The Darkest Day of My Life

I'd like to tell you about the darkest day of my life. 

I call it the darkest day of my life, but ironically it was the day the light started to come in. Perhaps this is how it always works. 

It was just a few weeks after I moved into Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. I'd chosen THIS school, out of all the schools in the world, to transfer to for my Sophomore year. This was my new life, the life I'd wanted, the life I loved... right? 

Wrong. 

Nobody would guess from my upbeat Facebook posts that I was actually quivering inside myself, terrified for what was to come. And as my dad snapped a photo of me perched on the edge of my bed in my new apartment, I felt anxiety overwhelm me. I watched my father stand outside my first apartment and shake hands with The Man who would make the next several months of my life a living hell. My father shook his hand and said, "We're glad Sarah has someone looking out for her."

The Man said, "Oh don't worry sir, I'll take GREAT care of your daughter."

With those words I felt dread quicken in my blood. 

As soon as my father was down the street The Man turned to me. "Get your things. You're not staying here." We drove in his car to The Apartment, which reeked of cat urine and god knows what else. "Take off your shoes," The Man said. And as I took them off I thought about how hard it would be to run away without them.

You see, I couldn't run away... I was just now becoming his captive in body, but I had been his prisoner in my mind for a very long time. The Man had reached into my life from a thousand miles away. I spent my last two years of high school and my freshman year of college glued to the emotional games he dragged me through. 

You see, being abused is like a drug. I didn't know it then, but the shouting, the hitting, the shoving, the threatening, the crying, the begging, the promising, the apologizing - they were all part of a carefully manipulated cycle that kept me utterly fixated and dependent on this human. And miserable - with him or without him. My life's purpose became to keep him appeased. And this was impossible. Even as I stood there that first night taking off my shoes, I knew that if I so much as placed them even an inch too far off the rug by the door, I would pay dearly for my crime. And as I gingerly placed my sandals down, I rose up again to face The Man. "Now come here."

Flash forward to the darkest day of my life. I trekked down the sidewalk to class. It was mid September, still warm in Atlanta, but a breeze blew leaves across the concrete in front of me. Despite the lingering warmth I was numb, cold, emotionless inside. In just six weeks, I'd spiraled deeper than I thought possible. I had no interest in my classes. The Man had seen to it quickly that I had no friends. As for my family, I ached and yearned for them to figure out what was happening. I called my mother from a Walmart parking lot sobbing after a particularly terrible fight. She tried to soothe me over the phone. "Sarah, what's going on?"

"I'm just homesick..." I whispered. "I'm just very very homesick."

As I walked to class on The Darkest Day of My Life, I had decided, and my choice weighed deeply in my chest like a stone dagger, crushing me and cutting me at the same time. 

The night before I'd laid motionless next to The Man with tears streaming down my face. 

"God, what's the matter now?" The Man barked after a few minutes.

"I don't think I can do this anymore," I whispered, unable to hold it back any longer. "I'm sorry, I'm--"

But before I could finish he'd flown into a rage. He yanked the blankets off the bed. "You BITCH," he screamed, his voice reverberating. I knew the neighbors would listen and do nothing. They never did anything. They watched me go in and out of The Apartment like a wounded cat they didn't want to be bothered with. 

"I'm sorry!" I tried to soothe him, but it was too late. He stood towering over me. He yanked the sheet from under me, sending me sliding from the bed to the floor. 

"GET UP!" He screamed. 

I scrambled, looking for my phone in the dim light of the TV. 

"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, you bitch..." The Man's last words were a whisper, and this terrified me even more. "I don't want to be with someone who is so INCAPABLE OF LOVE!"

I tried to get out of the bedroom door but as I grabbed the handle he yelled again, "What the HELL do you think you're doing!"

"Leaving," I said calmly. "You asked me to--"

"All I ever asked you for was for you to treat me well," The Man bellowed. "You're a poor excuse for a girlfriend - and there's no way in HELL you're leaving this house like that." He took a step towards me.

My heart raced. I jumped away from him.

"DON'T FLINCH," The Man snarled. "Jesus, what did I ever do to make you so terrified. You're pathetic."

"I need to call my mom," I cried, getting hysterical. "Let me call my mom."

My phone was on the ground between us.

"You are not calling anyone," He said calmly, stepping towards my phone. 

"Yes I am!" I yelled, feeling a fire boil in my veins. "I'm calling my mom!"

He grabbed my phone and flung it across the room. It hit a wall and slid down to land with a smack on the floor. 

You're next.

He didn't say it with his voice, but with his eyes.

I scrambled frantically behind me into the bathroom and closed the door. "I'm not coming out until you let me call my mother!" I sobbed, crumpling onto the floor in the fetal position.

"Is that what you really want?" 

I was silent.

"Sarah, answer me."

I felt the sobs overtake me. Mom, mom, mom. All I could picture was her face. 

"Bitch," The Man muttered. "You'll call your mother, and you'll tell her what? That you're in over your head? That you ended up here by your own stupid choice and now you want out?"

Mom, mom, mom.

"You can stay in there until we both rot," The Man hissed holding the door closed until I was too tired to fight.

When he finally let me out, he held his arms open. "Now, come here," The Man said. "That wasn't so fun, was it? You have got to stop making me so mad, Sarah. You push me to the brink of madness. One of these days someone is going to get hurt." The Man stroked my hair, kissed my forehead. "And none of us want that."

I sobbed against his chest and I don't remember anything else from that night. 

And so, the next day, I had decided. My life was over. As I walked to class, I thought about what I needed to do. I had no earthly belongings of any value. The only things I cared about were my journals... they were all at The Man's house. I didn't want him having them. I didn't want my family having them. I would need to figure out what to do with those.

As I walked, I looked up. The sky was blue as it usually is. God, are you there? I asked. I knew the answer. Yes, he was. And he was very disappointed in me. I had caused all this... I ended up here by my own stupid choice and now I wanted out. I knew the only way out. 

Please, if you want to... I said to the sky, with very little feeling left in me. Help me. Please. if you want to, HELP ME. Or... I'm going to have to.

Have to what? The Sky asked back. Kill yourself?

I nodded.

But Sarah, The Sky said, YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD.

Time stopped, and I looked down at my exhausted body, I felt my pulpy brain pulsing in my sore skull. It was true. I was already dead... already dead... already -

A bird sang loudly, startling me out of my deep train of thought. I looked to my right. There, behind some drooping vines hanging from huge mossy trees, was a small building. 

A clinic.

The student health clinic. Not the heroic chariot of angels you would expect, but... my feet compelled me into it as the words rattled about in my head. Already dead, already dead. These new words were a tidal wave and I was propelled forward by something. Fear? Chaos? I don't know. All I know is that my feet beat across the concrete despite the resistance in my brain and I flung my backpack down in the foyer of the clinic and rushed up to the desk.

"Hey - " I hissed through the glass window of the receptionist's desk. "I REALLY need to talk to someone." 

A few minutes - hours - lifetimes it seemed passed as I poured my jumbled mind out to first a counselor, then a psychiatrist, a chaplain, and who knows who else.

It would appear that depression, anxiety, and many of the other symptoms I was experiencing (think: sleeplessness, hives all over my body, frequent migraines, nausea, panic episodes, hair loss, etc.) are actually common indicators that a woman is going through abuse.

Abuse.

abuse.

AbUsE.

I held the word in my mouth but could never speak it because the one time I had even so much as started to say it to The Man he had flown into an unprecedented rage. So I didn't say it, but I thought it. and that seed of thought fell into my heart and grew into a tree of courage, and all the therapists at the clinic watered it daily. I was in crisis mode, though I didn't yet know it.

A few days later, I woke up sick. He let me leave his apartment for the first time since I'd moved to Atlanta as he didn't want to contract my illness. I fell into my own bed for the night exhausted and relieved. When I stayed with The Man I couldn't speak, roll over, look at my phone, or even adjust my pillow without dire consequences. Finally, thanks to some freaky kind of flu, I was alone. I sighed in relief and curled up among my blankets. I slept, long and deep.

The next day, I skipped class. I was drained. I turned off my phone and ignored the man. I was terrified of the repercussions of ignoring him but I was simply too exhausted to keep it up. I sobbed on the couch in the living room of the apartment I had barely known. My roommate ran me a bath and spread rose petals on the edge of the tub, dropped essential oils in and helped me settle into the hot water. And I decided, while soaking there in blissfully peaceful porcelain arms, that it was over. I would never answer him again.

* * * * *

There is much more to the story of my escape. It was only a few hours later The Man appeared at my apartment, brandishing his dark metal rage, and it was then I called first the police, then my best friend Kara, and finally my parents. Within six hours I was 300 miles away, on the doorstep of my parents' home in North Carolina. It was, you could say, the end, although for me it was the beginning of a brutal few months of recovery, which turned into a brutal few years of trying to regain some sense of normalcy, which leads right up to where I am today. 

I am frequently tossed back into the brutal and terrifying memories of that time. I awake to nightmares of The Man. I imagine his face peering through my windows as I work hard at my desk. I hear his cruel voice taunt me when I look in the mirror. When current boyfriends make an innocent slip and say something thoughtless, I feel The Man laughing behind their words.

And so, when things get especially hard, I retreat, into the depths of hot water, where I watch the steam rising off my reddening thighs, and behind the locked door of my bathroom, I feel alone, and safe, and I can at least say that the darkest day of my life is over.