The house is quiet now, but my heart is still hammering like it’s trying to break out of my chest.
Someone I care about raised their voice at me earlier, not even that loud in the grand scheme of things..
And in an instant I wasn’t here anymore. I was back there. Back in that nightmare that lasted four and a half years.
It’s like my brain has a hair-trigger alarm wired straight to those memories. One sharp tone, one angry edge in a voice, and suddenly I’m small again.
I can feel the way my shoulders automatically hunch, the way my breath catches, the way my mind starts cataloging escape routes even though I’m safe now.
Or at least I’m supposed to be safe.
I thought I had buried it deeper than this. I really did. But trauma doesn’t stay buried; it waits. It waits for the smallest crack in the armor and then it floods everything.
I remember the fear that lived in that house like a second resident. The constant walking on eggshells, trying to predict what would set him off. The way love and terror got braided together so tightly I couldn’t tell which was which anymore.
He raped me so many times that my body stopped feeling like mine. I would dissociate, floating somewhere above the scene, watching it happen to someone who looked like me but couldn’t possibly be me because how could anyone survive that?
And then there was the night he pushed me down the stairs.
I was pregnant. Not very far along, around 20 weeks. I had felt that tiny spark of life inside me and for the first time in years I had something to hold onto that was pure. Something that hadn’t been poisoned by him yet.
I don’t even remember what the argument was about anymore. Something stupid. Something that didn’t matter. But he was screaming and I tried to get away and his hands were on me and then I was falling.
The sound my body made hitting each step is still in my ears sometimes when it’s too quiet. And then the bleeding. The terrible, cramping knowledge that the baby was gone. That he had taken that from me too.
I lay there at the bottom of the stairs thinking this was finally it.. he was going to kill me and maybe that would be a mercy. But he didn’t. He just stood at the top looking down at me like I was something disgusting he’d stepped in.
I was rushed to the hospital.. my sweet, innocent baby boy had Hydrocephalus, and they wanted me to give birth as soon as possible. So I did.
Here i am, at Mount Sinai Hospital. I laid in that bed for 3 days waiting.. waiting for him to be born.
March 4th, 2009. My baby boy, Gavyn Rayne Heaton was born. Weighting 2lbs, 8oz. He was a stillborn. I didnt get to hear his innocent cry. Didn't get to feel his soft skin. My hello, was also my goodbye.
I don’t know how I survived the rest of that relationship. I don’t know how I found the strength to leave. But one day I did. I got out. I ran with nothing but the clothes on my back and the shattered pieces of who I used to be.
The first weeks after were surreal. I was free, but I didn’t feel free. I was confused all the time. My nervous system was stuck in fight-or-flight.
I would cry at the drop of a hat.. grocery stores, red lights, the sound of a door closing too hard. I was terrified of everyone and everything. I still am, sometimes.
The hypervigilance never fully went away. I scan rooms. I read tones. I brace for impact even when there is no impact coming.
Someone I care about. Smeone who has never hurt me like that.. yelled in frustration, and my body reacted like I was about to die.
Ye, it was through a text. But it still hurt. I wanted to shrink into the floor. I wanted to apologize for existing. I wanted to run.
Instead I just stood there frozen while the memories played on loop: the stairs, the blood, the hands that were supposed to protect me but only ever destroyed.
I’m not okay and I hate admitting that because I’ve worked so hard. I’ve been in therapy. I’ve journaled. I’ve tried to build a new life. But some wounds are so deep they echo forever.
The loss of the baby still aches in a place I can’t reach. The rapes left scars on my soul that no one can see. The almost-murder lives in my startle response and my nightmares.
I cry as I write this because I’m exhausted from carrying it. I cry because I miss the version of me that existed before him.
The one who laughed easily and trusted people and didn’t flinch at loud voices. I cry because I’m angry that he still gets to live rent-free in my head after all this time.
I cry because someone I care about is probably confused or hurt by my reaction and I don’t know how to explain that it’s not about them.
It’s about the ghost of a man who almost ended me.
I survived being choked, till almost passing out.
I survived the fear and the shame and the nights I wanted to disappear.
That has to count for something.
Maybe tonight I’ll let myself feel it all without trying to fix it. Maybe I’ll just sit with the grief and the rage and the fear until they get tired of screaming at me.
Tomorrow I’ll try again. I’ll remind myself that not every raised voice is a death sentence.
I’ll breathe through the flashbacks.
I’ll reach out for support instead of isolating. I’ll keep choosing life even when it hurts like hell.
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