Street roots., October 12, 2012, Page 9, Image 9

street roots
9
Oct. 12, 2012
SU RVIVO RS, from page 8
change. The fog of manipulation and abuse was slowly
lifting. Through art therapy and Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder classes, Mary began to realize that
there was a way to move on from her abuse.
I finally understood that I wasn’t the crazy one, it
was (my ex-husband), ’ she says. “The negative things
were not true, it was just a way to get into my head.”
Even her abuser could feel the change. Mary has
kept in touch with her ex-husband through e-mail —
being primarily a verbal abuser, therapists thought it
best to cut of phone communication - solely because
they have children together.
“I can even tell through his e-mails that he’s thrown
off by my empowerment,” says Mary. “Instead of me
being the reactive and insecure one in the
relationship, he’s the reactive one. He doesn’t know
how to control me anymore.”
This new sense of independent strength couldn’t
have come soon enough. Shortly after her escape
from her abusive husband, Mary was met with a slew
of other stressful issues. First, her family’s bikes were
stolen, then her car. Next, her youngest child broke
her leg. Now, she’s faced with a shattered ankle.
“As I was going along in my healing process,
traumas kept happening, which definitely slowed the
process down,” she says. “But we have gotten through
it. If anything, it shows how we’ve gotten stronger.”
Mary says she’s grown closer to her children, who
are all involved in various Gateway courses, through
this tumultuous time - proving to be one of the few
“benefits” of the process.
“The stress level is much lower, there’s a lot less
anger in our house,” she says. “We are no longer
debilitated by trauma. And it’s going to continue to
happen. So all we can do is ask ourselves: How
quickly can we recover?”
Anna
Anna, who moved to the United States from Russia
two years ago, was married only five months before
she fled her abuser. Lacking insurance, immigration
papers, an address and a grasp of the English
language, Anna couldn’t be more terrified.
“It was so, so scary,” she recalls.
After dropping off her 17-year-old son at a youth
shelter, a woman gave her the number for Gateway.
Nervous that she wouldn’t be able to communicate,
but desperate, Anna called and left a voicemail
message.
“An hour later, I got a call back from a woman who
spoke my language,” says Anna. “She was kind, quiet
and understood me. I knew I must go there.”
Anna quickly made the center a daily stop after her
abuse. There, she secured a lawyer to place a
restraining order on her husband, and had help filling
out immigration papers and a work permit. She also
was able to enroll in English courses at Portland
Community College.
“The most important part was speaking with a
counselor,” Anna says. “I had no idea how much my
husband controlled what was in my mind.”
Anna had met her husband, a military official, on
the East Coast, and then moved to Portland to live
with him. Before they married, he seemed like a
“good person,” she says. But she soon thought
differently.
“He would tell my son and I that he was up here
and we were down there,” Anna says, spreading her
arms wide vertically. “He was the boss.”
Companions
He also was in possession of all of Anna’s
paperwork, information and finances, making it
virtually impossible for her to escape. Soon after
speaking to a therapist, Anna understood why.
“I realized he must have a serious mental problem,”
she says. “Living with him, I thought it was me. I
thought I was the crazy one. But it was him.”
Now, Anna volunteers at Gateway, in between
classes and job hunting. Not only did the network of
peers help her get back on her feet, but it provided a
home away from home. A family.
“After the abuse, I felt like nothing; below human,”
Anna says. “But now I feel strong and independent. I
am a woman. I have rights.”
By Avendor
Your love is a river
Flowing across gypsy lands
Past war-ravaged fields
Behind garbage cans
Where lovers kiss
And smokers stand
So for me
While you still can
And cover my back
Like a good friend can
We’re short on change
But we can scrap
You can do this
And I can try that
And hopefully
In the orange sherbet sundown
We’ll find a place to hang
Out in this town
You see we’ll unwind
Brows dampened with sweat
Be seen simply as
Two quiet silouhettes
Susan
Susan never thought she would find herself in an
abusive relationship.
“I always told myself, ‘I will never let that happen
to me, it’s ridiculous’,” she says. “I was so arrogant.”
But, while working on her master’s degree on
counseling in California a few years’ back, she was
swept up in a manipulative, violent relationship before
she could react. And it wasn’t just a physical attack.
“Sure, it affected me mentally and physically, but it
was more a power play,” Susan says. “He wanted
control and found it by punishing me.”
When Susan began to seek legal help to separate
from her abusive husband, he had already meddled
with the system. The judge on her case to receive full
custody of her child was being fed a heap of
re-election money from her husband’s law firm. Thus,
she was playing a losing game.
“It’s politics,” she says. “And it can break your
soul.”
Not only had her husband tucked a bill in the law’s
pocket, he had permanently ruined her finances.
Susan’s credit was destroyed and was in bottomless
debt when she finally fled California with her 5-year-
old son in a desperate search for refuge. Living out of
her car, she had no way to apply for food stamps, let
alone a job, without an address or solid credit.
After being turned away from countless social
agencies, support groups that didn’t allow children (or
provide daycare), and shrugged off by every landlord,
Susan was at the end of her rope.
“Gateway was the first place that actually treated
me like an intelligent, strong adult — not a victim,” she
says. “I had found it hard to ask for help until then,
because everyone had their own preconceived idea of
a domestic abuse victim. I wasn’t it.”
Slowly, Susan has been finding solid ground. She
found a place to live, to start, at an affordable housing
apartment complex, along with childcare and
counseling. Her credit remains botched, but she’s
working to recover it with time.
“Things are looking up,” she says. “I now have a
safe place to live with my child, when I can lock the
door and have peace. That’s all I can ask for right
now.”
But while Susan remains personally bruised from
this experience, she stresses that it’s not a private,
stand-alone problem. It’s been raised to a national
scale.
“Domestic violence is a systemic, cultural illness. A
cancer. In families, it’s merely a symptom of a larger
reality,” she says. “It can’t continue the way it is. What
it takes is a community and government working
together to fight it, openly. It’s long overdue.”
Running our hands over our knees
Wondering about so many, many things...
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