Scattered. My brain is scattered. My world is scattered. I’m trying to sit and get it all out. I can’t seem to find a place to start. There are so many places, so many things that keep rolling through my brain. The things that keep me awake at night. The things that scare the shit out of me.
I don’t know why I haven’t put anything on paper recently. Maybe because it makes it all too real for me. If I write it, it’sreal. If I don’t, I can pretend. Pretend everything is “normal.” What the hell is normal anyway. Normal, a preconceived idea of what life is supposed to be like, what you want life to be like. If only it were that simple.
I apologize in advance it there are errors in the following. It is hard enough to write, its even harder to try to go back and proof and re-read.
My girl child. It happened again. February 6-7, 2022. He beat her again. She went to see him on February 6th, messaged me to tell me she was staying over that evening. I was at work (a new job that I have been at for only about a month). My cell phone rings and it’s my girl. I couldn’t answer immediately because I was talking to someone. She called back, I answered. She was crying and close to hysterical. She said they had a fight. I asked if he touched her. She said not as bad as last time. I asked where she was and she said she was in his car, driving to where her car was parked. I asked where he was, and she said she had no idea. They fought and she left. I pleaded with her to be safe, get to her car and lock the keys to his car in the car. I called my husband, told him what was happening and asked him to go to the parking lot where her car was parked and watch for her. He did. She never showed up. I tried contacting her with no luck. She called again, screaming, yelling, hysterical begging me to help her, begging me to save her, she was throwing up and dry heaving while she was talking to me. I got from her she went back to his house, they fought again, she ran outside and was at a convenience store and scared that he would find her. I have her on the cell phone and call 911 from my work phone. I give all the information I have to the dispatcher; he sends police. Her phone goes dead. She calls back from the convenience store phone. Still crying and begging me to help. The dispatcher tells me the officers are on scene. I hear them talking to her. She is beyond rational thought. I can hear the officers now yelling at drippy dick who found where she was. They were telling him to get away from her and stop talking and to listen to them. Drippy yelled at her for calling the cops. She blamed me. The phone went dead. I hear nothing for hours. I finally get a call from her saying she needed to figure some things out and she would be in touch with me, but she didn’t know when she would be home. Deep breaths. Trying to stay in “control,” trying not to freak the fuck out, trying not to let my new employer know what’shappening.
She calls again on my cell. Upset, but not hysterical. She tells me that drippy dick was driving her back to her car, and he got stopped by police for expired inspection. The car smelled strongly of weed (shocking), and drippy was put through Field Sobriety Tests and then taken for a blood test. She now had to drive his car to the police station and wait for him to be releasedbefore she could come home. I offered to get her an Uber, she refused.
I go home at the end of the workday. I message my girl a few times and finally hear back that drippy dick is driving her to her car. This would be about a 30-minute drive from where drippy lives to where her car is parked. She messages and says she would like to talk when she gets home. We wait and wait. We go to our bedroom because it’s getting later, and she isn’t home. Again, my cell phone rings and it’s her. Again, screaming and crying for me to help her. She fears him. She got to her car, they continued to talk, and she drove away. He was now following her, and she did not know what to do. I told her to keep driving home, told her to drive to a police department. Again, she really isn’t hearing me. She stops her car at a gas station and tells me where she is. The phone again goes dead. I call 911, again. I tell the dispatcher the details of what has happened throughout the day and ask him to send officers to help her. My husband also leaves to go to the area where she is. Officers call me back. They can’t find her. I tell them the events of the day and what happened. I call my husband and relay to him that the officers can’t find her. He is in the area and sees the officers, so he stops to talk to them. I get a call from a strange number and answer. It’s her calling from one of drippy’s phones. Her phone is turned off so we can’t track her. She will not tell me where she is but tells me she is safe and okay, and they are talking. But he is sitting in his car, and she is locked in her car and they are talking via phone. We have an idea where she parks her car and my husband, and six officers are in that area searching and find nothing. She calls me numerous times from drippy’s phone, and the calls just keep dropping. I have no idea what is happening. Eventually, the officers must respond to other calls and my husband comes home. She eventually gets home sometime after midnight on February 8th.
I don’t see her until the evening of February 8th because I had to work.
Sorry, back up a minute. As the things were happening the previous day, I was advising my sons, so they knew what was happening.
My girl messaged me at some point during the day on the 8th and said she would like to talk when I get home from work. I told her yes, we would definitely be talking. I asked my sons to be there as well. That way everyone hears what I have to say in case she isn’t thinking clearly, and she decides to go to one of them for help. She initially wasn’t happy that everyone was. I told her she needs to be honest and no lies about what happened.
Drippy dick decided it would be a great idea to get them Xany-bars for Sunday evening (the 6th). She said she had never tried them before. They ate them. Apparently, they ate a lot. She has little memory from Sunday evening at around 11PM to Monday evening around 6PM or 7PM. She knows they fought almost none stop. She showed us a few bruises on her legs. She was still very……. on edge. She said she could still feel whatever was in the bars was still in her. We asked that she tell us what she does remember. She knew they fought both inside his house and outside his house. She told him she was done and wanted to leave and was getting some of her things out of the back of his car. He was in the driver seat and when she reached in the back seat he started to drive away and drug her with the car, hence the road rash all over her ankle/leg. She remembered him punching her in the back of her head when she was trying to walk away from him. She said she knows at one point she was fighting for her life and had his skin under her nails when she came home. We all talked for about an hour. I could tell she was reaching her limit. She just repeated over and over that she wanted to sleep forever, she was tired of this, tired of making mistakes. She wants to be dead. We encouraged her the best we could. Knowing if we push too hard, she would flee.
She has been at home since this happened. I know she has been in contact with drippy, but she has not seen him. Will this be her rock bottom? Will she want help this time? Will anything change? I am trying to get her to talk to a Domestic Violence hotline. I am trying to talk to her about maybe trying a wilderness program where she has no contact with anyone. Will any of it help? I don’t know.
Watching her is hard. Hearing her words is harder. Not knowing how to help is beyond words. Seeing her beat up body is debilitating to me. She took a video of her body. The bruises are unbelievable. Her neck, throat, shoulders, arms, legs, feet, and head all have bruises. But I am sure that her brain is the most damaged. That damage doesn’t fade like a bruise. That damage is deep and permanent.
How do I...life? 