Becky, who asked to be identified by a nickname for her safety, often showed up to work with bruises on her face, caked over with foundation, but her co-workers never said anything. He hit her when the house was too messy or if he wasn’t in the mood for the breakfast she made. Some days, he attacked her for sleeping too late others, for waking him up too early.

She could never predict what would set him off. And then the meanness got darker.įrom the beginning of their relationship, Becky’s boyfriend drew the reins tightly around their lives. Underneath the laughing, something felt mean.

The first time Becky remembers her boyfriend hurting her, about six months into their relationship, was when he was joking around: a tug on her hair that was surprisingly forceful. She had already spent years raising her younger siblings when her own mother, who suffered from mental illness and was a survivor of domestic abuse, could not. They met in 1996, when she was a teenager with a new baby. With others, the memories hung fuzzy and distant. She remembered getting some of her injuries. She had stopped buying leather belts, the braided kind. When she went shopping, she would hold items in her hands, assessing how much damage they would do to her body. Her chipped front tooth was harder to hide than the broken molars knocked loose during two decades of beatings. She always wore her hair in a bun to mask a bald spot he had slammed her head against a door frame, and she had needed staples there. Smaller scars marked her eyebrows and her bottom lip, where a tooth once cut through.

Her nostrils were now asymmetrical from when he broke her nose. A scar snaked under her chin from when her boyfriend punched her. Her face, gaunt from weight loss, looked pale. In 2017, when Becky was about to turn 40, she woke up in the middle of the night and was startled by her reflection in the bathroom mirror. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

Como actualizar whatsapp transparente