by Chrisleigh C.
Talia Smith has yet to forget the sting of her father’s hand across her cheek or the bite of his steel toed boot between her ribs. She was in high school as a senior at the time, but it wasn’t the first time he had laid hands on her. Still, this particular incident of abuse Talia remembers best
She had returned home from school that day ecstatic that her boyfriend hadn’t found a reason to be upset with her. He too showed violent tendencies towards Talia. “I think I practically skipped through my front door when I got home,” Talia recounts. Her perfect day was cut short when she met her father in the kitchen. She could smell the alcohol on his breath before she saw him. She admits that she should have walked back out her front door, but she stepped into the kitchen instead. “I thought maybe that it would be different that time,” Talia says, “I always thought that it’d be different.” She greeted her father and asked him if he’d had the chance to send out her college applications. Instead of an answer, he threw his head back, laughing. Angered at his lack of regard for her future, Talia made a fatal mistake and turned her back on him. “I called him an asshole as I walked away, and that was all it took,” Talia recalls.
Talia remembers being spun around and meeting her father’s sharp knuckles. She recalls him slurring something about respect. “Then he hit me again,” Talia says, “This time on the other side of the face, and I could feel the blood dripping down from my eyebrow.” Talia tried to push her raging father away, but he caught her wrists in an iron grip. Instead of drawing back to hit her with his fist again, he grabbed a glass pitcher and cracked it against the side of Talia’s face. “I felt the glass shatter more than I heard it,” Talia reiterates in a hollow tone, “There were slivers of it stuck in the left side of my face and nose.” After countless more ruthless blows to the face, Mr. Smith released Talia’s wrists, and she fell to the ground, bleeding. “You know I love you, Talia,” he said. Talia responded with a bitter laugh, refusing to cry. “No, you don’t,” she said, and she spat blood at his feet. His steel toed boots met her ribs before she could move out of the way. With each kick, a sickening crack thudded in Talia’s ears. “And then I blacked out,” says Talia. Two days later, she woke up in the intensive care unit for the seventh time during her high school career.
Now fourteen years later, Talia is thirty-two years old and a four year veteran of a healthy marriage. She met her husband, Eric, in a bar she worked in during her first few college years. They do not currently have any children, but they hope to one day.
Talia left home after her last hospitalization and worked as a bartender in Raleigh. During this time she recieved her Master's Degree in Zoology and Master's Degree in Psychology. A few months after meeting her husband, she spent six months in Africa doing wildlife conservation. Upon her return, Talia decided that she wanted to do some kind of volunteer work. She was drawn to InterAct, a domestic abuse shelter and place of counseling.
InterAct is a private, non-profit, United Way agency that seeks to provide support, safety, and awareness to domestic abuse survivors as well as rape and sexual assualt survivors. Typically, volunteers for InterAct stay about five months before they move on to a different part of their career or another volunteer agency. Talia has been with InterAct for five years. In those five years, she has worked hard and become the head counselor. "[It has] been a real blessing and a curse," Talia says. Working for InterAct can be a 24-hour job. Talia also says that the personal effects of working with InterAct can be trying.
Each counselor at InterAct typically deals with twenty or more families a day. This creates a high stress environment. Even after leaving the job site, however, Talia says she goes home and is struck with an enormous amount of constant worry for the people and families that she spoke with that day. To keep her sanity, Talia says that working for InterAct requires a "balance of empathy and resilience." Obviously, volunteers can't be completely detached from the people they are working with--they have to care. At the same time, however, they can't let the day to day tragedies interfere with their personal lives. Her personal life isn't the only thing Talia has to worry about, though. She has been married to Eric for four years, and her job has a strong possibility of disrupting their marriage.
The first few years working with InterAct were the hardest on Talia's and Eric's marriage. After spending all day talking and listening, when Talia returns home to Eric, she doesn't feel like doing either. "It's not good," Talia reflects, "because when I got home, I wouldn't want to disucss some of the important things that married couples need to talk about." After a series of trial and error over the course of those first few years, Eric and Talia developed a way to preserve their marriage in the face of Talia's work. They call it "Talia Time." When Talia comes home from work, she and Eric spend time together, but they refrain from talking for an hour. That hour gives Talia the time she needs to wind down from work. Talia says that her work at InterAct really makes them appreciate their marriage. During the interview, Talia smiled and said, "It really helps, you know, to have a supportive and loving husband." Her smile was almost bright enough to cover up all the ghosts of her past.
While Talia still struggles to let go of her own personal experiences with domestic abuse, she also struggles to forget some of the survivors with whom she has worked. Their stories are sometimes too brutal for her to handle. Her most well remembered clients inclue a four year old rape victim who she sat with at the hospital while evidence was collected and a twenty-three year old mother who was tied to a chair and set on fire. "Their stories are horrific," Talia almost whispers. Through it all, hwoever, Talia says that even while their stories are sometimes almost impossible to bear, the success stories are what get her from one client to the next.
