Memo to the domestic abuser, 12 years on

Not even a boy with the access or privilege of an abusive spouse or boyfriend
nothing like that

Just a random, pathetic-ass straight boy in a grown-ass man-body, wearing dirty crocs and high-expectation-daddy issues back home (the ’rents paid for everything)

Who lied his way in through a Craigslist roommate interview (like he lied through everything) to get into the home I had made, and from which he could not be easily removed above a garden tended in summer by beautiful college men hired by the landlord who worked shirtless on hot summer afternoons, and I didn’t mind the view; whose fruits — tomatoes, basil, rosemary, and sage — were a delight to taste; with a deck in the trees for drinking wine at sunset in spring and fall; in winter, for building snowmen three stories above the garden, and watching students trace the perimeter of the park in fresh snow as dogs and their walkers worked the inner paths

If this violent, drunken, adderall-raging man-boy control-freak had not attacked and chased me down three flights of stairs that April night, I might have never had some of the adventures that came with my irrational path to resolution.

I lucked out, kid. Beyond reason. My under-slept, stressed-to-broken, no-path-forward, exhausted mind led me to an irrational response that… worked out. Somehow. Somehow it worked out. It should not have worked out.

Had the violence not come, I would not have fucked beautiful men on summer vacation in the tiny seashore town at the end of the continent to which I fled to get the fuck away from the rest of the entire fucking world because i suddenly had no fucking home to go home to, sleeping on the floor of my ex’s apartment across the river, trying to find someone to help me even get back into my apartment (on which I still owed rent every month) to get my possessions and finding no one, from a fucking pay phone in the fucking student center where i wasn’t even a student any more, had god damn well had quite fucking enough of this shit and a little money saved up that wasn’t doing me any fucking good otherwise so i might as well go to the fucking beach for the summer.

I would not have seen sunrises and sunsets at the edge of the ocean, never learned the rhythm of the tides, or gotten into the best shape of my life, had I not changed it all the fuck up.

But lucky beyond reason is just luck. An irrational response to a crisis is not a sane way forward. I got lucky. Lucky with hot, sweet guys who were mostly good to me. Lucky with a 175 square foot cottage at the back of a garden behind a tall fence that sheltered and hid me from all violence, and storms, and people I could not bear to see or talk to or deal with. I hid from you, abuser, until maybe February, when the town lay empty and quiet, as I sat one day in the rocking chair at the window in the library, saw thick winter waves crashing into a protected bay, and understood, finally, that you were not coming, and I felt the first relief of a pressure that had until then had only increased with each passing day. Ten months in. Long after I forwarded my mail out of state and a friend mailed it back to me every two weeks, so you and others could not find me. I hid from prosecutors who wanted to talk to me about your attack on the friend who was helping me move my things that terrible Saturday when you showed up, wasted, and blocked us from leaving the apartment, because I had no lawyer and you did, and because i was in fact every bit the “pussy” you told me i was, and because i was so scared and could not relive it one more time.

This is not a “thank you for helping me understand my strength.” Sometimes people write those. This isn’t one of those.
This is still a “fuck you now and forever.”
I’m definitely still the “pussy” you said I am. Coward at times. Weak man.

I mean, there were good reasons to fear you. You’re taller, stronger, younger. You were violent — the signs started to show not long after you moved in and dropped the cover story. You were inside my house with no one else. No witnesses to much of it (but there are recordings and other contemporaneous records and witnesses to other events, so don’t come at me now). Your rich daddy was practiced at bailing you out and paying off detractors. You spoke with amusement about the time you “beat the shit out of a rent-a-cop” and your dad fixed it all up. Hell, he even got himself out of that mess with the SEC.

The night your control freakery escalated beyond discretion and shame was the same night you described yourself to the girl as an “adderall addict” — and then I understood that there was more to the story than was explained by your habitual Saturday night pregame chugging two bottles of two-buck Chuck on the couch, staring into nothing, before heading to the bars to do the serious drinking. Bitch, after you came at me, after I was locked in my room, after the cops left telling me “sort it out yourselves or we’ll arrest you both and let the judge sort it out”, when the needy girl you brought home persuaded you to go out onto the deck to calm down, I grabbed the bag I’d packed, locked my room, and fled. You saw me on the stairs, chased me down three flights to the porch, to the sidewalk, to the street, yelling “You can’t leave. What’s wrong with you? Come home! You can’t fucking leave.”

Reflect on that, control freak. Reflect on how pathetic a grown-ass man-boy with a personality disorder sounds yelling “you can’t leave” to his roommate at ten minutes after midnight.

Ground level, landlord’s porch, his door. Hovered my finger over the doorbell. Didn’t press it a hundred times to get saved because I realized he wouldn’t understand. Hovered it there until the needy girl took you back upstairs.

And then I ran again. Three blocks with my bag. Half past midnight. Hid on a fucking porch because I was sure you were looking for me. Called my ex on my Motorola SLVR. Begged him to come get me. He came in minutes. It felt like hours.

Days later, you left voicemail ordering me to “come and unlock my (bedroom) door”. You e-mailed, ordering me to “come home”. Freak.

You eventually graduated from law school. I know this because I watched you struggle to pass the bar in your new state. Back then, they posted the names those who failed the exam as well as those who passed. They’ve since taken down your failures. But I saw them.

Six times, failing!
Six!
Then you passed and to be totally frank, I wonder if your dad paid someone for that. I mean, you’re really not very good at it. You don’t even like law. You told me you hated law school, but that it’s what the men in your family do, so you did it “for the guy who pays the bills”. You were ashamed that it was your “safety school” — ranked dead last, btw. Last! Consider that. You couldn’t pull your shit together to come of out of one of the worst-rated law schools in the country with enough knowledge in your broken head to pass the bar after one, two, three, four, five, or six attempts!

I just realized that as a violent alcoholic who drinks to unleash his true self, you’ve probably never been able to “pass a bar”. Haha.

Anyway, I woke up this morning with all this coalesced in my head and needing to be written before it faded. This means I’m finally rid of you. I do fear that by putting this out there, you might come back. But what I have written is all true, and my soul is now free of you.

The sun is up and a beautiful day is coming with a brilliant man who loves me back, with friends, shelter, purpose, and intent, so I’ll be moving on with this day, and with my life.

I conclude with my hope for you: that you will die still relatively young, alone, drunk beyond function, amped on adderall, reeking of alcohol sweat, caked in dirt, wet with vomit and piss. And I hope that when you die still relatively young, alone, drunk beyond function, amped on adderall, reeking of alcohol sweat, caked in dirt, wet with vomit and piss — that all who enabled and shielded you from your violence toward women who only wanted you to fuck them or love them (is that even a thing to you?), and men who wanted nothing whatever to do with you (such as the “rent a cop” you “beat the shit out of”… and me) — that they will wail “so young! too young!” (nah); that they will wonder “who led you astray” (you did, you lazy, abusive, cowardly shit); that they will spend the rest of their pathetic, self-serving lives “wondering what went wrong” (family of abusive losers); and that they will crave but never find “an answer” because they will never, ever admit that they birthed, funded, encouraged, and enabled a monster who did so much damage to so many during his too-long, wasted, pointless, disgusting, destructive life.

That’d be OK, really.

Footnote: Good people helped me during that time. Good people saved me during that time. Good people put themselves on the line to help me during that time, and after, and since. I owe them debts I cannot repay for all that has come of my life since this incident. I love you all and have tried to pay it forward but it will never be enough.