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| SincerelyMe's Blog
| | What Having An Abusive Boyfriend Taught Me |
Before I start, I want to say that I will not be going into details about the things he did. That’s not what’s important. What matters is that those awful things taught me a lot about people and human behavior. They taught me about myself.
High school relationships are meant to be a roller coaster. First there’s the not-so-subtle flirting, and then the hand holding in the hallway. The short and blissful kisses after school. There’s going to each others houses and watching movies, maybe having sex and drinking liquor sneakily stolen from the liquor cabinet. There’s the fall. Falling quickly and deeply into something you’ve heard but never quite felt. Love. You can’t get enough of it. The rush every time you kiss. The feeling of comfort in their presence. And then there’s the heartbreak. The inevitable end to an immature relationship, no matter how “adult-like” it may have seemed at the time. There’s wallowing in self pity. Blaming yourself for whatever it was that went wrong. Blaming your partner for it. Looking down, trying to be subtle when you see each other in school. Crying on your friends’ shoulders. And then you move on. Rinse, repeat.
I learned what it means to be afraid. I learned what it meant to be truly afraid and without control. The kind of fear that makes you triple check everything you do and say. The kind of fear that makes you believe what you do or say could be the difference between life and death. The kind of fear that forces your heart into your stomach and make you nauseous. The only time I felt safe was when I was away. And even then, there was the phone. The constant buzzing that I dare not ignore. I don’t think I’ve ever felt fear as deeply on a daily basis as I did when I was with him. I had been wanting to end it six months before I finally could. I was too afraid. If he was doing the kinds of things he was doing when he said he loved me, what would he be capable of if I left? Even after it was over, I was still shaken. I didn’t trust anyone. My relationships with men changed, perhaps forever.
I learned to hate myself. For a long time, I blamed everything he did on me. To this day, a part of me still does. He would tell me that if I had only done what he wanted, he wouldn’t have had to do what he did. He made me believe he had no choice. I was the one who fucked up. I deserved it. I learned to blame every bad thing that happened to me on something I did or said.
I learned how to lie. I lied to everyone. I lied to my friends, my parents, my teachers. I lied to people I should have trusted. I lied to people who could have helped me. I lied to the police. When they asked me about him, I looked at my shoes and lied. I said “no” to just about every question they asked me. I became an expert. I learned to use excessive amounts of cover up, and blame any injuries on my own clumsiness if anyone asked. Even though telling the truth could have saved me a lot of pain, both emotional and physical, part of me was always satisfied when I told a successful lie.
I learned about anger, and how difficult it is to control. When a mutual friend of ours, who I worked on the school’s literary magazine with told me that I “ruined him”, I went off. I didn’t care that a teacher was present. I didn’t care that several other students were present. I didn’t care that I was in a classroom. She humiliated me. She reinforced what I already knew - that it was all my fault. I started screaming. If I hadn’t left when I did, I would have started throwing chairs and desks at her. I don’t even remember the details of what I said, but my own rage and words were enough to have me storming out of the room.
Not only did I find a new side of myself that was filled with rage, I learned how seemingly insignificant things can set someone off and have potentially life or death consequences. I have never seen anger in someone the way I saw it in him. I could see it in his face, and that alone was enough to make me start shaking. Arguments so small that normal couples could simply laugh off would send him into a rage, stabbing his mattress with a ten inch knife. I became so submissive in fear that soon enough, I would be that mattress. And several times, I almost was.
I learned who my friends are. He wouldn’t let me hang out with my friends. Even girls were off-limits if he couldn’t be there. He didn’t really have many close friends, and that meant I couldn’t either. I lost touch with a lot of people that I thought I cared about, and that I thought cared about me. My real friends were with me when I reached the other side. They knew I was in trouble, and even though they didn’t say anything to me, even though I could rarely see them, they were there for me. When I confided in one friend that I wanted to end it, but was terrified of doing so, she offered to be nearby with her boyfriend in case it became violent, which I was certain it would, even in a public place. Unfortunately, even with that sense of backup, it didn’t provide enough security for me. He scared me into staying with him. He scared me into abandoning my friends, most of whom I completely lost touch with. But I was lucky enough to have one good friend stay by my side all the way through. She understood when I had to cancel plans and didn’t hold it against me, even though I refused to tell her what was going on. It took me nearly five years to confide in her how bad it really was, and the extent of it. She taught me what it means to be a good friend, and for that, I can’t thank her enough.
Perhaps most importantly, I learned that someone who says “I love you,” and means it, doesn’t treat you like that. They don’t use lies and coercion to get what they want out of you, to bleed you dry of your individuality so you can serve them. They don’t use fear as a weapon. When you cry, they hug you, not threaten you. Someone who loves you isn’t someone you’re scared to be alone with. Someone who loves you doesn’t need to say it. Their actions show it. | | Tags: domestic violence, dating abuse, love |
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| | Darling, you fucked up. |
It's weird to go from being so entangled in someone's life to being hardly anything at all. It sucks to hear the person you once cared for more than anyone talk about someone else the way you wish they still talked about you. And to think it wasn't that long ago when you could call them at two in the morning during finals week because your entire life was falling apart and they'd come running to your side.
I can't help but replay those words over and over in my head even though they're the last thing I want to hear.
I know how cliche it is for me to write this on Valentine's day, but it's pretty fitting when you think about how terrible we were with timing. We never quite figured that out.
And I know I promised, and I'm trying to stick to my word, but it's so much more difficult than I imagined. It's easy to make those promises when you have everything in the palm of your hand. It's hard to keep them when it's all slipping through your fingers. | |
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| | A Year Goes So Fast |
365 days and it barely feels like last week.
I think about the night I met you when you unlocked the bathroom for be me because I locked my keys in there. I wonder if you knew then what was going to happen six months later. I still wonder if maybe you’d be happy by now if you were still here. Things can change so much in a year. So much.
I always say that I don’t believe in a better place or anything like that, but sometimes I like to think that you’re in one. I hope you found whatever it was you were looking for. I hope you found the happiness that didn’t exist for you here.
And I guess it's none of my business,
but I hope you're well old friend. | |
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| | What You Least Expect |
Sometimes you think you need to talk, but what you really need is to listen.
Sometimes you get exactly what you needed at exactly the right time from the person you least expect it from.
For the person who gave that to me tonight, all I can say is thank you. | |
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| | It Begins and Never Ends |
March 11th, 2003. There’s a pit in my stomach. I walk into my parents room shaking all over. I’m going to throw up, I say. I tell them I’m sick. I don’t know how else to describe it at that age. They tell me to take a Melatonin and try to get some sleep. I can’t say I blame them, because this happens every night.
In a few years, I’ll learn that this feeling has a name. Anxiety. I’ll have massive panic attacks. I’ll find myself sitting on the steps of a subway entrance crying hysterically while people walk by and don’t say a word because they’re used to seeing crazy people like me. I’ll pick up everything I can get my hands on in the kitchen and throw it as hard as I can, hoping for some relief that never comes. I’ll start drinking what the average person would call way too much. I’ll punch walls and break my hand. I’ll wind up in the Emergency Room. Eventually I’ll see a doctor who will put me on Xanax, which I’ve taken before, but never orally or legally, and it feels like a godsend, at least for the first few days until I realize that I’m not cured, because unmedicated, I’m still the same fucking wreck I’ve always been.
And I’m scared.
I don’t want to feel this way forever. | |
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| | Why? |
Looking for answers is such a waste of time.
Because if there were any, maybe things could have been different.
An empty chair at all the tables... | |
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| | May Angels Lead You In |
If news travels fast in small towns, it travels even faster in small buildings. It took me two days to find out Liz was dead when I was twelve, but it took no more than a matter of minutes to find out about Jackie. When people think of suicide, they think about a young girl’s poor family and friends who will forever be scarred by her absence. They don’t think about the girl who walked into her room to find her roommate hanging and let out a piercing scream that would be heard throughout the entire building. They don’t think about the awkwardness, sadness, and horror that fell over the building within minutes. They don’t think about groups of terrified students standing in the hallways, unsure of what to do before the police arrived. They don’t think about the fact that thousands of strangers would know before her parents. They don’t think about police officers carrying a bodybag out of a dorm room hours later.
I didn’t quite believe my roommate when she came into the room saying “I think some girl just killed herself.” I don't know what I thought she meant, but I didn't think for a second that she was serious. I was sitting on my bed with Tyler, and we just looked at each other, silent and confused. My roommate grabbed a box of tissues and a water bottle and ran out of the room to take them to the girl who had just unleashed an unearthly shriek below us.
The entire building knew before the police did, and the entire quad must have known before they arrived.
I cried before I even knew who it was. I was standing outside on the sidewalk next to the building when my dad called to talk about a doctor appointment. He knew right away that I wasn’t alright. I collapsed to my knees in tears as the snow fell around me and tried to explain in a mess of words what happened. I can’t imagine how I formed a coherent sentence, but I must have, because the message got through. He asked a few questions, none of which I had answers to. I didn’t even know who it was. There’s nothing quite like knowing that someone you know is dead, quite possibly one of your friends, and not knowing who it is.
There was a shallow attempt to distract ourselves by heading to the tower and playing video games in Frank’s suite, followed by trying to stomach chicken nuggets from Wendy’s in the campus center, both of which were unsuccessful. It was in Frank’s room that I found out it was Jackie. I felt sick. I wanted to collapse. I didn't have the energy to be awake, but I couldn't sleep.
We went back to our building, feeling sick after just eating. Second floor girls cried on the floor of our hallway, temporarily expelled from their hall as police officers below took the body out. I sat with Laurel, who sat against the wall wailing, reading and rereading her last text message conversation with Jackie and blaming herself for everything. “She was fine four hours ago!” she cried. It was hard to see a friend in that kind of pain. We all told her it wasn’t her fault, that there was nothing anyone could have done, but there’s only so much that can be said.
There was a building meeting at 10:00 PM. They didn’t say anything we didn’t already know. Jackie had taken her own life. Everyone in the cramped basement room wore the same face and stared at the ground, trying with everything they had to hold it together.
Adirondack did not sleep that night. Noise was heard from all rooms and throughout the halls as people visited friends and hosted late night discussions about death, or more commonly, steering as far away from the subject as possible. Girls went to the bathroom in pairs. Everyone was terrified to be alone. People with extreme grudges asked if one another were okay.
Almost everyone in the building went home for the weekend. Possibly to be with their families, but most of them just needed to get away for a couple days. When Sunday came around and people returned, things were calmer, but still not okay. These kinds of stories never turn out okay. I've never believed in a better place, but sometimes I like to think she's in one. | |
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