On April 10, 2016, I was driving home from a session at my studio in Edgewood, WA when I was rear-ended by a man going (what officers estimated) over 100mph.

I remember seeing the headlights drilling toward me at the speed of light.

I remember exhaling and acknowledging that I was going to die.

My employer fired me for not being at work. Every night I had nightmares of Nate being sick in the hospital. There were so many days where all I did was lay in bed. When I would ask for help, I would get shamed. When I told the story to people, others would say that I was lying. I had no support and I was broken.

I am me because 12 years ago I was in the worst state of my life. I was mentally beaten down. I was forced into a fantasy world of hate. When I tell you you are not pretty enough or not muscular enough and that no one will like what you have become, you feel trapped and brainwashed like you can see nothing but a straight line ahead of you.

I couldn’t believe I had let this person do this to me. I couldn’t believe this man that I loved could treat me this way. I was smart and strong and I considered myself a good person; how could I be in this situation?! And then it got worse. When I started fighting back and his controlling and manipulation were not working as well, the emotional abuse expanded to physical.

You do not need to know the horrors I went through; I did not even want to know. My brain got too good at compartmentalizing the damage. I went through periods of forgetting the abuse and pretending I had a real dad and “normal” family. I rebelled a lot against the abuse as I got older and it got much, much worse. But he had too much leverage. When I was small, pain worked. Then, I did not care about pain.