To All the Woman Before Me

I need to start this by saying I’m sorry.

To the women who came before me, the ones who tried to warn me, who gently hinted, who flat out said “be careful,” who shared their own stories with shaky voices and tired eyes...

I’m sorry I didn’t listen.

At the time, I thought I was different.

I thought my situation was different.

I thought our love was different.

I thought maybe they were projecting their pain onto something that didn’t apply to me.

I told myself that just because it happened to them didn’t mean it would happen to me.

Sometimes ...especially in moments of regret... I wish I would have listened.

But the sad, humbling, brutally honest truth is that everyone has to learn for themselves.

You can hand someone a roadmap, circle the danger zones in red, and they still won’t understand the terrain until they are bleeding on it.

& boy did I fucking learn.

Now I’m on the outside looking in.

I have nothing but time to think.

Time to replay conversations.

Time to rewatch moments in my mind like a film I can’t turn off.

Time to analyze my own life the same way I analyzed case studies in the textbooks I studied.

That’s the part that stings the most.

I studied this.

I underlined it.

I highlighted it.

I wrote papers about it.

I memorized the cycle of abuse.

I could outline coercive control and trauma bonding in my sleep.

I could sit in a classroom and explain the methodical progression of isolation, degradation, gaslighting, and escalation.

& yet, I never once applied it to myself.

Looking back, it was so calculated.

So structured.

So unbelievably methodical.

It was always ten, twelve steps ahead of me. The agenda had already been written; I just didn’t know I was cast in the role.

It started with love, or what felt like love. The intensity. The adoration. The way he made me feel chosen. Protected. Special.

“I’ve never met anyone like you.” I mistook possession for passion. I mistook control for security.

Then came the taking.

It didn’t look violent. It looked caring.

He started isolating me from people I loved, but it was framed as protection.

They were “toxic.”

They “didn’t have my best interest at heart.”

He was “just trying to protect me.”

& because I loved him, because I trusted him, I let him redefine my relationships.

I let him slowly separate me from anyone who had known me before him.

Then he started isolating me from work.

“You shouldn’t have to work anymore.”

“You’ve worked so hard for so long.”

“Stay home. Focus on the kids. Let me take care of you.”

It sounded generous. It sounded like devotion. It sounded like love.

It was control.

We only had one car. Since he worked and I stayed home, he took it.

Every day.

I sat in that house, dependent.

If I needed something, I had to ask.

If I wanted to leave, I had to plan around him.

My world became smaller and smaller until it revolved entirely around his schedule.

& then came the degradation.

“You don’t do anything.”

“You just sit at home all day.”

“You don’t work. I do.”

“It’s my money.”

“You have nothing without me.”

“You wouldn’t survive without me.”

The same man who told me I shouldn’t work began using that decision as proof of my worthlessness. That’s how the cycle works.

They remove your independence and then punish you for not having any.

The gaslighting wrapped around everything like a suffocating blanket.

“It’s us against the world.”

“We only have each other.”

“I’m the only one who stays by you.”

“I’m your support system.”

“I’m all you need.”

& eventually, I believed it.

The verbal abuse came next.

The name-calling.

The threats delivered so calmly they felt like facts.

The subtle intimidation.

The way his moods dictated the temperature of the house.

My nervous system learned to read him before he even spoke.

I became hyper-aware of tone shifts, footsteps, the way he closed a door.

Fear became my baseline.

& when I was already worn down, when my sense of self had been chipped away piece by piece, the physical abuse arrived.

A quick shove into a wall.

A remote thrown at my face.

A hand around my throat in the middle of an argument.

It would happen fast — so fast that afterward I would question whether it was as bad as it felt.

& then came the love bombing.

The apologies.

The tears.

“I love you.”

“It will never happen again.”

“I was drunk.”

“I’m such a horrible person.”

“Why do you even love me?”

Threats of self-harm because he felt “so bad.”

& just when I would start to soften... the switch.

“I only did it because of you.”

“You made me that angry.”

“If you weren’t such a bitch it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Look what you made me do.”

That’s the mindfuck of it all.

The cycle doesn’t just repeat... it tightens.

Sometimes it takes weeks.

Sometimes months.

Sometimes years.

But it is always there, moving quietly beneath the surface.

By the time you recognize it clearly, the damage is already embedded.

Your body reacts before your brain does.

You flinch without realizing it.

You monitor every word before you speak.

Your nervous system lives in fight or flight.

Hypervigilance becomes normal.

Safety feels foreign.

Your identity feels distorted.

You feel suffocated in your own skin.

& here’s the part people don’t understand: leaving isn’t just about walking out a door.

There is a point in the cycle where you know, deep in your bones, that any decision that goes against what they want could fast-track you straight back to the most dangerous part.

When you’ve lived that reality, you understand what it feels like to genuinely fear for your life.

Yesterday someone told me that society wants the “perfect victim.”

The cinematic victim.

The woman in the grocery store with two black eyes and a broken nose.

The one who runs, and the police burst through the door and justice is immediate.

Society recognizes those victims.

But the truth is, many of those women never make it out. They don’t get to be survivors.

& those of us who endured the psychological warfare, the coercive control, the strangulation marks hidden under hair, the constant terror that rarely leaves visible bruises... we’re told it, “Wasn’t bad enough.”

I can tell my story a million times.

I can provide proof.

I can describe in detail the moments I felt pieces of myself being stripped away.

& still someone will say it wasn’t severe enough.

Let me say this clearly: I lived it every day. I felt it every day. I hid it every day.

& it was for fucking sure bad enough.

So, to the women before me... I’m sorry I didn’t listen.

I understand now that you weren’t trying to ruin my happiness.

You were trying to save me from the same slow erosion you survived.

Sometimes I wish I would have listened.

But if I had, I wouldn’t have the depth of understanding I have now.

I wouldn’t be able to write this from the inside out.

& if sharing this... raw, angry, & unfiltered...helps even one woman after me recognize the pattern sooner, question the “protection,” pause at the isolation, or trust her gut instead of his apology…

Then maybe I can find peace in knowing it wasn’t all for nothing.

To the women before me, I see you now.

& to the women after me...

I hope you never have to learn the hard way like I did.