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You’re at a dive bar with your boyfriend and his aggressively shitty friends.
It’s their usual, rowdy scene, although it’s never really been yours. You’re an introvert who’s learned to manage in a crowd, but you much prefer a smaller group setting. Honestly, you’re mostly there to appease and babysit a violent alcoholic.
You didn’t really want to go out tonight, just like you haven’t wanted to go out any of the other nights this week, but here you are again. You’re tired of the constant hangover that comes with dating someone whose blood itches in the absence of booze.
Of course, it’s safer if you’re there. That way you can do your best to make sure he doesn’t get in a fight, crash his car drunk, shoot anything, or get arrested, all of which are well-informed concerns. If you hadn’t come, he’d likely have returned home either dangerously angry or not at all.
You push the thought back down, plaster on a smile as he squeezes your thigh a bit too roughly.
Sometimes you think he must not know his own strength, the way even his affection leaves a bruise. Other times, you’re frighteningly certain that he knows exactly how tightly he’s gripping you.
Good nights
You’re actually having a decent night together for once; thanks to your practiced dodging of the eggshells he’s always scattering for you.
This stage of relative peace in the cycle of abuse rarely lasts long. You know this in the back if your mind, yet your traumatized brain won’t let you look at it too clearly just yet. Forced to live in survival mode, you simply aren’t in a safe position to analyze your situation rationally.
Instead, you hope that if you can keep him from getting too drunk, the mood will stay light.
Maybe he’ll finally realize he can have fun while also moderating his level of intoxication, rather than leaving that responsibility to you.
Maybe he’ll notice that his moods are better and he feels healthier when he isn’t downing full handles of vodka daily.
Maybe, just maybe, if you’re good enough, you can help him keep it that way from now on, like he’s promised time and again. Like he promised after the most recent violent night.
That’s always the hope.
Careless whisper
You model the ever-docile, well-behaved partner as the group demands round after round of sickly sweet bomb shots, washed down with beer buckets.
You even try to relax and have a couple of drinks with the group, chasing the mirage of protection that comes with their tenuous approval as a chill girlfriend.
You jump into the conversation with an animated story about something that happened at work the week prior. As the group erupts into laughter around you, you glance over to see your partner glaring at you icily.
The stark shift in his mood is jarring and sends a shock down your spine.
Using the group’s clamor as a cover, he says in a low voice meant just for you, “You’re hollerin’”.
Oh no.
You deflate. Switch to water.
Your face becomes a carefully flat, unemotional mask. If you do speak again that night, it’ll barely be audible. You avoid the eyes of the group, retreating back into your introverted shell, humiliated at your own obnoxious exuberance.
No longer the fun girlfriend, you now look like the moody one. The better to make you look and feel crazy later. To make you feel like you can’t trust your own hearing or voice. To make you get quieter and quieter, until you forget how to speak above a whisper. Until you forget how to speak altogether.
Just as he intended.
The sound of silence
In addition to the physical and sexual violence I was regularly subjected to during my period of abuse, my narcissistic abuser spent five years psychologically and emotionally tearing me down at every opportunity. He’d criticize everything from my body hair to my behaviors, methodically picking at my deepest insecurities in order to maintain control.
If he decided I was getting too much attention from others, having too good a time, or in any way stealing his spotlight, he couldn’t stand it. He’d yank on my invisible leash, devaluing and shaming me by telling me I was being too loud or embarrassing in some way.
After all, what better way to make a woman feel ashamed than by telling them they’re taking up too much space?
This went on for so long that he began to either mock or reprimand me anytime I displayed the smallest amount of excitement. This embedded itself so deeply that three years later, I flinch away from even the most positive attention.
At each “You’re hollerin’”, I shrank myself smaller and smaller.
Reality check
A few months after my escape, I was visiting with my best friend who lives several states away. We were chattering at each other as usual, the noise level naturally rising and falling with our excitement.
As tends to happen whenever I feel too loud, I suddenly feel a bolt of fear. I’d apologize for yelling and take my energy level down several notches.
After the third or fourth instance of this, my friend paused to observe me in silence, obviously noticing my skittish body language.
With a heartbreaking gentleness in her tone, like she was comforting a scared animal, she said, “You’re barely even whispering.”