Tsunami Warning

There was a time when I began to hide my whole world from my father when it came to the abuse I was experiencing.

Dad stood by when I moved out of my tiny cabin-style studio in Ben Lomond ~ in my first attempt to end my destructive relationship ~ a mere nine months before I ended up moving in with my abuser.  I had to get out of the Santa Cruz Mountains in order to break free from the man who had begun to destroy my life in a short six months.

So the day after my 37th birthday, he stood watch in the van while I packed up the rest of my stuff.  My nephew Cameron and his friend Nick had already came for the furniture days before my final visit. 

I had not even really been living in the mountain studio for a couple of months having already rented another studio near the university the previous November shortly after I drove myself to the E.R. on Halloween night.  Looking back, this was my first attempt at some sort of safety plan ~ securing some secret housing that would wait for me until I could sneak away completely.

But The Bad Man soon found out where I lived, and he began to come by at all hours of the night, tapping on my windows with his motorcycle keys, calling out my name, begging me to let him in ~ just this once, he would plead.

And sometimes I did let him in just to not wake the landlords in the house next door.  Other times, I would stay as quiet as I could behind those four walls ~ like Anne Frank in the Attic Apartment ~ waiting for him to finally leave ~ and then I would call the police to make an incident report.

He wore me down after four months of stalking turned to wooing, and then he began another four months of fighting with me about his wanting me to move in with him and my wanting to remain alone.  I remember Karen at Walnut Ave Women's Center telling me that once I did move in with him it would be very hard to leave. 

But I gave in to stop the fighting ~ the main topic of our arguments ~ that I did not want to live with him.  I gave in, and I did not want to tell my father.

And so I called Quicksilver.  A local voicemail service where I could set up a Santa Cruz phone number so my dad could stay in touch with me and never find out that I moved back to the Santa Cruz Mountains.  Three more years of secrets began on the day I acquired my secret voicemail number that I still have to this day.

Dad would leave me messages about family get-togethers.  And I would call him back from work.  He would send me cards to the old apartment, and I would get them a week later with the yellow forwarding address sticker on them.  I did not think ahead to how I would handle the situation with the mail once the year ran out for forwarding.

The secret voicemail then became the only weapon I had against my abuser from finding other ways to contact me once we finally broke up three years later.

I had changed my home phone number multiple times during our on-and-off relationship that I was not about to give him my phone number once I was finally free.  So I kept paying the $45 quarterly bill to give him only one way to contact me.  He would leave me long, lengthy messages at times ~ always wanting to see me again ~ using the animals as ways to get me to miss the dogs and cats ~ telling me they missed me and did not understand why I did not visit.  I made a copy of each of the messages, especially if they were abusive ~ always with the notion that one day I may need to finally file my own restraining order on him ~ and not just one that cops had automatically placed on him the night he bashed my head into the wall.

Last summer, the voice mails stopped.  And I started having nightly dreams and daily flashbacks about him.  I instinctively knew that something was wrong.  I emailed his sponser and found out my ex was finally in jail but not for any charges of domestic violence.  The whole idea of him finally being in jail really caused me to tap into those horrible four years I spent with him and to all the heartbreaking years of verbal abuse that escalated into physical violence ~ so much of which I had blocked out simply to get through another day.

For six months, I processed those flashbacks.  By the third month, I knew I had to continue writing about my experience.  The blog I had started to honor my mother at Christmas immediately transitioned to include stories of domestic violence.  All the titles in my head from all those years together were typed up and out in a frenzy of writing for four months all with the idea that he would be locked up for 2 years.  When I heard his release date had been bumped up to February and that his sentence was reduced to six months, I began counting down to that day in February and wondering just how long it would take him to contact me.  Maybe I should have had Vegas take bets.

"You have one unheard message," informed the familar voice to my voicemail service of 9 years.  And there he was on the other line ~ same as he ever was ~ as if another marriage and domestic violence and being locked up for drugs had not even happened since his last message to me ~

There he was warning me about the tsunami.  Asking me to check on his grown son who was staying in the old house in Felton.

I felt nothing inside at the sound of his familiar voice. 

There was no pain.  No sadness.  No fear. 

  

Uncensored