The First One
February feels like a curse. The city barely starts to pull itself out of the dark rain filled winter. My ability to handle the darkness of the season comes from the stories of my past. For me, the curse started 8 years ago.
I was dating a man named JD. He was very sick and I was too young. My therapist explained what happened in a simple way. The more emotion he felt, the worse his schizophrenia got. I don’t remember a lot of my 18th year because of him. Most memories are pieced together by years of therapy and the friends who saw the bruises.
He showed up at the coffee shop down the street from the house I worked in. I had just moved out on my own for the first time. It was a hot summer day. He had gone surfing and asked me to scratch his sunburnt back as we shared a cigarette. He asked my name. The way he said my name will always haunt me. He was the second person I’d had sex with, he was 34, and what I thought would be a one night stand has turned into a lifetime of recreating this relationship hoping for a different ending. Six months into dating him, I lost sight of myself. I vividly remember looking in the mirror and not recognizing the eyes looking back. This sounds cliché but if you don’t understand, then you’ve never been so gone.
He had a girl living in his shack. She was an art student who only wanted cheap rent. His insanity had gotten so out of control that pieces of the bathroom were lying around the kitchen, where he had a mouse trapped in the sink. Everything smelled of cigarettes and mold. You had to watch your step or the booby trapped floor would consume you. At this point, my eyebrow ring had already been ripped out under suspicion of being a camera. I had already shown up to coffee with my friends with bruises on my wrists and was told the words that saved my life, “If I tell you to leave him, then I’m just like him. Instead, when you’re ready, we’re here. Never stop talking to us about it. We will always come get you.”
February 7th, it was cold but the sun was shining through the hole in the roof. We were arguing about something. We end up in his bedroom. He sat in front of the door with the axe he used to attack someone the first night he hit me, it was still covered in blood. I begged to be let go. He made it clear I wouldn’t be leaving in one piece.
I tried to fight to get out, to talk, to cry, to love, anything. I saw the art student pass by the window. I screamed for help, she kept walking. A man came by, knocked, and upon hearing me yell, left in a hurry. I was just a mouse in a sink.
I know humans have an animal instinct for survival. I know this because I felt it. When no one wants to help you, you have to save yourself. I don’t know how much time passed, just that the light got dark. The day moved from early to late while he sat and I tried to reason with a man who heard aliens telling him to kill me.
I remember this: I spoke to him calmly about what would happen if I missed my medication. I was told that I had 5 minutes to go get it. When I got home, I locked the door, and called my Dad. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember glass shattering and the look on JD’s face as he came crashing through. I hung up fast hoping to save my Dad from the sound of what was about to happen. I was so ashamed. I have some memories of flashing police lights. The entire police department was in the driveway with their guns raised. He spent time in jail and I have spent decades in his prison.
This was the night I started to shake the stranglehold this man had on my brain. It took almost 6 more months of finding him in my house when I got home, a restraining order, and an eventual move to the city. Nights of running being chased through the bushes trying to get to the ferry so my friends could pick me up. They always did. They gave me a place to live and never treated me like I was fragile. He told me he would always find me. He has followed me since.
I celebrate February 7th as the anniversary of when I chose to live. The day I lost the girl who just wanted to love without the fear of being killed or worse.
Update March 29, 2026. JD died a few months ago. He said he would always find me, and he always did. I saw him as recently as 3 years ago. He died of unknown drug overdose. He had 36 arrests on his record. The system failed us but now I’m free. I am sad for the girl who spent an entire life with nightmares. I didn’t realize how much I carried from this, until I tried to set it down. Someday I hope to lay to rest the ghosts leftover from the first man I dated.
Update June 25, 2026
I was able to stand at this shack for the first time in 24 years today. Gently showing my nervous system we don’t have to be afraid anymore.
Professional Driver, Closed Course 