You came to me with your two little girls. You said he had hit you in front of the children and said unforgivable things to you. You repeated his words and I agreed the blows and the words were unforgivable. You said he had threatened to throw the children down the stairs to you. You said he had backed off when you grabbed a knife and threatened to stab him in the neck.

I called everywhere to find the three of you a place to stay. Every official venue was closed because of your “administrative status”. Friends of friends agreed to take you in. Their demands were minimal: no communication of their address to your husband. Husbands who move on their threats? They exist, as you well know – and wives too. The last thing they needed was violence in their house.

Meanwhile, he had kept your phone and harassed me with calls I stopped answering. He moved to text messages. The usual range, running from apologetic, to maudlin, to angry, to threatening. I didn’t answer but kept them for the record.  He did the same with others who had helped you and your family.

I bought you another phone so you could communicate with your mother, and warned you against the temptation to call your husband for an “explanation”.

You refused to go to the police despite the fact you were protected in every way we knew how. When I called to see how you were doing, you said he had followed you to the house and you had agreed to speak with him.

I checked this out with the folks sheltering you. They told a different story of loud arguments over the phone, followed by the information your husband was coming back to town for a “talk”.  The people sheltering you refused to let the man at their door inside. You brought him inside anyway.

Things didn’t degenerate then but I told you the game was over with us. The harassment  then moved over to me and you were on the front lines as an instigator.

I know a thing or two about ambivalence in battered women. You’re not the first of that species to cross my path and to play double-crossing games. You want to play with your own life and that of your two little girls? There’s no way I can stop you from doing that. You put my friends at risk after they reach out to protect a perfect stranger at their own risk? You go on my absentee caller list.

For your sake – but mostly for that of your two little girls – I hope you’ll get your act together fast. I don’t know of a single kid in the world who needs to live through the shit they are witnessing every day and every night, and that they’ll go on witnessing because you refuse to grab the chances when they come your way. The man’s  hit you and threatened to kill you in the most graphic terms imaginable. If that’s not enough to make you take to a shelter and stay there, there’s not another thing I can do to help.

So please stop calling, and forcing me to shut off my phone. Please get your life back. You kept telling me what a vibrant and self-determined person you were before you met him. Get in touch with the one you were in LA, with no father, no mother, no husband, no sister or brother to lean on you, or you on them.

You missed your chance with us. Try not  to miss the next one that shows up.