"Um... Princess... It's the first time I forgot to put the garbage out."
The car went silent for most of the rest of the way to the train as I realized what I was doing yet again.
So maybe here's another list. I don't know what to call it, but it's a list of things I remember, again, but I guess it'll be less neat since they're not soundbites or short things, also with no order or deliberate relationship references.
He whispered "I love you" in my ear on a chilly summer night as we sat on a park bench together. It was the first time anybody had ever said it to me and somehow, it was much, much colder than I'd ever imagined. Maybe it's like they say about dog training- if the dog misinterprets your voice as angry or something, whisper because it's much harder to convey any sort of tone with a whisper. Maybe that was it. Maybe I couldn't hear tone. Or maybe there was none. It just wasn't the stuff dreams were made of.
Ok, this one will be hard. I'm emetophobic, right? Extremely so. And he came home so, so, so drunk from a work party that I wasn't invited to and he got so sick. And he spent hours in the bathroom and finally came to lie beside me in bed and the stench was unbearable. Absolutely unbearable. I told him to sleep on the sofa. "I own this bed. You sleep on the sofa." I explained that if I slept on the sofa, he'd pass by me every time he went to the bathroom and I couldn't handle that. He said, "Too bad. This is my bed." Keep in mind here that I'm absolutely overwhelmed with panic at this point. Phobic panic. I turn my body and push him off the bed with my feet. He stands up and he's got that look in his eye- that glossed over look, you know? And he grabs my arms so hard I get instant bruises where his fingers are. I slip out of his grip and he shoves me into a corner and comes at me. He grabs me again and when I get out of it this time, I punch him in the face. He comes at me again, even more ragey and I punch him again and flee my corner.
Eventually, from my hiding spot, I hear him getting dressed so I go see what he's doing. In his drunken state, he takes his keys. I grab the sole set of back door keys and I lie in the hallway, which is conveniently the exact width of the length of my legs if I sit with them straight on the floor, and I use my feet and locked knees to hold the apartment door shut to prevent him from leaving. This only makes him madder. He threatens to throw up on me if I don't move. And he would too, judging by the goings on so far that night. In my absolute panic, I manage to stay there anyway. He walks away for a bit. I close my eyes and pray to a God I don't yet believe in to please make it stop. He comes back and starts kicking me in the thigh. "Move," he repeats between kicks. Finally, I move and I run to grab the phone and I call his mom. Mamma's boy kryptonite. I put him on the phone and I go back to sit by the door again. Within a half hour, she's there and she tells him to pack a bag. She tells me I need to leave this relationship. I deserve better than this. But her tone isn't concern. No, instead, it's condescension and manipulation (she always hated me).
Soon, they were gone and I was alone for the week.
It was an ice stormy night I don't even remember what started it, but I just wanted it to stop. I told him I was going to kill myself. He said, "Quit talking about it and just do it already." I took whatever coat I could find and headed down to my ice-covered car. I think I've told this story a thousand times, but as I scraped my car off, the cold tears and anger relentless, a stranger approached me and asked me if I needed help. He'd help me scrape off my car and all the while I thought, "he's helping me die faster." But he made me promise that I'd be ok, which is such a weird thing to do. At the time, and still now, I guess, promises are everything to me. You don't break a promise. "Promise me you'll be ok?" And even though I knew that it was wrong that a stranger cared more for me than the person I lived with, I went for a weepy drive and eventually found myself back in the apartment, crawling into bed with him again.
He'd called me a gold digger so many times and put me down for being in school rather than working and every day, he'd come home and tell me I'd done nothing all day when I was applying for jobs like crazy. His car died for some reason (he had about four accidents a year) so he used mine to go visit a friend of his early in the morning. My interview was at one at a downtown hospital in a breast cancer research clinic. He assured me he'd be back in time. He showed up at twelve thirty. There was no way I would make it. I was so disappointed and upset and his solution was to drive me so I wouldn't have to find parking. He drove (and is the worst driver imaginable- ragey, taking risks that are completely unnecessary and unbelievably dangerous) and dropped me off at the wrong door. Needless to say, I was late, frazzled, upset and otherwise useless as far as a job interview might go. When I got to the clinic finally, my interviewer had gone for the day. That was the end of that.
I was in my corduroy coat that I wore around the apartment like a housecoat because it was just long enough (but not all that long) and warm. The button holes had warn out though, so it opened randomly, so it wasn't like I considered myself covered or anything. It was merely to keep warm in the house.
The incredibly old landlord knocked at the door. I heard them talking in the hallway and half a second later, there he was, in the kitchen with me and you could see that he was just as shocked as I was, that somehow both of us could see how it was inappropriate and a disrespectful violation for me but he couldn't. After the landlord left, I asked him what he was thinking agreeing to let the landlord in when I wasn't dressed and his reaction was this sort of vague confusion, like he could not see how he did anything wrong. He could not, even after explanation, see how I was affected. It was like I really didn't matter to the point where explaining that I do matter was something so far beyond his comprehension that he just blanked out.
He got this huge tv from his cousin for two hundred dollars. It was a fifty-six inch projection tv. And we were sitting on the couch and he had the remote and was just flicking channels, not watching anything in particular. He came across a dark movie, right in time for a horribly graphic scene where a girl's boyfriend ties her to a bed and invites all his friends into the bedroom to rape her. And she's screaming and it's the worst scene in the history of movies and I told him to change the channel because even the "milder", less graphic scenes of that nature I can't stand to watch or even hear or be anywhere in the vicinity of and he just wouldn't. And so I'm yelling at him to change the channel and he looks at me irritated and says, "Why? I want to see what happens," and looks away. I had to leave the house. I got into my car and I drove for the amount of time it takes to run through an entire movie, just in case. And when I came home, he was asleep on the couch and I slipped by and went to bed alone.
My brother came to visit to help tile the bathroom or something (i.e. to do all of whatever it was they were doing) and as they worked "together", somehow, the subject turned to me. I was sick with the same thing I have now, except that I nearly died last time and for a long time I was on four of these pills a day plus four beta blockers and I was told to keep my activity to a minimum on account of the dying thing due to my heart rate being so high all the time. And they worked and chatted and I sat in front of the computer doing the only thing I could, really, while my body failed. (After this time around with these pills, I don't even know how I survived that flare up. I have no fucking idea.) Anyway, so eventually, they're done, and my brother leans on the half-wall separating the kitchen from the living room where I am and asks me why I don't get off my ass and get a job. You know what that's like? Having somebody convince a person who actually does love you that you're a lazy gold digger who does nothing? When you're dying too? I ended up getting into a screaming fight with my brother and he stormed out and I was left there in that house with a guy who seemed oddly satisfied.
He fell asleep on the sofa nearly every night. And during the day on weekends, he'd criticize me for not planning anything to do with him and for being utterly boring. So around seven or eight, I'd ask him what he wanted to do. "Nothing. I'm too tired," he'd say and he'd promptly fall asleep in front of the tv. Eleven o'clock would roll around and the phone would ring and suddenly, he's in the shower, putting the smells on and styling the things and just as he's about to open the door to leave, I ask what he's doing. "Going out to see [his friend] at a club downtown." And he'd open the door and leave. Just like that. I don't even know how many times that happened, but at the end of it all, I started to wonder if he was gay.
He joked that I didn't trust him and I retaliated that he didn't trust me either. His response was, "Oh yeah? I do trust you. My email password is [password goes here]. See? I have nothing to hide." After the first infidelity I found out about, I grew even more distrusting until one evening, when he wasn't answering his phone, I plugged in the password. It wasn't right. He had lied to me. I texted him by email that he was a liar and he called me immediately to do damage control. In the process, he gave me his real password, but also convinced me that using it was unnecessary but if I did, that was fine because, again, he had nothing to hide. A few days later, it had eaten at me until I just had to do it. And there, on the screen, were examples of more cheating. I was so upset I could barely breathe. Somehow later on, he managed to explain it all away and I felt slightly better but wary.
The following night, I had to go to a friend of mine's show and while I was there, I thought of all the things I wanted to ask him and when I got home, something didn't feel right again. I went back into his email to prove myself wrong and found myself digging a little deeper, where I found even more horrible things. Devastating things. I texted him immediately, calling him a variety of names intended to make it known that I knew he was a huge liar and cheater. He called me right away to do the usual damage control, but when it seemed futile, he said he couldn't talk because he had to go to a Hallowe'en party. I asked if he was serious. He said yes and a rude goodbye before pausing to wait for mine. I sat there in silent disbelief. He said he'd call me later and repeated the same rude goodbye. "How can you do this?" I asked. "I have to go," he said before letting out one more rude goodbye and hanging up. I flooded him with text messages. Finally, he broke apart from the party (which was in his building) and webcammed with me. He was smiling. I was busted up and he was smiling. "How could you do this to me?" I asked. He replied, "I guess that means we're breaking up?" and then, still smiling, he waved at me. A sarcastic, artificially cheerful wave. I was livid. What kind of person does that? Turns out he was pretty wasted, he'd tell me the next day after waking up feeling horrible. He tried to do damage control, but I wasn't very consolable.
Later that night, he called me to talk things out, but I guess he didn't count on me being me and after a bit, he lashed out, saying, "Can we just drop it? Just drop it. I don't want to talk about it anymore. Talk about something else or I'm hanging up."
It's actually harder to come up with specific examples than I thought. It was more of a general feeling the whole way through. A feeling of not being good enough, but instead of it being a question of self-worth on my part, it was actually deliberate on their part. Telling me I'm not the right girl because I don't play softball and he always dreamed of being on a softball team with his future wife. Telling me I looked horrible in whatever clothes I was wearing. Telling me that trying to hug him in public made me a disgusting and inappropriate person. Hiding me from his friends- one time even literally. He hid me in a room with the door shut and told me to be quiet. And that general impression you get when you're with somebody and you know they're embarrassed by you and everything you do or say.
To be honest for a change about this, the first time I got off the plane in February 2008 and met evil for the first time, he looked terrible. I remember it so well. He was sitting there with his left arm up along the top of the airport seats, wearing frumpy pants and the frumpiest of hoodies unzipped to reveal a more frumpy tshirt underneath. He looked how you'd picture anybody who spends too much time on the internet, you know? Out of shape and inadequate. I barely looked at him until we were in the car, in the dark. His hands were mutantly tiny. Smaller than mine, both in size and girth. Tiny hands. We stopped at the pharmacy to get me a toothbrush and when I talked about getting lube, he left to go sit in the car without me. I got some anyway and the cashier joked with me and as I left said, "Y'all have fun now," and let out a chuckle. It was funny. I got into the car and told him what the guy'd said and he rolled his eyes and told me I was embarrassing.
It seems so absurd now, you know? It seems like this alternate universe where it's so obviously wrong. Like that every day had a million reasons why I should have left every single relationship till this one. Every day. Like waking up on Sunday morning to the smell of crepes and walking into the kitchen only to find they'd all been eaten already. "I didn't think you'd want any." I taught you how to fucking make them. Why wouldn't I want any? Who makes an entire batch of crepes to eat them alone? And that recipe makes something like nine crepes too.
Just him saying, "Everybody sees potential in you except me," was enough to leave. But no, that was in month three and I stayed six years.
Or the other telling me he'd never marry me and then deciding maybe he'll give me a little more time to grow on him. What?! And when I'd ask him if he even loved me, he'd say, "You're growing on me."
The worst was how one would fight for me, even if he didn't actually want me. Why bother with the damage control if you want out? And the other would just quit. "I guess that means I don't love you," he'd say, not even making eye contact.
And yet, at the end of the day, that's what this relationship is missing. It's missing this thing in his eyes where he's got this underlying panic and need to run away. That's what he's missing. An overwhelming, yet stifled, insecurity. It's as if I would feel more comfortable if I knew he was more defective than I am. And even if I know that a relationship that broken is so unhealthy, I can't help but wish I wasn't such an underdog in this relationship all the time. In the other ones, deep down, I knew I was better than them. But in this one? It feels like I'm constantly messing up, constantly ruining things, constantly making this amazing guy's life far more difficult than it should be.
It sucks.
I love him to death, but sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get over this feeling like I'm just the interim girlfriend between his icky past and the easy, content, stable girl he's going to end up with (and who he deserves). It's like he's my foster. I take him in, fix him up a little, and then he moves on to his foreverfamily.
I can't shake this feeling that I'm just not good enough for him.
Maybe I am supposed to be alone. Maybe I'm too detrimental in pairs.
You make your own happiness, they say and I wish that was true. I wish I had the coping mechanisms and selective amnesia to make that true. I wish I didn't carry with me all the hurts and patterns of indifference, disrespect and betrayal of trust. I wish I wasn't so compelled to predict what might happen next in a futile effort to protect myself. I wish I didn't project all the most horrible things I've come to know to be true about doing life with a boy onto this one who, if I'm honest, is only hard to deal with if I make him that way. I set him up every day. And I yell at him every day. And I criticize him every day. And all these things have absolutely nothing to do with him, but this shitty version of reality I'd become accustomed to.
The damage isn't so much that we are wronged by others- that's inevitable. The damage is when we become convinced that those wrongs, the horrible treatment and disappointment are normal, or sometimes even right. The damage is when we begin to believe that we both deserve this treatment and that we somehow cause it to happen.
That's the worst part, I think. I have this idea in my head that the minute I go all in emotionally, the minute I let go, that's when he'll dig his fangs in and take advantage of my vulnerability. That is what I am trained for at this point and I know it's a huge lack of trust on my part as well as just a horrible judgment of a person so not deserving of it. He just doesn't have it in him to take advantage of anybody, let alone me, the person who he loves- but actually loves, not just whatever it was I'd grown used to where that word gets thrown around and its backing is empty promises, disappointment, disrespect and infidelity.
Anyway, I'm done writing. How do you say that? I'm written out? I'm wrought? :D
Goodnight.
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