A phone call from the deep south

Stacy grew up in the “Bible Belt”. She grew up fast too. Despite a childhood of abuse, she emerged as an independent and hard-working adult. She spent her teenage years working and helping with the household bills. At seventeen she didn’t trust most men until she met someone different. Despite a few rumors that he was “an odd bird,” she felt there was something about him. Soon she was head over heels and ready to be marry him. That marriage nearly destroyed her.

“There were good times,” Stacy recalls. “Especially when the kids were little, but the longer it went on, the worse it got.” He constantly belittled her and cheated on her. He brought home a child from another woman for Stacy to raise. Stacy grew to love the boy, but she resented the public display of infidelity. She was mad, but everyone encouraged her to just forgive him and let it go. “I’d been raised to think: he’s your husband, he’s the ruler,” she said. “Man, I was taught some wrong stuff.”

After twelve years, she grew weary of his infidelity and belittling comments and divorced him. She started dating again and enjoyed a new relationship, but her ex-husband was still part of her life. He kept threatening to go to the courts and take her children away. She believed his threats and returned to him. He said “I’ll kill you before I see you with anybody else, and I didn’t have a reason not to believe him”.

The next seventeen years were worse than anything before. “He pushed and shoved me into: furniture, trees, bushes, closets, and down stairs as well as in front of a train,” she recalls. He held a gun to her head. He also destroyed her self confidence. “He belittled me, he degraded me, he insulted me, he humiliated me,” said Stacy. He insisted they try swinging with other couples. He made her go out to bars, hit on others and bring them back to their bedroom to film the resulting sexual activity. Stacy hated it, but he threatened to abandon her on the side of the road if she didn’t comply. Stacy had developed PTSD and agoraphobia after the birth of her third son. Her husband exploited the illness to get his way.

She kept up a good facade out of embarrassment, but her children knew she was unhappy. Her eldest son suggested she become a counselor since she was always helping other people. School became her only escape from the abuse. She was proud of her A average, but more importantly studying psychology helped her understand what was happening to her. It also forced her to join social media sites, like Facebook. She started conversing with her old beau from just after the divorce.

That beau, Nelson, had suffered a brain aneurysm. Nelson’s brother contacted Stacy and told her that Nelson was not himself and only remembered her. He asked if she would help Nelson to remember. Stacy agreed and started conversing with him about pleasant things like her grandchildren. She never told him of the abuse, but he had suspicions.

One day after the kids were grown and her health was failing, Stacy couldn’t take her marriage anymore. She confessed to Nelson that she didn’t want to go to the bars that night. He said there was an easy fix. “You just need to be my wife.” She didn’t believe him. Who proposes to someone they haven’t seen in seventeen years? But he was serious.

A few days later is was Father’s Day and Stacy was trying to finish schoolwork before the family came over to celebrate. Her husband starting drinking and harassing her before noon. When the family arrived, the boys all snuck into the bathroom to smoke pot.

The smell made her sick so she left for her son’s house where it was cool and quiet. She was able to finish her assignment and get some much needed rest. Shortly thereafter her husband, now drunk and high, called to demand she return home. She didn’t want to face what she knew he was going to do to her. So she decided to just stay at her son’s for a little while. Her ex-husband kept calling her and telling her he loved her with one breath, then threatening her with the next. She realized she needed to get farther away to feel safe.

She tried to avoid being in his actual physical presence. “There is a connection between he and I that I cannot explain” she said. “It’s almost on a chemical level, and if we are around each other it’s like the whole world is separate from us. It’s unexplainable.” So she knew distance was her safest bet.

She sought refuge with Nelson and his family. His mother welcomed her into her home. They took her to a doctor who said she was “on her deathbed.” Her skin was gray, she weighed eighty-five pounds and she had four infections. Now a year later she’s remarried, gained twenty-five pounds and earned her Master’s Degree in Psychology. “I truly believe my life was saved,” said Stacy.

Her new life came at a price. Her children blame her for running away, and she has spent less than an hour with her grandchildren this past year. Her father skipped her graduation to spend time with her ex-husband and his new girlfriend. It’s as though she lost him too. The children saw the abuse; she doesn’t understand why they blame her for leaving. There are many who feel her decision was to leave was wrong. But her life was in danger. “Nelson was my beacon of hope,” she says. “He loves me and keeps me safe, and I know that sex will never be used as a weapon towards me again.”

She moved out of state and is afraid to reveal her address to her children. She sends mail from her mother’s address as a precaution. “It’s bad that the victims should have to safeguard themselves instead of the cops,” she said. But she adds that domestic violence is so widespread and tolerated in the South, that the cops have probably just become numb to it.

Stacy wants to change that. She’s getting her doctorate in psychology so she can counsel other women in need. She is also writing a book about her experience. She hopes that by sharing her story, she can help someone else who is suffering. But the writing process is long and difficult. “I didn’t want to talk about it at first because I thought people would look at me shamefully.” But she has come to realize she has nothing to be ashamed of. She’s going to speak out and insist that families and the nation do more to support victims of domestic violence.

She said this crime knows no geography, no race, no color, no creed. Stacy spent years suffering alone. She says, “I will no longer be silent. If my story can help just one person get their life back; then I will shout it from the roof tops if I have to!”

“No one should feel like they do not matter in this world. No one should feel so alone that life is just not worth living.”