Most of the advocates were graduates of the university I worked at nearby, or they were seniors there on internship at the center.
The policy was that we were never to ackowledge each other in public outside the walls of the center. Strictly for the participant's safety in case the abuser was with them or nearby like on another aisle over at Safeway.
My connection consisted of one-on-one appointments, bi-weekly support group sessions, and the hotline.
These women were practically young enough to be my nieces, and yet they had so much knowledge, so much wisdom, so much compassion that was boundless to all of us ~ and always without judgement. They were psychology and sociology majors and many were on a pathway to leave the center and continue on at graduate school to become social workers.
They would be on-call for the 24-7 hotline, and so I might even end up talking with them in the middle of the night at times.
They had the most angelic of voices on the other end of the phone line. Always calming. Always so reasurring. Always willing to work out a safety plan all over again even if I knew in my heart that this would be just one more futile attempt to leave him.
The voices and the names became so familiar after four years. Even the answering service ~ which first took the call for the hotline and then tracked down the advocate on-call by cell phone ~ had one kind soul in particular who would answer the phone. A young man ~ probably in his 20s ~ and probably another student where I worked ~ would always take my call first with his gentle manner and respectful nature for a woman on the other end who clearly had been crying ~ and even at times may have sounded hysterical.
Gentle souls all of them ~ all willing to help a stranger on the other end of what was a lifeline to me.
I remember interviewing a young lady for a job at the rental office where I worked at the university. I remember her telling me she was joining the 60-hour advocate training at the Walnut Ave Women's Center, and I remember my boss not hiring her because she thought she would not be available enough for our shifts.
I remembered her name and her voice when I called the hotline two month's later from my abuser's second home up north. It was the same woman on the other line that my boss did not hire. She had completed her 60 hours of training. And if she knew it was me, she did not say. But I remember calling secretly from the greenhouse in my abuser's backyard, hiding from him as I always did whenever I made that call. To my lifeline. From my own private hell. Duplicated three hours away from the hell I experienced back in Felton. And talking to a woman that she did not hire. But who had been hired to take care of me that day.
1 (866) 2 My Ally. I will never forget that number for as long as I live.
I will remember the one lifeline I did have to the outside world ~ and the women and the one man who made such a difference ~ during the most frightening moments of my life.
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep
~ John Milton, Paradise Lost
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