The Duchess Speaks

This week in August is always a tough one for me. I want to sleep more and when I'm awake, I'm shaky and uncomfortable. It doesn't hit me until I look at a calendar and realize it's “that” week. In the past, the dread would creep up weeks before and I would indulge in inappropriate behavior….partying, drinking, revolving door of lovers….anything that would numb my mind from the memory. Once I reached my 30s and sought appropriate therapy, I've been able to redirect my feelings to healthy behaviors, one of which is writing. This story contains explicit details of physical abuse that may trigger some people. Please do not read on if you will be affected negatively. 

Many years ago, I was a wildling. I drank and danced with abandon, dated a flurry of pretty people and never really stayed in one place more than a few seconds. I lived in a very small coastal town in Oregon, which was also host to small Coast Guard base. If I'm going to follow the recipe of full disclosure when writing about my pain, I have to admit I chased “Coasties” as my friends and I called them. I'm cringing now, but at the time I was completely besotted with the uniform. I dated cops for the same reason, but I was much more interested in Coasties as their time in our town was brief and a constant supply of new blood was available for my voracious appetite. As a result, I was pretty popular with the permanent staff at the base. They would tell me when new blood was coming, so I had first pick of new crews. 

It so happened that a ship on its way to Alaska had to dock in our town due to mechanical problems. It was serious enough that the boat would be dry docked for several months, adding a crew of 60-70 new Coasties to our base. I was ecstatic….so much new blood!

When their housing was figured out, the new crew slowly started filtering into the social scene. I met the majority of them at a local nightclub that I frequented even though I was underage. This particular club had a card room where there were serious poker tournaments (obviously illegal, but overlooked since plenty of law enforcement hung out there as well). I saw him from the back at first….he had almost white blonde hair, carefully styled in a pompadour like a blonde Elvis. He was obviously tall even though he was sitting down, and was noticeably overdressed for a crappy club in a small town. Where the other men wore tshirts and jeans, he wore a turtleneck and jacket and shiny wingtips. He looked so out of place that it was almost comical. When I finally saw him standing, he was walking my way. He was easily 6’3”-6’4” with a chiseled jaw and glacial blue-green eyes. I was so overwhelmed by his attractiveness that I didn't even hear him offer me a drink. My mind was spinning….guys like this usually chose the twiggy girls with straight, flowing blonde hair, not me with unfashionable curves and big, curly hair, no matter how I flirted. As we walked to the bar, his hand touched the small of my back and for once in my life, I wasn't awkwardly the same height or taller than the man next to me. In fact, he made me feel tiny! I could feel the hateful glares from the twiggy girls….they knew as well as I did that I was out of my element. 

The rest of the night, Ben (not his real name) gave me his undivided attention. My usual boisterous personality slid away with him….he made me feel like I could really be myself. We sat in a corner and talked the night away. At closing, he drove me home and left me with a kiss on the hand….and woooo did I fall hard. 

The next few weeks were a blur of exploring local beaches and showing him the good restaurants in town. He always dressed much fancier than the guys in our town, which drew some criticism from them….i stepped between many a drunken local boy and my fashion model date before it could escalate. Soon, far too soon it seemed, I was staying with him in his room and he was staying at my apartment. It all felt so wonderful that I never questioned it. The sex was phenomenal….i still have yet to find a comparable partner. We just fit together in so many ways….my friends loved him, my family especially loved him, and it all felt so right. He had even mentioned me moving to Alaska with him, which had my head spinning. He was my own personal Adonis, and I worshipped him with all the fervor of the newly enlightened. He could do no wrong in my eyes. 

The day in question started like any other. It was a weekend, so we had slept late that day and were just lounging around his room. His roommate (a permanent local) had found a girl to spend time with but had left his Toyota 4x4 truck for us as we planned to spend the evening on the sand dunes with my friends having a bonfire. I don't even remember what we were talking about; it was trivial to me. I remember jokingly calling him a “lazy bum” because he had dishes in his sink (extremely unusual as he was a major neat freak). After I said it, he became unnaturally quiet so I turned around to see if he was behind me and I caught his fist square in my jaw. He was so much bigger and stronger than me that it knocked me off my feet. I'm not a weak little girl, and of course my temper got the best of me. I leapt to my feet and threw a right hook that likely didn't hurt him but I would later find broke 4 bones in my hand. 

I've never seen eyes change the way his did. The sweet, loving guy who had held me in his arms while he slept the night before disappeared and was replaced with an evil monster. He grabbed me by my hair and started dragging me towards the door. I was wearing a button down shirt of his and underwear but nothing else, so I fought like crazy. Another punch to the face broke my nose and snapped me into reality….i knew something bad was about to happen so I began fighting for my life. I will never, ever forget the sound of his gun cocking or the steel of the barrel touching my face. Every ounce of fight I had left me and I slumped to the floor. He picked me up like I weighed nothing and wrestled me out the door and down to his roommates truck. Once there, he told me in a deadly voice to get in or he would kill me right there. Knowing I shouldn't keep fighting, I climbed in. He threw himself in the drivers side and started driving towards the sand dunes. 

(If you are unfamiliar with the Oregon Dunes, it's a large recreational area open for off-roading enthusiasts. It covers several miles of central Oregon coast and you can easily get lost out there and never found.)

I clung to the door of the truck and assessed my injuries. My nose was definitely broken and streaming blood down my face. My right eye was rapidly swelling closed and my head felt like he had ripped a bunch of my hair out, but otherwise I was still intact. He had opened a cut above my left eyebrow, and the blood was pooling in my left eye. I was too scared to try to wipe it away, so I just let the tears come to try to flush it out. This earned me another smack and an order to “stop sniveling,” so I swallowed my tears and stayed as silent as possible. In the meantime, he was driving like a maniac, weaving in and out of traffic and speeding. I prayed that we would get pulled over but we arrived at the turnoff to the sand dunes far too soon. 

When we reached the staging area (where the road ends and the sand begins), he put the gun under my chin and told me to stay silent in the truck while he manually turned the hubs so we could drive on the sand. It's a pretty crowded place a lot of the time but since it had just gotten dark, the staging area was deserted. Every bone in my body was screaming “RUN!!!” but I was sure he would kill me if I did, so I laid still and gathered my wits. Once out on the dunes, maybe I could calm him down. 

He threw himself back in the driver’s seat and immediately we were speeding across the staging bumps, making my broken body scream. Unable to hold it back, I screamed out loud from the pain which earned me an open handed slap to the face that rung like a bell and knocked the air out of me. 

I tried speaking to him soothingly at first, then begged him for my life. I know I told him more than once to just let me out and I wouldn't turn him in, to which he sneered and called me pathetic. 

When I saw where he was going, hysteria rose in me like a hot air balloon. We were going to the romantic area we went on a date to just a few weeks ago; a place I held special and knew how secluded it was. I gained my second wind and attacked him, screaming like a banshee. I was not going to let him get there as deep down I knew I would probably die there tonight. 

I might as well have been hitting a statue; he was totally unfazed. When the truck stopped I leapt out of the door, running as fast as I could. Being barefoot on soft sand gave me an advantage and I nearly got away but he tackled me hard to the ground. Tearing off the shirt I was wearing, he again grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to the exact spot we had sat and kissed tenderly only a few short weeks before. 

He dropped me and stalked off, gun in one hand and his head in the other. I saw the punch I had managed to land had cut his perfect cheek and I was both glad and horrified. He seemed to be fighting an internal struggle with himself….i kept seeing the sweet side of him slide onto his face only to be immediately replaced by the demon that had taken over back in his room. He was crying, so I knew he was still in there under the rage. I made myself as tiny as possible, rolling into a ball and tucking my face into my knees. 

He sat down in the sand, his gun dangling from one hand and his face in another. I began telling him again to just leave me there, promising I wouldn't go to the police if he just let me go. I said it over and over, hoping he would snap out of it. 

After what seemed like an eternity, he rose and walked back to the truck. I didn't dare move; I hoped he would just drive off and I could walk out to find help. I knew enough of the dunes that if I walked east long enough I would hit a well-used trail. I allowed hope to build, but unconsciously sniffed when the blood flowing from my nose streamed into my mouth. 

He stopped at the door of the truck, not facing me. I heard the gun hit the seat, and his footsteps came back to my prone body. I laid as still as possible, hoping he would just go away. 

I heard a noise and realized he was sobbing. I couldn't bear the sound; it was the keening a small child makes when it's frightened. I looked up at him and saw his beautiful face crumpled and sad. I did the only thing I knew….i soothed him. I told the man who had just hurt me worse than I had ever been hurt in my life that it was okay and we were going to work this out. He dropped to his knees and laid his head in my lap, tears trailing down my thighs. I touched his beautiful hair and cried with him. I touched his back and his arms circled me tightly, his head now in my chest. 

I try to be as transparent as possible while writing this, but what happened next is still a very raw pain. I feel like my body betrayed me and that's hard to accept. We had sex for the final time right there on the sand and it was confusingly soft and tender. He kissed my wounds and apologized over and over. Every cell in my body was SCREAMING how wrong it was, but I ignored it and let it happen. I think subconsciously if I acted like nothing had happened, he would be my Ben again. I was horribly, horribly wrong. 

When he finished, he grew disgusted with himself. I can't remember all of what he said, but a lot of it had to do with his own self loathing. I had no idea this beautiful man hated himself so much, and it was too much for me to bear. I wept for the loss of my own innocence but also his….it was clear he had major self image issues. His disgust grew until his anger had returned, and the evil slid back into his eyes. 

I ran. I have no idea where the strength came from but I ran faster than I've run in my entire life. I'm only 5’9” to his 6’3”-6’4” and he caught me easily. 

He threw me to the ground and sat on my legs, then began punching my face so hard I saw stars with each blow. I don't remember feeling pain so much as I felt my soft body give in to his hard one while he punched my face and chest. When he rose to his feet, he kicked me unmercifully in the stomach and back. I felt and heard ribs giving way and breaking, and one kick to my spine caused my legs to go numb. I laid with my face buried in the sand, the salty air stinging the open cuts. 

When he finally stopped, I was afraid of what would happen next. After standing over me for what felt like hours, he got in the truck and drove away from the place we had only recently shared the most beautiful intimate moment of my life. I laid still until I couldn't hear the engine anymore, then let the tears come. I cried and cried, wiping away as much sand and blood as I could. 

I couldn't stand up, but kneeling on my knees I checked myself over. I had huge red marks on my belly and thighs from his heavy work boots, and several cuts on my chest where his fists had torn my skin. My hair was matted with blood but it appeared to be still connected to my head. I felt my face and it was an alien landscape of swelling and blood. Both eyes were now starting to swell, and I feared I wouldn't be able to see soon. 

That realization was enough to push me to move, to crawl, to do ANYTHING but lie there and let myself die. I found the shirt he had ripped off lying a few feet away and pulled it around my badly beaten body. I knew I would have to find some unsuspecting pleasure riders and get help from them and I didn't want to be naked. The shirt fell to my knees and smelled like him, which brought fresh tears. I willed my body to move and pulled and pushed myself up the face of the big dune between me and a popular riding trail. I'm still thankful for a low, full moon that night - I wouldn't have been able to find my bearings otherwise. 

I kept this crawl up as long as I could and finally made it to the trail. It was then that I collapsed and blacked out for a while; when I came to I could hear the whine of 4-wheelers coming my way. I weakly rose to my knees and waved my arms, pushing whatever sound I could get out of my lungs. Thankfully the shirt I was wearing was still white enough that it glowed in the path of the wheeler’s lights. Two men came riding up to me and I panicked again, trying to crawl away. I was terrified that it was Ben returning to finish me off, but it was two strangers. They took one look at my mangled body and assumed I had been in a wreck which isn't uncommon out there. I tried my best to explain what happened, but ended up just sobbing on one man’s shoulder. 

I thank the universe for sending those men my way….they were extremely gentle with me and wrapped me in the clothes they stripped off. One raced back to the staging area to call for help (this was pre-cell days) while the other waited with me. The one who stayed held me and soothed me and I blacked out again. When I came to this time, I was surrounded by police and fire personnel and I was being loaded onto a rigid board. 

Even strapped down, the ride back to the staging area was excruciating; every bump jarred me to the bone and drew hoarse screams from my mouth. They ended up having to hand carry me across the bumps at the staging area and finally into an ambulance. 

All I could see once inside was the horror on everyone's faces - they worked fast and quietly….it was so quiet I could hear my ragged breath. I knew it had to be bad when the ambulance raced off running lights and sirens. 

The young EMT who assessed me and cleaned me up as much as he could was actually someone I knew, at least in passing. He kept telling me it was going to be okay but his face told a different story. I closed my eyes and let the blackness come again, this time from the medicine he put in the IV. 

I didn't regain consciousness again until three days later. I woke to my roommate asleep in the chair next to my hospital bed and layers of thick bandaging covering most of my body. She jerked awake when I called her name and she burst into tears. I asked for a mirror, and when I saw myself I wish I hadn't. My face was horribly swollen and pure black over most of it. I had burst blood vessels in my eyes and I could only open them 1/4 of the way. The areas of my body not swaddled in bandages were black and purple and hurt terribly. I didn't even look human. 

I spent over a week in the hospital, and more than 3 months recovering. I had 4 broken ribs, a punctured lung, both collarbones were broken, a bruised spleen and liver, broken nose, broken right arm and hand, and a huge fracture in my right cheek. The physical damage healed, but the psychological damage did not. I spent the next few months utterly terrified of men….i would panic when I was in a close space with them and refused to see any of my male friends alone. I didn't get over that for many, many years and I still panic when I'm alone with a man that I feel is threatening (based purely on his size, not demeanor). I moved out of my apartment and back in with family while I healed. 

I did tell my story to the police. Because he held a decent rank in the CG, his superiors talked me out of filing charges with the local police….they told me he would get worse punishment from them and I believed them. It turns out he was stripped of rank and had to attend intense therapy, which resulted in him sending me letters. I sent back every one and finally warned his superiors that I would file stalking charges against him if he didn't leave me alone. 

I never heard from him again. I do, however, keep track of his whereabouts and found he was living up here of all places (he was originally from a wealthy suburb of Chicago and spoke often of going back). He is no longer enlisted on the military and has a family. I hope with all my heart his wife has never seen that side of him. He's a shell of the guy I fell in love with; he's fat, his beautiful face is weathered with time and those glacial eyes have dulled. It should make me happy but it doesn't. I just find it incredibly sad. 

I went on to marry my now ex-husband barely a year after it happened. If I'm being honest, I can say I married him because he wasn't handsome (a factor I felt hid Ben’s true personality) and he had made it clear that he would never hurt me. When he broke that promise years later, I'm proud to say I was able to stand up for myself and I knocked the crap out of him. It was the very last time a man put his hands on me in anger and I made him regret every second. When I divorced him, I left behind that hurt little girl I had been. I moved 3 hours away and restarted my life in my old hometown as a single parent dedicated to my child. 

Writing this every year drains me, but it allows me to find some peace with the pain and remind myself that I'm not helpless. Not only can I defend myself, I can defend my child and I will die fighting. I will never allow anyone, male or female, to put their hands on me in anger again. The unfortunate thing is this memory continues to haunt me 20-some years later….i haven't found a way to make that easier but I diligently write it out and leave the pain in these words. 

I would love to say that I made it to my current relationship without any more bumps but that would be a lie. I ended up in a 5 1/2 year relationship with a textbook narcissist who was, in many ways, a carbon copy of my Ben - he was attractive, the sex was out of this world, and he put me on a pedestal. Unfortunately he needed validation from many women and I finally got out of that one. You would think I would want nothing more to do with relationships and you'd be 100% correct. My fiancé came into my life exactly when I needed him and I've finally found someone who isn't hiding behind a facade. He is loving and encourages me to be myself, no matter how messy that is sometimes. It's taken us almost 7 years to get to this point, but he's thankfully patient and understanding. I still have moments of panic when we disagree but I know he will never, ever hurt me and I can move past the panic. 

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. Please don't feel you are obligated to comment; I don't write this for validation. I write it because a very kind therapist encouraged me to put it on paper when the feeling overwhelms me, as it did this weekend. I purposely set my wedding on the anniversary of the day in hopes that it would replace the bad memories with good ones….as you can see it didn't work. Our marriage only lasted 4 years, and I've not been able to let it go. For now, I'm satisfied that I can at least get it out.