Chapter 6: The Call From Texas
Last Saturday, I told you about one of the lowest points of my life.
I was homeless. I had slept beside a dumpster. An old friend eventually gave me a place to stay, and I will always be grateful for that.
But having a roof over my head didn’t mean I was okay.
I was drinking heavily.
I was using meth.
I was trying to numb memories I didn’t know how to deal with.
Then my brother in Texas contacted me.
He invited me to come stay with him.
And he told me something else:
There was a job waiting for me.
I remember thinking about it.
Texas.
A new place.
A job.
A chance to get away from everything surrounding me.
Maybe even a chance to become somebody again.
I didn’t know whether it would work.
I didn’t have some great plan for rebuilding my life.
I just knew I couldn’t keep living the way I was living.
So I took the chance.
I went to Texas.
And when I left, I left the meth behind.
I never went back to it.
I wish I could tell you that was the moment everything changed and I suddenly became healthy, sober and whole.
That’s not my story.
Alcohol remained part of my life for many more years.
There were still wounds I hadn’t dealt with.
There were still things about myself and about abuse that I didn’t understand.
There would be relationships ahead of me that weren’t healthy.
There would even be more abuse.
My road back wasn’t straight.
But going to Texas mattered.
Because for the first time since waking up as John Doe, I wasn’t simply reacting to what had happened to me.
I made a decision about where I was going next.
Someone offered me an opportunity.
And I said yes.
Reflection
I’ve thought a lot about that phone call over the years.
My brother couldn’t heal me.
He couldn’t erase the beating.
He couldn’t give me back the home, job or belongings I had lost.
And he couldn’t make my decisions for me.
What he could do was put an opportunity in front of me.
A place to go. A job. A chance.
Then I had to decide whether to take it.
That experience is part of why I believe so strongly in what RADV is supposed to be.
We can’t live a survivor’s life for them.
We can’t tell them what decision they have to make.
And we can’t promise that everything will suddenly be okay.
But we can help build a bridge.
A bridge to resources.
A bridge to people who care.
A bridge to an opportunity.
A bridge to the possibility of something different.
Sometimes a person doesn’t need someone to rescue them.
Sometimes they just need someone to say:
“There’s a place for you over here when you’re ready.”
My brother did that for me.
I crossed that bridge.
And although I still had a very long road ahead of me, I had finally started moving again.
I didn’t know it then, but years later those words would become the heart of something called:
Riders Against Domestic Violence.
We Are the Bridge.
Next Saturday, I’ll tell you about something much harder to understand.
How I got back on my feet…
and eventually found myself in another abusive relationship.
Because surviving abuse doesn’t automatically mean you understand why it happened—or how to recognize it when it starts happening again.
My story. Our mission. Their hope.
— Dave “Grizzly Dave” Beatty
Founder, Riders Against Domestic Violence (RADV)