How One Woman Survived Domestic Abuse

When I saw this piece on domestic abuse, I knew it had to be shared with our Fly community. Now I know that we’ve covered this subject before, but I honestly feel like we have to keep coming back to it. Let’s face it; it’s an issue that’s not going away.

Before we begin, answer the following poll question so I can gain a sense of where we are as a group.

The following excerpt comes from the book, “Crazy Love.”
Written By: Leslie Morgan Steiner

“We’re not going,” my husband said.

During our four years together, he had canceled plans regularly. So I shouldn’t have been surprised. But this time, for this special trip, I was.

I met him when I was 22. I had a Harvard diploma, a great job in publishing, my first credit card, endless youthful optimism. Surely I was the best person on earth to help Conor battle the inner demons wrought by an abusive stepfather, a mother on welfare, and hardships that forced him to drop out of school in eighth grade.

He first attacked me five days before we got married. I was so astounded that I wrote it off as prenuptial nerves. The bruises on my throat faded just in time for me to button up my mother’s wedding dress.

Next he punched me on our honeymoon. Then Conor pushed me down the stairs, poured coffee grinds over my hair as I dressed for an interview, choked me during arguments. I hid the bruises — and the truth — from everyone. Including myself. It didn’t occur to me that I was a battered woman.

He never had to beg me to stay, because I never seriously considered leaving. I loved him. I thought I could change him. He cheered on my dreams: getting an MBA, becoming a mother, laughing more. I couldn’t just wake up one morning and give up on us, no matter what he’d done the evening before.

The trip Conor canceled that night was meant to be a celebration of six months of his not hitting me. After I stopped packing our suitcases, I lay on our bed, imagining laughing over café au lait with Conor on a Paris street, riding the Metro with the station colors flying by. The man I imagined in Paris was not the man in the next room. That man was gone, if he’d ever even existed. And I realized I couldn’t let myself disappear with him.

“Conor,” I whispered when he came to bed. “I’ve worked too hard. It’s all paid for. We won’t have a vacation again for a long time. I’d rather go with you, but I’m going anyway.”

I suppose it was stupid to stand up to him. But suddenly, in that moment, I had to know what he would do if I put myself first.

“You selfish bitch.” His voice shot across the room like a fist, and his body soon followed. “You can’t go without me.” Much later, when I regained consciousness, my screams echoed in my ears as if some other woman had been screaming her head off in our small bedroom.

For the first time in four years, my love for Conor seemed completely irrelevant.

I did what I had to in order to calm him down.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he whispered as he left, choking back tears.

But instead of waiting for that call, I phoned the police.

That last attack convinced me that the man I loved might kill me one day if I let him. All the hope in the world could not change that. The choice became simple: him or me.

I chose me. And I’m alive today because I did.

**Leslie reads from her book “Crazy Love”

**Leslie Morgan Steiner is the author of Crazy Love, a memoir about abusive love. If you, or anyone close to you needs help getting out of an emotionally or physically abusive relationship, please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-SAFE, or log on to ndvh.org. For more information, log on to loveisnotabuse.com.

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