Content warning: This story contains mentions of physical, verbal and emotional abuse.

There were a lot of different ways I thought about writing this. If you told me I was going to be doing this six months ago, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to write it, much less post it anywhere. 

While living at home during the first COVID-19 quarantine in 2020 and until the beginning of 2021, one of my family members became physically abusive. In the fallout from this experience, I have reflected greatly on what it means to receive support and accommodations from the University while going through emotionally traumatizing experiences.  

When we first got the emails campus was shutting down and we would be sent home, I felt my stomach drop as I read it. Though at that time, physical abuse was not an aspect of my household, there were already dynamics at home that made me afraid and nervous about living there full time. I was determined, however, to make the best of the situation. Dysfunction and behavioral issues are a part of every family, I said to myself. These are things people go through all the time. 

Looking back on that time, the word dysfunction does not begin to cover what was going on at home. I’ve spent a lot of time in therapy unpacking the fact that abuse can still be abuse before it gets physical. It is still hard for me to grasp that what started out as aggressive but relatively harmless outbursts decades ago could become something dangerous and life-threatening. How was I supposed to call someone I grew up with a bad person? How could they be capable of hurting me?

I had a hard time learning to call what happened to me abuse because it was the only thing I knew. People I call loved ones continue to maintain very close personal relationships with this relative, a person whose interactions with me began to frequently consist of physical threats, attempts to cause physical harm and the use of slurs. 

This person called me slurs to my face and threatened to kill me while chasing me around the house where I grew up, banging on locked doors and windows, telling me that I “couldn’t hide forever.” 

The behavior and moods had no schedule. They didn’t account for anything anyone else did that day. For the person, the thought of compromise, of having to share a living space, meant having total control over everything. At one point, this relative and friends of theirs had stolen enough of my things that I started to lock the door of my childhood bedroom from the outside whenever I had to leave my room for any reason, hoping they wouldn’t find another way to break in. 

I remember seeing signs my relative was going to have another outburst during the start of Finals Week in Fall Quarter 2020. I put together an overnight bag and went to a relative’s house. What was supposed to be one day ended up being a week. I remember the growing fear of having to return home, mixed with the growing fear of not being able to finish finals, mixed with the anxiety over how much I should or shouldn’t tell my other relative about the situation at hand. At one point, I tried to bring things up with the person I was staying with, but the examples I gave did not phase him. He called them “stressful, but nothing too major.” 

I was also unsure of what I should tell my professors, or if I should tell them anything at all. There were some weeks where the house was manageable, and I had a surprisingly great amount of time to get assignments done. During other weeks, being in my house wasn’t an option, and I had to find a way to leave and a place to stay last minute. Sometimes, there was no way to leave. The storm just had to be waited out. 

I wish this was something professors, campus leaders of all kinds and my peers took into account everyday as they go about their days, make their syllabi and work on projects together. The pandemic has and continues to ask a lot of us. Even though being away from home has been the best thing over all, many more complications come with navigating life, school, work, doctors and insurance, taxes and incredibly difficult family circumstances mostly alone. 

People have a hard time conceptualizing what happens in abusive households. The media and the general public’s representations of abuse do nothing to capture the subtleties, the cycles and the manipulative nature of living with abusive family members. Media outlets reporting on domestic violence are quick to include intimate and specific details about the violence, yet do very little to explore the reasons the violence came about in the first place. As a culture, we demand that survivors of many types of violence disclose intimate details about what happened to them, leaving the court of public opinion to decide whether it was abuse without ever considering how the impacted person feels themselves. Look at any comment section, and you will see strangers’ opinions are often given more credibility and weight than a survivor’s own words. 

Myself and others I know with similar experiences struggle when it comes to asking for help, since we ourselves are still processing and learning how to explain our own situations. I know from personal experience how frustrating it can be to have your story misrepresented. Having loved ones ignore, downplay and lie about what has happened is part of my and many others’ experiences relating to domestic violence. 

I have had many family members shy away from these conversations, expressing they “do not want to get into details” and not seeing what happened as abuse. One individual left me a voicemail telling me I had no integrity or character because of my decision to leave an abusive situation. With these experiences in mind, how do I even begin to approach this conversation with a professor, who is basically a stranger to me? 

This quarter, I am taking a class for the first time in which the professor had a completely asynchronous way to earn class credit laid out in their syllabus. They include ways to complete the course completely in person, completely asynchronously and a few suggestions on how to mix both to best accommodate your needs for the quarter. The vast majority of students show up to class regularly. 

When I read this syllabus, I was so touched by the level of care that was put into it. I immediately thought of how helpful it would be if more classes were like this, or even if a majority of classes were like this. Had I been taking classes structured this way at home, I would have been able to navigate my complicated personal circumstances and academics much more easily. 

I encourage professors to learn how difficult family circumstances impact students’ academic experiences and to incorporate flexibility into their syllabi in a way that is appropriate and supportive of students’ needs. Navigating institutional systems takes time and makes it difficult for students to access helpful, tangible resources. There is a chance for you to step in here, and you have no idea how many lives you would be changing if you take it. 

Jonathan Van De Loo is a Communication junior. Van De Loo can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.