Where I am from, we valued individual narratives and stories. We protected each other by being neighborly and understanding that a friend saying “Do you need to talk” to someone screaming next door is bound to solve so many issues. And when it can’t, we would understand that calling aggressive parties into the mix would not do better for anyone,

When I left college, I moved back home. Then I moved back to my college area, just a different part of the metro area. I had a good job and an apartment in an area like my home.

I met this boy online and as we continued to date, he kept on pressuring us to move in together. At one juncture it was so much quicker to just have him move to my place rather than pretend we could have a dual income, that I allowed him into my previously hallowed home.

Now, I had never lived with anyone before.

Not a partner or roommate.

Sure, technically I’ve had roommates. In college I shared an apartment dorm with some girls. But that was the way it was. We left each other alone and didn’t need to mingle. It was because it was easier to have on campus housing and we could figure out how to live with a stranger easier than figuring out which friend could withstand learning the skill of living with someone.

When this boy moved in, I realized over a fair amount of time that a lot of our relationship dynamics weren’t sustainable for a long term relationship. I had proposed to him and given a ring and all that but he didn’t understand what that really conveyed.

At some point before I kicked him out with the help of good friends, a neighbor called the police on one of our fights with each other.

No big deal, right?

Wrong. So wrong.

In the midst of us fighting, I had completely passed out to the point where he was likely screaming in panicked chaos that I was dead. I’m sure he was screaming at the top of his lungs and terrified of my inability to respond.

So sometime between my passing out and him waking me up was a loud bang on our door and I recall a few flashing lights. It was around the late fall of 2022, and I had begun a job where I was assistant teaching some college classes to help pay for a hobby degree of mine.

I had begun having these horrible panic attacks because I had experienced sexual assault on a college campus when I was a freshman. I’ve had really bad social anxiety and jitters ever since the fall of 2016. I’ve gone through disordered eating and mood disturbances and dissociation as common responses to this.

Being back in a large crowd with a lot of very loud students whose intent I didn’t know caused me to come home really scared all the time, and often very easily frightened throughout the day.

My boyfriend was screaming at me that I was shutting down and not doing anything but panicking and shaking all the time because going on a college campus was bringing back a lot of memories I couldn’t stand. He got really physical and I passed out from a complete inability to react to anything more.

He came back and shook me awake, telling me that he was so worried and that if this kept happening he was going to send me to the hospital because it was too much and he didn’t know what to do on his own anymore.

I cried completely hysterically and couldn’t do anything but be in pain that I was not only very confused that he was scared but also terrified that he was going to have me involuntarily hospitalized for having a normal life long reaction to trauma.

His main intent was to say he cared, I think.

But what ended up happening was a series of him continuing to say I didn’t care about him enough despite him not telling me what he needed. In my subsequent lack of response to a lack of request, he would get physically and sexually violent. He’d continually shout in my face that since I like to play dead that I would be better off dead.

At some points I would pretend to pass out so maybe I could get some rest that wasn’t just me being choked to that level of exhaustion. So he was right that I would play dead, and more right that maybe I really would have been.

So that continued for a grand total of two years of my goddamn life on this earth.

I made him get out eventually when he was becoming financially independent on me and I was getting so little support everywhere else in my life that I couldn’t pretend he loved me anymore. He said he couldn’t take care of himself and me, and so I kindly let him go. He just fought the whole time.

On 4/30/23, beginning around five in the morning, my current boyfriend and I were arguing about how I wasn’t feeling like I ever got to talk about myself.

He was so overwhelmed that I felt so abandoned that he screamed his head off and banged on the walls and I screamed back and kept asking if he was okay and we got nowhere. We had spoken earlier in the week that I needed to figure out the feeling, and you’d be shocked how many people are not wanting to hear a fight end with a distraught female voice hysterically screaming through tears that “I’m really suicidal and you don’t care” followed by more tears.

He then was able to figure out what to do and we really quickly calmed down within a few minutes.

Then as soon as I’m ready to sleep, and just about to relax because I calmed down, there was a really loud knock at the door. I jumped awake in terror and my boyfriend ran to the door and answered it to see what was up. He was away for a few seconds and then came back and said they were police officers and they had declared after his answer to them that they wanted to talk to me.

I freaked out and really didn’t want to but needed a few minutes and didn’t get those but went to talk to the officer anyway because I was worried more about what would happen if I refused or were way too slow, since they seemed to need me there in record speed at six thirty in the morning.

They made us stand apart to answer their inquiries, which was very much not good. My boyfriend suffers from “I have a bad TBI and memory but also don’t say that to the right people or communicate well in general,” which is very cute but very annoying when it was a genuine disagreement where my declaration was less a comment on neglect but rather ability.

I grabbed my cat and was completely shaking like nothing else and he made me give my ID and shone a light above my head to then ask if I were okay. I was profusely apologizing for making a complete ruckus over having a PTSD nightmare at such an inconvenient time for everyone.

My ex added to my trauma from September 2020 to April 2022 as my partner who abused my kindness and understanding that it’s hard to witness someone else have experienced trauma and then until July 2022 as a key component of why I couldn’t calm down that my ex was still out to harm me for having past trauma.

My current boyfriend shouldn’t be blamed by the police for not being a trained trauma therapist. Most people spend years figuring that out on purpose. You couldn’t be born with that. It’s not a feasible expectation for anyone to meet.

The police downright threatened to arrest someone next time that they were forced to show up at our door. I am terrified of speaking up for myself because what if it gets understood wrong again my the neighbors, who are also not trained trauma therapists and I wouldn’t expect them to be???

Word of advice:

Please don’t call the cops on a domestic dispute.

With me and my current partner, we did need someone to step in but not someone who was going to come with that level of aggression.

With me and my ex, we needed that level of aggression to get him out, but not at the expense of him being able to turn it on me to blame.

If the dispute really could use a friendly intervention, then make it. Don’t send the police over. They don’t care that I have really severe PTSD from multiple occasions. They just care that someone complained and they legally have to make arrests on all noise complaints.

Don’t scare a girl with trauma if you’re really that worried about her well-being.

XOXO,

Dorothy B.