WARNING: I do ask that you not try to guess who the other person in this post is. I have had a lot of trouble deciding whether or not I was going to post things that pertain to other people, but I figure -- hey, it's still my life. So the best I can do is say... don't guess, you're probably wrong. Also there are two sides to everything. My side is right, but that's not the point.
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For some reason, every goddamn screenwriting teacher always wants to go around the room asking three questions: what was your happiest moment, your saddest moment, and your scaredest moment?
The first two are laughably easy.
1) Happiest: The day I discovered a Coca Cola Freestyle machine.
2) Saddest: The day after my mom died.
Because on the day my mom actually died, I still got to eat pie for breakfast.
 The day after she died, we were out of pie and she was still dead. Totes sadder. | ||
When asked these dreaded questions as a freshman, I usually just picked some random event in my life that sounded kind of scary because the general fear that a ghost might be living in my intestines felt like too complicated a thing to explain to a group of strangers.
 Plus 18-year-old me didn't have one event that stuck out as particularly scary.
23-year-old me does.
Before my 20s, I didn't know what it felt like to be really afraid. I'd had panic attacks -- but I hadn't been that sort of scared that sends so much adrenalin pumping through your veins that you can no longer feel if you've shit your pants. Of course, you assume you've shit your pants, but you can't be sure because your skin tingles with the numbness of dissociation as you pretend you aren't in hell.
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I felt this fear for the first time when my boyfriend at the time came home -- mouth dry and unhinged, eyes puffy and drooping, swaying like yo Grandma --
You know, drunk off his ass.
Side note -- this also happened to be the night that I discovered Omegle which, in spite of the unfortunate lack of penises, I thought was a lot of fun. I'd even made a new group of friends in the form of a bunch of kids from Joliet, Illinois, playing video games in their mom's basement.
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His explanation went something along the lines of: the sheets are messed up. There are people on the internet. You had sex with them. QED.
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| Because fuck logic. |
Now this would have just been a hilarious story to tell the grandkids...
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| And THEN he thought I had SEX with them! lolololol |
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| That's French for Boyfriend soup. |
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| But Lord Boyfriend... you forgot to wash your hands... before you tried to kill me... |
As a 5'4", 115 lb woman, I've dated men as tall as 6'7" and as heavy as 250 lbs. It would take a lot of effort for me to find someone who I could date and who wouldn't immediately kill me in a fight.
Just hanging out with someone that much bigger than you is a little bit freaky -- consider the cuddling.
The best I can do to help you live the general fear is to imagine that you're dating Andre the Giant.
Now imagine getting in a fight with Andre the Giant.
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The first thing that crosses your mind is how fucking easy it would be for him to just crush your face if he wanted to crush your face. There's really nothing you could do about it.
That was the feeling I had when Andre closed his meaty fingers around my neck. I remember thinking -- have I shit my pants? Because it's very possible I shit my pants. And also thinking that breathing shouldn't be this hard unless I'm eating ice cream, because, duh,...
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| Ice cream>Breathing |
I'm proud to say that my response was to claw ineffectually at his hands and give a very stern facial expression, which, apparently worked, because he released me and continued yelling about how I was a fucking whore or something.
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| Who remembers these things? |
You will be proud to learn that I cannot take a slap. No, one for the count and I went down like the damn Hindenburg.
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| Tumblr: TOO SOON! |
After getting choked AND hit, my next reaction was to pick up my phone and call the police. Drunk boyfriend then thought it was smart to stagger off into the night, like a pirate baby.
I shit you not, when the police came -- two of them -- tried to chase that mother fucker down. They gave up and asked if I wanted to file a report, but mostly I wanted to go to sleep. An hour or so after they leave, drunk boyfriend comes back, crying impressively loudly and apologizing.
This would have been much sweeter if he hadn't been trying to break down my door.
He'd literally managed to cave in the chain lock, when I sat there, huddled by the bed, 911 to my ear.
That, I think, is what fear feels like. Fear feels like the sound of your shitty, plywood, college door as it buckles under the weight of a man who is so shitfaced that he can no longer feel pain.
Forunately, the answer is yes. A shitty plywood door will hold long enough for two out of shape cops to return and again, fail to chase down a maniac.
My favorite part of that story, however, is the look on the Joliet boys' faces after I realized we never ended our conversation.
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| True story, I was Facebook friends with them until like few months ago when I figured it would be weird to be friends with someone whose only connection to me was Omegle and domestic abuse. Hi Zachary! |
Anyway, that, my friends, is the last night I dated Andre the Boyfriend. It is not, bizarrely, the last time I considered dating Andre the Boyfriend.
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| I don't know why either. |
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| I learned everything I know about love from Snapple |
And yet there was something that I missed about our relationship.
The guilt of that desire weighed on my mind -- what was wrong with me? I chalked it up to the fact that Andre had good qualities too. He was clever, and mindful, and knew how to hit a girl...
But that didn't outweigh the bad things, the rational part of me said. Of course, I imagine that most abusive relationships start the same way mine did.
Andre was so cool, and in control, and passionate. Being around him made me feel like a character in a movie -- everything was so vibrant.
It was like being around someone whose 'emotions knob 'got flipped all the way up to ten. And at the beginning of a relationship, it's all exciting! So that meant we were ten times as excited as usual!
And it's not like he was smacking me up to begin with. I'd like to think if he up and kamehamehaed me on the first date, I wouldn't have stuck around. It was gradual.
I remember the first time I thought maybe there was something abusive. A couple weeks into our dating and he thought I was flirting with a guy at a party, so he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away. It definitely felt weird, but I justified it. We had been sort of pretending not to REALLY like each other all along, because, you know, if you LIKE the person you're dating, you're totally a pussy...
So I told myself that he was just showing that our relationship mattered, right? I mean, shitty way to show it, but hey love's supposed to hurt or whatever. It's not like he bruised me or ate my liver.
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| Yet. |
So that's how it went for a while. The lows didn't feel low enough to justify ending a relationship -- which is scary anyway -- and the highs were just high enough to cancel them out.
Very slowly the aggressions would creep up and get worse... but somehow it still felt like he knew what he was doing and I didn't.
Instead of giving me the silent treatment when I was late, he'd yell at me. Then he would yell at me anytime I did something he didn't like -- whether it was clearly wrong or not. And eventually he yelled at me when HE did things wrong.
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| Am I a stupid bitch because you urinated on yourself while you were drunk?... Did I make you do that?.... Am I a wizard?! |
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| You got me! I almost believed that I made you make out with that girl at a party, but I'm 98% sure you be prankin. |
...but again I tried to justify it. I told myself -- okay, so he's mentally ill. I can't blame someone for being mentally ill. I still like him when he's nice, so it'd be WRONG for me to leave him just because he's having a hard time.
So I kept on. It started to become a secret badge of honor that I was actually PROUD of. Sure, my boyfriend was hard to be around... but I could take it. I was strong enough. I felt like... hey, maybe I can even help him.
If he was abusive, I'd tell him to stop and then later he was also so apologetic. He said he KNEW what he did was wrong and he was so sorry... that it wasn't HIM it was because of the alcohol, or the anger, or the lack of Fancy Cakes.
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| And who could blame him? |
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So we just... didn't. Somehow I found that if the other person didn't agree to a break up... it just didn't happen. So we kept on. Everything was fine one day, and the next there'd be an explosion.
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| Tumbler: 2 SOON!!!!11!!! |
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| "No Daddy! Jolteon didn't just cast 'Thunder'. That's just my thighs." |
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| I emailed Obama about making it a new holiday. High hopes. |
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| Fun fact: Not the thing to say to a girl whose mother killed herself. |
And of course, I felt guilty. And sad. And like God was testing me. So I visited him in the suicide ward. As soon as the government had stripped him of his shoelaces and promised he was sane, however (aka, when his insurance ran out) I was gone for good.
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| Bye bye bitch! |
But somehow that feeling remained that... I missed him.
When I didn't hang out with him everything felt so... dull. The world was boring without those crazy mood swings that had come to feel normal. I felt unimportant, like no one really needed me anymore. I didn't have that vindication of KNOWING that I was the sane one, the "right" one, the 'better' one.
When I started dating the next guy... I struggled a lot. I KNEW he liked me, and that I liked him, and that it was a way healthier relationship... but it was so boring. He NEVER called me a stupid fucking whore cunt.
I was fortunate that I had all my friends and family. I was lucky to have started out so arrogant that I KNEW I wasn't really a stupid fucking whore cunt. I recognize that I got off easy with one choke. One year, and I was out.
But I'd tricked myself in so many ways -- that I was helping him, that it was normal, that it somehow made me better by comparison -- but most of all, I tricked myself into believing that his actions had jack shit to do with me.
Andre wasn't a bad person. I still believe that. Argue with me if you want...
... but I just don't believe people are bad, most of the time. People can do bad things. Andre probably did/does have a mental illness, or a dependence problem that effects his thinking and behaviors.
I also know now that that ain't my problem.
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| I got 99 problems but snitch/abusive relationship ain't one. |
He didn't do those things because of me. I wasn't helping him, I wasn't hurting him, it wasn't about me. It was about someone who was fucking crazy being fucking crazy.
And I happened to have purchased a ticket. Getting out of the theater might have been a pain the ass because the movie kept crying and screaming at me... but even if the protagonist's a brunette high schooler named Quinn who's raised by her dad after her mother dies...
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| WTF Leigh Whannell? The next thing you're going to tell me is that she has a brother and grew up on a street called "Brenner."
... that doesn't mean the movie's about me.
Plus, once you get out you have to acclimate to normal relationships again. And in normal relationships your boyfriend doesn't drive 150 mph on the freeway because you were late for an impromptu road trip.
In the real world, you drive 70 mph, but sometimes, if a cop isn't around, you can drive 80.
But eventually that goes away, and after a few months, I felt normal again.
Plus, you're alive. And that's pretty cool. |
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