There’s a memory that lives in my brain like a spider behind a painting. I don’t always see it, but I know it’s there. If I tilt the wrong way or let my guard down for too long, it skitters out and reminds me:
I almost died in my own bathtub. At the hands of the man I married.
He pointed a loaded gun at my head.
He pressed my body under water.
He called me ugly while fantasizing about someone else.
And somehow, I lived.
You want to believe that kind of moment would come with sirens. With flashing lights. With a permanent, obvious scar you can point to and say, “This is where he broke me.”
But there’s no visible wound. Just the quiet horror of survival. The kind where you still have to go to work the next day. Pay the bills. Fold his socks. Smile at the neighbor.
Because what do you do when your abuser is also the person you once loved more than anyone else on earth?
You survive. And you remember. Over and over and over.
Here’s the part no one talks about:
I have empathy for him.
I know—I know—how absurd that sounds. But it’s true. Because I know his trauma too. Different shape. Opposite pole. But trauma just the same. He came back from war with ghosts of his own. And those ghosts did not come back quietly.
And sometimes I think maybe… maybe if things had been just a little different—if he’d gotten help sooner, if someone had intervened, if his pain hadn’t metastasized into violence—maybe he wouldn’t have become someone I feared.
But those maybes don’t undo what happened. They don’t un-pull the trigger. They don’t dry the water from my lungs.
And they sure as hell don’t mean I have to sacrifice myself to save him.
Empathy for him was never the problem.
The problem was I forgot to have any for myself.
I could explain away his outbursts. His rage. His disappearing acts. His addictions. I studied his pain like a war map, trying to find the coordinates that would bring him home. But I never stopped to ask where I was on the battlefield.
And one day I woke up and realized I’d gone MIA a long, long time ago.
I’m learning now that both things can be true:
- He was traumatized.
- He traumatized me.
- He was in pain.
- He caused pain.
- I loved him once.
- I’m not safe with him now.
This duality is messy. There’s no Hallmark card for it. No checklist for closure. Just me, staring into a bathroom mirror, whispering, “You lived. He didn’t kill you. You don’t have to die for him now either.”
I don’t want revenge. I want peace.
But peace doesn’t come from pretending it didn’t happen.
Peace doesn’t come from minimizing the horror.
Peace comes from naming it.
He almost killed me.
He made me believe I was nothing.
He saw more value in a stranger online than in the life we built.
And still—I have empathy. For him. For his ruined mind. For the boy who never got help. But I will no longer let my empathy become a weapon used against me.
I survived. He did too. But I’m no longer responsible for saving both of us.
Now, I am allowed to wake up and love myself more than I pity him.
Now, I am allowed to remember the trauma and not water it down for anyone else’s comfort.
Now, I am allowed to say:
I am a survivor. And I deserve my own damn empathy.
If you’re living in this same space—the blurred lines of love and violence, compassion and fear—please know: you’re not weak. You’re not broken. You’re not crazy for caring.
You’re just human. A human who deserves to be safe.
Even from someone you once loved.
Even from someone who says they’re sorry.
Even if no one else understands.
You do.
And that’s where it starts.
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