An Angel Rides With Death – My Abusive Relationship Survival Story – 5 Years Later
Have you ever felt so confused, so helpless, and so filled with terror that you just checked out? I don't mean for a moment or two while you get your bearings, I'm talking a full-on, lights-on-nobody-is-home, my-soul-just-left-the-building kind of way? I'm talking a huge part of your own personality and everything that makes you who you are disappearing and piloting your body around like a machine for years?
I did.
I was in the shower the day I felt my soul leave my body. It was after yet another nasty, knock-down, drag-out fight between myself and my then-partner. It had happened several times, and since I'd already moved thousands of miles away from the …show more content…
Her health took a dive, she became agoraphobic, she started drinking to excess, and her mental health had declined so badly that I came home one day to find her blackout drunk with a knife to her gut, tears streaming down her face, heart-wrenching sobs shaking her tiny body.
It was on this night that I made the decision to quit my job, sell my car, and leave everything behind so I could get my love back to her home state. I was 30 years old at the time, but I might as well have been 12.
The title of this piece, 'An Angel Rides With Death' is the most accurate way I can describe the dynamic Mel* and I had. While I'm certainly no angel and Mel is not Death in human form, those were the roles we ultimately played.
You see, I'm on the autism spectrum, so I'm incredibly literal and I take things at face value. Even though I had experience being around alcoholics as a child, I really believed, with all of my heart, that her extreme behavior and drinking was entirely situational.
You see, she'd just received news that a friend who was like a brother to her had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and she just wanted to go back home. That was her explanation for why I came home to find her in the state I did that
Have you ever felt so confused, so helpless, and so filled with terror that you just checked out? I don't mean for a moment or two while you get your bearings, I'm talking a full-on, lights-on-nobody-is-home, my-soul-just-left-the-building kind of way? I'm talking a huge part of your own personality and everything that makes you who you are disappearing and piloting your body around like a machine for years?
I did.
I was in the shower the day I felt my soul leave my body. It was after yet another nasty, knock-down, drag-out fight between myself and my then-partner. It had happened several times, and since I'd already moved thousands of miles away from the …show more content…
Her health took a dive, she became agoraphobic, she started drinking to excess, and her mental health had declined so badly that I came home one day to find her blackout drunk with a knife to her gut, tears streaming down her face, heart-wrenching sobs shaking her tiny body.
It was on this night that I made the decision to quit my job, sell my car, and leave everything behind so I could get my love back to her home state. I was 30 years old at the time, but I might as well have been 12.
The title of this piece, 'An Angel Rides With Death' is the most accurate way I can describe the dynamic Mel* and I had. While I'm certainly no angel and Mel is not Death in human form, those were the roles we ultimately played.
You see, I'm on the autism spectrum, so I'm incredibly literal and I take things at face value. Even though I had experience being around alcoholics as a child, I really believed, with all of my heart, that her extreme behavior and drinking was entirely situational.
You see, she'd just received news that a friend who was like a brother to her had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and she just wanted to go back home. That was her explanation for why I came home to find her in the state I did that