I talked to an old friend last night about how sending this information into the void that is the Internet is being received. Because I honestly only have Kevin to give me feedback.

She asked me my end goal of all this, and I had to pause and consider. I didn’t quite know at the beginning, and it was an important question to be confronted with. We talked it out for a while, and I came upon an actual utilitarian rationale.

In June of 2018, when Kevin and I were living next to the bus interchange in Silver Spring, I accepted a three month mapping contract in Gaithersburg. What they didn’t tell me about upon accepting the job was that there was a strict no-speaking policy while at my computer – one of thirty packed tightly in a sterile computer lab. We had no friends in the area, and the metro was shut down for the whole summer.

I was completely severed from my community, and the only people that came to see me were two of our best friends (Gay men) in Baltimore. They came almost every weekend to spend time with us. They ultimately used my isolation against me when we got in a fight, exploiting the triggers of my PTSD, keeping me continuously traumatized well into the new year.

At one point, I found myself so disconnected from society one morning that I blanked out while on a morning walk. When I came to, I was fully engaged in a conversation with my reflection in a coffee shop window. After realizing what was happening, I walked into the cafe to get breakfast, and when I sat down — the whole room distorted, every parallel line slanting in a 45 degree angle and staying like that for 10 minutes.

I completely lost touch with reality.

It was captive abuse. AGAIN.

It was another group where I was safer inside abusive hierarchy than the visible violence waiting solely for me outside of it.

It’s become clear that this dynamic is a pattern for me that I have to unlearn. I have had as many of these kinds of abusers as I have years on this earth.

I’m getting established in a new job and in my graduate program, and I have come to realize that they are both remote. In the past few weeks, it seems that, once again, I am able to go 3-4 days having no real human contact with anyone except my husband, no one to talk to but my journal. I’m in a similar environment to last summer in a lot of ways, so I want to develop a community of people to understand how I got where I am; who can talk with me about this past that I’m only now processing; who I can talk to about newcomers into my life to make sure they don’t become another captive abuser while I’m still pretty isolated.

I’m way too busy between work and school to wind up in an another abusive friendship. The only way I can think to do that is to stay within the borders of the community that gave me asylum from the violence, within the violence.

My friend in this group also had reservations about how to engage the material. She felt like there were a million things she could do to accidentally hurt me. She was also wary of the semi-public visibility of comments and liking things. I trust you all.

You can respond or engage if you want. You can stay quiet if you want, too. You can direct message me. You can do whatever feels right.

I trust you.

I just ask that by the end of this, you tell me you saw me.

I guess that’s what this is about. I need someone to know that I’m here.

Because nobody but Kevin really does.