In my life I've been betrayed by a wide range of people, friends, family, strangers even. However none of those hurt as much as my last and greatest one. The last one was attempted by my ex boyfriend, whom probably was my first real love, but executed by me. It is neither a fairytale or a love story nor a story with a happy ending.
It all started perfectly, like a real ass fairytale. He was the fucking prince charming on that fucking white horse. He showered me with flowers, gifts just like the big book says. I was a bartender at that time, we've met at the university, we were friends first because I had this unshakable gut feeling that I couldn't and shouldn't ever trust him. However I was just a fallible, naive girl so one morning I woke up and had this text on my phone, from him, and I had these stupid butterlies in my stomach.
After our first "official" date, I lost my head. He took me by storm, he conquered my heart against my better judgment, so I gave in and the most unexpected thing happened, he didn't stop trying to impress me. I still remember precisely every minute of those times. My shift ended at 2 am on every work day and he was waiting for me every goddamn night in front of the gate, and we just drove around for hours until like 5 in the morning, talking about who the hell knows what. Every time he looked at me I got a teensy bit scared because I saw something in his eyes, that I've always wanted to see: love, enchantment. Before him, I'd never imagined that anyone could look at my that way. So after 1 month my security system alarted me, that if I'll continue to go down this road I would definitely get screwed over. In other words I pushed him away. I told him that I don't want to be with him, and we ended it.
Then christmas came, and I was completely and utterly alone, and he was the only fucking thing on my mind. So I went out with my friends, got wasted and did some stupid ass shady shit. The next morning before I went to bed, I texted him, that I miss him...he replied in the morning but not in the way I would've wanted him to, so we said goodbye and I felt like shit. Then I went to work and I was super down, I couldn't smile, I was just existing. Then the only plausable thing that could've brought me back to life, happened...he wrote me. So that day we spent the whole night together, after my shift we drove around a bit with him and his friends, then we watched a movie, and after everybody had left and there were just the two of us, we had sex and we talked until the sun came up. Two days later, we were officially a couple. I was deliriously happy, as a clam.
So here I was, in a relationship with a guy, whom I knew was toxic, and violent and a total douche, yet I was as happy as I'd ever been. In retrospect I should've listened to my never silent gut, that has kept shouting at me to leave asap. But I had no intention to leave, I was having the time of my life. Our life was perfect, we stayed up every day until the sun had come up, we slept in, then we cooked, made love, went to work or to an exam and then repeated the whole thing all over again, and it went on and on until the exam period has ended. We had some bumps in the road by that time, which in hindsight were probably red lights, but I had no urge to take them in consideration. I had this rock solid intuition that I am the girl who's able to change him.
Boy...was I clueless.
A few months have passed by, like this. It was just him and I against the world, cuddling, losing our heads, and our sense of reality. Nothing else existed, everything was a blur, but us. And for a dumb, careless second I genuinely believed that we were meant to be together, and that all the crappy things that have happened in my life were just obstacles that I had to overcome, in order for me to be worthy of this kind of love. I thought that he is the guy, who'll pick up all my broken pieces from the ground and glue me back together, and I'll do the same for him, so we can be whole together. I thought here's my chance to finally be happy. And for just a blink of an eye I got lost in love...
Then everything has started to fall apart...it all started with a dumb fight, about a party, that was our first break up. That was the first time he attampted violance in my direction. He started off small though, he just yanked me in my work place. So I obviously broke it off, immediately. I felt crushed, I couldn't even fit it in my mind, I am not stupid, but I just couldn't wrap my head around it. I was his blond princess, it was us against the world, I was his light in the darkness. /his words, not mine/ Then how could he do this, how could he hurt me physically?! It just felt like, the sky was the ground and left was right and every goddamn thing was upside down. Then he proposed that we make up, which I was very relucant to agree to, then he asked me to meet him for just one second, and after that he won't btoher me anymore. So I said yes, I got in his car, I just wasn't able to squeeze a single word out of my mouth, it felt like I went mute. So in that uncomfortable silence he handed me a post card, which was red and had hearts all over it. My hands were shaking and I felt the tears trying to break out, I tried to suppress them, but when I opened the card in which he wrote our love story, there was nothing left for me that I could've done with my tears, so I bursted out in them. And when I managed to finish the story through my blurred eye balls, there was this question in the very end: "So now, the boy turns to the girl and asks her with fear, whether she'll be his girlfriend again?" So I gave in, I surrendered....I said yes and kissed him. It was a quick dry-superglue kinda solution, it hid my pain and my wounds, quickly and superficially.
From there on I always had this teeny tiny voice in the back of my mind that made me insecure about us, about our "perfection", but I ignored it, I just shushed it. He ensured me that nothing even remotely similar will happen again. And after the 100th repetition I made or more explicitely forced myself to believe it somehow. Thus we just went on with our lives like nothing has happened. It seemed like a functional plan, and it was until it wasn't anymore. Until the next time, which was a slap, and then a strangle and stuff like this. So I decided to end it, for good, for eternity, we had a nice and peaceful breakup, with tears and shit and I felt like someone has just ribbed a piece out of my heart. Nothing had colors anymore, there was no music, no laughter, no scents. Life got pale and I got devistated and depressed, I just couldn't adjust to my life without him in it. Every fucking person in my surrounding kept telling me that I'm better off without him, because he's an awful human being and a weak excuse for a man, and I couldn't agree more....but every time he popped into my brain, it wasn't him slapping me, it was him kissing me good night, it was him waking me up with breakfast in bed, and him hugging me so tight we practically became one person. I just couldn't manage to live my life with that voide in my heart. So when he texed me for something, asking me to meet him, I was just physically incapable of saying no. So well, you know the drill. We got back together, with conditions obviously. The quick dry-superglue method benefited me greately for like a few weeks, once again.
In consequence most of my friends have turned their backs on me, stating that they can't watch me ruin my life, but I became ignorante to these statements, I only saw him, I only saw that he is there for me and that at the end of the day, he's a good guy, whom deserves to be loved, and who's entitled for the benefit of the doubt. I was so allured by his charm, by his pain and sadness. I felt like I have to save him, and that if I leave him, he will be out in the cold, all by himself. And for some unknown reason I didn't give a rat's ass about me, about my emotional health and balance, my safety or even my future, all I saw was this emotional orphane, whom I loved, after eveything he has done, I still haven't lost even an inch of love for him. Somehow I managed to make sense to everything he had done to me, I twisted out the scenarios so many times that I found the triggers in all of them, and created an excuse for him, or maybe for myself, so I would be able to be okay with my decision of forgiving him. Oh and obviously, I believed him every fucking time he sweared that this won't ever happen again...how gullable was I.
Hence we were the unimaginably happy couple once again, for a few weeks. We went for roadtrips, and watched movies all weekend in the "safety" of my apartment, cooked and ate and made love. Until the next bump appeared on the road, but this time, I wasn't williing to surrender, I wasn't willing to play the victim's role, I refused to be viewed like that. Thus I hit back, so from that point on we fought, I wasn't the girl who got hit by his bf anymore, I was the girl whom has hassles with her bf. And after a while these circumstances made the whole abuse okay, accaptable in my perception. I got fine with my body being constancty covered with bruises and with our weekly hassle "ritual". So since his tacique hasn't affected me anymore, he tried a different approach, so his abuse would have impact on me, so he could get the lead back over our relationship. Because he had this inevitable urge to be in charge. Therefore the emotional abuse has started. He started calling me a slut, religiously and explaining to me that why wouldn't anybody agree to date me, but he...as the good guy, can figure out a way to settle. Because he's such a fucking great guy, that he wouldn't want me to end up alone.
Evidently this whole charade appeared to be bullshit to me, but you know what they say...the words have weight. And eventhough I had enormous willpower once...after the 1000th time, I started to believe what he tried to push down my throat, and I got scared I got frightened that he's my only option, hence I gotta obey. Nonetheless I tried to break the spell every chance I got, I went away to work at a festival with a guy whom has always given me a great deal of support and adoration but he followed me there too...and I just got myself into an even more tremendous mess. Therefore our hassles escalated, and my bruises (also his) got even nastier. On the other hand this whole so called relationship manifested a kinda bond between the two of us, which has made it approximately impossible for us to let each other go. So we stayed together and poisoned each other a bit more and more by each day.
Isn't it funny how love can so easily alter into hate. Because that is explicitely what has happened with us, from "us against the world" to "us against each other". A phase has started, in which I couldn't sleep well anymore, I was always sleep deprived and tired and unmotivated. I burst into tears multiple times when after a fun activity with my parents I had to go home...to him. I was constantly and utterly scared. Every time he touched me in those last few weeks, I felt repulsion, resentment and haterade, I just wanted to get over the sex part because I knew that if I don't sleep with him I wouldn't hear the end of it, the end of the specualtions about me having sex with someone else, because I'm so sex centered blah blah blah. When in reality I lost all my sexual appetite, I got nervous and disgusted just by the thought of him touching me. A few weeks or even months have passed this way, when I finally gained the courage to break this unhealthy, nasty, disgusting, nauseating thing off. But then faith stepped in, and shit all over my plans.
The story in a nutshell, is that he got fucked up with my friends so we bailed the party and came home. He passed out on the floor, so I ordered a pizza and watched a movie, enjoying every minute of my so called solitude. But then my cousin /who was also wasted/ knocked on my door, cried and then left. So I started texting with his girlfriend to investigate the source of his sadness. That was when my bf decided to rise from his ashes, still drunk btw. So he saw me texting came to the bed and called me a whore, so I slapped his face but just a little, and so the beating has began. I had no goddamn chance. I was effortless and he was invincible. After like an hour maybe I managed to get him out of my fucking apartment. I couldn't sleep that night, I just turned from one side to another, shaking of shock and fear. The next morning I had bruises on both sides of my skull, after I took some pictures just in case, my phone rang. It was him, my whole body started shaking, I could barely hold my tears back, my voice was uncertain and shaky. He was angry, he didn't really remember what he has done, he wanted to meet me to break up with me. I tied my hair up into a bun on the top of my head and went downstairs. When he was confronted with the amount of cruelness he has attempted, he started crying, telling me that I'm better off without him and that he's a monster. As I looked at him, being crushed and vulnerable, so delicate. My heart literally broke, and I felt the untamable urge to forgive him, making him swear on every living soul that this was the last time. So we were back on track, once again.
Eventhough I thought that I was already at war,that was the point where I was forced to realize, that the real battle has just began. It was the battle of my mind and my heart. The next 2 weeks were maybe the hardest fucking weeks of my whole entire life. Those injuries were the first ones that I was genuinely ashamed to talk about or to show, so I kept the whole thing in secret. Only one person knew...so I was backed into this corner with my so called bf, who had beaten up, and had absolutely noone else around, because I've already managed to alienate everyone around me, because after a while every living soul I've exchanged even a word with had become a source of tension and violence between the two of us. I can honestly and assuredly say that I've never felt so alone and unsafe in my whole entire life. Suddenly all of his movements felt like threats, and made me twitch a little. For like a week he acted just like in the very beginning, he was prince fucking charming, but at that point I was indifferent to it, I couldn't believe a single word that left his lying ass mouth. I gotta say, my acting experiences have payed off a great deal, in that week. I put on the role of someone who forgave him. And he bought it. Shockingly though this whole play was in the theatres for only one week, and the whole shitride has started all over again. At one point after his family skiing trip I was determined and super disciplined about breaking up with him, but I ended up compromising with him, which felt like betrayal, but not on his part...on mine. I was the one whom had betrayed me, I had never kept my promises. I always put him and his needs above mine, and I'd rather surrendered every fucking time. I failed myself about a hundred times. And after that night he found an excuse for arguing and breaking up, and beating me for the last time.
To sum it up, I had my fair share of torture and pain for a lifetime and the thing that I've regret the most is that I didn't stand up for what I deserve, I gave in against my better judgement to the emotional and physical intimidation, and betrayed myself by not making up my mind in time, and by going back on my word to myself. I strongly feel that women like me, don't have the courage to have a voice about their experiences, because they're terrified that society will label them as weak, unworthy of love, pathetic etc. When in fact the most important thing that we have to keep in mind, is that we have a responsibilty for all the women just like us out there still struggling and feeling abandoned, and for ourselves. We gotta take charge and make sure that what we had to go through, our daughters won't even know the definition of. We don't have to do this so those shitbags would suffer, and get what they deserve, we have to have a voice so we wouldn't betray ourselves once again, and so the rate of domestic violence would decrease! Let's be true to ourselves and take actions into our own hands. So we wouldn't have to live with a burden like this, let's free ourselves, because no one's gonna do it for us!
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