America the Beautiful, America the Abuser, America the Abused.
On Wednesday, America attempted to leave her abuser. While I watched our national horror unfold, I felt triggered. Triggered because I have been here one too many times before.
I know what it’s like to leave an abusive man. So did my mother. So do my sisters, my niece, and my daughter. Leaving an abusive relationship takes courage, planning, time, money, guts, support, strategy, luck, and a village. It takes a village. Because it is dangerous. It is terrifying. But it is also exhilarating and empowering.
If you make it out alive.
Research has shown the risk of domestic homicide becomes highest during the period of separation and the intensity of domestic violence escalates when the abused person decides to leave the relationship. — Betty Jo Barrett, an intimate-partner violence researcher and an associate professor in the women’s and gender studies program at the University of Windsor.
Triggered because America is my daughter and Trump, her narcissistic boyfriend. Who beat her, kicked her, choked her, threw her against the wall, pushed her down the stairs, locked her outside in the winter while pregnant, yanked her off the couch by her hair, convinced her her family didn’t love her, lied, cheated, and stole from her. From us.
The thing that I did not know that was so revealing to me was that anywhere between 50% and 75% of domestic violence homicides happen at the point of separation or after [the victim] has already left [her abuser]. — Cynthia Hill, director of HBO’s Private Violence.
Triggered because America is me and Trump, my abusive first husband. Who backhanded me, broke my glasses, demolished my entire living room, smashed my late mother’s antique chair, punched holes in walls, told me I’d never amount to anything, threw an ironing board at my baby and slammed me to the ground.
When she stands up to him, he makes her pay for it — sooner or later. Friends say: “Leave him.” But she knows it won’t be that easy. He will promise to change. He’ll get friends and relatives to feel sorry for him and pressure her to give him another chance. He’ll get severely depressed, causing her to worry whether he’ll be all right. And, depending on what style of abuser he is, she may know that he will become dangerous when she tries to leave him.— Lundy Bancroft, “Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men”
Triggered because America is my sister and Trump, her abusive husband. Who isolated her, smeared raw hamburger in her hair, swore he would take her beloved dog, made her believe it was all her fault, not his, as he threatened to kill her holding a gun to her head.
Most abusive partners exhibit a behavioral pattern that has been described as a cycle of violence. The cycle of violence has three phases: the honeymoon phase (when everything in the relationship seems lovely), tension building, and violent incident. Many abusive partners become remorseful after inflicting violence, and promise that they will change (beginning the honeymoon phase again). This cycle makes it difficult to break free from an abusive partner.— Women Against Abuse
Triggered because America is us and Trump, our abusive husband. Who lied to us, gaslighted us, isolated us from our political allies and global friends, called us names, pissed on our sacred institutions, spat on our revered Constitution, violated us, cut us, mutilated us, cheated on us, ravaged us with a viral disease while raping and pillaging the very foundations of our once-respected democracy.
Because the reality of it is, for abusers, it’s almost like they have a toolbox and in that toolbox they have a variety of tactics — everything from a dozen red roses and “Oh, baby” and a night out on the town to threats to a gun. He will use any one of the tactics that he feels he needs to use to make sure that his position of power and dominance is maintained in the relationship. — Kit Gruelle
I am triggered feeling the same anger and indignation I felt years ago when I got right back in my first husband’s scary, twisted face, daring him with equal venom to hit me.
One. Last. Fucking. Time.
He didn’t do it.
Domestic violence can also strain the people who witness, intervene, or simply recognize the tragic realities of relationship abuse. It can be painful and draining — physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially — to watch the people in our lives abuse or be abused. In that regard, we are all impacted by any and all forms of abuse, and it’s on each of us to take steps in our daily interactions to end and prevent future abusive behavior.— National Domestic Violence Hotline
We are all triggered, culminating in the shock, sorrow, pain, anger, anguish, and horror that has accumulated in our hearts and our heads for the past four years, cracked open and laid bloody bare this week in the cherished halls of one of the world’s most long lasting, iconic emblems of democracy: the United States Capitol.
Four (Hundred). Long. Dark. Haunting. Years.
We cannot do it.
What happened at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday reminded me of leaving abusers. Of my eldest sister when I was 12, fleeing with her beloved Siberian husky in the middle of the night to an undisclosed town on the other side of the state while her abuser was at work. Of myself when I left at 26 and he threatened to shoot himself, then three years later, stood at my car window knowing I was struggling financially, begging me to have sex with him one last time for $1,000…$1,500…$2,000, upping the number each time I refused until I sped away in disgust. Of my only daughter when I was 45, hiding with me and her sweet, innocent baby for weeks in different places across Washington state while waiting for the legal system to deliver imperfect justice that, luckily, prevented her from becoming another single digit added to the tragic total of the worst kind of statistics.
The steps necessary for America to leave her ultimate abuser, Donald J. Trump, will require more than impeachment or the 25th Amendment. It will require more than calling the police or frantic fleeing in the middle of the night or restraining orders or money saved in secret bank accounts, rulings read by low-level judges or help from domestic violence shelters via desperate pleas on calls to a hotline. It will require America — mostly White America, if we can muster the collective morality — to write new laws, institute new policies, put our liberal monies and actions where our mouths are, and self-reflect in a way that we have never self-reflected before, choosing our future leaders based on their empathy, humility, and humanity rather than swagger, hubris, and demagoguery. Leaving our ugly, racist, misogynistic abuse behind, as both the abused and the abuser, saying no. NEVER AGAIN.
We must do it.
