The beauty of being a neurodiverse human with mental health diagnoses (and not caring a flying fuck who knows about them) is that it makes it really challenging to silence me, and that is a character strength I will take with me anywhere I go, anytime I go there.

I have briefly shared in past posts glimpses and some narratives of my ex, Scott. I have followed these up with glorious rants (and beautiful call-outs according to my girl) about the systemic failings of a university. I am now taking the time to express the things I cannot, will not, and am not needing to tell the university. This is something that I would tell people who knew me, and a university who failed me but won’t see me, can’t hear it.

This is the story of my ex that I feared would destroy me to share.

Part of me believes that still, and an even bigger part of me can’t be silenced by that fear.

When I met Scott, it was not an abnormal meeting. The ones with the abusive guys who ruin your world almost never are. They aren’t normally insightful enough to know that their inability to recognize how to be upfront and honest is a bigger red flag when the date is abnormal or sketchy. Otherwise, it kind of is just neutral information to women. I kind of anticipate that guys (or most dates) aren’t going to emotionally open upfront.

Scott utlimately met me at this place called Zia Records, in Phoenix, almost in Glendale.

I will openly admit that we were meant to grab food, and I was getting my nails done (to impress the guy, of course) and had so little understanding of now long a nail appointment was that I said, “Oh, sorry, I went to the wrong location. Can we try meeting somewhere else? I also realized I completely lost track of time before reaching out.”

This was honest enough. And I didn’t want to bring up that my ability to plan was none.

That was how we ended up at Zia. He was wearing an Eagles fan jersey, dark blue jeans, and realtively worn-in sneakers. I will never forget my confusion that he was wearing this to take me on a date to get food. And while, admittedly, Olive Garden is not top tier cuisine, I still feel it’s fair to expect someone to try a little harder in a public date for food.

I was kind and very lost at the goal. I was wearing a fairly sexy top, a pair of very fitted jeggings, and some very cute wedges. I knew maybe I was overshooting the idea, and also, that’s who I am as a human. My friends and I grew up going to Olive Garden and similarly priced (and tiered) restaurants before homecoming and prom events.

We raided Denny’s after theatre shows. We wore full makeup and cared not. Sometimes we’d go to Glory Day’s, which is essentially a sports bar that’s more family-friendly. Other times we’d even hit up I-HOP and yes, it was glorious, because a place with negligible service standards when you want social hour is exactly what the doctor ordered.

So yeah, maybe my nostalgia got the better of me on this one.

And also, for a first date, I was confused he didn’t think about who I was.

We got to talking. This guy was the epitome of spoiled boy who wants to throw a hissy fit at everyone while also refusing to take responsibility. (I have since encountered many more humans; male, female, and non-binary; all with this overarching feature.)

He basically said that he was so mad I was an hour late and I stood him up and I should feel so lucky that he was willing to meet me anyway. And I, I snapped back real fast. I told him that it’s not fair to put unreasonable expectations on someone you just met, and, in fact, it’s definitely not my job (or reasonable or an appropriate ask) to justify myself to him when I didn’t even have to reach back out anyway. He needs to calm down. I told him.

See, I didn’t lie about who I was.

I figured, the guy who loves a fighty woman is also the guy who knows when to take her fightiness and turn it into character arc progression and emotional intelligence strides.

He said he loved me, and I was stupid enough to believe him.

As we knew each other more, I learned he had a cat that has been his since he was little. I learned he often confuses similar words, concepts, and phrases. I learned that he doesn’t always keep a running track of things he says. I learned things that seemed features of a human and not clear, or upfront indicators of the things I was going to experience.

Sometimes, and we’ll get to this more, I am angry in how his abuse was crafted.

Because as someone who may not know me, those character traits seem maybe just a little silly and quirky. And a lot of the character traits he showed me and was consistent in were reflections of myself used directly to discredit any claims I had that he couldn’t love me and was lying about his respect for me and appreciation and acceptance of my values.

Because to coercive control perpetrators, isn’t part of the ploy that you can’t be abused by them because they’re exactly like you? Is that not the whole reason it’s so destructive?

I will try not to express too many of the behaviors that were fabricated from him. I do not want to get into the minuta or nuances of which of his mimicry was most destructive. It just was. I don’t need to throw specific horror stories to prove my point. It isn’t right.

I have not once tried to lie to anyone (specifically in close relationships) about my mental health struggles. I don’t always give diagnostic labels and specifics. I am always fairly open to inquiries and questions, and am upfront that it’s just another trait of mine.

If you want Scott’s argument, he would throw in my face that I should be honest about myself with people I wasn’t comfortable with. His demand was that it wasn’t fair to him to see such a brilliant and bold woman have to stifle who she was. He said it wasn’t fair that I was in a situation that people would reject me. He often would say I was lying and judgy.

This is the juicy narrative.

We were at a church in Phoenix called Faith Builders. It was a lovely church and one of the most amazing faith communities I’d been in. I found them by sheer chance. They were across the street from my first adult apartment. I figured a local church is my cup of tea.

I adored the church and Pastor Barb. The community was full of people with day jobs whose passion and love for God extended into unique and often exciting ministries. One family led their own church in Mexico, in tandem with other leaders. Another family pushed for a recovery ministry to be at the church. There was one family who led children’s ministry for years and then decided they wanted to work with foster homes. I met some of the most amazing social justice and advocacy demanding Christians.

They’re not a church for everyone.

They say, “We love you back to life.” And to a lot of people, this could be really fluffy and demeaning. Some people, like Scott, were offended at how it trivialized the Gospel and Jesus’ ministry down to loving people so well that they are transformed. And honestly, Barb was one of the only people who understood the efficiacy of that belief system.

I have not met too many deconstructed pastors. I am glad I have met one.

Scott realized they were my church because these were not the kind of people who put up with abuse or couldn’t recognize it. When he came to see that he wasn’t really fooling many people with his presentation that his love for me outweighed my hurts to him, as they quickly could poke holes in it and see where the logic disintigrated in minutes.

See, the thing about being abusive to a very kind woman who repects her privacy while also respecting other’s boundaries is that because I wasn’t talking to people about how much I disliked Scott or anything even compliant-oriented, it was murky. I often would want to have people over to hear about them and their daily lives and experiences.

It is a lot of things, and it is infrequent in the narrative of a victim (as he attempted to get a church to believe he was) that their abuser (which was allegedly me) would spend so much time not trying to get a community to turn on their victim. I can say, I have done some fucked up shit, and I still have never – to this day – been characterized as abusive.

(Even my rant about police mischaracterizing me is a rant about how police are ill trained and ill equipped to respond. They didn’t ever actually think I was abusing anyone.)

Because you see, I was upfront to the church that I was a mentally ill muffin. I was upfront that I was pursuing a degree in counseling, and had a special area of interest for addictions counseling. I never lied about the features of myself Scott was saying made him the victim of a mentally ill woman using her illness to cover up abusive behavior.

Scott realized quickly that the church was honest, and not to his liking.

This was seen in how after the police came to my Phoenix apartment, and arrested Scott (a fact he still will deny – it shows up on the searches if you try hard enough) for nearly murdering me with his bare hands. The literal fact that I was not rushed to a hospital in an ambulance still astounds me. I am told, in present settings, that I have neurological symptoms of a low-grade stroke. Which validates my story, if not offensively so.

Because the police came and yelled at me for scaring some poor boy.

I strongly suspect Scott knew what he was doing and knew how to describe it to evade all responsibility for damaging my brain. I recall a lot of things being screamed about how he was mad at me for a miscarriage (failed to explain why it happened, of course) and that it was crazy to think he could be hurting me when he’s been so nice through my stress.

I probably smirked in my heart at that. I don’t think my body was actually alive enough to function at that capacity. Even a slow movement of the mouth is pretty hard sometimes.

I don’t think they believed him, and I do know they were harsh to me. Because they weren’t getting an answer from him that was the truth, and they needed me to back up their claims that I was in danger. Pro tip, though, yelling at the nearly lifeless girl to give you answers she is physcially incapable of producing is an abuse of power. I stand firm.

Scott I suspect was thrown into a diversion sequence. This is often what happens when you are arrested either for reasons incongruent with the police ruling, but the court believes there is a need to intervene, or, in this case, when you have done something horrific and the system is designed for the abuser to win, not the vicitim to have justice.

Because the court policy is, “Well, generally, in domestic violence cases, if the victim doesn’t show up to the hearing, the case is dismissed immediately.” (I have thoughts on how this information is more useful to a defendant than relaying to the defendant what the DA is demanding they provide to the court. It creates many issues for a lot of us.)

And I definitely didn’t show up.

Fuck, like I didn’t even know there was something to show up to.

I to this day remember all of the events of the police showing up that night. And still, in my ultimate chaos and confusion, I do not recall getting a court date paper. I don’t even recall seeing any papers in my apartment recounting that he was arrested. And trust me, the court provides a fuck ton of paperwork when they want to charge you with a crime.

Scott either hid the papers (likely, not guaranteed) or I never got them (which is incredibly more logical here, for good reasons, and also such a trip because that’s literally part of the arresting procedure). I to this moment in time am lost on how police forces found it inappropriate to award me my rights and also hold plausible there was too much in it.

But I also know that when something is that obvious, the courts get really bothered.

See, I figure he got a diversion program for some key points – he both was mysteriously absent from the apartment for two months, and, for a few months after he came back, there were new, mysterious appointments and new adherence to clinical interventions.

But the spicy part isn’t even that he found an alternative site to perform diversion classes at or that he failed to convince a ministry that he wasn’t abusive. The spicy part is that he used all of this to persuade me to find a new church. He was in a hissy panic that he didn’t like the church anymore. I think they actually tried to hold him accountable. (Good luck.)

So we went to this Calvary church in Phoenix. It was actually fairly close.

It could have dawned on me sooner. But after going through that level of abuse and torment, my body was still recovering and managing regaining fuctionality and the ability to comprehend daily tasks. I will say, having a brain injury meant it was that much worse to be abused. I not only was actively harmed, but I also couldn’t remember any of it.

The church had a young adults group. They were really sweet, actually.

The pastor, Jesse, who ran the group, is the culprit of like 95% of my current issue with conservative churches. He was exactly Scott’s guy, though. And I am no fool. I know what can and cannot be said in specific contexts and atmospheres. I respected the theology of the group even if I didn’t want to personally agree with a damn thing they spouted.

Because ultimately, they respected my views. They were intrigued with my views and my stances that were so similar to theirs but included a perception of God that was limited only by plausible imagination and not by Biblical tenets or scripture quotes/analysis.

I went to a hockey game, the Coyotes, with some people.

They asked me about myself. I expressed I was this openly queer woman who loved Jesus and was not about to be told she couldn’t be herself. I explained that my views are mine and I am not here to force others to agree, but I will be heard, at any expense to me.

Darrin (one of the other people there) was the light in the tunnel.

He hears me talk and his immediate response is, “So is Scott nice to you?” I have never been so compassionately read to filth before. This is proper friendship. I attemped to vocalize my experiences and all that came out was jumbled words and a, “Sometimes.”

I will never forget the way the small group stopped communicating with me the same way after this realization. They ran to church leaders and ministry directors. I was getting feedback that, “Well everyone is just really worried about you.” Which was fine, except not telling the person people are worried about why they’re worried about her is a mess.

See, the one context I had for all of this was a meeting where Jesse calls me into his office in response to my desire to volunteer in children’s ministry. He spans the gamut of offensive things pastors have spouted my way. He begins by attacking that as a queer woman, I can be a greeter for the church, but there’s not a chance I could teach kids. I knew the argument. I let him present it. He suggested that I would be uncomfortable in the role in his church. Which sounds a very unique phrasing of his issue. Then he spouts my second issue with conservative churches. See, for backstory, I had invited the entire small group to my Passover Seder. I am culturally and ethnically Jewish, and I celebrate Passover Seders not only by the book because it’s not my job to change it but because it’s a celebration of my heritage, and I don’t mess with ceremonial stuff. Jesse, for his credit here, takes the moral low road. He doesn’t say that I’m not Jewish. He doesn’t say that I’m offending Jewish people for hosting a Seder. He knows I have reasons that are not only ethically sound but really he knows I’m not dumb enough to break customs. His moral low road was the funniest argument I’ve heard. Thid dumbass pulls open the Bible and quotes at me that because I am neither male nor a Rabbi that I am unfit to host a Seder, and takes a further moral low road by suggesting I am offending God in hosting a Seder.

So I asked (perhaps in a confused understanding) what the reason everyone else wouldn’t give me a response to the Seder was. Jesse was firm that they didn’t know what I was teaching at the Seder. I am firm that he helped induce this chaos. I don’t think anyone cared until they came to talk about my status as a victim of violence and the pastor turned the argument into how I am a disgrace to God for hosting a Seder as a woman.

We love a dumb man whose fighting prowess is that of a six year-old.

So I leave the church, crying, panicked and overwhelmed. I have not broken up with anyone at this point in time, for what it’s worth. I am so mad and taken aback.

Scott, for his complete credit, sees my distress and says (in a way that circumvented the issue while also cocercively abusing me) that I should be a pastor. He says my theology is really cool and I should just be the pastor who changes all the issues in the church. It sounded really nice and cool. And I also had forgotten why I didn’t go to a Bible College.

My parents often remarked about me that as a faithful believer of Jesus they would have expected I’d have wanted to attend a school like Liberty. I take no issue with them on the basis that I have not attended there. I also know what they’re broadly like. I specifically knew I was not going to find people who understood me at a Bible College. I knew myself well enough at 18 to know that Christian communities love me and love to hate me.

Scott was the one who said I would be an amazing pastor.

I chose an entire school because of an abusive man. CCU was the first thing I found when I was searching for a Christian college. I figured maybe he was right, I would do well in a program designed to make a theologian with additional skills. I had been to GCU and they were also a Christian university. They were, to their credit, maybe not as Christian as people made them out to be in comparison to other marketed Chrisitan colleges.

Maybe the fluke in my rationale was that a guy who said I would be a good pastor was missing my desire to not be a pastor. Maybe the fluke was believing him that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed and confused when asked to make a degree a theology degree as well. I did a lot wrong in how I chose CCU. And they did a lot wrong in not answering my questions.

Scott may have been able to figure it out easier than I did.

I make no apologies for being duped by both a university and an abusive guy – and with the same goal (somehow), no less! The goal of both was to have a theologian! Scott may have misunderstood how theology programs work, but I didn’t. I read through the materials and presentation of course outcomes and collected data for prospective students. Maybe I also was too brain dead (in some literal sense) to parse through confusing data and a program that seemed to be out of place. I was hopeful, maybe.

Scott assured me I would be able to attend.

“Talk about your ministry goals. I’m sure they don’t need to hear about your clinical focal areas as an incoming student.” I did get coaching on how to apply. It was from the guy who probably would’ve loved the school. I just wasn’t the target student, and I was worried about all of this. I didn’t see how appealing to what I knew would get me accepted was helpful in wanting to know if it was the right program. And when I say a lot of my essay was Scott-breathed, I earnestly mean that a lot of what I wrote was not me.

A lot of what I wrote was the voice of a girl I never have been.

I tried integrating myself into it. And at that point in time, knowing who I was seemed contingent upon who Scott was asking me to be. As it stood, better the devil you know, right? He was awful and horrible, hands down. And also? What good was it to me when the Chrisitian communities I turned to for support were full of disdain for me?

Sometimes, I laugh at choosing a school because I was too scared to attend the exact opposite campus in California, online. It was an LMFT licensure program and the school was so liberal that I chickened out, afraid and scared that my story was going to be crumbled and trampled over. Not because they were liberal, but because the ultra conservative side was unkind to the degree that I worried the opposite was no less.

Sometimes the reason my story is so complicated and weird is because I did figure out that Scott was pushing me to attend a school that wasn’t me.

He was the guy I loved who was so mean to me that it didn’t make sense, I guess.

I was hoping, and this was the dumbest reason to have chosen a college, that by attending a school my abuser thought would make me good enough for him, he might stop abusing me so severely. I wasn’t thinking he’d stop. Just that maybe it would help me gain even an ounce of respect in his eyes. And I don’t really think it did.

Because I did put my acceptance on hold for a whole year and a half.

I stopped and really thought about what I was doing. And also, I couldn’t get a comprehensive answer on anything I asked the university about their degree; from an intended audience to the average demographics served, no useful data were presented to me, no matter where I went or how hard I attempted to gain clarity on the matter.

I stupidly posed this dilemma to Scott.

Who basically said a reiteration of that it was my dream to attend a program like them and I was so excited to attend. He doubled down, expressing that I was being hypocritical of a program for characterizing them differently than they presented themselves. The mixed messaging of my abuser was mimicked in the university’s marketing.

I would never tell a dean that the personal reasons for not attending a Bible College are that not only have I experienced relgious abuse from pastors and ministry leaders (often the very people staffed to teach at such a school) but I have also survived domestic violence under a guy who leveraged religion and religious values to control me.

Scott was clearly no help to me in this.

He frequently wasn’t much support for anything.

The tangent to the full circle story of why religious abuse and trauma are my clinical areas of specialty is explaining why abuse is both what I explained earlier and includes more.

Scott was a jerk to my cat. I got a cat something like a year into dating him. I say it was my COVID kitty (it was kind of a depression kitty, though, so it works). Honestly though, in retrospect, the kitty was my method to feel some relief from being tormented and beat.

Scott was not nice to the cat. He was worse to his own cats, as well. So you know, apparently the abusive guy has pets that he can’t take care of. (There is not enough stamina in me to express why he got a second cat when he couldn’t afford the first one.)

He would beat me and rape me when I disagreed with anything he had to tell me. He would take the stance that it was the man’s job to teach the woman how to behave and it was his authority to choose how he did this. I knew he heard this from a spiritual leader who meant well in telling him this. But it was used to promote and perpetuate abuse.

He often fought with me over wanting to be respected.

For a guy hell-bent that I was being difficult, he sure misunderstood that the way to get a resolution was not to attack me for expecting to be treated as a human. For a guy who grossly misunderstood religious boundaries, he seemed convinced that it was my desire to be with a guy whose behavior matched that of the abusive relgious leaders I disliked.

I never understood why he grossly misunderstood my stance.

And yet, maybe being abused so badly meant that overall, that one feature of him alone was almost irrelevant. Because how annoying to be sitting here as someone who supports survivors and victims while also thinking that maybe I’m at fault?

Because the point of sharing it is to validate to a lot of people that they could be in similarly precarious situations. It is to say that surviving abuse (all of which was not going to make for an appropriate length of post) sometimes looks messy. It isn’t linear and it often means wanting to bash your head in because it was that bad and you made it.

Sharing my story means validating that you can be a survivor and still not have figured out how to dispose of internalized victim-blaming narratives.

Surviving abuse means learning how to live again.

I’m here for the ride.

XOXO,

Dorothy B