4:00 am

Thud. Thud. Thud.

This wasn’t the first time.

Pounding.

Starting to wake.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Groggy from sleep. It must be my roommate. It must be Ben.

Pounding.

Graceless persistence. Half asleep I rise to answer the careless racket.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Unexpected. This is not Ben. This is not good. I am not safe.

Why won’t you talk to me?

My heart is racing. I’m short of breathe. Mike, what are you doing here? Go home. I’ll call you in the morning. I won’t call him in the morning. My heart is racing. The door won’t shut because he pushes back.

I want to talk to you now.

He wants to talk now. My senses identify his state. His smell. Drunk. He looks it. I am not safe. Mike, please, I’ll talk to you in the morning. I won’t call him in the morning.

He is inside. I am inside. I am scared.

Scared is just a word. I jump in horror movies. I scream in a haunted house. Scared is simply a word but is not enough to convey what I feel.

Why won’t you talk to me?

He grabbed the scissors off the table.

Why won’t you talk to me? I’m going to kill myself in here!

Mike, please leave. I am going to call the cops. I need to call anyone. I am not safe. I have no control. He grabs my phone, I struggle to keep it from him. Broken. My phone is broken. 4:06 am, and my phone is broken. Nobody is around. Nobody knows what’s happening. Nobody can help me.

I’m going to kill myself in here!! Why won’t you talk to me?!

Scissors to his neck. Nobody wants to be the reason someone kills themselves, nobody. Blood. What the hell do I do? Mike, please! I will talk to you in the morning! Why are you doing this? I am not safe. Repeating he was going to kill himself. How the hell do I get out of this? I ran to the back of my apartment. Cornered, I faced him. Staring at me, scissors pointed at me. He has scissors! What am I going to do?

Visibly drunk. I try to run passed him, pushing the scissors from my direction. Blood. This time it belongs to me. Blood from my hands.

I run.

He runs.

I run from the back of my apartment, pass the bathroom, pass the bedrooms, pass the kitchen and living room. Out the door. Through the hall. Up the stairs. I am outside. I am bleeding. I am running.

Scared is only a word. Scared is a verb: Frightened; made afraid. This is bigger. This is indescribable.

I’m outside. Somebody help me!!! Anybody. 4:20am. No one is around. Anybody help me? Can anybody hear me?! There was no one. I collapse. A panic attack. Sitting in the fetal position scarce of breathe I panic. Mike, please stop! You’re scaring me and I can’t breathe!

I can’t breathe.

He screams at me. Mike grabs my arms and drags me away from the apartment building. My pants fall off. More blood.

“What’s going on?!”

Another voice; not my own and not Mike. I am not alone.

I run to her. Together we went inside. The police are already on their way. Someone else had heard. Someone else had called.

Waiting. He is yelling.

Bang. Bang. Bang

Banging on the windows and yelling. Why did this happen? 4:30 am. I am not alone.

This wasn’t the first time.

From my experience, situations seem worse at face value.

Our communication is poor and the details are extremely vague. Phone call after phone call is passing and still it seems we have no information. Ashley’s friends and police officers have no details for us.

Is my daughter safe? Speed limit 65 on the highway; 65 feels slow.

Time passes. After speaking with Mike’s parents we are informed Mike is in custody. I can breathe; my daughter is safe, for now.

Time passes and the tension doesn’t cease. An hour or so into the drive we have contact with the police department. We are informed Mike is being released.

Mike is being released? My blood boils with frustration. Ashley isn’t safe. My daughter isn’t safe. I’m still miles away and I can’t protect her yet.

Anger. Why is there so much false information? Why can’t I just get the story? What the hell is going on?

Finally Ashley’s voice. I’m finally hearing my daughter’s story.

Scared is only a verb. A word so commonly used and abused. As a father, I learned the meaning of scared. Scared for my daughter’s safety. Scared and wanting to protect her. Wanting to hurt whoever hurt her. Wanting to fix everything.

Time passed. I think she is safe. I don’t think Mike is going to try to hurt her again. This crime against my daughter cannot go unpunished. Now I need to see this punishment will fit the crime. I need to see that this can never happen again to the daughter I have spent my life protecting.

Mike is getting released. No charges filed against him. Incompetence! No charges?

Incompetence of the arresting officers and district attorney. The men put in this world, trained to protect my daughter can’t even do their jobs. Now, he goes free?

Mike is pulled from Illinois State University. Finally, good news. Finally something to settle my nerves. If Mike stays in Illinois State this is bound to happen again. If Mike stays, Ashley isn’t safe.

From my experience, situations seem worse at face value. Information is cloudy and you can’t always get the information you want when you want it. You have to do the best with what information you have.

My priority is to keep my daughter safe. My priority is making sure that this can never happen again.

Raging and flushed. I want to beat the shit out of Mike myself. I spent my life raising my children and trying to protect them then something like this happens and I realize there is nothing I could’ve done to prevent it.

Helpless. What could I have done to prevent this?

I want to be there. I want to comfort her. I want to make her safe.

In the car my mind is racing. Is there no way to get there faster?! Scared. I’ve been scared before but nothing like this. I never knew what the weight of scared could be. Like sandbags suffocating my chest.

Finally, my daughter. I can’t hold back my tears. Finally I have her in my arms. Finally able to keep her safe. She’s OK. I am so happy she is ok.

As we approach the police station we see Mike is sitting in the lobby. My daughter once so strong, now so fragile collapsed in front of my eyes. Collapsed with fear.

My husband would go to the police station alone and I would stay here with my daughter. Protecting my daughter.

Mike is finishing the paper work to be released. Technicalities with paper work. The victim has fewer rights than the criminal! My daughters’ attacker is being released due to a technicality?

We watched Mike leave the station with his parents. Do I see remorse? Blankness.

Anger. Emptiness. My stomach hollow.

What needs to be done to keep my baby safe?

Night came so quickly and events were calming. I finally have time to talk to my daughter. This wasn’t the first time Mike had been abusive she said, although I suspected things myself. She lied to protect him before now.

I did tell her she was partly responsible for staying in an abusive relationship.

This wasn’t the first time it had happened! Why would she have let this go on? I blamed her.

I want to take her home. Home for the summer. Home, where I know she will be safe. Where no one can enter in the middle of the night and harm her. Where I can keep her safe.

Ashley refuses to come home. Dropping out of summer class for the summer would show he won. She is right. She has worked too hard to let someone bring her down. She is strong. She is not going to come home.

My daughter is lucky. Many women don’t live to tell about their experiences with abusive relationships. Many women aren’t so lucky.

I don’t think he needs to be in jail. I don’t think that’s where he belongs. In truth, counseling and therapy would be more helpful for him to overcome all the emotional abuse he has from his own father.

Time heals the wounds, but those emotional scars will be on my daughter for life.

I consider my sister to be one of my best friends. I remember when we were little neither of us could go into the basement alone because we were scared. We would always go together. If we needed something, we would beg the other to go with us. Never would we venture into the dark by ourselves. All for the fear.

Fear of what?

Scared is just a word. A word that doesn’t even come close to describing how I felt. Mike had been in our home. Mike had sat at our dinner table.

Mike had been in our family.

She will never be so quick to accept someone into our family again.

Scared doesn’t even come close to the fear of hearing my sister, my friend, so helpless.

Ashley has always been hard-working and independent. She brightens up every room she enters. I never thought anything could change that. I didn’t expect anything to break her.

I saw Ashley two weeks after the attack for the first time since the attack at my senior graduation. I waited anxiously. I have never seen my big sister as anything but carefree and strong. I didn’t want that to change.

Then she was home. Her bruising and cuts weren’t as bad as I had expected. She didn’t look different. She looked like the older sister I had admired my entire life.

I wrapped my arms around her. I wanted to hug her as hard as I could. I wanted to hold her just so she knew how much I loved her and how much I wanted to protect her. Instead, I gave her a light hug, careful not to squeeze too tight.

Are you alright?

Yeah, al. It’s just life.

And that was all we said about it.

At the time assumed that would be it. We would move on and life would be just the same as ever. Ashley would continue being that same sister I admired. I still admire her, but she wasn’t the same. We didn’t move on. But really, that’s a whole other story. Now I know, she will never be the same.

This wasn’t the first time it had happened. This wasn’t the first time he raised his voice. It wasn’t the first time he pushed, hit, or scared me. It wasn’t the first time he threatened to kill himself if I left him.

A two year restraining order. That was my protection. Two years is coming up pretty soon.

I can’t help but wonder if he is angry with me. I cared about him and I didn’t want this to happen to his life. I couldn’t even fight back. I cared about him and I wanted him to get help.

He took a lot from me that night. He took my self-esteem and my dignity. He left me alone and ashamed. Ashamed and scared.

No one could understand me. They told me to talk to as many people as I could about the attack. To make sure my friends and my family all knew and to make sure I was talking about it as much as possible. It would help me cope.

I did the opposite.

Two years is coming up pretty soon and although so much time has passed I can’t help but wonder if he thinks I ruined his life. I wonder if he is angry with me and if he thinks about hurting me still. I wonder if I still need a restraining order.

Sometimes when I am driving home alone at night I get so afraid I can’t breathe. I start heaving and having a panic attack, just like that. Sometimes when I am alone in my apartment, I lose my breath and I can’t seem to get it back. This never used to happen before the attack. I never used to be so fragile.

But that’s life.

Photo

Video

Photo

Photo

Abiding Blemish

Photo

Photo

Photo

Photo

Video