The Stories, Creatively Told
- Bouncy Ball
- Daybreak – Short Story of Leaving My Abuser
- Knot Spinning
- Pride and Greed
- PTSD Makes a Noisy Mind
- Declaration of Freedom From Abuse
- The Haunted House – How to Explain Verbal Abuse
- Of Knights and Poets
Creative Storytelling Helps Abuse Victims Heal
I brought creativity, empathy, and a deep capacity for love into my marriage. Maybe you did too. With a healthy partner, those qualities help build a good life together. With an abusive partner, those same qualities get turned against you.
Many survivors describe a “loss of self” during and after an abusive relationship. It feels like you handed part of yourself over to keep the peace, or to stay alive. It feels like the “I” in you is gone. That’s how it was for me. I used my creativity to find ways to stay with him. I tried to solve “our” problem by feeling his pain and believing my love would show him the way. The best parts of me were the parts that kept me there. My truth got lost in a lie.
Several months after I left, it dawned on me that the truth stays the truth, even after hope is gone. The truth about who I am was still there. He had covered it up, but he couldn’t destroy it. He couldn’t take it from me, because it is me.
With that in mind, I started looking at everything he had smothered me with: guilt, fear, and constant self-doubt, until I was the one tearing myself down. I am still me, and I am still here. Some days it didn’t feel that way, because I was lost in everything he told me I was and wasn’t.
What Is a Creative Version of an Abusive Experience?
Recovery sometimes means going back to what happened. Separating my truth from his lies brings up memories I didn’t know I still had. Remembering can shock me: the things I pushed down, the lies I accepted. Sometimes it’s too much to process in the first person, and I have to remind myself that those events aren’t happening now.
It helps to step back from the memory, as if a friend were telling the story instead of me. From that distance, I can see what happened more clearly. Writing the memory as creative nonfiction, and letting the words come however they come, helps me catch feelings that would otherwise slip away. It helps me work through painful memories and build a new story that fits the truth better.
Creative nonfiction tells a true story but allows some room that straight nonfiction doesn’t. My story Daybreak is an example. It’s a very condensed version of the night I left my husband. The line on my forehead is not embellished. The knife helps tell the story, but it isn’t entirely factual. The story is true, but it pulls from more than one experience. In creative nonfiction, the heart of the story is true, but the details don’t have to appear in order or exactly as they happened.
If you want to tell your own story this way, it can help you make sense of what happened and hear your own voice again. Go at your own pace. If a memory becomes too much, stop. You can come back to it later or work through it with a counselor. If you still live with the person or share a phone or computer, keep your writing somewhere private.
Featured image by Pablo Picasso; I butchered stretched out the sides to make it fit the screen how I wanted.