Coming Home: Reclaiming Your Space after Abuse

If you lived with your abuser, or if your abuser spent any real time in your home, then you probably still see the memories — good, bad, and horrific — play out like movie clips right in front of you.

Maybe you hear his laugh and smile sadly for the sweetness that once was. Or… you hear him yelling and wince at the malicious delight in his eyes when he sees that he hurt you.

Maybe you even dread going home because you don’t want to keep reliving these moments, seeing and feeling the ghosts of what was, trying to push through the longing for what should have been. Maybe you can’t even call it home anymore.

I got to the point where I couldn’t use the word “home” to refer to my actual address. It was my apartment, sure, but “home” was the place we said we wanted to build together. I’d reserved that word for him, a metaphor for the safe space he once made me believe existed. And so, when I’d say “home,” I was always referring to his arms, figuratively and literally. He knew how important that word was to me.

To some, it may seem silly to get hung up on a word and its implications. To me, however, a lover of words and someone routinely being accused of wordsmithing or using the “wrong” words, it became an almost-obsession to make sure I was getting it “right.” To use the “wrong” word was the difference in a great day or weeks of punishment. He could say whatever he wanted however he wanted, though, and I was supposed to accept it. So many double standards…

But then, word and location, he weaponized “home.”

To have him throw this symbolic word around was painful. I don’t know if he was soulless and just didn’t care that it hurt my feelings or if he knew damn well and did it on purpose. He was capable of both, and even in hindsight, I can’t tell the difference.

Like the pathetic damsel-in-denial he crafted me to be, I’d cry out, desperate for him to understand that my home didn’t exist without him. I couldn’t just “go home.” Where was that even?

And to make it worse, he went back and forth on whether I was allowed to be in his home. We went from being together every night to him breaking up with me arbitrarily (one of many times and supposedly my fault, of course — didn’t have anything to do with him trying to get back with his estranged wife or anything). He sucked me back in when whatever happened with them went sideways and then dragged me along, off and on, for another year and a half. To this day, I can’t tell you why he did it or why I let him.

The fact that I believed in this man for over three years when he showed me he was an ass in three months dumbfounds me. Thanks to a couple years of therapy, I’ve learned that narcs/gaslighters are good — really good — at making you think you’re what’s wrong, leaving you tripping over yourself to prove your love to them.

I should have just left him.

I didn’t know, though, because I believed all the lies and the manipulation. He’d convinced me I was stupid, worthless, a “piece of shit,” and completely incapable of functioning in society because I was such a horrible judge of people. (Spoiler alert: all of that was total gaslit bs.)

He stopped coming around much in March last year, and it didn’t take long for every conversation we had after that to turn into a screaming match. He’d pick a fight about something petty, escalate the thing, use it as an excuse not to be around me. Pretty sure his favorite attack was weaponizing his affection and attention.

I finally realized he was mostly stringing me along to protect himself and that he’d already latched on to his next victim. Poor girl doesn’t know what’s coming to her. Via con dios.

But I digress.

What’s important is the night I reclaimed my life.

There was a night in July where, after months of being screamed at, I’d had enough. He called and woke me up one morning about 1230am. His divorce was finally done. Took the entire time we were “together” to make it happen. He enjoyed using the status of it to control, manipulate, and punish me for wanting him to get it handled. He’d been out all night. The conversation starts jovial but turns hateful, and shocker, he’s screaming at me again. He doesn’t like a thing I’ve done, doesn’t understand how it happened the way it did, so of course he’s calling ME a liar. Sigh.

For a hot minute, I yelled back, defended myself, called him out on his tactics. I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to wake me up with this nonsense and then go off on me. He started in on the name-calling, a classic move he’d defer to when I pointed out where his “logic” was flawed. But that morning, standing in my courtyard in the almost-full moon, I was done.

A switch flipped. In a moment, I’m grateful he called me, and I say so. “Thank you for calling me tonight. I needed this.” And after years of dealing with his ridiculous shit and man-child ways, I was just over it. It felt glorious to finally stand there at 230am in the cool summer silence and be done with him. Apathy achieved.

Go back up to bed, surrounded by all the things. It’s almost 3am, and I’m mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. You know how it goes. We’ll deal with this crap later.

The Great Reclaim: A How-To

Once you’ve finally got the strength to shut the door in his face for a change, now you’ve got some purging to do. This is my home, and I’m reclaiming it. As you look around, though, where do you even start?

Get Rid of the Immediate Triggers

Sights are obvious. Take down all the visual triggers and even if you can’t bear to throw them away yet (don’t worry, you’ll get there), hide them somewhere you don’t have to see them. I walked around and gathered up the bazillion pictures I had lying around or pinned to the fridge and stuffed them in a drawer I don’t use. That phone charger and smart watch charger I bought him for the rare occasion he spent the night? Stuffed those in there, too.

Oh, and the drawer? It’s in a nightstand to the brand new bedroom suite and mattress set I paid thousands of dollars for when he said that he struggled to be at my place knowing I’d had other partners in my old bed. (He was still in his marital suite, though. Totally not a double standard, he said.) See a pattern here?

His toothbrush? Repurposed. Threw it in my kitchen drawer that holds all my sponges so that I can use it to scrub funk off my cats’ water fountain parts. When it starts to fray, I’ll clean the grates in their litterboxes with it. Appropriate metaphor, I think.

Renamed “his” bedside lamp in my smart home app. Swept and mopped the place in case there was a stray hair of his somewhere. Threw away ticket stubs and mementos. Stowed away gifts he bought me. Bought new place mats for the table we ate at. Took his log-in off my iMac. Unshared things in Google Drive. Archived folders of pictures in my cloud storage. Deleted pictures off my phone. Blocked him (and his new girl-toy who started digging into me) on social media.

Ripping off the Bandage

The quick stashing of things was to get him out immediately. Months later, when I was in my strength and had learned even more about all the lies I’d been fed, I found it MUCH easier to dig all those picture frames back out, empty them, and throw our “cherished memories” in the trash can. (My friends were ELATED!) What was even better was filling those frames with new memories with great people and putting them out everywhere!

The hardest part of reclaiming the sights in my place was my hallway decor. When I moved in, I basically created a shrine to the band that he destroyed for his ex in another attempt to get back with her. I hadn’t done anything new to that space because I didn’t know what I wanted, and honestly, I didn’t notice it much because I was hardly home.

So, I needed to figure out what I wanted this space to look like, and I decided that, since downtown Memphis saved me, I would honor my city in return. A little Amazon shopping and some great new pieces from a local photographer with a creative eye and it was on.

I thought I might have someone come help me because it’s easier to hang things with two people, but I decided that this was something I wanted to do for me. So, on a whim one Saturday, I skipped brunch and broke out the step ladder.

Momma’s got some mending to tend to.

Took down all the framed band posters and adverts, and started digging them out of their frames. One by one, I pulled them out, threw them in the trash, and replaced them with something new and fun and me. When they were all put back together again, I began the arduous balancing act of one-woman picture hanging.

I’ve never been more excited to hang pictures in my life. There, in the quiet afternoon sun, using the bubble-level app on my phone, I finished my reclaim.

At the end of the day, you want to eliminate whatever you have lying around that makes you see him there again. It’s not a perfect system. Your brain’s going to do it anyway every now and then, but get rid of the obvious. It could even be something as silly as a cup he always used to use. Be rid of it. There are more cups. Cuter cups. Better cups. Cups that hold more wine.

Nose Goes!

Coffee brewing. Fresh baked bread. A summer rain. Grandma’s cooking. Smells are nearly hardwired to memories. This is particularly unfortunate when your nose thinks you’re smelling one thing even if your eyes see another but all the brain juices still fire off and now you’re choking up in public.

Getting away from smells is much harder than sights. First thing I did was switch laundry detergents. We both used the same one, and so when mine ran out (waste not, want not), I went to a totally different brand and scent. And then I washed everything. My entire apartment scent changed.

Candles? Ditch ’em. Give them to a girlfriend if you can’t stand to throw them away. Scentsy bricks? Toss.

Are you wearing the perfume he got you? Chunk. We’re making a safe space here! Chunked the $80 bottle of his cologne I bought him, too. Byeee!

Face wash? Chunk. Hand soap? Chunk. Shampoo? Chunk. Smells that are gonna hang around me all day gotsta go.

Get rid of whatever triggers you, even if you have to do it in the moment that it happens. Making dinner one night and triggered by his favorite cooking spices? Trash. Cleaning products? Ditch. Anything that cues a memory, get it out. As the plaything of a narcissist, you’re going to overthink the damn thing enough as is. You won’t need the help.

Can you open up the windows and air the place out? Do it. I didn’t even care that it was a humid, Memphis summer day with a heat index in the hundreds. I’ll gladly pay that electric bill any day for the peace that brought.

Sounds Like Freedom

Even harder than smells is sounds. Lord. This one took me a minute because, for a lot of things, you can’t control them. Alexa’s always going to make the same sound when you call her name, you know? (Also – make sure you disable any drop-in permissions if you gave them out. Ain’t none of his business what you’re doing.)

Control what you can, of course. He used to be one of the only people who called me, so I changed my ringtone. Facebook Messenger was our means of text communication, so I changed that chime, too. In the end, it got to a place where the sound of either of those meant I was “in trouble” for something, so there was a lot of anxiety around hearing them. Being able to shut them off was invaluable to my mental health. So think of all the little things like that that you can alter in your world. They add up!

But what do you do when a sound pops off and you’re hit with the feels? A few things, arguably. If it’s a trigger you didn’t think of, like a ring tone, and you can change it, change it obviously. But if it’s something you’re powerless over, you’re going to have to work harder. If you can’t avoid the sound by avoiding the space it’s in — like, your elevator chime — then you’re going to have to rewrite your response to it manually.

Whatever you get hit with, know that you CAN get past it.

I started a monthly girls night in my place to fill it with powerful women and laughter and upbeat music. You don’t have to go as far as all that, but definitely fill your space with people who love you. Crank up P!nk Radio. Laugh. Talk about something else totally unrelated. Catch up with all the people you had to give up for that guy. They miss you.

It’s absolutely possible to rewrite the script in your head and to reclaim the spaces that were once “yours” together. It may not feel like it right now, but I promise you you’re strong enough to do it and you DESERVE to take your life back after giving so much of yourself to someone who wasn’t worthy of it. That big heart you’ve got? Love yourself with it for a change.

You got this.

As always… thanks for reading. <3

Featured Photo by Christopher Harris on Unsplash