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Note: The following essay contains descriptions of domestic abuse. When I saw Kristen Bell’s anniversary post on Instagram earlier this week, I froze. She celebrated 12 years of marriage to her husband, actor and podcaster Dax Shepard, by writing: I would never kill you. A lot of men have killed their wives at a certain point. Even though I’m heavily incentivized to kill you, I never would. I’m sure she meant it to be funny and irreverent, but reading it made my blood run cold. I know what real death threats sound like. Advertisement I can remember pressing a pink pillow over my 10-year-old ears in an attempt to block out my mother’s screams as my father beat her with a belt. Fifty-six years later, I can still hear the sharp and rhythmic sound of leather on skin, broken only by her crying, “Please, stop! Please!” It was winter break, the time I dreaded most. There were too many hours for my parents to share the same space. Too much silence before the eventual storm. Advertisement We lived in a custom-built home beside a lake outside of Detroit. My father had a Ph.D. in chemistry. From the outside, we looked like the perfect immigrant family. Inside, however, the air was always thick with tension — the kind that made you hold your breath without realizing it. Anything could set my father off — a wrong word, a burnt meal. Whenever a letter arrived from his siblings in China, it felt like we were living through a world war inside our home. China was mostly closed off from the world at that point, and letters rarely arrived. When they did, reading them left my father feeling guilty and angry — guilty that he was the only one of his eight siblings who had been able to immigrate to America and furious at my mother for not allowing him to send money home to them. “Why didn’t you tell me they wrote?” he’d shout when he discovered a letter had arrived and my mother hadn’t given it to him. Advertisement “They’re doing fine,” my mother would say. “Don’t lie to me!” My mother struggled with her mental health, but she refused to stand down. She’d scream in Chinese back at my father — her words fast and sharp. The house became a boxing arena. My brother and I would sit on the couch while they pushed each other — our heads both bowed, with me usually crying. Sometimes I’d cower in my bed, clutching the pink pillow and praying it would end. When it finally did, I’d find my mother sitting on the floor, her face blank, her hands trembling. I’d put my arms around her and whisper, “It’s OK, Mom,” but we both knew it wasn’t. Advertisement I’ll never forget the time I accompanied her to see a doctor to have her wounds treated. I sat on a metal chair and listened to him tell her, “This has got to stop.” The man who should have heard those words was waiting outside, smoking in his company car. Sometimes my father’s rage turned toward me. Individuals who attack their partners often attack their children, too. I didn’t know that then — I only knew I had to stay small and quiet in hopes of becoming invisible. One particular experience is etched deep in my memory. It was in the middle of the night, in the middle of a frigid Michigan winter. My parents had been fighting for hours. Their voices rose and fell in waves of fury until, sometime after midnight, I drifted into an uneasy sleep. Suddenly, I felt my father’s hand yank me from my bed. I hit the floor before I could even open my eyes. Advertisement “If you don’t shut up, I’ll throw her out,” he shouted to my mother, his face twisted with rage. He dragged me down the hallway toward the front door. My brother ran from his room, yelling, “Dad! Stop! Let her go!” My father pulled harder, trying to drag me outside into the snow. I grasped the stair rail with all of my strength. Finally, he let go. I slumped to the floor, my body shaking uncontrollably. My brother helped me up and whispered, “Go back to sleep. It’s OK.” But it wasn’t OK. It never was. That was just one of many nightmarish nights I experienced. As far as I know, my mother never considered leaving. She had no options — no money of her own, only limited English and nowhere to go. Divorce would have brought unbearable embarrassment to my traditional Chinese American mother. My parents were desperate to project the image of a respectable family. We were the “model minority” family before that phrase became commonplace. Advertisement “Don’t tell anyone,” my mother would say. “People won’t understand.” And even if she did tell someone, the shame and humiliation would have been unbearable. So, I stayed silent at school and at Brownie meetings. I never tried to convince her to leave, and I never confronted my father directly. Even after I graduated as valedictorian of my high school, got accepted into a top MBA program, and became a wife and mother, the silence stayed with me. During college, my brother and I had to rush home from our respective campuses whenever things got bad. I’ll never forget one night after an especially violent fight. My brother sat on our parents’ living room couch, his face drained and his shoulders slumped. Advertisement “I can’t do this anymore,” he said quietly. But he did. We both did. We kept witnessing their violence until we finally fled thousands of miles away to California after graduate school. Our parents eventually moved to California and lived with my brother. Although the physical abuse subsided, the verbal fights lasted until my father died. I suffer from complex PTSD and have struggled with depression for years — unable to shake the feeling that chaos could erupt at any moment. Now, decades later, I still flinch when I hear sudden noises. Slammed doors and raised voices make my heart race. The trauma hasn’t faded; it’s always there waiting for me to experience it again. My mother died 13 years ago without ever telling her story of domestic violence, but I can tell mine. I can name what happened, and in doing so, reclaim what was stolen — safety, peace, and the belief that love shouldn’t hurt. Advertisement Kristen Bell may have thought she was making a joke, but there’s nothing funny about domestic violence. A recent report found that roughly 1 in 5 homicides in America is committed by an intimate partner, and over half of female homicide victims are killed by a current or former male intimate partner. For those of us who grew up in homes marked by fear and violence, that reality can never be a punchline. It’s a memory we carry for life. 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Your initial support helped get us here and bolstered our newsroom, which kept us strong during uncertain times. Now as we continue, we need your help more than ever. We hope you will join us once again. Support HuffPost Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages. Yvonne Liu is a writer working on a memoir about mental health, adoption and surviving a traumatic childhood. Her work can be found in the New York Times, Salon, Newsweek, NBC News and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a James Patterson “Go Finish Your Book” grant and a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Tennessee Williams Scholar in nonfiction.
