Most cases of domestic violence don't begin as horror stories.
Often, they start as fairy tales. Love stories that twist themselves into horror. Maybe that is what makes these cases hard for people to swallow. A fairy tale without the fairy tale ending is not a tale worth much.
Their love story takes place in Hollywood, California: a place of dreams, creativity, and dazzling performances.
Two people have made an online connection that's showing signs of becoming something more.
Both are creative, passionate, and involved in the fashion industry. So why not go on a date and see what comes of it? They would meet in public on Hollywood Boulevard.
Neither one of them needed to worry. The date was a hit; love came fast and naturally. It was a whirlwind romance worthy of its Hollywood setting.
They met in February and found themselves having a beachside wedding by that June.
Their first child was due in the spring of the following year.
They were happy, healthy, and living a love-enriched life together.
Until the day she came home to find him shaking in a closet.
"In men, schizophrenia symptoms typically start in the early to mid-20s."-The Mayo Clinic
At the age of twenty-nine, her husband was experiencing a complete mental and emotional breakdown.
He didn't understand what was happening to him; he began to see and hear things that weren't there. Constant auditory and visual hallucinations took over.
During these episodes, he would hallucinate people were coming after him; they threatened to kill him and his family. They were spying on and plotting against him.
He'd become unresponsive and his eyes would become dark and unfamiliar.
He came to believe that his wife was the evil he was seeing and hearing. She was the one threatening their lives.
That was when the psychotic episodes worsened. She would wake up to him attacking her in the darkness of their bedroom.
As his mental health deteriorated, the violence of his attacks increased.
His delusions of being attacked ramped up, as they did, so did his violent reactions to them and furious attacks on her.
He was biting, punching, and shoving her as well as threatening to kill their pets or himself. He was in a continual state of psychosis.
"Social isolation abuse is behavior that aims to cut you off from your family, friends, or community. It can also involve a person or people trying to damage your relationships with others."- DVconnect
Word of his instability had come down the line. The verdict was her friends and family members were much too frightened to have her come stay at their house to get away from him, fearing he would follow her.
There were many times when she and her two babies would be forced to drive somewhere and sleep in the car for the night. On other occasions, they'd hide out in hotels.
When she turned to her best friend of several years for help, she was turned away.
He would tell her he was going to kill her daily.
He killed her dog to be sure that she believed him.
He was a ticking time bomb in a never-ending cycle of detonation.
Finally, on the last day of them sharing a home, she was laying down cradling their firstborn, and touched by the scene, he decided to snap a picture of them.
He tried to get her to smile, but she was lost in her own mind. As he took photo, all she could do was hold her baby, staring into nothing, and think, how will I get away from him before he kills me?
When he left that day, she packed her and the babies’ things. After some pleading, a relative of hers agreed to let her and the kids stay with them for the next few months.
From then on, they never met each other outside of a public place or police station.
He fell into homelessness.
He couldn't feed or care for himself in any way. He was lost in another world—a world where the people closest to him were the most significant danger and had to be eliminated. His official diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder. Having both of these psychiatric disorders combined is rare and can be most dangerous when it occurs.
"Borderline Personality Disorder is a mental illness that severely impacts a person's ability to manage their emotions"- NIMH
She decided to move herself and the kids back home. She missed the three of them having their own space, was done with being chased from her own space.
But now that she was alone and back in the area, it wasn't long before he began to stalk her. He'd send her disturbing texts and leave unsettling notes. He'd send her videos of him harming himself in extreme ways.
She shouldn't bother with running; he'd cut the cables on her car.
He carved the word WHORE into her front door.
He was on his way to kill her at this very moment.
Still, she attempted to help him with his mental health from afar.
When he ran out of steam, he'd often end up laying in the rain or sleeping on top of piles of garbage. She'd sign him into a shelter or have him committed to a mental health facility, but no one could or would keep him for long.
It all came to a head one afternoon outside of her apartment building.
As she exited the building, pushing her babies' carriage, he rushed up to them and made a move to grab their son.
She managed to dodge him and get into the building's elevator in time. When she made it back into the apartment, he started banging on the door and screaming for her to open it. Lost to anxiety and panic, she fell into a deep sleep.
When she woke up, she found out he had crossed over the border into Mexico.
He was banned from entering the United States and wouldn't be allowed back into the country.
She believed the good part of him that was still somewhere inside; perhaps his unconscious mind was responsible for his removing himself from the country.
Deep down, he knew he was approaching the point of killing her, and he got out of the country before it was too late.
She began therapy to work through the trauma of surviving intimate partner violence.
She would find herself thinking back to all the times she asked for help with leaving the relationship and was turned away.
She remembered the friends and family members who abandoned her outright. She was determined to do anything she could for people who found themselves in similar situations.
That's when she decided Army Pink would establish a mission of support and empowerment.
She would help others with the process of leaving an abusive relationship as she had.
She would help them become survivors.
Army Pink is making the world a better place by creating limited edition items to raise funds and awareness for causes that have the most significant impact on people's lives. This accessory is not only a nod toward empowerment; it's a genuine show of support.
A dollar from every Peace Pendant goes to fund transportation to help someone escape an abusive relationship.