My Pandemic Story

Everyone has one; this one’s mine. As a perfectionist, I don’t usually want to be “below average.” I can’t find the source, but it is said that it takes women an average of seven times to leave an abusive partner. It took me two.

My first attempt to leave my now ex-spouse, the albatross ("Adam"), was March 16, 2020, as the world was shutting down.

At around 3 PM MT on that day, I was taking a bathroom break from my work from home job. When I was washing my hands, he came into our bathroom, he said that I had to quit my job. I can’t recall the exact words so here is an approximation of our conversation.

Q: What?

A: With this coronavirus thing, Trump is going to declare martial law. We need to go live off the grid for two weeks.

Q: What, no.

A: The National Guard is going to be patrolling the streets. It’s going to be chaos. We need to bury our valuables and take only what we need to survive. At least two weeks and probably not come back here after that.

He loved that quote from Spaceballs, “Take only what you need to survive.” The man was forever finding ways to cut me off from my stuff, I swear, and I’d finally gotten wise to it, as emblematic of his unresolved childhood abuse and now a way of controlling me. He went on to say, let’s go live in the Pawnee [National Grasslands], which was about an hour northeast of the house we shared with his father. Let’s take the bike and go.

I kept saying no, don’t be ridiculous, I can’t leave my job, we’re in close to $40k of debt thanks to you, I can’t quit my job. He persisted in spouting this 4ch@n-fueled conspiracy theory nonsense (which I later learned was classic QAn0n bullsh1t—listening to the wrong Q, buddy). I finally said:

I regret this. I regret marrying you. Marrying you was the biggest mistake of my life.

Words that can’t be unsaid. I meant them. They finally made it off the pages of my diary and out of my mouth.

Then we argued. I remembered being frozen and occasionally yelling at each other, arguing on the floor of our bathroom in front of the two Continental Giant rabbits, Luna and Andy, who he insisted on buying despite my objections at the end of January 2020. (Yes, the rabbits lived in the bathroom; we had the master suite.) I slammed my right hand on the floor out of frustration, feeling utterly trapped, and he yelled at me for that. Well, buddy, you pushed me beyond the point of civility!

At some point, he lost his sh!t. As with so, so many incidents with my ex, he resorted to threats of self-harm. I said nothing. I learned it was best to cry, say nothing, and let him wear himself out.

Then his dad came home from work. The albatross argued with him about enacting his QAn0n fantasy of going off the grid—which of course his dad thought was nuts. Then he shoved his dad, and they launched into one of their usual same old arguments, name-calling, etc. It got worse. The albatross ran upstairs to our bedroom, slammed the door, and threw a solid teak mid-century modern bookcase—fully loaded with books and DVDs—in front of the door. His dad yelled at him through the door. I stepped back into my office, unable to act.

After some time elapsed, the albatross came barreling out of our bedroom, ran down the stairs, and ran out the front door. His dad gave chase. I sank down in my desk chair, noting it was about the end of my workday. I’m not sure who called or texted first, but I ended up on the phone with Yvonne. She said the words that I had been writing in my diary, that I needed to physically leave.

The tactical mistake I made was to start packing. I spent too long packing and was carrying my work PC out to my car when the albatross and his dad returned home. If I’d had 20 minutes more, I’d have been gone, into the world going on lockdown. I remember having a very vivid sense of driving away in the dark, being able to see the highway as if some part of me in an alternate reality had already left. I’d had the same sensation during a similar episode in New Hampshire a year prior.

They begged me to stay with the usual lies about making changes and getting their collective acts together. I don’t remember saying a whole lot out loud. That was truly the moment I became an atheist and/or the faith of my childhood went out like a snuffed candle. No amount of praying to some Jehovah or angels was creating any action in frozen ol’ me.

I stayed, and it took one more time getting injured on that damn KLR dualsport and one more time having sex against my will for me to leave on June 15, 2020. Second time, with a call to law enforcement, was the charm.

Here I am, four years later, divorced for just under three years. The COVID-19 pandemic was the catalyst for me to leave that abusive relationship and for that I am grateful.