breaking the girl

I fell in love with the wrong guy when I was 18. I had a crush on him for years - he lived down the street from me, he was on the football team in high school, a few years older, devastatingly good looking....you know the rest.

We started dating at a time I was feeling a bit lost - I was taking a few courses in college, working full time, and enjoying the lack of rules and structure. At first we hit it off famously. And we drank a lot. And then after a while I noticed that he drank a whole hell of a lot. By this time I was living with him, out of co-dependence rather than necessity. I NEEDED to be around him just as he needed to drink. I gave up my sense of self and climbed right down the rabbit hole. And in retrospect, that made me an awfully easy target.

It started off slowly - fighting, yelling, derogatory behavior, but again, youth and passion and drink all made that somewhat normal. And then it got worse. He started to endanger my life, driving while guzzling pints of vodka, threatening to run off the road into a tree, by forcing (yes, I know, no one really forces you) to drink much more than is a good idea, so much so that one night it almost killed me. And then it got even worse. He pushed me out of a moving car. He hit me. He forced me to have sex with him, once in front of his friends, once so bad it's not worth repeating, and some other times, too.

It's insidious, this type of abuse. Because by the time they wear you down to a point you might do things you never thought you'd do, you are confused and depressed and sure you are going crazy. And I was such a little girl at the time, with so little experience to draw on. I was trying to escape my childhood, and I ran straight into hell.

And the funny thing is I wasn't one of the women who truly have limited choices. I had a home I could go back to if I had to. I had friends I could talk to. But since I was enduring it, it shamed me and I had to keep it a secret. I could tell no one, because there was no one who would understand. I wouldn't have been able to explain it because I didn't understand it myself.

Slowly I began hating him and hating myself. I stopped talking to friends, and I lied to them when I did. I put myself again and again in a position to be abused. I remember feeling like I was watching a movie while floating on the ceiling. I remember being so upset I would throw up.

And in between the nightmare he worked a sick magic, proving and showing why I couldn't leave and why I could do no better. I knew he was full of shit, but I couldn't make my limbs move in the opposite direction no matter how hard I screamed inside.

And then one night I walked in the door and saw him sitting in a chair, a smoke in one hand and a pint in the other, and as he turned in his chair to face me and the face of pure evil looked back, I heard a voice inside that said you don't have to do this anymore. I dropped my groceries in the entry way and I turned and ran as fast as I could to my car, drove to a friend's house, and I never saw him again. I never went back for my belongings, I never spoke to him again. It was done.

And still, I never told anyone what happened. Yes, we broke up, yes it's over...yes yes yes. But never about what really happened, about the torture and abuse. Never because in my mind I had chosen to stay. I had CHOSEN to stay, and I had a CHOICE.

When I went back to college full time I switched my major to psychology. I wanted to learn more about how this could happen, and what I could do about it. The DV shelter came from this, doing good to replace something bad. It took several more years to focus that work inward instead of outward, but right before I had a nervous breakdown I did something about that too. That's a song for another day, this has exhausted me enough.

This isn't a story to incite pity. I realize there are much worse stories to tell. This is simply a glimpse into what shaped me - this cornocopia of bad choices sparked a life path I had might not taken otherwise. Or perhaps it was in me all along. But that would mean going back even further.