By MIRIam farias, JRN 111 Student

Behind closed doors, many women suffer in silence, walking in the dark, feeling and hearing the sharp cracks of eggshells digging into their skin. With every step they take, the pain becomes numb. But once the light is turned on, those scars become visible. 

Tracy Curtis, a domestic abuse survivor, continues to live with those eggshell scars to this day, but she has decided to shine a light on them as a way of helping others. Curtis works as a community education and outreach coordinator for Crisis Center For South Suburbia.

It all began for Curtis four years after she ended her 17-year marriage with her ex-husband and decided to move with her daughters to southern Indiana for a job opportunity. Her main focus was to make sure that her daughters were well nurtured, so she was not looking for a relationship. Unexpectedly one day, she met someone online. He was a younger man, so she did not have real interest in pursuing anything with him.  

“He was very persistent,” she says. “I ended up meeting him for a cup of coffee at a restaurant.” 

Although age was a barrier for her, the young man said he believed that love is love. Curtis decided to give him an opportunity. Like most women, she wanted to feel loved, valued, connected.   

As time went by, she noticed her suitor was moving too fast: “It went from zero to sixty.” 

She described him as very charismatic and loving. When Curtis introduced him to her daughters, she noticed how nice he was to them, which won her heart. She allowed him to move into her townhouse. And that’s when everything changed. 

“He became extremely jealous, and he wanted out of the townhouse to get closer to his parents,”  says Curtis. “ Everything was about his family.“   

The two eventually became engaged, but when Curtis was trying on a wedding dress, she had a gut feeling and a pit in her stomach that made her second-guess her decision. 

“When you are trying on wedding dresses, you’re very happy, but I was crying. I was on FaceTime with my girls, and they were crying too.”  

Tracy Curtis

“When you are trying on wedding dresses, you’re very happy, but I was crying,” she said. “ I was on FaceTime with my girls, and they were crying too.”  

Unfortunately, she didn’t listen to her gut. After the couple married, they moved into the new home near his parents. That is when the cycle of walking on eggshells began. She says he was a master of the silent treatment and of gaslighting.

“He just kept calling me a lot of choice mean words and telling me that I was just going to be like my mother,” she said. He would tell her she should probably just go back to her ex-husband because no one else would want her.

Curtis wanted to fix her husband. She felt if she found a diagnosis and the correct medications, their relationship would be stable, the way it was initially. She managed to get him to see a counselor.

“He walked out and said, ‘She said it’s not me, it’s you–that you’re crazy.’”  

When he kicked her out of the house with her daughters, she realized she was in an abusive relationship. He told her that they weren’t allowed back into his home, and they had no choice but to sleep in hotels. His toxicity even led to her being fired from her job, she said.

“He felt like I was flirting with my boss, and I was not,” Curtis said. “ There was a lot of financial abuse because I got fired and I didn’t have my own money.” 

Curtis described him as being a good manipulator. He would repeatedly put her into a remorse or honeymoon phase, telling her that it would not happen again and how it was due to him having a bad day at work or how horrible his mother was being with him. Not only did he manipulate her to think that his actions should be excused, but he would also manipulate her to get upset with her own daughters, she said. 

Curtis wants people to understand that they can’t fix their partners and they need to accept who that person truly is. They don’t have the power to heal their partners’ traumas.

Eventually, she left the abusive relationship, but her husband came into her workplace and convinced her to come back. 

One day, she says, an unsavory friend of her husband’s made a comment about her daughters, which was the last straw for her. “Don’t ever talk about my children,” she said. Her husband was high and unsure of his actions. 

She decided to go to his mother’s home because she had an issue with her tire and didn’t want to drive her car like that. She then had to hide her car. Eventually, he found her sitting in her car. He had a weapon pointed at her.  

“It was just a mess,” she said. “Then he tried to run me off the road and the knife–”  

Curtis does not remember how she got out of that situation because it was so traumatizing for her. All she remembers is being in a closet hiding from him and fearing that he would find her.  

“His mom is the one that, I guess, saved me,” she said.  

Curtis has been out of that relationship for about 13 years, but she still struggles with PTSD.  

“I get really bad anxiety, even if  it’s just someone kind of ignoring me or not promptly returning my texts,” she said..  

Curtis wants others to know that if she could get out of that unhealthy relationship, so can they. She urges people to put themselves first and to seek help. She aims to help many people understand how there is always help no matter if you are stuck financial, physically or emotionally.

Recently, she came to Moraine Valley to make a presentation in the library to help college students recognize the signs of a toxic relationship.

“How many of you have been in a relationship where you get 5,000 texts a day–a ‘Good morning, beautiful,’ ‘Good night, beautiful’?” Curtis asked the audience during her presentation on Oct. 17. “It starts to get into that controlling pattern when they’re constantly texting you.”

Intimate partner violence is common among women between the ages of 18-24, she said. Sadly, many are unaware of the red flags until it is too late.

The Crisis Center of South Suburbia actually started as a shelter in a farmhouse on the Moraine Valley campus, founded by Dianne Masters. “Her husband murdered her shortly after she got the shelter up and going,” Curtis said. “He was a very affluent attorney in Chicago.”

Through her work with the center, Curtis has positively impacted many individuals, providing them with all the resources she knows are available. She has especially impacted her niece’s current girlfriend, who once struggled with domestic violence.  

“I started opening up about what was going on in the home,” says Monica Elisa Torres, 29.  “She quickly directed me to her aunt who specialized in this and gave me a lot of resources.” 

Curtis wants people to understand that they can’t fix their partners and they need to accept who that person truly is. They don’t have the power to heal their partners’ traumas. She hopes by sharing her experience, she can help people recognize that once they set themselves free, their wings will expand and they will fly once again.

“There is so much silence,” says Curtis, “and every survivor should share their story.”  

If you or someone you know is affected by intimate partner violence or domestic violence, help is available through the Crisis Center’s 24-hour-a-day hotline at 708-429-7233. Students can reach out to the Moraine Valley counseling department for free help and resources. If the situation is an emergency, call 911. 

---

PHOTO BY TRACY CURTIS