five times. It's like you know what. I'm not even going to go there.

Speaker 1:

When I came out of that flashback, when I finally saw something and remembered, I'm going to cry again. I remember coming out and my heart pounding so hard. I felt like I had to run because I remember thinking if I don't run I'm going to die freezer and grabbed cheese. I had this big GFS bag of shredded cheese and I remember putting it up under my shirt and holding it there and having to pace around my living room. I was touching everything in my living room, trying to remind myself that you are not there anymore, trying to ground myself, and the days after that I could only listen to like Christmas music and this was like early September, because it just felt so nostalgic and I just wanted to go back to a place that felt safe. One of my favorite memories is how much my dad loved Christmas.

Speaker 1:

That was such a confusing time for me because I'm like how do I not remember, did I make this up? I felt crazy and I was scared to leave my house because I didn't trust my brain to not do something like that in public. That sent me spiraling into the deepest depression I've ever been in. I was really low, really, really low, and I finally got a therapist and she's wonderful. One of the things she's always said is telling my story is part of my healing journey and I knew that I would get there eventually, and I just remember feeling so alone again, feeling so alone again.

Speaker 1:

I didn't think that anybody was handling their healing like I was. I didn't think anyone felt this way, and I'm so happy that I finally made the decision to just start asking around to other women, because you know how people say, that people who have been through trauma speak a different language and we just know. We don't even have to say anything to anyone, we just know when other people have experienced the things that we have. And so I just trusted my gut and I started messaging other women asking if they'd been through the same thing and, like 99% of the time, I was right. I found another survivor who was ready to talk, like I was, and that's why you'll always hear me say that healing happens in community. And that's why you'll always hear me say that healing happens in community, because when her and I started talking and she started validating everything that I was thinking and experiencing and having troubles with healing wise, my whole entire healing journey did a 180. And I started posting on social media. I need and I get messages from you that say that you're so happy that you found my page or my podcast, because it helps you understand that you're not alone or it helps you leave.

Speaker 1:

I never imagined that it would turn into this and it really just started by saying I have things to share and I have to find someone to share it with Because I'm feeling so alone. Oh God, alyssa, get it together. Thank you for listening. I wish I would have wrote an outro, but I didn't because I told myself that I was probably going to get emotional and who knows if I was going to make it through the whole thing. But I did and I'm really freaking proud of myself and now you know a little bit more about me. But honestly, I wouldn't have any other way because I hope that that you see yourself in my story and the ways that help you heal.

Speaker 1:

There is tons of room in your life for love and safety and peace and dreams and hopes and financial stability and emotional support and a healthy relationship with yourself and your family and whoever should come in your life romantically Like you can literally have everything that you want. You really can. I think that you just have to put some love and effort into yourself and I really do believe that you attract better that way. I really do believe that because I ask everybody else like what is one piece of advice that you would give to someone who is looking to leave? My piece of advice would be to shut out the noise, even if that's like for five minutes a day, that you can find some alone time, maybe like you're driving to the grocery store. Shut out the noise, turn on your phone, talk to your camera, say everything that you're going to through, sorry, out loud and then listen to it back, because I started doing that and three months later I left.

Speaker 1:

It's insane what hearing in your own words, in your own voice, what you are going through does to you. So shut out the noise, listen to yourself and then also make time to do one thing a day for yourself. For me it was after he went to work. I would walk the dogs, I would not take my phone and I would just be present. I think that was just another form of shutting out the noise, but doing that made me love myself just 1% more, like Savannah last season said. It's so true. It is so true Because that 1%, that 1%, changed me so true. It is so true Because that one percent, that one percent, changed me so much. Take care of yourself and I really, really love you and remember the world is a better place because you are in it. Thank you.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Elissa

Host