The relationship ended years ago. Somehow, I was still being forced to escape.
October 24, 2026
Trigger warning: Domestic violence, threats, stalking and privacy violations, body shaming, and eating-disorder references.
People talk about leaving domestic violence like leaving is the finish line.
Get out.
Take the kids.
Don’t tell them where you’re going.
Block the number.
Don’t go back.
Survive.
And then everybody exhales.
You made it.
Except nobody tells you that sometimes you can leave a person and they can still find ways to make you feel like you never fucking escaped.
For privacy purposes, we will call my ex Pinocchio.
That is not her real name.
If her legal name were actually Pinocchio, somebody should probably investigate the carpenter.
I chose Pinocchio because lying appears to be her full-time occupation.
Getting her out of my life has been like getting rid of bed bugs.
You think they are gone.
You start relaxing.
Then one appears out of nowhere and ruins your entire fucking day.
Once you get bed bugs, you need an exterminator to get rid of them hoes.
In this case, the exterminator consists of attorneys, law enforcement, court paperwork, and whatever tiny fragment of my sanity remains operational.
✨ BALANCE ✨
Pinocchio and I separated years ago.
Years.
There are entire pieces of my life that happened without her in them.
I created a life of my own.
I worked.
I parented.
I fucked up.
I healed.
I relapsed into old versions of myself and crawled back out again.
I laughed until I couldn’t breathe.
I cried on bathroom floors.
I made friends she has never met.
I became versions of myself she has never known.
I had another fucking baby.
A beautiful little girl whose entire existence happened outside of that relationship.
I hid my pregnancy from Pinocchio intentionally.
That sounds insane when I write it.
You should not have to hide a pregnancy from somebody you have not been with for years.
But I did.
Because privacy stops being something casual when you have survived domestic violence.
Privacy becomes safety.
So I protected mine.
Or at least I thought I did.
Until an email arrived.
My job.
My home.
How long I had lived there.
The fact that it was a house.
My new baby.
And then:
“A little girl, right?”
Four fucking words.
That is all it took.
Four words and suddenly I could not breathe correctly.
Because how the fuck do you know that?
Who told you?
Where did you look?
How long have you been looking?
What else do you know?
Have you seen pictures of her?
Do you know her name?
Do you know where my son goes?
Do you know when I work?
Do you know when I am home?
Do you know when I am not?
How much of my life have you been watching while I was stupid enough to believe it belonged to me?
And then came the sentence that made me feel fucking crazy when I tried to explain why I was scared:
“I’m coming there.”
But she also said she did not care about me.
She did not care about my child.
Okay.
Then why the fuck are you coming?
I kept asking myself that question.
Why?
Why are you coming to a place where you have been explicitly told you are not welcome?
Why did you need my address?
Why did you need to know where I work?
Why do you know about my daughter?
Why do you know she is a girl?
Why do you know anything about a baby I went out of my fucking way to make sure you did not know existed?
Maybe there is an explanation.
That is the fucked-up part.
I know there are explanations that do not end with somebody getting hurt.
My rational brain knows that.
My traumatized brain does not give a fuck.
Because domestic violence teaches you that sometimes the thing that sounds harmless to everybody else is not harmless at all.
Sometimes it is not the sentence.
It is who said it.
It is what happened before it.
It is what you know they are capable of.
It is remembering all the times you ignored that feeling because you did not want to be dramatic.
It is knowing how expensive being wrong can be.
So when someone who has hurt you says, “I’m coming there,” you do not get the luxury of treating that sentence like a fucking travel itinerary.
You calculate.
You plan.
You protect.
And you wonder whether you are overreacting.
Because that is another little souvenir abuse leaves behind.
You become terrified of danger while simultaneously being terrified that you are being dramatic about danger.
What a fucking mindfuck.
So today, I documented.
I screenshotted.
I forwarded emails.
I talked to my attorney.
I went to law enforcement.
I sat waiting for an officer while desperately wanting to go home.
I explained pieces of my life to a stranger with a badge while trying not to fucking cry.
I was told to go to the courthouse.
So I went.
Wrong person.
Come back tomorrow.
Of course.
Because apparently fear has business hours, a lunch break, and a strict no-walk-ins policy.
And through all of this, I am still somebody’s fucking mother.
My children still need things.
My baby still needs to eat.
My breasts still fill with milk because apparently mammary glands have absolutely no respect for a psychological crisis.
There are bottles.
Diapers.
Pumping sessions.
Bedtime.
Tomorrow.
Always fucking tomorrow.
And somewhere during all of that, Pinocchio called me Ms. Piggy.
Because apparently the harassment package includes unsolicited body commentary at no additional charge.
Very comprehensive service.
Zero stars.
It sounds so stupid compared with everything else.
That is almost why it hurts.
Because I am scared for my children, and somehow there was still room to hurt me too.
Not Mommy.
Not the woman collecting evidence.
Not the person trying to figure out what time the courthouse opens tomorrow.
Me.
The woman who has spent years fighting with her body.
The woman with an eating-disorder history.
The woman who knows better and still looked at those words and felt something old wake up inside her.
You’re fat.
There it is.
Hello, old friend.
I fucking hate you.
Suddenly, I am not only scared.
I am ashamed.
I am angry.
I am sad.
I am humiliated that I am sad.
I am pissed off that somebody who is not supposed to have access to me can still reach through a fucking screen and find a bruise to press.
Because that is what I do not think people understand about abuse.
It is not always one enormous thing.
Sometimes it is death by a thousand tiny invasions.
Your address.
Your workplace.
Your finances.
Your parenting.
Your body.
Your children.
Your fucking peace.
One finger in every part of your life until you are standing there thinking:
Can I have one fucking thing that belongs to me?
Can my home belong to me?
Can my body belong to me?
Can motherhood belong to me?
Can my daughter exist without being dragged into something that started before she was even fucking conceived?
Can my son be a child instead of leverage between adults?
Can I go to work without wondering who knows where I am?
Can I open my email without my stomach dropping?
Can I just exist without wondering where the next intrusion is coming from?
I want to disappear.
Not die.
Disappear.
There is a difference.
I do not want my life to end.
I want the demands to end.
I want to crawl somewhere nobody can fucking find me.
I want my phone to stop ringing.
I want email to stop existing.
I want courts and cops and attorneys and paperwork and accommodations and appointments and pumping schedules and responsibilities to shut the fuck up.
I want to put my children somewhere completely safe, crawl underneath a blanket, and become unreachable.
Just for a little while.
Because I am so fucking tired.
And that is the part of surviving domestic violence that does not photograph particularly well.
Sometimes survival does not look powerful.
Sometimes it is not a woman standing triumphantly in the sunlight, thinking about how far she has come.
Sometimes survival is sitting in the dark, attached to a breast pump, while your entire nervous system is screaming.
Sometimes it is saving screenshots you wish you had never received.
Sometimes it is asking law enforcement for help when law enforcement makes you nervous.
Sometimes it is going to therapy when every molecule in your body wants to cancel the fucking appointment and hide.
Sometimes it is emailing your psychiatrist because you are scared you will lose your job because your brain cannot keep absorbing catastrophe and clocking in early like nothing fucking happened.
Sometimes survival is deeply unimpressive.
Sometimes it is administrative.
There is a shocking amount of clerical work involved for something nobody fucking applied for.
Sometimes it is embarrassing.
Sometimes it is ugly.
Sometimes you cry.
Sometimes you do not fucking cry even though you desperately need to.
Sometimes somebody insults your body, and suddenly you are fighting a battle you thought you had already fought.
Sometimes you miss your pumping schedule.
Sometimes you snap.
Sometimes you swear.
Sometimes you sit there thinking:
We separated.
Years ago.
The relationship ended.
The thing everybody treats like the finish line already fucking happened.
So why am I still doing this?
Why am I still protecting myself from you?
Why am I still protecting my children from the fallout of something that ended years ago?
Why do you still get to make my hands shake?
Why do you still get pieces of my fucking day?
Why do I have to go to a courthouse tomorrow because you will not leave me alone?
I do not have a beautiful answer tonight.
Maybe someday I will turn this into something about resilience.
Maybe someday I will write about reclaiming my power, breaking cycles, or whatever inspirational shit we are supposed to say after surviving something terrible.
I will put it over a sunset in a decorative font.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I am angry.
Tonight, I am scared.
Tonight, my feelings are hurt.
Tonight, I want my babies close enough that I can fucking touch them.
Tonight, I want every door locked.
Tonight, I want to know how somebody got information that I deliberately kept private.
Tonight, I want my home to feel like my home again.
Tonight, I want to stop wondering what “I’m coming there” means.
Tonight, I want four stupid fucking words—
“A little girl, right?”
—to stop echoing in my head.
I do not want to be inspirational.
I do not want to be resilient.
I do not want another goddamn lesson in how much I can survive.
I have survived enough.
I just want to be left the fuck alone.
-EC 🌈
If You Need Support
If you are in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services when it is safe to do so.
In the United States:
National Domestic Violence Hotline
Call: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
Text: START to 88788
Visit: thehotline.org
The Hotline offers free, confidential support. Internet use can be monitored, so consider using a safer device if you believe someone may be tracking your activity.
Outside the United States:
The NO MORE Global Directory lists domestic and sexual violence helplines and support services across nearly every UN-recognized country and territory.
Visit: nomoredirectory.org
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