I Found Myself

Chapter 1: The Storm

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I've always believed the first thing a child feels is fear. The world we are born into, the environment that surrounds us even before we take our first breath, shapes us in ways we can't fully understand. I don't remember the fear that I felt when I was still inside my mother's womb, but I know it was there. There was no safety net, no comforting embrace to shield me from the violence that raged just outside. Instead, I grew in a world clouded with anger, isolation, and uncertainty. And the thing is, I wasn't the only one who felt it.

It was late March 2001, and an ice storm had descended on the Midwest, a brutal, bone-chilling force of nature that coated the world in sheets of frozen rain. The streets were treacherous, the roads dangerous, and the sky was a deep gray—an omen, perhaps, of the storm that had already settled in my mother's life. The world was a storm, a cacophony of chaos that had no plans to stop, and neither did the one within the four walls of our home.

I wasn't born yet, but I was already a part of it—this swirling, chaotic mess. I couldn't see it, of course, but I could feel it. And in a way, that's the hardest part to explain: the sense of danger that saturated the air around us. I wasn't old enough to speak, but I was old enough to sense the tension. The deep dread. The constant, underlying current of fear that ran through everything. Even before I opened my eyes to the world, before I took my first breath, I could feel that fear pulsating through my mother, through her veins, through the air that surrounded me. It was almost like the ice storm outside mirrored the storm within her heart.

My mother was only 19 when she found out she was pregnant with me. 19 years old. That's barely old enough to know who you are, let alone how to care for another human being. She was a girl still trying to figure out what she wanted out of life, still working to find herself, to understand what kind of woman she would be. And then came the news: she was pregnant. At a time when she didn't feel ready to be a mother, when she barely understood what it meant to be an adult, she found herself carrying a child—me.

I can only imagine the shock, the panic, the overwhelming weight that must have hit her when she saw those two pink lines. A baby—my baby—a life that was already entangled with hers, with all the dreams and all the struggles that she hadn't yet figured out how to face. She didn't have the luxury of a safety net. No one was there to help her, no one to guide her through what was coming. She was alone, even though she had me.

But at 19, she didn't know what to do. She didn't have the tools to navigate what was ahead, especially not when the man she loved was quickly showing his true nature. My father was a violent man. From the moment my mother conceived me, his actions would begin to shape both her life and mine in ways that neither of us could have imagined.

My father was cruel. He was the kind of man who sought control, who thrived on manipulating others, especially the people closest to him, and is the biggest pathological liar to this very day. For him, my mother wasn't a partner; she was a possession, a plaything for his aggressive needs. A thing to be controlled, to be molded into what he wanted her to be. And if she didn't comply? Well, then he would break her, literally.

The first time my mother told me about the abuse, I couldn't grasp what she meant by it. I couldn't understand how someone could hurt another person in that way. She had been 19 years old, so young, just a child herself, and yet already trapped in a relationship that would strip her of everything—her self-esteem, her sense of safety, her trust in the world. My father would do more than hurt her physically. He would emotionally break her, too. The mental abuse would be just as damaging, just as cruel. He would break her down, tell her she was nothing without him, and make her feel as though she had no worth. And because she was young, vulnerable, and already unsure of herself, she began to believe him.

But I wasn't born yet. I couldn't understand how my mother felt. I couldn't understand the suffocating fear she must have carried, knowing that the man she loved had the power to hurt her and, by extension, hurt the child she was carrying. I couldn't know how she must have felt when she saw the bruises on her body, when she had to hide the black eyes and broken nose from the world. It wasn't just about physical pain—it was the mental toll that left scars deep inside her that no one could see. And the worst part was, she had no way of escaping it.

My father's abuse wasn't sporadic. It was constant. He didn't just beat her on the weekends or when he was drunk. He beat her regularly—sometimes for no reason at all. There was always a reason to make her feel small. Always a reason to control her, to tear her apart until there was nothing left of her but his broken image of who she should be. And the cruelty didn't stop when she found herself pregnant with me. In fact, the violence only escalated. My father would barricade himself in the closet, hiding with a knife, and when he did come out, my mother would scramble for any way to call for help, to get away from the terror, to keep herself and me safe. But he was always one step ahead. He would yank the phone cords from the walls before she would get home, cutting off the only lifeline she had to the outside world. That man would go out of his way to make sure the only way out of the house was through him.

There was no one to save her. No one coming to help. The system that was supposed to protect her failed her at every turn.

She had no way to fight back. She had no way to get away from the man who had her trapped. My father wasn't just hurting her physically. He was robbing her of her agency, her sense of self, her ability to trust in the world. And as I grew inside her, as I was about to be born into this toxic environment, I could feel it all—the suffocating, oppressive weight of her fear. The fear that if she didn't get out, she wouldn't make it. The fear that she wouldn't survive to raise me. The fear that I might not even make it to birth.

But my mother kept going. She didn't have a choice, not really. She had me to think about. She had a child to raise. And even though my father tried to break her, even though he did everything in his power to destroy her, she kept moving forward, always looking for a way out. I can't imagine the exhaustion, the mental and emotional strain she must have felt, but she didn't stop. She couldn't.

And then came my birth. The ice storm that raged outside, the freezing rain, the cutting winds, it all seemed to mirror the storm that had been brewing inside her for months. She told me that when I was born, it felt like a small miracle. I had survived, and she had too. But what she didn't know was how much more she would have to endure, or how the justice system would fail her at every turn.

The courts didn't protect her. She tried to get a restraining order, tried to get him out of our lives for good. But the courts didn't believe her. They didn't think her testimony was enough. My father would show up to court, smooth-talking and charming, and somehow, he would get away with it. A slap on the wrist. A mild reprimand. And every time, my mother was left to pick up the pieces, left to suffer in silence.

The physical abuse was bad enough—broken bones, bruises, cuts—but the emotional abuse was worse. It gnawed at her, day after day, stripping away any sense of self-worth she had left. My father's cruelty didn't just manifest in his fists—it was in the way he belittled her, humiliated her, made her feel like she didn't deserve better. And my mother, young and unsure of herself, believed him. She believed she couldn't do better. She believed she was stuck, that she had no choice but to stay.

But that's where the story becomes complicated. Because while my mother was enduring all this, she never once gave up on us. Even when things seemed hopeless, she didn't let us down. She kept us together, kept us safe, and somehow managed to keep us from falling apart. Despite everything, we were her reason to keep fighting, her reason to get out of bed every morning. She loved us with a fierceness I can't quite explain.

I grew up knowing the fear my mother lived with. I saw it in her eyes. I felt it in her movements. I watched her try to navigate a world that was not designed for people like her. And I knew, even as a child, that something wasn't right. The system wasn't working. The courts weren't protecting her. The world wasn't offering her the justice she deserved.

And that's when I decided I had to do something. I couldn't sit back and let what happened to my mother—what happened to so many women—go unanswered. I had to fight for them. I had to make sure that no woman would ever feel like she had to stay in a dangerous situation like she had no other choice.