Ragdoll in a Carry-On: Mail-Order Bride, Return to Sender
I used to call them demons. You know – those memories. The ones that wake you up at 3:12 AM with a sick feeling in your stomach and a fog of shame so thick it might as well be another comforter. We all have them. Those “bad nights,” “close calls,” “things I don’t really talk about.” I used to think they were just dark moments that haunted me because that’s what trauma does – it clings, right?
But lately, in sobriety, I’ve started to wonder if I got it wrong. What if they weren’t demons at all? What if they were just me? My brain, my body, my self trying – screaming and begging – for attention. For care. For processing. Screaming like a fire alarm in a house I kept insisting wasn’t burning down. What if those memories didn’t haunt me but instead were trying to help me?
Because here’s the thing: Houdini, I am not. Neither are you. And no matter how deep we bury the event, the bruise, the betrayal – it doesn’t go away. You can’t outdrink it, outwork it, outsmoke, outpill-pop it or outmantra it. And trust me, I tried. Booze was my sedative of choice. My distraction. My eraser. But all it did was dull the sirens.
And one of the louder sirens in my memory? We call it “Vancouver.”
The recollection of this particular event doesn’t necessarily encompass my personal wrongdoings but the calamity could’ve definitely been avoided if alcohol hadn’t been on the guest list. And ketamine hadn’t shown up uninvited.
In 2015 – maybe 2016, honestly my memory still flinches – I was dating a chef at the ritzy restaurant where I was a hostess. After about a month, he told me he had plans to move back to Vancouver for a year. But then he met me. And stayed another two months “because he loved me” (cue the “aw” followed immediately by the sound of my eyes rolling into another dimension).
Eventually, he moved anyway and I was heartbroken. I visited him once, it went “well,” and I booked my second trip while flying home from the first. I planned it for Halloween.
I love Halloween. Not because I like scary things – I don’t. But because it’s the one night you get to be someone else and nobody asks why. It’s not about the skeletons and blood (those were already inside me); it was about hiding in plain sight. In therapy, I’ve learned it’s less of a “fun holiday” thing and more of a “please don’t make me be myself” thing. Dressing up felt like a break from being D.
So there I was. Halloween night. Mail-Order Bride. I wore a lacy white costume covered in postage stamps. A joke but also maybe a little prophetic. After two drinks at the house my boyfriend shared with his brother and a couple of friends, I black back in to the following image: grabbing a doorframe, trying to stand and my boyfriend’s brother punching me in the face.
My boyfriend was behind him – yelling at me.
I was supposed to fly back to Toronto the next day. My mom called while it was happening – either accidentally answered or soul-level SOS. She heard everything. She called the police.
So now I’m being taken out of the house, no purse, no phone, no idea what the fuck is going on. Just bruises, fear and the strong sense that this wasn’t what love looked like.
The cop who picked me up was a woman. I asked her if we could stop – I had to pee. She said no. I asked again. Still no. Finally, I told her if she didn’t stop, I’d pee in the back of her cop car. She laughed.
She shouldn’t have.
I peed.
She let me out at the end of Capilano Road in front of a hotel. I sat on the curb and cried. No phone. No money. No mom. No memory.
Then the brother – the one who had just punched me – pulled up. “Are you okay? Let me take you home.”
And I got in. Because sometimes survival sounds like making one more bad decision just to stop making decisions altogether.
Turns out, some of his friends had spiked the drinks with ketamine. No one knew. Everyone was blacked out, spun out or straight-up gone. At the bar, I’d gone outside for a smoke and wasn’t let back in – too “drunk.” I tried calling my boyfriend and his brother. Nothing. I called a roommate. He answered. That became: “D was trying to hook up with the roommate,” which became: “Let’s beat her up.”
Later, at home, my boyfriend was angry with me. Me. I packed to leave. He had a “change of heart” and pushed my flight back three days. (Spoiler: not romantic.)
Three to 5 days later, he dumped me via Facebook Messenger.
My mom took me to the doctor. I said I fell. Repeatedly. My mom mentioned my sides and back hurt, so the doctor asked if he could look. Then he asked again: “What happened?”
I just looked at him.
He knew. He wrote in my file that I “look like [I’ve] been thrown around like a ragdoll.”
And he was right.
The boyfriend didn’t change my flight to spend more time with me. He did it to stop me from going to the police. His brother picked me up that morning not because he cared but because he was on his way to the station and saw me on the sidewalk like a discarded work piece he forgot to hide.
People can be evil, yes. But worse, they can be convincingly good at pretending they’re not. Especially when your own brain is too busy trying to survive to call bullshit.
When you’re an addict, even the red flags feel romantic. Even a punch in the face feels like “maybe I deserved it.” The scariest part? You stop trying to make sense of it. You just try to forget it.
But forgetting doesn’t mean gone.
Those demons I used to drink away weren’t monsters. They were messengers. They were me. Screaming through blackout nights and bruised ribs: Please, deal with this. Please, remember.
And now, finally, I do.
I remember. And I care.
And I’m still here.