Story Thirty-Eight

That time I ignored really solid advice from lawyers, again.

Dear Reader (and my Fish),

When I get drunk, I talk too loud. If it’s tequila I’ve been drinking, I get deliciously free of my OCD and very dancey. Drinking red wine makes me regret wine. Drinking bourbon leads me to music, which always leads me to writing. Sometimes I get stuck in the music, rearranging all albums to be in their perfect order or writing a third verse to a song long-finished. There was one time at a pub in Oxford, wherein a rugby team didn’t believe I could do the choreography to “BYE BYE BYE” by *NSync. The hell else was I supposed to do? (Never drink a snakebite again, that’s what.) Sometimes I call my mentor at 2AM and demand she edit my newest copy NOW and it’s only the next day I realize I called a superior at work and hollered southernly at them until they paid attention to my writing. All checks out, really. Sounds just like me.

I like drunk me. We’re fun and a bit wild.

Oddly, I do all my weirdest shit 100% sober. I accidentally got a part as a mermaid in a play after a perfect rendition of a vally girl’s “Ice Ice Baby.” Was I in an audition? No. Was I in an iHop? Yes!

I called a blind Pulitzer-nominated journalist and demanded she hire me because I’m an editor before I’m a writer and it’s hard to explain that to a boardroom who wants to see your writing samples. I taught my niece how to climb on a lion in New York City and out of a window if she’s ever stuck at a party she doesn’t want to be at. I’ll fully square up with a marine in his own kitchen cuz he mansplained an editing joke to an editor and I ain’t like the way he just talked to my best friend. (For future reference, don’t start fights with marines if you don’t have home field advantage. Best to be safe. I lost.)

You know what I don’t do when drinking? I don’t hit my girlfriend or my boyfriend. I don’t become a different person entirely. I’m just me but louder and more eager to run across a parking lot to pet a husky I don’t know (yet).

My boyfriend and I broke up because he hit me.

Technically, 1.7 liters of Bicardi Pineapple Rum walking around in human skin hit me while I was holding my toddler. Because of my previous marriage and trauma, high-energy situations happen in slow-motion for me. I am great at bad things because I’ve been hurt so many times before. His hit didn’t land. I turned into Neo from The Matrix and met the blow and deflected it. Yay? Go me? Do they make a badge for that? …do you think it’ll match my nails?

It’s never anyone’s fault when domestic violence happens to them, it really isn’t. I feel cursed though, always having to learn the same lesson twice. The trouble with being a raised a girl is that you’re conditioned for everything to be your fault. Eve bit the apple first, remember? The first words that crossed my mind after I kept my child safe from his father wasn’t “oh no this hurts too much to bear.” It was “you deserve this because you were smug on the inside about your first abusive marriage.” (My inner voice is a complete cunt to me occasionally. I swear I’m working on it.)

I was smug, though. My first husband was easily controlled and learned quickly that if he was going to hit me, I would hit back. You shouldn’t fuck with a southern bitch and I wear that label proudly. I slapped him so hard one day he told me that he was going to call the cops on ME for abusing HIM. “Sure, call the cops, dear. I’ll just show them the bite on my arm and scratches in my skin that haven’t healed yet. See how that works out for you. In the meantime, keep your hands off my body and I won’t slap you for the displeasure.”

Looking back on that moment now, he probably wanted to hit me for saying that. The only thing that stopped him from reacting violently, again, was a lack of alcohol and the knowledge that I’d go down swinging. Bullies. He didn’t ever hit me again though, and I thought that made it a good marriage, so I stayed and managed a recovering alcoholic’s life for years before I decided to leave. I spent every holiday alone because holidays trigger drinking and it’s best that he was with his recovery group whenever there was life to be lived. I was lonely and I was sad and I was not in love, but I wasn’t broken. So I was smug. The thing that happens to all girls did happen to me, but I was fine and made it through in one piece.

This time? I’m okay but I’m not fine at all. And there’s a voice in my head that wants me to think it’s my fault the father of my child got so mad at an incendiary and literary description of his immature mother that hitting me was his only solution. And you know what I do with that voice? I go to therapy. Only fucking thing that’s ever helped with the inner voice that makes me want to kill myself to get rid of it. Prozac takes the urgency out of the compulsions, so I have time to think and react before I harm myself. I have to take a pill to keep from scratching my own skin off and hurting myself and I don’t hit people when I’m drunk. The irony kills me.

I don’t want to be writing this, I really don’t. I’d hoped to take this L gracefully and channel my anger into helping other victims of abuse, like I did the first time. Instead, the words boil beneath my skin and the secrets we keep for men in power shatter my heart and my bones along all the old cracks.

It’s for the best, really. We fought about how to raise kids and what to spend money on and whether or not he could hide alcohol in a place I couldn’t find it and the color pink. I’m mildly annoyed that he seems to have chosen the “you’re a fake queer and our son will know it when he grows up” route that is, unfortunately, available to immature men. Sorry, sweetie. My queer identity, like your alcoholism and pill head tendencies, are (repeat it back with me) pre-existing conditions.

I’m writing this on a cozy cold Sunday afternoon, watching football with my son. He and I have several dance parties a day to get rid of the gross muscle memory leftover from the fracturing of love. Being a single mother is daunting but I watched a pro do it growing up and the dad is getting the help he needs to become a person who doesn’t hit women who insult their mothers, Tolkien style. My writing wall is covered in post-its while I edit two manuscripts and finish writing two others. I dance in my kitchen and let my son cry and wear pink. I finally had a really great holiday with my real found family that I’ve been searching for my whole life. There are, like, seven adults in my life who are determined that I don’t stop believing in whatever love is supposed to be. Weird, that. I’m nonplussed, truly. I was afraid that maybe I would only ever be inspired to write one sad suicide essay, but no. The essay is done and, surprise surprise, my brain has more to say about the world. I have things to say about abortion and queer safe spaces and how ugly America is. I’m still me. I just cry more now, involuntarily.

Hell of a break up, but also…what a great new addition to my literary resume, no? “Works well with metaphors under pressure, can quote dead old white guys to angry white men in a soothing tone. Works 9 out of 10 times.”

I do, occasionally, have to learn some lessons twice, but when it clicks for me, I am force of nature, a hurricane, a siren, a wild storm that lights up the sky. And if I am a strike of lightning, my son is a perfect earthquake. I’m going to raise him to be more like Aaron Bushnell than a man who hits non-binary women. He will take the wretched foundation of toxic masculinity and break it apart, when I could only sing and choose my words so very carefully.

I love you, Fish. I hope you read this letter to your dad one day. I hope we were able to be civil about you, at the very least.

Anyway, hitting your girlfriend or wife or boyfriend is LAME! Like I told my toddler— your mom is gonna piss off a lot of people regularly. I’m a writer. We aren’t a well-liked species. You gotta learn early and quick to do something else besides throw a punch.

If you or someone you know is struggling with dv or ipv, don’t be afraid to reach out. There’s always someone like me waiting just for someone like you.

-Sav

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Editor’s note: I have been counseled many, many times to keep my dirty laundry in a closet where it belongs. Trouble is, I hate being in the closet. Kind of the opposite my whole point on this earth, really. All of the above is painfully true to the best of my recollection and has been edited for clarity and heartbreak.

Tirado’s note: What every domestic violence survivor needs is money. Give my trans editor money at the links below or I’m coming to haunt you. And I’m dying, so you don’t know that I can’t.

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