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Love
and Scars |
It seems as though every girl looks at others who are in abusive relationships as naive, perhaps even stupid. “I’ll never be like that.” A common phrase we hear ourselves saying while watching trashy talk shows about domestic violence. However, abusive relationships aren’t just about weakness or low self-confidence, often abusive relationships are started with love, it's loving a person like you never thought you could. I met him my freshmen year in college and was instantly taken with his deep brown eyes. He was two years my elder and a well-known basketball player at my college. There was something about him that I was immediately drawn to, I had never met someone like him and I knew the instant that we spoke he would be my boyfriend. We dated for a little over two years and in that time I was completely his. I was infatuated with the way he was in control of his life, straight A’s, a promising athletic career and being a popular figure at parties. While his life seemed to be heading in the right direction, while I was his girlfriend I allowed my life to play second fiddle. My grades were low, my own personal athletic career mediocre and my social life dependent on which places he wanted to go to on weekend nights. It wasn’t always like that. In the beginning he made me feel special, as though I was the most important thing in his life. Always taking care of me, allowing me to enjoy my freshmen year. After three months he slowly began to change, all of a sudden my dorm room only became a place to visit in between classes. I was forced to stay at his apartment for weeks on end, with little to no contact with my own friends unless they so happened to stop by his place or be at the same party we were attending. My family was slowly being extracted from my life, he made it seem as though phone calls to my mother and father were ‘baby’ things to do, although his father called his cell-phone almost everyday. The first time he hit me, I was sure he had to be on something. We had attended one his teammates party and we had had several drinks but he had disappeared several times through out the night only to return with stink breath and dilated eyes. Before we began dating, I had heard rumors that he was a heavy drinker, but he never displayed a habit while I was around. When we returned to his apartment, he furiously accused me of cheating on him and demanded an explanation. When I informed him that he was insane, that I would never think of hurting him, he threw me into a mirror, my back sliced by broken glass and he repeatedly punched me, leaving me with a swollen lip and black eye. I tried to leave that night but stupidly I believed his apologies and agreed to give him a second chance. Unknowingly that day I gave him the OK to hit me. We finally broke up half way through my junior year. He had been cheating on me with the same girl for at least three months and never tried to hide it. He decided he’d rather be with her and I thanked God for the easy ‘out.’ He had cheated on me throughout our relationship and I was always pretended I was stupid, if I didn’t I would’ve been physically hurt, instead of just the emotional scars that I was forced to carry. After a fractured nose, endless black eyes and scars that are still evident on my body to this day, I was free of my baggage. The last year and a half I had left in school were spent with friends, freedom and a boyfriend who I wasn’t scared of. Besides the occasional drunk ‘I miss you’ phone call, I was free of the abuse that I had let take over my life beforehand.
“You changed your cell phone number.” The voice on the other end said. Immediately I knew it was my ex. “You can’t call me here.” I said as I hung up the phone. I thought that it was over and the phone calls would stop after that, however some how he managed to find my new number. My cell phone rang day in and day out with messages of “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m not like that anymore, you were the one person who loved me. I want to marry you.” Promises of change, a new life and a new relationship flooded my phone, messages that contained tears, threats of coming to find me, and than threats on my boyfriends life. Recently and because of the constant harassment, I was forced to change my number again, only giving it to those people who are the closest to me. No longer can random friends from college reach me, out of fear that the number may get passed on. And although I moved again becoming just a number in a big city, fear that he may find me overwhelms me sometimes to the point of tears. The abuse has long been out of my life, however I’m not sure I will ever be the same, I’ve lost the innocence I had once had, knowing that love isn’t always pure. My boyfriend who has also come to be my best friend knows that the road I had been down was a long, tiring and hurtful one. I may never fully recover from the pain I had once been in but everyday he shows me that not all men are like that. And so I keep believing that maybe one day I’ll sleep through a night and that someone will love me without wanting to hurt me because that love should never hurt. end |
Graduation
came and went, going home was a welcomed event and I couldn’t
wait to begin my new life and let go of the memories that had haunted
me. It was six months after graduation when my house phone rang.
My mother called me upstairs to tell me that ‘Rich’ was
on the phone, my heart fluttered as that was the name of my crush
at the time but when I said hello it wasn’t who I had been
expecting. |
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