Natural Disaster

by Ginger Zee

  I woke up a few hours later and John was still glued to his computer, this time with a new development. John had messaged Angelo on Facebook and they were sending messages back and forth to each other.

  “You have one more chance, Ginger. Did you sleep with Angelo?”

  I sat there frozen. I was exposed. I could see Angelo’s profile picture across the room. John knew everything. That has to be every cheater’s nightmare. They were messaging each other with time lines, comparing notes on my stories. The jig was up.

  Once he had his confirmation, John started calling me the nastiest things I have ever been labeled. He attacked my family, my friends. He insisted I hand over my phone so he could read every text message not only between Angelo and me but between everyone and me. It was a horror show. He then forced me to give him my password to my e-mail. He was hurt and now no one was safe. He didn’t let me sleep; he just kept hammering me with questions, making me admit what a horrible human I was. I couldn’t stop crying and couldn’t stop puking. I was so upset that my body was revolting. He went on for hours, repeating the same points until he got me to answer the way he wanted.

  I was now pacing on the balcony of our room; this torture and cross-examination were seemingly endless. Wasn’t he satisfied with my admission? Why did he need so many more details?

  I had never been in this position before, so it was a very odd place to find myself in, and I couldn’t tell him that this was going too far. By eight A.M. I was exhausted. John hadn’t slept a wink, and hadn’t let me, either. I would rather have gone to jail for a night than have had to endure this.

  I felt so relieved when I was “allowed” to leave the hotel room. The whole night I had felt imprisoned, partly by my own guilt, but mostly by him. This was almost the perfect outcome for an abuser. To have his target make such a glaring mistake meant he would never have to keep me down going forward. I’d do that to myself. He could just emotionally “kick me” whenever he wanted. We packed our things, drove to the airport, and flew home.

  I was destroyed. I hadn’t slept now in almost two days. I had hardly eaten. My eyes were swollen like giant pillows from crying. The accusations that were thrown at me were more than I could handle. I’m not saying I didn’t deserve it, but as a lifelong people pleaser, this was my ultimate nightmare. But I deserved it, right?

  My mom picked me up at the airport and I figured John and I were over. It should have been over. Our relationship was obviously shattered. At any other point in my life, with any other person, I would have left. I should have left. But somehow, we kept going. Within hours of getting home, John told me that despite my mistakes, he didn’t want to live without me. I was his “everything.” What I really became was his emotional punching bag.

  From there on out, John pulled all the strings. He needed to know my every move at all times. I validated every story of where I was, what I was doing, and whom I was with, complete with photos and GPS markings. With one phone call, I would abandon everything and everyone in my life to get to John. All I wanted was a chance to prove that I could be the best partner anyone could ask for. I was so busy waving my white flag that I never saw his blatant red flags.

  John’s mood would shift dramatically from moment to moment. No matter where we were on the globe, I was always traveling with Jekyll, Hyde, and at least three other characters.

  One of those characters loved control. He loved to interrogate me, and once he found a nugget, he would demand I hand over my phone, my e-mail passwords, everything. And then he would dig deeper than a detective on SVU. This guy would find some archived e-mail from ten years earlier that even I had forgotten about and start accusing me of sleeping with whoever had sent it. Some of the accusations were ridiculous: students I had taught, my best friend’s husband, my best friend’s husband’s neighbor.

  Every time John and I were together, things began the same way. We were great when we were great. But sometime within the latter half of the first day, John’s eyes would glaze over. He would turn from a loving and caring person to a cold and frightening monster. He would start prosecuting me. And I would start crying. Then we would fight. And for three days it would be pure hell. He would drop me off, my eyes always swollen from days of crying and trying to make him love me. I would get to a safe place away from him and like clockwork, he would reverse course. Back to nice John. Back to I love you. Back to We will get through this. Sometimes I would turn my phone off or be in the air traveling, and when I powered back up, it would always be flooded with panicked, desperate texts from John apologizing for his terrible behavior. He would promise that it would never be like that again. But it always was. And every time, it got worse.

  Even today with all my progress and growth, I have to remind myself to separate my feelings from others and to avoid absorbing other people’s energy. I’ve heard it referred to as “staying in your lane” and that makes sense to me. The bottom line is I can only be responsible for my own feelings and actions; the rest of it is just none of my business. Simple idea, hard to execute, and profoundly life changing when it’s worked to the best of my ability on a daily basis.

  I’m not saying there aren’t relationships that can recover from cheating, because I’ve seen it happen. But John and I were never committed to each other before I slept with Angelo. We lived in different cities and were both wildly ambitious. And he was an abuser. We were doomed. It’s wild that an intelligent woman like myself could get wrapped up in that web of manipulation, but for anyone else who has gone through this, remember: it doesn’t matter how smart you are. Abuse begets abuse and does not discriminate.

  See, that’s all my side. I am certain he would tell the story much differently. But the truth I believe has something to do with both of us being a terrible fit for the other. I have this beautiful dream that he is different to other women. That I brought out the monster and there is this generous, kind-hearted man inside. I would often ask myself, when were we doomed? The moment we met, the moment I cheated, the moment he found out? Well before John ever met me? Maybe that’s the wrong way of looking at relationships. It’s hard, most of the time impossible, to see the big picture when you’re in the middle of a storm. I know I certainly couldn’t. But looking back, I’m hesitant to use the word “doomed”; if anything, we were fated. And by fated, I don’t mean in that Cinderella romantic-comedy kind of way. I mean we were drawn to each other to learn certain lessons from each other. You don’t even have to believe in past lives to take this idea in. It’s more like there’s something intuitive that we pick up from each other that draws us to certain people. And maybe in romantic relationships, all those hormones that make us sexually attracted to each other—and with John, there was no denying or even fighting that attraction—are nature’s way of making sure we don’t pass each other by. John had a lot to teach me about myself and I’m grateful for the time we spent together.

  That’s a strange thing to say when you look at the story I started telling Dr. Wilson. Reminder: 911 call.

  This was going to be the trip where John treated me well the whole time. That’s what I told myself, and what he always promised before every trip.

  My friends were throwing me a party. I called John and invited him, but he made up some excuse. I was supposed to leave to meet John for a trip the day after my party.

  About forty-eight hours before the party, John called and gave me an ultimatum: fly to him tomorrow morning or he will know that I don’t love him and am cheating again with someone else. This was a ludicrous claim of course, a peak of manipulation and craziness, but what I did was even crazier.

  I asked if I could wait one day so I could make it to my party and he said no chance. It was tomorrow or never. So I did it. I skipped my own party. And I did it for John.

  I still can’t bring myself to look at the photo my large group of friends took for me, standing around the cake with my name on it, while I was flying to “Abuseland.”

  I joined John and in true manic fashion (
on both our parts) we hiked as soon as I arrived. It’s almost cheesy how the abuse aligned with the ascent and descent of our hike. As we climbed the mountain, John built me up. He talked about getting engaged, and how much he loved me as we climbed higher and higher, the sun shining. It was nearly perfect. As soon as we started our descent, however, he started preemptively accusing me of the make-believe cheating I would do in the future with people I hadn’t even met yet, coming at me harder than he ever had before. I couldn’t wait to get to the bottom of the mountain so we could be near other people. As soon as the trail opened up, I started to run. John chased after me, throwing insults at me like it was a game of paintball and he was determined to leave me splattered head to toe with hate, pain, and doubt. Things got even worse that night when I received a text from an old college friend, who was just texting to catch up because we hadn’t talked in years. John grabbed the phone and read the text as evidence that I was currently cheating on him.

  I told him he was wrong, but it didn’t matter. It never did. He told me he needed to step out for some air. He slammed the hotel door and left.

  In that moment I briefly thought about packing my things and trying to escape before he got back because I knew this night was about to tailspin into a sleepless wreck. Before I had a chance to even get up from the couch, John slammed the door and came back in demanding my e-mail password and started sleuthing. When he found an ancient e-mail from that same college friend from more than ten years before alluding to a brief college hookup, all bets were off. He’d found his “proof.” I was doomed.

  “You are worthless and no one will ever love you….What a waste of time you have been. Every and any woman is better than you…You are so lucky to have had this time with me because now it’s over, you lying sack-of-shitty whore….Your dad is an idiot and your sister is…”

  You get the point. But then he went a step further.

  “Give me your phone. I’m going to text this guy and get the truth. Give me your phone,” he ordered.

  I handed it over. I had nothing to hide. John pretended he was me and started texting him, fishing for something that did not exist. It must have been so strange for my old friend, going from our friendship where we barely talked to this assault of text messages.

  When John was satisfied that there was nothing more to learn and he wasn’t getting the payoff he wanted, he handed me back my phone with a unique stipulation: “Tell him you no longer want to be friends with him. Tell him he should never contact you again because you are in love with me.”

  I paused.

  At this point I always did everything John said. I skipped parties with friends; I didn’t call family back. I was his puppet, because I thought it would help me someday prove that I wasn’t a bad person. I had cheated, but I was and could be a great woman.

  But by this point I was so beaten down, and now he was reaching to the extreme edges of my circle of friends. I held the phone tightly.

  “Do it!” he screamed.

  I started typing and did not want to hit SEND. I didn’t mean any of those words on the screen. I loved my friend, and I didn’t want to lose him. I knew this was just one more step in losing myself.

  Any of you reading this who have been in an abusive and manipulative relationship know that isolating your victim is crucial to abuse working. Without support around me, I couldn’t stand up to John or recognize his abuse as easily. I was getting wrapped tighter and tighter in his web of control.

  “Send it, or we are done.”

  I hit SEND.

  And it still wasn’t enough. Of course it wasn’t.

  He launched into another attack immediately. He started searching through my e-mails again, pausing only to call me a name or ask me a ridiculous question. The words started flying faster than ever, insults to proclamations of love. Everything was always my fault. He kept searching my e-mail, asking more questions. Now it was two A.M., and I just couldn’t take it any longer. I couldn’t believe I had just sent that text to my friend. Everything started to become clear. I finally saw myself in the mirror. The good me. The strong me. The me that would not take one more moment of this abuse. I had finally had it. I stood up and said, “I can’t do this. I’m done.” And that was it. It took me so long to find the courage to say just those few words, but I did it.

  John looked at me as though the puppy he’d been kicking around had just bitten him. I packed as fast as I could, with John standing over me vacillating between pleas for me to stay and good riddance that I was leaving. I wheeled my bag out to the hallway to the lobby and realized there was no one there. We were in a small resort, and this was not the Holiday Inn. No problem, I thought, I’ll just sleep on the lobby couch. Then the texts from John started coming. They were threatening, then loving, then desperate, begging me to come back. I refused, and of course that made him even angrier. (I wish I had these text exchanges, because I can’t remember them exactly, but I know it was bad enough that I decided to hide.)

  I ran up to the third floor and scurried around the pool, checking doors that were all locked to find a place to hide from his crazy. I could hear him calling my name from the staircase. I got in the elevator, and went to the second floor and found a table to hide under. It was the kind of cheap hotel table with plastic clips and a Velcro skirt in a loud floral pattern used for banquets.

  I called my mom from under that table.

  This was not the first time my mom had answered a three A.M. call and heard me crying with John yelling in the background. I whispered, “Mom, I’m scared. John is at it again, but worse than ever.”

  “Honey, slow down,” she said comfortingly.

  “I am in the middle of nowhere, there’s no one at the desk. I am so scared….” (My cries were muffled; I was still hiding.)

  “Ginger. I want you to breathe. Take an inhale and an exhale. When we get off the phone, I want you to call the police so they can help you out of there. You need to get away from him. He is a monster.”

  And she was right. I knew it. I’d known it for a while. The problem was I felt like a monster as well. I had become a dreadful person who barely recognized herself.

  And that’s when I called 911.

  A few minutes later, a squad car quietly pulled up to the front door of the hotel. I watched from the second-floor window and made a run for it.

  I didn’t want to see John. I didn’t want to see him ever again. And I didn’t know what he would do if he saw me actually escaping.

  As I turned to get in the passenger seat I realized this was the first cop car I had ever ridden in. The policeman took me to another hotel and I checked in and got a few hours of sleep. I blocked John from all of my forms of correspondence and told myself that was it. I was finally going to get myself back. I would apologize to my friends and family he had forced me to cut ties with, and rebuild all my relationships. I would rebuild myself.

  This was one of many stories I was determined to work through in therapy. A compilation of experiences from random points in my life that brought me to this place. My one to two hours with Dr. Wilson every day were the best part of being in that hospital. After our sessions, I went to lunch. They definitely did not encourage social interaction at the hospital, so I had a lot of time to reflect and plan on how I would change the way I lived. In the afternoon there was a group discussion where I gained major perspective. There were others there who had lost everything and everyone in their lives because of drugs, alcohol, or severe mental illness. So my starting point in recovery was gratitude. I was depressed, but I knew I could recover.

  While the experience in the hospital was frightening, and every day I was in there I thought about leaving, I kept telling myself how important it was to get better before I started the job I’d wanted all my life. But it was more than just the job. The job I knew I could handle. I also needed to alter my core. I wanted to learn honesty with others, but mostly honesty with myself. I wanted to learn to communicate, stand up, and not avoid confrontation
. I just couldn’t screw it up this time. I would not let that happen. I was determined to put in the work to give myself the best possible chance to succeed at ABC and in life.

  After my week was up and I was released, Dr. Wilson and I made a plan to see each other twice a week. I decided to stop drinking completely for four months. I also started working out five days a week. The funny thing about making good, grown-up choices is that they snowball into more good choices. I drank water and I ate right. It was another full-time job being committed to my health and well-being, but it was more than worth it. I had some help for sure, but it feels good looking back on that time and knowing that I stepped in and saved my own life.

  Let me just say this about the drinking, because it’s been mentioned a lot in this book. (And I’ve certainly done more than my fair share of it.) I understand that alcoholism is a disease, and I know several people whose lives have been saved by rehabilitation programs. I did a lot of hard work getting to the bottom of my truths and my issues, and it turned out that for me, drinking was a coping mechanism, not a disease. My disease was depression and self-hate. My addiction was to consuming the emotions of those around me. Once I tackled those demons, the drinking just kind of fell away and lost its value.

  This is the first time I have told this story about my recovery and the depths of depression it took before I began to climb out. It feels good to share it and air it out in the open, and I’m a little amazed I had the strength to keep it a secret for so long. There’s a saying, “You’re only as sick as your secrets,” and I can see the truth in that. It’s wild to think back on starting at ABC and the fact that my new coworkers had no idea that the young, excited meteorologist before them had just left a mental hospital the week before she stood at the same desk on Good Morning America. When they say “people can’t change” I disagree. I did. I think of that time in the hospital and the year after with Dr. Wilson as the time I finally grew up and out of my adolescence. I don’t think I am immune to depression in the future, but I do think I’m a lot safer now. My one hope is that sharing my story will have some value to somebody who is still carrying their own secrets, because we all have them, and that whoever they are, they find the courage and the strength and love for themselves to get help. None of us gets through this life alone. Certainly not me.