Is it Love? Or is it Abuse?

Kacie was in love.

She’d reconnected with a high school class classmate, Ryan, and the chemistry was instant.

“He was perfect, everything I thought I wanted in a man,” Kacie said. “It started off

exactly how I would have imagined—flowers and picking me up over rain puddles even. Like literally love, like you see in the movies. And it made me fall in love with him.”

Kacie’s mom said Ryan wasn’t a good guy. But she ignored her mom. “Honestly, nobody wants to hear that about a man that they're falling in love with. You focus on the good things when it's young and fresh and new.”

But abuse can creep up on you.

“I don't know what happened,” Kacie said. “It started after we had our first child.”

“He started alienating me from my friends and family, not wanting me to go and hang out with them, not letting me talk on the phone, making little snotty little comments when I would talk to one of my friends.”

“Or if I would go over to my mom's house, he would want me to call him every second I was there.”

Control escalates

When Kacie became pregnant with their second child, they moved to Sioux Falls because finding a job where they lived in Michigan was difficult. Ryan became more domineering.

“It started with him not allowing me to dress the way I was dressing, which was T-shirts and jeans, but they weren't loose enough for him. He figured I was always getting dressed to impress somebody else,” Kacie said.

At various times. Kacie held retail positions that required business casual clothing and a professional appearance. “I would sell suits, men's cologne, women’s perfume and handbags. Sometimes I was a manager and would have to work later than my scheduled shift.”

“It changed to, ‘Who are you doing your makeup for? I don't like it when you do your makeup to go out to the grocery store or just little things like that. You must be making yourself look good to impress somebody.’ And it came to, ‘Who are you sleeping with?’”

“He told me I needed to quit my job,” Kacie said. “But yet also not going out and getting a job himself.”

Because of Ryan’s behavior, Kacie ended up working nights in a warehouse setting. That led to more accusations about where she was going, why she was home late, who she was sleeping with. She kept telling herself she loved him and trying to make it work.

“I would just keep telling him, ‘Stop. There’s nobody else. I love you.’ But it kept going on. Towards the end of our relationship is when it started getting really bad.”

The last straw

Kacie endured his blaming and control for 13 years. But push came to shove when they moved into a new townhome. Ryan said he was hearing sounds, people in the walls or in the crawl space. This scared the children, of course. Then it became Kacie’s fault—she was sleeping with someone who lived in the walls or the attic.

“He kept calling the cops, making reports about somebody living in our attic and in our walls,” Kacie said. “The police would come and find nothing. And it got to the point where the police officers would call me before they came out to check on anything.”

One day, Ryan was out of the house all day, which was unusual for him, while Kacie was home with the children. After he returned, she had a cup of coffee but began to feel sick. “I knew something wasn’t right.”

She went to the ER, where they helped with the nausea but didn’t do a drug test, despite her suspicion that Ryan put something in her coffee. Kacie purchased a drug test on her own and results were positive for four substances, including ecstasy and meth.

That’s when she left her husband and went to Shelter for Family Safety.

“They helped me get ME back.”

Kacie said that going to Shelter was hard and scary. She’d never been in that situation before. Ryan had repeatedly warned her that if she were to leave, she would lose the children forever. “My children are everything to me and the thought of losing them forever kept me there,” she said.

Ryan had also told Kacie that if she ever left him she would fail—that she would be nothing without him and have nothing without him. She had no family or friends in the area and felt intensely alone.

“I knew what type of relationship I was in. I knew what had just happened, and I knew I wasn't safe. You don't ever see yourself being in an abusive relationship and you don’t see it until it's there in your face.”

“It was hard to do, and it was the best decision, not only for my safety and my kids' safety, just because the staff there—I get teary-eyed even just thinking about that place. And those women there, they helped me so much,” Kacie said.

“They helped me remember how strong I am. And it meant everything to me, just knowing that I wasn't alone. They made me feel safe. They helped me realize that I am strong. They helped me get ME back.”

The hardest part for Kacie was admitting she needed help, asking for help and then being open to receiving help.

“Having them there was amazing. It saved my life. I would have gone back to him if I didn't have a place that made me feel safe and secure with my children.”

“Because of them, I got my own apartment, my lovely apartment,” Kacie said. “I love my apartment. I have a great job now. I'm beyond happy. I love my life right now. I'm doing great and I'm thankful every day I wake up. I just look in the mirror and say, ‘This is yours. You did this. You got here.’"

“And my credit score has gone up like over a hundred points since I have been on my own, which is huge. That's a big adult thing that I'm very proud of.”

“This is the happiest I have been, I can confidently say, in 15 years.”

Kacie has also reconnected with her mother. “I talked to my mom every day. And she even came out here from Michigan to help me move into my own apartment. She’s always there for me and we’re in a good place.”

But Kacie also wants to help others the way the Shelter staff helped her. “I love that place. I want to work there. Everything that they've done for me, I want to do for other people. I want victims to know that they're not alone and that people care.”

“I want to make victims feel how the staff made me feel—which was welcome, heard, and cared about.”