The apartment was on the second floor of a dated building in a crowded part of town. It had hardwoods but a window air conditioning unit and a galley kitchen you had to crab-walk through. It was by no means perfect but me and my old friend from high school I’d reconnected with on Facebook were only too happy (and a little too quick) to sign our names on a year-long lease.
We were lucky. No other properties out of the countless ones we’d called were showing units because of the pandemic, which was perhaps the main motivation behind our rush to move in. I was living in my parents’ basement since graduating college a few months before. After finding a baby copperhead in the basement and my mom walking into the room unannounced in nothing but a towel during a Zoom meeting, I hatched my escape plan.
We settled in. I was still ‘working from home.’ I moved in my grandmother’s ancient mid-century modern yellow organza sofa, so heavy it needed four of us to move it up the stairs, and shopped at my closest Aldi with a mask on. Every Friday morning we met on Zoom for court-related meetings, rescheduling this, rescheduling that.
I signed on to my first post-college paying job just a few weeks earlier. By the time I’d gotten my key card to the parking lot and the ink was barely dry on my direct deposit form, the state shut everything down. Court was cancelled. We did Zoom court with what our presiding judge called ‘judge on a stick.’ He joined the virtual hearings in a Hawaiian shirt from a cushy house on the lake. I zoomed from my new bedroom in the apartment, muted, the AC window unit on full blast and the ceiling fan speed turned up. I called my long-distance boyfriend on my lunch breaks and drove the 170 miles one way to see him on the weekends. He was still in school and still mad that I hadn’t accepted my law school offer so I could stay in town with him. I loved him but deep down I think I knew we wouldn’t end up together.
Every other week, twice a month, I dressed up for court and made the commute down to the courthouse, a behemoth Greek Revival construction. Protection order court was held on Thursdays, domestic violence court on Fridays. I was the advocate for both courtrooms and all the victims for both dockets. Protection orders were being filed and approved in rapid succession, so much so that we’d still be on the 9 AM docket as the day approached noon. I was also required, per my job’s staffing issues, to take the 4 PM to 12 AM shift at our emergency shelter. There were no other drivers on the interstate when I would drive the hour home to my apartment, and the absence of traffic was haunting and uncomfortable.
It was a job I had fallen into. I turned down the Peace Corps, turned down a public affairs job in DC to stay closer to the boyfriend. In the end I knew I didn’t have it in me to live up there like the rest of my classmates. It would’ve eaten me alive. I don’t have a competitive bone in my body and that’s the bare minimum you need to survive in a place like that.
I saw an ad on Indeed and sent over my sparse resume and a well-written cover letter. I got the job within a week. I knew basically nothing about domestic violence nor victim advocacy and the legal system and my employer didn’t care. They strapped cinderblocks to my ankles and tossed me in to the deep end. Covid was a nightmare for everyone, but it unwittingly opened my eyes to the pandemic that had been bubbling beneath the surface. During lockdown, domestic violence incidents surged as victims and abusers were forced to quarantine together. And in the heat of summer in the Deep South where I live, those incidents climbed. DV is traditionally worse, at least in my experience, during the hottest months of the year when the heat drives people crazy and during the holidays. Victims were isolated from family and employers, giving abusers their way in to exact total control. It was a war that had long been waging in our country and I was drafted and dropped on the front lines, without realizing it until it was too late.
The moment I realized this was four months in, as I walked down a hospital floor with a cop next to me to see one of my victims. Her husband had beaten her so hard he’d induced a miscarriage after accusing her of cheating. She was silent when I saw her laying in the bed, cuts on her forehead taped up, her knees bruised, one half of her face swollen shut. Tears rolled down her cheeks but she made no noise, didn’t even blink. The cop gave her his card sheepishly and we talked outside the room. She had no family nearby. They lived in a rural area without many neighbors and she’d worked at a local restaurant, until he showed up and caused a scene. That afternoon I went home and felt too broken to cry. My head swam with everything and I felt the weight of a hundred people on my shoulders. Mere weeks after that, the boyfriend called me and we broke up over the phone. He had his own issues and though he didn’t say it, he knew I couldn’t take care of myself as well as him.
I was so stupid. Stupid more than anything else. I was excited about this job. I was lucky to get one when so many others were being laid off and money was tight all around, and I felt gratitude even in the midst of mandatory ‘check your privilege’ virtual meetings that were held weekly where we tiptoed around the fact our city was being burned down, just a few miles from the apartment I could barely afford.
It was around that time I flipped to self-destruct mode. I flirted heavily with an intern who worked in the office, a lanky law student who needed a haircut. I’d been flirting with him before the boyfriend and I broke up because I liked the attention and the guilt, with everything else, was unbearable but every emotion I felt was evolving seamlessly into apathy. Whole days passed where I only exhaled when I got in my car to leave for the day. Aches and pains appeared out of nowhere. I couldn’t be in the same room as my parents without arguing with one or both of them and following one particular fight my mom and I went weeks without speaking. My supervisor was incapable of managing people. My coworker, another advocate, checked out completely by that point. The law student went back to school at the end of the summer but frequently asked if I’d drive an hour to spend the weekends with him and have sex (charming, I know). The judge who’s courtroom I was assigned to looked at my breasts more than anywhere else and managed to turn every request I made of him into an innuendo. The prosecutors were acerbic and arrogant, or scatter-brained and unprepared. Men who’d beaten their wives, girlfriends, or children’s mothers senseless came through court like a revolving door through the seventh circle of hell. Most of them were mentally ill, unemployed or on drugs and usually a combination of all three. The ones who claimed to be rehabilitated had to give presentations to the court on what they’d learned about abuse or managing their emotions, only to be cut loose and wind up in front of the same judge weeks later for a dirty drug test or a strangulation charge. The lack of basic decency and respect for human life I was submerged in made me respect my own life less. I drank too much. I used edibles to sleep and tried to casually date people I wasn’t attracted to. I stopped going to church. I wanted to feel something and all the while I felt nothing at all.
I threw myself into it. I talked to victims more than I talked to more than my own family members. I kept blank intake forms and business cards in my car in case I ever ran into anyone that needed services. I gave my personal phone number out to clients who used and abused it because they had no one else to talk to. I did everything you’re not supposed to do. I was a glorified social worker and I thought I was so much more. I told myself that the judge listened to me and I was making an impact. I told myself I loved the work and maybe I did because I was hooked on the misery of it all. I was addicted to be unhappy.
Eight months after I started, they laid me off. There was no more funding to supply my salary. It felt like my heart had been ripped from my chest. I was deluded into thinking that when the time eventually came for me to leave, I’d be able to do it on my own terms. Everything—my income, my relationships, and my mental health—had all been decimated at the expense of this job, a job I once considered noble and a calling few are chosen for. I didn’t mind barely making a living wage because The Work I did was important. It was crucial. I helped people who were in the worst situation an individual could ever possibly be in, and I did it without complaint and without thanks. Getting laid off felt like a monumental slap in the face. It didn’t help that I later learned there had been enough money to keep me on until the end of the year and they’d chosen not to. It also didn’t help that I couldn’t afford my apartment with no job and I hadn’t been in the position long enough to qualify for unemployment. It didn’t help that my former employer still used me in their promotional content on social media. That I still received calls from victims and I had to block them or tell them I didn’t work there anymore. Slap after slap.
Over the years, I’ve had a sinking feeling I believe might only be unique to me, but in reality is a sentiment many advocates probably feel. Being an advocate, both then and now, is all I know how to do. I’m not marketable or employable as anything else. When I started applying for jobs after I got laid off, there weren’t any other similar positions open. I went to work in retail for the holidays and fell into a crushing depression. I stocked shoes and coats and did inventory when I ached to be in court, making quips at defense attorneys. I missed my big quiet office and the Mayberry-esque town and the drug store where I went to eat lunch every day. I even missed the snotty clerk with the bedazzled phone and French tips and the judicial assistant who’d become my lunch date and close confidante.
I’ve over-analyzed this entire year to death and in all likelihood I wouldn’t be where I am right now had I not been essentially forced to grow up and get a grip. There is nothing prestigious or glamorous or sexy about this job and it is not like TV, as much as I wish it were. It is brutal and rewarding and thoroughly frustrating.
I say this because I’m still an advocate, albeit in a different place and in a different environment. Unlike a few years ago I have absolutely no delusions about what this job is and who I am. It is not part of my identity. It is a job—a job that I’m good at and one I enjoy but a job nonetheless. What I am now first and foremost is a mother and a wife and had I stayed in the courthouse that time forgot I’m not entirely sure that would be the case.
When you’re an advocate it becomes extremely tempting to convince yourself that is all you’ll ever amount to. You help victims during their darkest times and you work closely with important people in the community but an advocate is all you’ll ever be. I’ve since given up on that though I’ve worked in this field for over three years now and in doing so I’ve allowed myself to become much more. I exist beyond my office and beyond my phone that constantly rings and beyond rape response clinics and police precincts and courtrooms. I still have some of that pessimism I left 2020 with but I like the surety and contentment that experience brings, like waking up to a sunny morning after a long deep sleep. I like it so much I feel more comfortable in the sunshine now than in the dark.