Chapter 7: I Thought I Had Escaped
Going to Texas changed the direction of my life.
But it didn’t erase my past.
I had a place to stay.
I had a job.
I had left meth behind and never went back.
From the outside, it probably looked like I was getting my life together.
In many ways, I was.
But there was something I didn’t understand yet.
Getting away from what happened to me wasn’t the same thing as healing from it.
I still drank.
For many years, alcohol became a way of dealing with things I didn’t know how to talk about.
Back then, I didn’t understand trauma.
I didn’t understand triggers.
I didn’t understand why certain things affected me the way they did.
And I certainly didn’t understand how what I had already survived could influence what I accepted in another relationship.
I just kept moving.
I worked.
I rebuilt.
I had relationships.
I tried to create a normal life.
But somewhere along the way, abuse entered my life again.
This time I found myself in an abusive marriage.
I remember asking myself a question that I would ask many times:
How did I end up here again?
I had survived being beaten.
I had survived waking up as John Doe.
I had survived homelessness.
I had survived addiction.
I had started over.
Surely I should have known better.
That’s what I told myself.
And that thinking created another kind of shame.
Because when you’ve already survived abuse once, admitting that it’s happening again can be incredibly difficult.
You start questioning yourself.
What’s wrong with me?
Why didn’t I see it?
Why did I stay?
How could I let this happen again?
For a long time, I thought those were the questions I needed to answer.
Today, I understand they were the wrong questions.
The responsibility for abuse belongs to the person choosing to abuse.
Period.
My responsibility was learning how to recognize what was happening, understanding what my past had done to me, and eventually finding the strength to change the direction of my life again.
But I wasn’t there yet.
There were still hard miles ahead.
Reflection
This is an important part of my story because somebody reading this may have survived one abusive relationship only to find themselves in another.
And maybe you’re ashamed of that.
Maybe you’re thinking:
I should have known better.
I understand that thought because I’ve had it too.
But surviving abuse doesn’t hand you a book explaining everything that happened.
Sometimes you leave with nothing more than your life.
Healing comes later.
Understanding comes later.
Learning boundaries can come later.
Learning what healthy love looks like can come later.
And sometimes we stumble along the way.
That doesn’t erase the progress we’ve already made.
My road wasn’t a straight line from victim to survivor.
There were turns.
There were setbacks.
There were times I thought I had finally escaped my past, only to realize I was still carrying parts of it with me.
That’s another reason RADV exists.
We don’t ask survivors:
“Why did you let this happen again?”
We ask:
“How can we help you find the next bridge?”
Because whether it’s the first time you’ve needed help or the fifth…
you still deserve help.
You still deserve dignity.
And you still deserve the opportunity to find your way back to yourself.
Next Saturday, I’ll take you further into that abusive marriage and some of the moments that finally forced me to recognize something I had spent years struggling to admit:
Men can be victims too.
My story. Our mission. Their hope.
— Dave “Grizzly Dave” Beatty
Founder, Riders Against Domestic Violence (RADV)