02/04/2024
Hi everyone,
Olivia here… I’m writing this update in the middle of the night, again, not because I want to, or because my recent periods of insomnia are in any way fun for me, or anything else besides a manifestation of my very real, and very ugly, torturous state of mind. I need to remind everyone, that I didn’t ask for any of this. My fiancé didn’t sign on to any of this. I didn’t know until just about exactly a week ago, the insane s**t pile of a storm I was bringing her into when I asked her to be my fiancé. If I knew, I would have at least prepared her, or her family, or even myself.
I am writing this from a place of desperation. I have learned, since I was in diapers, to never, ever even think of asking for help until it has become my only last resort. When I asked for help, or protection, I was told to either get my exhausted mother of four, who was living in a constant state of fear just to f***ing survive the night, out of bed, or to “go talk to them about it.”
Up until about a week ago, my biological father was my hero. He was the golden child; the overachiever I wanted to become, the idea of hard work I instilled in myself, and the man whose words I held in my head when I could not for the life of me, remember which way was up, and which was down. He wasn’t a fearless man, and I knew this. I’ve seen him cry, I’ve seen his pain, and I’ve come to understand, on my own, that his seemingly impenetrable exterior, is full of holes. It’s only now that I understand how to see right through him.
I want everyone to know, that right now, in this moment, my fiancé and I are safe. We have a roof over our heads, our cats are fed, and so are we. With that all being true, this is very much temporary. We are still being harassed, stalked, and living under a very real threat of more violence, because of the actions of my biological father.
Just as he did to my mother, he has been doing anything and everything within the limits of his disgusting amount of money, that he only believes gives him some god given right to control each and every woman who comes around him. The men in my life who have done their best to protect my mother, have not all survived him. My mother has buried her father and two of her younger brothers. My mother has also come far too close to burying two of her own children.
My father has seen good men, and even better women die all around him, and still believes that the “mad women” in his life are to blame. Before Thanksgiving of last year, I had a life I loved. And he couldn’t stand it. He sees my sexuality as a manifestation of my insanity. He sees my nightmares and screams and sobs begging and pleading for his help, as a threat to his own reputation.
I had a small apartment, in the city I call my hometown, and I was coaching gymnastics. Not because I can’t hold a job, not because I burn bridges all around me, but because I love children, and even when I have nothing but illness, exhaustion, and pain, I have the ability to connect with young minds and tell them how special they are, how important they are not only to me but to the world, and that I always miss them when I’m away, and that I will always be excited to see them when I return.
The life that my fiancé and I were building was ripped out from underneath of the both of us. We have been building this life together, since the day my father kicked me out of his own home, after an argument between me and his wife. He allowed her to verbally assault me, and his idea of an apology was to suggest I find a new place to live, recover, and do my fu***ng best to abstain from giving into any and every destructive urge I had. I had discharged from treatment for my eating disorder just shy of 6 weeks before that conversation I walked away from. My father followed me into the room I was lucky enough to call mine for a few weeks, asked if I was okay, and did was he was best at, and left.
Shira and I have, so incredibly carefully and with a constant intention to be our best selves started learning all of each other and are committed to one another. We are the idea of love I never believed to actually exist. We do this, over and over, each and every day, so we can show up for each other in the ways we want to. And we also understand that we sometimes just don’t have the spoons to remember our own humanity. Our home is, and always has been, “a haven where shame has no place.” Shira and I had been seeing each other for only a week when she put the clues in my facial expressions together enough to just ask what no one had asked me in years. “Are you okay? What happened? What did he say to you? Why didn’t he stand up for you?!”
I still cannot understand why people who have come into my life, and then decided to leave, are happier believing that I am the problem in the Garrity household, and I’m “just crazy like Susan.” I’m sorry, but I’m having an incredibly hard time believing that the wonderfully intelligent human beings whom I have allowed to not only have a very special place in my heart, but a warm place to stay in my home, and a seat at my table, are more comfortable believing that I have the ability to orchestrate a toxic madness such as this, instead of accepting the truth.
My father has spent his entire life, the entirety of his relationship with my mother and her family, whom he has known since childhood, and the entirety of my life, grooming me for the abuse I endured for more than 10 years. Do any of you know how fu***ng sickening that feels? Do you have any clue what you have done?!
When I tested positive for Covid, that wasn’t the answer and mystery diagnosis we were all searching for. That was the last punch that broke my back. I am used to physical pain. I have been ill since childhood, and the one person who has fought for me, was taken away from me for three years. My father allowed me to lose my mind, time after time in hospitals he refused to visit me in and go months without sleeping for longer than a few hours because I was haunted by nightmares that I just couldn’t take anymore.
I called 911 on Christmas Eve and thought that when the paramedic pulled down his mask to reveal to me that he was someone who has always had my back, that help was coming. My fiancé was in bed, doing her best to sleep, and I couldn’t afford an Uber. I called family and a few friends, and no one’s me came. My childhood friend’s older brother who has always had my back, said he knew who I was, and in that moment, I was reminded that I still lived in a community who had always shown up for me, known me, and welcomed me.
That isn’t what happened. I was drugged, after security was called on me by the physician assigned to “asses me,” and also after I advocated for myself to be seen and treated and pleaded with him to “just look at the paperwork I brought with me” from the second of two diagnostic procedures I had the day before. I recounted my terrifying evening via text to my childhood best friends, cousins, sisters, brother, and father, fell asleep, and then spent Christmas, and the days leading from then until now, without a single call from any of them.
The fact that it has taken me putting the pieces of my broken brain back together for 34 goddamn years, losing contact with my mother for three years, and countless hospital admissions for me to figure out that my mother isn’t the devil that was described to me by the stories that played on repeat in my head. He was the monster, and he always has been. He has bullied, ridiculed, and abused everyone around him, and it comes as no surprise that my mother's chronic pain and debilitating injuries are not a result of her being “fat and lazy.” They are from being pushed down. They are from being hit. They are from my father.
To all of you who have donated or shared this fundraiser, or both, thank you from the bottom of my shattered and aching heart. You have never questioned the validity of my pain. You have never questioned the validity of my fear. You have never questioned my humanity when I begged you to do just that. I don’t even know how to thank you adequately right now but please know that you have already helped us more than I know how to say.
I’m writing this, once again, from a place of desperation, and very real need. My father doesn’t “pay my way…” He is a wealthy man who has learned how to keep his puppets always dancing around him and desperately waiting for him to just look at them. He has learned to “teach women lessons” by the ways of physical, emotional, psychological, and financial abuse. He has dangled the carrots of “rent and groceries” in front of me time and time again, to ensure I will never leave him behind. He disgusts me, and I will never, ever, let that criminal near me, or anyone I love and care about, ever, ever again.
I have a car payment that is due in less than a day. I have debt from medical care I’ve received and debt collectors calling me every waking hour of the day. I stay awake while my fiancé sleeps, getting emails out, finding new ways to hustle and investigating every threatening noise I hear or just think I hear because I am a survivor. I’m not crazy, I’m not a hypochondriac, I am ill. And we are broke.
If you’ve read this far, well s**t, I want to thank you even more. I don’t give up, and I will never give up on the people I love and care about. I keep receipts, and I have a photographic memory not because I’m special or I have ever wanted for my brain to become this way. I am who I am, because I had to be. I know how to hustle, and how to do pretty much everything else I know how to do, because my mother taught me. And I finally know why.
I have big dreams, and even higher aspirations. For me, for my family, for my friends, and for women. I will make it to law school one day, and I will never give up on doing what I can to pay it forward for the rest of my existence and after.
I am asking you all again, to please share this fundraiser, and donate only if you can. So many of you whom I have come to know, I met in the darkest of times, and came to also know your struggles and the pain it breeds from. Abuse cannot be loved away. Abuse cannot be taken from someone’s memories. Abuse grows, like mold, and doesn’t get better until it’s addressed. Please listen to women. Please believe them. Please stop questioning their stories of trauma and abuse. Please, stand with women, and all survivors. We don’t all make it out. We all know I almost didn’t.
Thank you,
Olivia ❤️🩹
Hey friends, Olivia here. I think creating this page in itself says… Olivia Garrity needs your support for ❤️ EMERGENCY-Medical, moving, legal etc. ❤️✨
