Mary Jo Buttafuoco Recalls Exact Feeling of Being Shot in the Face by Amy Fisher 33 Years Ago: 'An Explosion' (Exclusive) By Janine Rubenstein

The morning of May 19, 1992, felt like any other for Mary Jo Buttafuoco.

“I got the kids off to school, I cleaned the kitchen, I made the beds, I did all the mom stuff. And my plan that day was to paint in the backyard,” says the Long Island mother of two. Now a 70-year-old grandmother living in California, she can recall details of the day that changed her life like it was yesterday, rather than 33 years ago.

What happened next — her then-husband Joey Buttafuoco’s 17-year-old mistress Amy Fisher showing up at her door and shooting her point-blank in the face — created an almost instant media firestorm. And after miraculously surviving the attack that left her with facial paralysis and a bullet forever lodged in her brain, Buttafuoco was immediately, unwillingly thrust into the spotlight.

Now, decades later, her harrowing story is being retold in Lifetime’s new biopic I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco, premiering Jan. 17 at 8 p.m. ET. Only this time, Buttafuoco narrates the events of her own life, as actress Chloe Lanier plays her younger self.

“My kids’ friends always ask me ‘How on earth did you manage to survive?’ I wanted to tell this story to young people, to people who heard the name but didn’t really understand what went on,” she tells PEOPLE. “I want to let people know that things happen and sometimes really bad things happen, but you can get past them.”

Buttafuoco isn’t sure how she survived the gunshot, but she does recall exactly what it felt like, in chilling detail.

“I remember the ringing of the door. Our exchange really wasn’t confrontational,” she says of teenaged Fisher, who unbeknownst to her, had been in a long-term, secret affair with her husband Joey.

“I was so taken aback by this kid that I was like, ‘What? You’re here with a T-shirt telling me that Joey’s having an affair?’ And I’ve been raised a very polite lady, a nice Irish-Catholic girl. So I didn’t yell at her or argue with her or anything. I had no idea what was going to happen.”

As Buttafuoco moved to go and call Joey to try and sort things out, “I turned my head and it exploded,” she says. “At the moment, my only thought was that she hit me with a bat, but I didn’t know where the bat came from. That’s what it felt like. It was just such an explosion on the side of my head that knocked me backwards and down, but it didn’t hurt. I went out that quick, boom, that was it.”

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Fisher, dubbed the Long Island Lolita by the media, pleaded guilty to first-degree aggravated assault and served nearly seven years in prison for the shooting before being released on parole.

Though Buttafuoco originally stuck by Joey’s side after he continued to claim Fisher was lying, the two split not long after he admitted to having a sexual relationship with her, for which he was convicted of statutory rape and served four months in jail.

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“To carry hate, to carry anger, it’s so debilitating. I did. I had that for a long time,” she says of feelings she held for her ex and Fisher. “Forgiveness isn’t about saying, ‘It’s okay what you did to me,’ because it’s not. It’s more saying, ‘You did this to me, but I’m not going to let you ruin the rest of my life.'”

These days, she says, “I don’t have a relationship with him. I don’t even know where he lives. My son sees him. My daughter has no relationship with him. I don’t feel for him, it’s kind of like karma. I feel like that with Amy, too.”

Buttafuoco says she often wonders, “‘Oh my God, why am I still here?’ Especially when I read about all of the shooting deaths in America. It’s a miracle. My carotid artery was severed. But my neighbors came running over, retired police, firemen. I had the right group of people there.”

And after recently celebrating her milestone birthday, the founder of The Facial Paralysis and Bell’s Palsy Foundation says “There’s issues that come with 70, but I’m grateful to be alive for all of them. I’m content. You think, ‘How much time do I have left? 10 years maybe?’ And if that’s the case I want to enjoy myself. I’ve never felt so good mentally and emotionally.”

Lifetime’s new biopic I Am Mary Jo Buttafuoco premieres Jan. 17 at 8 p.m. ET.