some ramblings

I was 19 years old and only just coming to terms with being the victim of an emotionally abusive relationship that technically had not even ended yet. I did not understand many things, let alone that just because I had been away at college didn't mean that I had escaped the torture that someone I still struggle to call my abuser had put me through. In fact, I had managed to tie all of my memories from that relationship to the physical space of my college campus. Because of the fact that I had not processed what had happened to me before coming to college, the only place I had ever ruminated on my abuse was at school. This discomfort and depression had been building itself up from the beginning of my freshman year, and so by the time sophomore year rolled around I felt trapped in the one place I ever felt truly happy. Everything on campus reminded me of him, but not in the way that hearing his favorite song or eating a food we had once shared together would normally remind me of him. Instead, I had managed to tie every single thing in my physical day to day experience to my understanding of our relationship and the resurfacing of traumatic memories. 

And by processing all of my trauma in one place (a place that he had never even step foot in) I found him nestled in every nook and cranny of my college experience. He was hiding in the tree that I sat under before my anthropology class, his cruelest words to me were carved into the sidewalk that took me to the dining hall where he happened to greet me at the door and follow me in to the table where I met my friends for meals. His shadow would squeeze into the booth with me as I told my friends about my day. I admittedly love talking about myself, and I get a rush from telling even the most mundane stories, so they would hear everything from what I put in my coffee that morning to who I ran into at the library. The only parts I left out were the ones that involved him. For some time that was because I was at a complete loss at how to explain what was happening to me, but by the time I could articulate things, I was embarrassed to explain that it felt like the ghost of my high school ex was sitting at the table with us and responding to everything we said. I was scared to admit to anyone that I had no control over my life, that he decided everything from the outfits I wore to the boys who captured my attention.

I couldn't explain to my friends any of that, but being around them did help because I could listen to them and drown out his whispers in my ear, but the moment I was left alone, it was back to  either confronting him or watching him out of the corner of my eye. They'd leave me to get a refill on their drink, and in the mere minute that they were gone I would start asking him questions. Asking him why he spent so much of our lives going out of his way to hurt me on purpose. Asking him if he loved me in a way that wasn't for selfish reasons. Asking him what convinced him that his words to me were ever appropriate. 

I asked myself questions too. I asked why I let myself be manipulated for so long. Why did I not tell anyone in my life about the inner workings of our relationship. Why I let him get away with hiding the intimacy of our physical and emotional connection from everyone we knew. Why I couldn't tell that he was cheating on his girlfriends with me.

And I thought that working my way through those questions would be good for me. They weren't though, and I ended up nauseating myself with guilt from those questions because they were all directed in a way that would put the blame for my own suffering on me. And I realized it was because he had trained me so well. Like a dog I obeyed him for fear of punishment, knowing that he would deny me affection if I spoke out of turn. He made me feel like all of my negative emotional reactions to his doings were my own fault, like I could have avoided being in pain if i just wasn't so sensitive. 

And it's funny now because out of context the the things he said to me are obviously absurd, but in the context of our relationship, they were normal and way too often justified. When I tell my friends the stories of what he said and did to me, I find myself laughing because I'm aware that my under-reaction to the situations makes me seem stupid and gullible, and in between near hysterical laughs I have to remind us all that I am deeply traumatized from those "absurd" situations and how often they happened. 

A prime example of one of these situations is that when we were just a couple months shy of turning seventeen, he said something to me that I still think about everyday. He had just recently entered the first and longest "off" stage of his long term on-again off-again relationship. And in those off stages he would unabashedly treat me like his girlfriend, and I lived for those times where he made it seem like any day he would confess his love to me and we would finally get to be together. We were talking in history class one of those days, and he told me about how he was going on about wanting to date someone to his mother, and that she suggested that he date me. I could feel every cell in my body vibrating with excitement when he brought that up, and so I said in a flirtatious and matter of fact manner "yeah, she's right, you should date me." It was a bold move for me to say something like that, because at that time we had never outwardly acknowledged our romantic feelings for one another, only masked our connection as a friendship that felt kismet. 

And before I could even prepare myself for a response from him, he said, as if this was something he had always thought "well, I don't want to date you, because I want something long term, and I think you're going to kill yourself soon." 

It was moments like those that in retrospect were extremely damaging to my self image and simultaneously obvious signs of toxicity, despite at the time seeming like an understandable thing for him not only to think of me, but to say in such an assured manner. It didn't even register as a red flag, just as a rejection of my feelings for him. I wasn't upset because he had said something so offensive and frankly disgusting, but rather because I had to deal with his obvious rejection of my feelings.  

And after writing all of this and reading it back to myself, I want nothing more to give up on trying to explain what happened to me and how I feel because of it. I have these moments of inspiration where I think "I should try to write about how I feel as a way to process my emotions" and then I write something like what you just read that feels completely and utterly asinine. What happened to me feels increasingly like something that no one wants or needs to hear about, and I am no great author, I have not made art here. I've tried many different attempts at writing what you've read here, and it's been nothing but discouraging. Not because people tell me it's bad, but because I perceive it as so. So I will leave this story unfinished, I won't add more detail or instill some kind of lesson or theme. I will just post it to a blog no one will read and hopefully expelling it into the void will help me feel better about being haunted the way that I was.