I was born into a family with troubles and grew up seeing abuse from a variety of loved ones, nothing was ever sexual but verbal and physical abuse was something I encountered as a child. When you are surrounded by abusive behavior you come to accept that behavior is the norm, that is how people are supposed to act and treat each other. Malicious words and jaw-dropping insults constantly surrounded me as a child.
I grew accustomed to this behavior and it was not until I moved to South Carolina at age 14, 2004, that I found a distance between abusive environments. However, Catholic school brought a new subject which would haunt me for years, and still to maintain a strong position as to why I hold the beliefs I enunciate. Systematically being told I was less than a man, my duty in life was to serve my husband, and my sexuality was something of which I should be ashamed. As an atheist and bi-sexual, I was adamantly opposed to pretty much everything I was being taught; however the societal shame of womanhood is something which we face everyday. In my rebellion I openly pursued sexually unorthodox relationships, enjoyed a variety of lovers, and was, and am, proud of my bi-sexuality. I was always safe in my adventures, but to say I was promiscuous would be an understatement.
When I went to college I was so thrilled to be in a more open-minded environment, I was flourishing academically and in my junior year I met a guy who I thought was just awesome. I had fallen in love with him when one day another woman appeared on my porch claiming my boyfriend had knocked her up and she needed an abortion. I could not make sense of this—I loved him, I was with him, how could he have done this, what did I do to deserve this? On his knees he begged for me to take him back and in my adolescence and panic I slapped him across the face, hard. I can never lie and say I was not the first person to strike, I have to be truthful. Nothing can be gained by me trying to falsify my story. In my denial of the incident and shame of his cheating I distanced myself from my family members; I felt something was wrong with me for him to cheat. I also believed, with enough shame he could and would change–I was wrong!
During my senior year of college, this boyfriend and I had moved in together, things were going well between us since the incident, so why not. One day when I was leaving Mt. Pleasant after an arduous Latin final, I rear ended a car in bad weather and totaled my corolla, with a new apartment in West Ashley and me without transportation I became dependent upon my boyfriend to get to school. Around the same time I started having gastro-intestinal issues which became increasingly problematic. Soon, I was accruing medical bills, taking time off of work, losing weight, and overall just terrified. I tried to explain to my mother I had an issue, but she was always mistrusting of doctors, and in general avoided them due to her own experiences as a child. Furious at the lack of support from my mother and surrounded by the fear of not knowing what was wrong with me, I shut my mother out of my life and tried my best to fix the situation myself.
Trying to finish my double majors in college I found I had very little time to work, additional bills and my lack of income became an issue. A friend recommended his online work as a cam-boy and suggested I give it a try to make a bit of extra money. I worked enough online to pay my bills and financial independence–an aspect of myself which I still maintain, I’m financially savvy. The work was fun, I was my own boss, I did not have to deal with food and bev, I didn’t mind being nude, and I was already a computer nerd.
In college I had gotten heavy into the party scene, but my performance in school rarely faltered; despite my love of drugs and sex and rock and roll I always loved history, computers, and politics more. I graduated with high accolades, a standing ovation in fact, but I had closed off my family and not a single person was there to see my accomplishments. The person who would have been there, my mother, I had shut out of my life due to my medical complications. The doctors were finally able to diagnose me with Giardia and I received treatment, but it took nearly a year of terrible symptoms for the disease to be identified, and it would take even longer for the insides to heal.
After graduation I found little work for my degrees in Classics and History, the economic crash was in full swing in 2011 and my father offered me a place in new Hampshire. I figured why not, so my then-boyfriend and I moved up to the Great North. It would be in this isolation where my first true experiences of physical abuse started. He could not find work, was dealing with not obtaining his degree, and I was supporting us both with camming money, graduation money, and the money his family gave him. I looked for jobs but all I ever found was unpaid internships, no one seemed interested in me despite my best attempts.
We stayed in New Hampshire and during this time he became more and more aggressive with me— he would choke me, punch me, tell me things like “I will cut you so your outside is as ugly as your insides.” What was worst, I believed I deserved the abuse. After all, growing up I heard terrible things come from my father regarding women and what he thought of them. Of course I deserved the way this man was speaking to me, in fact I deserved the bruises too. The entire time this abuse happened, I never told anyone. I was so ashamed. How could smart, pretty, Alicia fall into such a terrible situation? The fear of others’ opinions and judgement haunted me, all the while the abuse got worst.
My then boyfriend and myself moved back to South Carolina so he could finish his degree and during this time he confided in a friend of mine that he had been not only cheating, but engaging in a lot of homosexual relations— without protection. I will forever be thankful to my friend for disclosing what he had said because that is what gave me the strength to leave.
The night I left him he had taken a gun to my head and pistol whipped me, knocked me out and had me locked in a room for 8 hours while he beat me and raped me. He turned away for a moment and I bolted down the stairs, knocked bikes down in the hallway and ran, nearly naked, for my life to my lawyer friend’s office–about a half-mile from my house.
I was bleeding, hysterical, and my friend called the police. The process to report the assault was a gut-wrenching and traumatizing; photos taken of my bloody face, the barrage of questions, being asked what I had done, why had I not called before? My boyfriend was arrested and I had to go to several court hearings, alone and scared, trying to ensure he could not come after me. The state did not want to grant a restraining order since I needed two counts of a police reporttack to qualify for a restraining order, despite the obvious attack.
The court also told me the wrong date, in writing, for his hearing and I was unable to appear and testify; the bureaucratic error made by the Charleston Police Department allowed him to continue to contact me. I felt I was pushing a rock up a hill and every communication with the police was terrible and made me feel nothing would be accomplished, I was wasting not only my time but theirs, and the men working my case articulated the sentiment– mind you South Carolina has some of the highest domestic abuse rates in the US.
After my traumatic break up I drowned myself in every drink I could find, every drug I could take, and every person I could fuck. During this time, I did not really talk to too many people about the abuse I had endured, I was ashamed, he had slut shamed me so badly that I was fearful to speak about my camming; my ex had happily used my income but also called me a “slut” and a “whore” the entire time. Constantly reaffirming my own lack of self-worth, I just further isolated myself in fear. I was so afraid, so hurt, so alone, I just wanted someone to love me and tell me it was ok and they would take me away from everything.
I met that person shortly after my break up and this new lover offered me an escape. With my online work I could go anywhere, why not travel? Why not go see the world! He had a boat and another set of friends were also interested. He was my knight in shining armor, he was going to rescue me from all of this. So he sold me on the idea of leaving on a sailboat, he sold his old boat to friends of mine and used my money and the money he got from them to buy another boat. I did not realize the extent of his swindling, but as a used car dealer, he fit the part. My friends overpaid for his boat and he took advantage of their desire to sail—they did not have the knowledge or the skills to do so and he had no intention to help them fulfill their dreams, just his own. He was happy because it would put him one step closer to his ambitions, I was happy because this meant I could escape all of those bad memories. My ex had started harassing me again and the police did little to help, running away with my rebound man seemed a much more viable option.
I fell so hard in love with this new guy; he was charming, handsome, funny, adventurous, rambunctious, a party animal. We worked as such a great team, had so much fun together, and I ignored every red flag possible. His issues with his mother, his apathy towards his handicapped little brother, driving aggressively with me to scare me, financial insecurity, the negging, self-deprecating remarks, blaming me for someone sexually assaulting me in public, questions raised about infidelity with friends of mine. All of these issues had appeared before I ever left port and I chose to ignore them all. But right before we were scheduled to do our shake down sail, my best friend, Jim, died very suddenly of a heart attack.
I was devastated, a person who had always been there for me and supported me and always been a good friend to me had been taken away from me, one of the few people whom I could trust no longer existed. With my friend stolen from me I started slipped into an even bigger hole of depression. I drank more, I cried more, all of the trauma I had been suppressing was trying harder and harder to burst forth and all the while I pushed it down as hard as possible. I figured if I just put all my money and efforts into this boat and him, I could escape from everything. We would sail the world and in a few years I would start graduate school. Nothing could go wrong.
We fixed up the boat and on a whim and prayer, 2,000$ in the kitty, we set sail. He encouraged me to patch up the connection with my mom, and I did— I now realize his encouragement was nothing altruistic, he saw my mother as another source of financial security. Along the way I would cam from various locations and that money would help us get to the next place. I handled all of the finances because that was the deal, he would fix up the boat and make it beautiful, and I would fund our travels.
We had problems from Georgia, a mere week into the journey–he would ignore my financial questions, drink extensively, and belittle my crewing attempts as I tried to learn boat-life. As I watched him have no regard for the money I earned I started to resent him, with each insult at my attempts at boat life, I started to hate him. One day we were trying to put the engine on the boat and he said something callous to me so I walked away, the incident would escalate into a physical altercation where I soon found him strangling me. We cried and promised each other it wouldn’t happen again– I just wanted to escape, after all love conquers everything.
Well we hit a snag when we first entered the Bahamas. We did not really have the money to clear customs and we were trying to pass through on our way to the Turks and Caicos. He had misjudged the harbor and run aground— hard. As we passed through the Bahamas, I was so depressed. I hated myself for so many reasons and on one of the first shore adventures he told me how he “wished he had picked a different partner to come sail with him.” I tolerated everything because I feared I would be alone.
By the time we reached Provo, I do not know how many times things had escalated to the point where I should have left. I found myself in the same situation as I was with my last boyfriend. I was too ashamed to admit I had been duped and too afraid to reach out for help. Going through Provo I remember riding a horse and the bruise he left on my leg being unbearable, and thinking to myself how stupid I was, how I deserved it. I wanted to leave him and then his dog died. He had tied him up by the collar and not gone back to check on him, we were out partying and the dog jumped off the boat and hung himself. His mother scorned him about how it was his fault, and it was, but it was not going to bring the dog back. A flag showed itself recommending we slow down on the partying but we disregarded it and carried on. That night instead of reflecting on the decisions we made we chose to drink and party, that night I drunkenly hooked up with a girl, in front of him, while he drowned his sorrows in booze. From the get-go my sexuality with women was stated and allegedly accepted, so for me I saw nothing wrong with kissing another woman.
We left Provo and made our way south to the Dominican Republic, we have memories on Sandy Cay which I can never forget, beautiful ones where I believe we loved each other— but we were still fucked up, still on a head of mushrooms. He told me that day he loved me more than anything and I did too. Despite all of the abuse, we loved the life and we loved each other. We were going places together.
When we got to the Dominican Republic we tried to do repairs to the boat, but just wound up partying. He nearly killed himself on a bike a few times, passed out on the beach and had his grandfather’s watch pulled off his hand– I now realize he had paid a prostitute for sex and she stole it from him. I was camming to pay for our partying and renovations to the boat. But we had a bike and adventures!
I worked in the mornings as he was never a morning person, when he woke up he started drinking. I became increasingly disdainful of the lack of work on the boat and the money being wasted. All the while he started to call me a “whore” and a “slut” as well. Looking back, it was his own insecurities at me being the bread winner, but it hurt me so much to be working to support someone I loved and for them to not appreciate my efforts, but to belittle them, and demonize me.
The DR was probably the most stable time for us, we had great friends and really were living it up. All the while he and I engaged in sexual activities with friends of ours, and it would be this point in time where the first accusation of rape happened.
I had passed out and a friend of ours was assaulted by him, I of course did not want to believe it and blamed the girl, citing her own inebriation. I believed what he said! She had come onto him, right? We got engaged after I started to say how I wanted a bit more commitment from him, in reality I wanted to see more work done on the boat and less drinking, but an engagement ring seemed like just that. He was in it for the long haul. Things would get better.
I loved the DR, but that place just enabled my poor decisions and to suppress all of my emotional demons with a lot of Ron Barcelo rum. I don’t think we saw a day of sobriety when we lived in that country. I constantly resented him for drinking all of our money away and I started drinking even more heavily to sedate this sentiment and to bottle these issues up until eventually I would explode when I could no longer endure any more abuse–deep down, part of me knew what he was doing to me was wrong, and she was just to meek to rear her head.
I would hold onto months of belittlement, physical abuse, neglect, emotional abuse, and then after enough drinks one night I would just explode in a barrage of screams and threats, eventually finding myself hysterically crying and pulling my hair out in clumps.
The entire time I threatened to leave him, I wanted him to tell me how valued I actually was, rather than how useless I felt. The entire time he used my own self-loathing and insecurities against me. He manipulated me to get everything he really wanted, and he did. I could never tell him no, I loved him. I felt if I did not at least have him, then I had nothing. He was the only person who knew all of my secrets, he was the only person I could trust.
Eventually the time came to leave the DR and I remember waking up to the engine over-heating while we were miles off shore and just about shitting myself. We sailed for years with no sun cover for me, and every day at sea was torture for my fair skin. I became more and more frustrated with the state of the boat. I kept giving him money, but nothing ever improved. He never actually cared about me or my well-being, it was always what I could do for him, or how I could make him feel.
Things had gotten to be so terrible by the time we hit Culebra and my depression was at an all time high. He was beating me, I had brought another man on the boat when he left to go save a friend of ours, but I could never act on my fantasies. I can say with a free conscious I never cheated on him, we had an unconventional sex life, but if he was not around I was not interested. But I would be lying if I did not say the opportunity did not present itself often, I just always believed no man was better than he was. He was my Odysseus.
One evening after a terrible fight stemming from him stealing my debit card and withdrawing money, I just could not take the emotional and financial abuse any longer I locked myself in the bathroom and tried my best to eat every pill possible in the hopes it would kill me.
I remember him screaming I was a “whore” and just wanting to leave all of my sadness and sorrows behind. I was so afraid. I had no hope. Throughout this time I rarely talked with anyone about what was actually going on, all my friends just saw how much fun I was having in the Caribbean! Look at how amazing my life is!!
My camming business was doing well, but I could not keep up with the constant request for boat upgrades which he never installed. I just felt so used. When we got to St. Croix and hauled the boat out that is where my real nightmare began. I could handle paying our party tabs and general boat upkeep, but now I was looking at shelling out 15,000$ on a problem caused by him running the boat aground in the Bahamas.
When we started the job it seemed it would not be costly, but he refused to get a job or go to work on the boat in the morning; he wanted to drink and party, pursue other women and couples, and I was stuck picking up the growing tab while we stayed in the most depressing apartment in which I have ever resided.
He blamed me for not being able to afford more, he always felt there was more money than there was, that I could just pay for everything. He had become dependent on a certain life style I had afforded him and that was not going to change. While we lived in this “crack shack” I had gone to bed early one night and he slumped into bed later that night and had left the door unlocked and open. I woke up at three in the morning with a strange man on top of me and his hands down my pants. I screamed and the man barked “if you move I’ll kill you.” At this point my ex-fiance stumbled into consciousness and kicked the guy off of me and the guy ran outside.
When people ask “why didn’t I report the abuse,” this is why, the VIPD did nothing but arrive late to the scene, ask very little questions, tell me I had to drive to the other side of the island to get a police report, and that there were no outreach programs to help. I had been sexually assaulted in my own home, and I was basically told to screw off. All the while, my ex would tell people how the assault was my fault because I could not pay for a better apartment. From that day forward I never respected him again— he could not pay for anything, he could not uphold his part of the deal, and he could not protect me.
By the time we got to St. John we were already broken, I was just in denial about how bad it was. My spirit was destroyed and after one last brawl in St. Croix I never had any fight left in me, for the next three years I endured countless physical assaults without having the will to fight back, just being beaten in his drunk rages. I would go through nearly three years of accepted physical, financial, and emotional abuse, all the while I kept my sorrow internalized and did not speak to anyone about the situation. The physical abuse got worst on St. John, he drank more in a new party setting; I drank more to deal with the trauma from the break-in and sexual assault in addition to his ongoing physical and emotional abuse.
For the first time in four years he had a job so I thought things would improve. I still cammed on the side, that income still constituting most of our money, but finally he was at least contributing, even if it was menial. The oppurtunity for to attend Captain’s school in St. Thomas and get an even better job presented itself. So I paid for his courses with the hope things would get better, more money was the obvious solution. We ended up with an incredible offer which seemed too good to be true. Unfortunately, the charter job enabled him to drink and party more, while becoming even more egotistical and narcissistic. In hopes of helping him in his career, I put my own ambitions for social media work and grad school aside and took the charter chef/first mate job. I was able to give up camming, but I never had any social issue with it, all the hatred for my job came from others’ opinions of my work and the social stigma attached to being a sex worker.
I don’t think he ever appreciated me giving up my dog for his career, or working in a hot kitchen for twelve plus hours a day. But I kept thinking, hoping, it would get better. It never did. Instead he just beat me more and started to cheat on me, more than before I guess, I guess he was doing it the entirety of our relationship. My spirit finally broke and I was already dead inside, but he was just further stomping on it with every belittling word he uttered to me and every slap or punch he threw. I was never good enough crew, he deserved better than me. I worked all day non-stop and watched him get intoxicated with guests week after week and do little to help me with my demanding job, he was the Captain and he was there to have fun.
I put on weight, my depression got worst, two cat 5 hurricanes destroyed our home, Irma and Maria. He returned to the islands sooner than I did, we had been abroad in Thailand during the storms. I thought he went early to keep me from seeing the destruction, but it was because he wanted to get away from me and just did not have the strength to admit it was over between us, he still needed me to support his work and life, he was not ready to discard me just yet, there was still a use for me.
He cheated on me while I sat crying and worried for him, and when I came back to see him he went on a cocaine bender, side-swiped a car, called me fat, beat me, and in general did everything he could to try to get me to break up with him. I foolishly held on thinking things would get better. On charter he would hit me, slap me; I would tell him how much I hated him. Things would get better right?
One night things got to be terrible, he made advances on a friend of ours and raped her while I was asleep. I came onto the bow and found him on top of her, I could not accept what I saw and did not believe that I saw him raping her. When I confronted him he was drunk with a condom hanging off, I slapped him hard across the face, and I told her to “get the fuck off the boat,” my reaction to her rape was to disbelieve her and to reconcile with my lover, all the while telling our friends his actions were consensual, and to lie for him as he asked me to “clear his name.” This is something which I will have to live with, but I can at least recognize what happened and try my best to learn from what happened and to be a better person.
Before I could even get back to St. John word had gotten back to our friends about his actions. I did not realize it was rape at the time, but now I do. After hearing what she said, what he had done, how he acted, I have to accept that for a long time I did not believe not just one woman, but two. I have to accept that I enabled his actions to some extent, that I did not believe the accusations being made against the man I loved. Other friends would eventually come out and say he had made unwanted advances on them as well, his predatorily behavior was far from isolated. I now understand why he tried to rid himself of the nickname, Pirate, it was the truth about him.
Just before my birthday we had one last terrible fight, he threw me through a door and repeatedly punched me in the head screaming “you made me like this! I was never this way before you!” Saddened by believing I was the problem I tried to commit suicide on the yacht we ran, I tried to hang myself while listening to the one music which still made m happy, Dave MAtthews Band. He must havew heard me gurgling as he came in and found my limp body before I succumbed to death, he screamed at me “You stupid bitch! People will think this is my fault!” Even in death all he cared about was himself, in fact, now I believe he was pushing me towards this action for years, it was better I die than speak out about his behavior and ruin the facade he had created.
When I left island I was covered in bruises, I went north to Maine and I would ride a horse for the first time since Provo and I sadly realized I had a bruise in the exact same location as my last horse riding adventure. It was that moment in time where I started to cry, to realize I had endured that pain for years hoping it would one day get better. It took six weeks for those bruises to fade, and it will take much longer for the gaping emotional wounds to become scars. But, despite everything I do not regret my time I spent in the Caribbean, I had fun for a long while, but I could no longer run and try to escape my problems with partying. I was Wendy and it was time to leave my Peter behind in Neverland and grow up, no matter how much I wanted things to work I had to leave my job, the life I knew, and everything I owned behind. For the first time, I was going to put myself first and heal.
What hurt more than all the bruises, everything, was knowing he had another girl lined up to be my replacement. After six years of my support, he had another woman he had been talking to for years fly in five days after I left to replace me. He then proceeded to post pictures of this girl all over his facebook, only to have our friends confuse her for me, which in an of itself is saddening. I should hate this girl, but I don’t— I feel bad because I know she will find herself in the same position I found myself. So, when that time comes I hope she can leave as well and it will not take her six years. But. like me, he has groomed her for abuse and chose someone with self-worth issues, the perfect candidate for abuse. No matter how hard he tried, he could never beat me, I am a strong woman and he realized I would never dance to the drum beat he wanted. He could not control me no matter how hard he hit me, despite my depression I still had a spirit which could not be extinguished.
I guess that is where I come to a rambling point here— I went through nearly a decade of abuse from two lovers and was unable to see how terrible things had become. To me, it was normal! I had accepted that I deserved abuse at a young age and sought people out who treated me as such. I used alcohol and drugs to cope with death, depression, sexual assault, physical assault, and my own insecurities— all the while this state of being allowed men to prey on me, my insecurities, and my fears.
At this point in my life I am nearly six months sober— I still enjoy my ganja— my back is not in constant pain, I have lost nearly fifty pounds, and for the first time I can look at the choices I have made in my life and say I have grown from my experiences; I will no longer allow myself to be treated in the ways I previously deemed acceptable, this behavior has brought backlash from people who once walked all over me, but building boundaries was a necessity and standing my ground has gained the respect of myself and others. I will never allow anyone to treat me with so much disrespect, or to ever lay a hand on me. I will walk away when I see a flag, rather than brushing it off hoping things get better. My next relationship will be healthy and hopefully I will find someone who loves me for who I am, not what I give them.
Why don’t women come forward to report abuse? It’s because it is hard, it is an emotional attack which is scarring for many. To have to recount what has happened to you and see the judgement in people’s eyes is terrifying. So I guess that is what I am saying, I have laid open my life for the last ten years in hopes that you might be able to trust the woman who is coming forward. Because I could never admit to my close friends the abuse I dealt with, that those “boat bites” weren’t caused by me falling down the stairs but by the hand of the man I loved.
To be able to admit, yes, I tried to kill myself when I felt I had no other options and had been brainwashed to believe the abuse I felt was not only deserved, but inescapable. Yes, I am putting myself out in the open to be scrutinized, to be called a slut or a coward. To the people who criticize me, go ahead–I do not need or want your approval, I know the truth.
For now, I am traveling again, in therapy, sober and happy. I am trying my absolute best to no longer run from my demons, but to face them directly. I outgrew the party and was ready to move on with the next part of my life, graduate school; he wanted to stay behind and live the perpetual party, even if his lifestyle was starting to hurt those around him. I hoped he would grow up at the same time as I did, realize drinking and partying was not the end all be all, but that is his choice to make.
If you want to judge me, that is ok, you can do that, you too can choose to ignore my story and say I deserved everything I got. But, I will not ever believe you are correct. I will not doubt the women strong enough to come forward and point the finger at those who have assaulted them. I am here, open and vulnerable, to say “I was human, I was afraid, I was worried about my future, I was worried he would hurt me more, I feared I would be homeless or lose my job, I hoped it would get better, I did not want to ruin his professional aspirations, if I came forward he would tell everyone all of my secrets and post compromising videos to shame me.” But now I’m telling the world my story and hopefully it can inspire someone to leave an abusive situation or speak out against any abuse they witness. I would love to say that my story is unique, but that is the point being made in all of these movements, the abuse women endure is not unusual, it is deeply rooted and even accepted within our culture. The next step is to identify what can be done to ensure women, ALL WOMEN, have a brighter tomorrow. A future fostered not only by their own actions, but also by the people who surround them. #WhyIdidntreport #metoo
