How Can I Help You?

Abstract

This nonfiction story is set in a small town just outside of Austin, Texas: as a twenty-something academic, yet naïve, preacher's daughter with a new boyfriend, Nate, I slowly find my relationship turning into a constant source of abuse from my once charming partner, who I later discover suffers from bi-polar, paranoid schizophrenia and is Central Texas's meth kingpin. Although Nate was always the abuser in the relationship, he didn't always see me as the drug-free, outspoken college girl that he originally met me as--he sometimes saw me as the undercover Drug Enforcement Agency spy or the plant from the F.B.I. or the woman sent to him by his father who had been dead for more than seven years. In this memoir, I detail my account in a sometimes humorous and sometimes gut-wrenching way as I explain the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse I endured for months, yet still managed to break free of.