The First Phone Call: What It Actually Takes to Leave an Abuser

The phone is in your hand. You know the number. You've memorized it because you couldn't write it down — he checks everything. Your heart is beating so hard you can feel it in your throat. Your fingers are shaking. And every single thing he's ever said to you is playing in your head like a recording you can't turn off:

No one will believe you. You're crazy. You'll lose everything. You have nothing without me. If you leave, I will find you. And when I do —

You breathe. You press call.

In Passing Through Sorrow by Sarah K. Jensen, this is the moment. Not the escape. Not the rescue. This moment — the phone call. The one that changes everything. The one that takes more courage than anything Bailey Simmons has ever done, including surviving six years with Roy.

Because surviving is something that happens to you. The phone call is something you choose.

What It Actually Takes

People think leaving an abusive relationship is a decision. One moment of clarity, one burst of courage, and you walk out the door. They don't see what comes before the decision. The months — sometimes years — of quiet preparation that happens entirely inside your own mind, because any external sign of planning could trigger the violence you're trying to escape.

Here's what it actually takes to make that call:

It takes someone to call. Bailey didn't call a hotline. She didn't call the police — Roy was the police. She called her neighbor. Ana. The woman who'd been watching through the window for three years, leaving baskets at the door, waving across the yard, making sure Bailey knew she was there.

You need one person. Just one. Someone outside the world he's built around you. A neighbor. A coworker. A friend from before. A stranger on a hotline. One person who isn't in his circle, doesn't know his rules, and won't report back.

It takes a reason that's bigger than your fear. For Bailey, it wasn't her own suffering. She'd endured that for years. It was someone else. A woman Roy brought home. A stranger whose life was in danger, and Bailey couldn't watch another person suffer what she'd suffered. The moment it became about someone else's survival, not just her own, she found the courage to move.

This is common. Victims who can't act for themselves often find their voice when someone else is at risk. Not because their own pain isn't enough — but because they've been taught it isn't. They've been told, for years, that their pain doesn't matter. But someone else's? That's harder to dismiss.

It takes a plan you didn't build alone. Bailey didn't plan her escape. She made the call, and Ana took it from there — contacting Killian, coordinating the extraction, making the arrangements Bailey couldn't make because she was under surveillance. Most women who successfully leave have help. Not just emotional support — operational help. Someone who can make calls, arrange transportation, find a safe place, handle the logistics that are impossible when you're being watched.

It takes a willingness to lose everything. When Bailey left, she left with nothing. No money. No possessions. No identity outside of Roy. She walked out of that house with the clothes she was wearing and the courage it took to make one phone call. Leaving an abuser often means accepting that the life you had — however painful — is over. And the life ahead is unknown.

That's not weakness. That's not failure. That's the cost of freedom. And it's worth it. But no one should pretend it isn't terrifying.

The Moment After the Call

Here's what nobody tells you about the moment after you make the call: you don't feel free. You feel exposed. You feel like you've stepped off a cliff and the ground hasn't appeared yet. Every instinct you've developed over years of abuse is screaming that you've made a mistake, that you've put yourself in more danger, that you should go back, that at least there you knew the rules.

Bailey felt all of this. And she did it anyway.

Because courage isn't the absence of fear. It's not even the overcoming of fear. It's the willingness to act while afraid — to make the call with shaking hands, to step into the unknown with nothing but the knowledge that staying is worse than anything that comes after leaving.

What Happens Next

The story doesn't end with the phone call. The phone call is the beginning. What comes after — the hiding, the rebuilding, the slow reassembly of a self that was systematically taken apart — is a different kind of fight. A longer fight. A fight that requires not just courage but endurance. Not just strength but people.

Bailey found Killian. Found Gram. Found a community that helped her rebuild piece by piece. Not everyone finds that. Some women leave and face the aftermath alone. Some go back — not because they want to, but because the world outside the cage is harder than they were prepared for.

This is why the support matters. Not just the moment of the call — the months after. The people who stand beside you while you learn to breathe again. The neighbor who keeps showing up. The brother who comes home. The grandmother who teaches you that you can give your pain to Jesus and He will carry it.

If You're Standing at the Edge of the Call

Maybe you're reading this and you're there. At the edge. The phone is in your hand. You know who to call. And every part of you is frozen — not because you don't want to leave, but because leaving is the hardest thing you've ever considered.

Here's what I want you to know:

You don't have to be ready. You don't have to have a plan. You don't have to know what comes next. You just have to make one call.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233. Text START to 88788. They won't make you do anything you're not ready for. They'll listen. They'll help you think. They'll be the Ana on the other end of the line — the person who's been waiting, who's ready, who won't hang up.

And if you're not ready to call them — call someone. Anyone. A friend. A neighbor. A family member you haven't talked to in years. One person. One call. One word: "Help."

That's all it takes. Not a plan. Not a perfect moment. Not a burst of superhuman courage. Just one call, made with shaking hands, by a woman who decided that staying was no longer an option.

The Story That Becomes Your Story

Bailey Simmons made the call. And her story — from the Walmart trips to the one book a month to the night she picked up the phone — is fiction. But it's built on the truth of millions of women who have stood where she stood. Who have felt the phone in their hand. Who have heard the recording of everything their abuser ever told them playing in their head.

And who made the call anyway.

If this series has done one thing, I hope it's this: I hope it's changed the question. Not "why doesn't she just leave?" but "what does she need to leave?" Not "why did she stay so long?" but "who helped her get out?"

And if you're the one who needs to get out — the phone is in your hand. The number is right there. You don't have to be brave. You just have to dial.