When my best friend Kay and I were about 18, she was the PBX operator at a department store. She introduced our group to one of her co-workers, Jennifer. I immediately recognized her from high school. I also saw that she was quite noticeably pregnant. As soon as the father found out, he bailed.

Meeting Jennifer’s family was my first taste of actual mental insanity. Her mother was quite literally, psychotic. She took a ton of different drugs a day, including Xanax, Percocet, Prozac, and about a dozen others that I can’t remember. She was loud, and would fly off the handle at the slightest thing. It took nothing for her to jump up, grab one of her daughters by the throat, and slam them up against the wall, screaming at them incoherently.

Five minutes later she would tell them how much she loved them.

Her two younger sisters were a handful, as well. Her sister J was a cutter, and was mutilating herself regularly. She also lashed out at everyone around her who tried to stop her, threatening them physically.

Her other sister, D, was a manic depressive. She was NINE.

Jennifer, on the other hand, was the only “normal” one of the bunch. In fact, we really liked her. She was not afraid to tell anyone ANYTHING. She had no problem getting in anyone’s face, no matter who they were, male or female.

After Jennifer had her baby, we sort of lost touch with her. She still called, and stopped by occasionally, but we didn’t really hang out anymore. She hooked up with a guy, F, who was married with three kids. She got pregnant immediately.

She and F moved in together, and shortly after her second child was born, she got pregnant again. Neither one of them worked, F getting money from his mother to scrape by.

We started noticing that Jennifer was different around F than she was when it was just us. She seemed nervous, and reserved, and didn’t speak much. She was also wearing long-sleeved shirts and pants all the time, which was not completely abnormal, but still, a bit unusual.

Her life was a constant complaint. She was always complaining about her mother. About her lack of money. About her kids. About F. About her first son’s father, who refused to pay child support. Every time we talked, all she did was complain.

It became a chore to be around her.

One day, she called Kay, and told her that there was something that she hadn’t told us. She met us at my parents’ house, and she sat and told us about F, and how he abused her, both mentally and physically, and that she wanted to get out, but she was afraid.

We offered to help her in anyway that we could.

We didn’t hear from her for a while.

When we did, she acted like that conversation never happened, and she had no intention of leaving F. She finally said she only told us that because they had gotten into a fight that day, and that she was saying that to get back at him, and that it wasn’t true.

But we knew it was.

She stayed with him for another year. She denied it for most of that time. And, as much as it probably makes me look like an asshole for abandoning her, I couldn’t take being around her at the level of denial she was living in.

In hindsight, I am sure that her denial was the only way she knew how to cope, and given her trashy, insane upbringing, maybe she didn’t know there was something better for her out there. I don’t know. Looking back, there are a million things I would have had Kay and I do, and we just didn’t do anything.

One day, out of nowhere, after weeks of not speaking, Jennifer showed up at my house, pregnant AGAIN. She came in, and told me how she had left F, because she met a new man, JR, and they were living together and expecting a baby (the rampant pregnancy really bothered me, though I never said anything). She also told me how jealous F was, and that he called her all day every day, begging her to come back, and then threatening her.

He would sit outside of her mother’s house, waiting for her to come over, and then follow her when she left. As soon as he found out where she lived, he began to stalk her.

She told her mother, her father, F’s family, and even called the police. They told her there was nothing they could do, since he hadn’t actually done anything. She tried to get a restraining order, but due to F’s crafty lawyer, he convinced the judge that because she had custody of two of his children, that he needed to be around her.

The phone calls and the stalking persisted. Jennifer and JR moved, but again, he found her.

JR worked nights as a tow-truck driver. One night, while Jennifer and her three children slept, F broke in to the apartment. He shot her, three times, and then turned the gun on himself. Jennifer’s oldest son, who considered F to be his father, ran into the room when he heard the noise, only to find two dead bodies.

A few days later, F’s family posted a glowing obituary about him, pointing out his love for his children and his family. It made me ill.

The fact that Jennifer called out for help for so long, and was virtually ignored by everyone (myself, included) infuriates me. It bothers me that no one wanted to do anything about it until he did something.

Well, he fucking did something, alright.

I wasn’t friends with Jennifer at the time of her death. When she told us about F, I asked her what she was doing about it, and her reply was “Well, what can I do?” She said that if she just ignored him, he would go away. When we suggested contacting the police, she became extremely defensive.

I couldn’t handle the thought of listening to her stories, knowing that she was unwilling to do anything about it. Of course, I didn’t know until much later, after her death, that she had tried for months to get someone to listen to her.

And it sickens me that no one did.