Tangled

Editor’s note – Names marked with a * have been changed in the telling of this story.

By K Shepherd*

Breakups are never easy. Leaving someone you love is never easy. Separating from your best friend is never easy. It is never be easy, no matter the circumstances. no matter the circumstances.

My senior year of high school I finally mustered up the courage to leave my ex boyfriend, for the hundredth time. The only difference was this time I never looked back.

We started dating on Valentine’s Day during my sophomore year. I was 15 and this was my first real relationship. Everything started off great. Justin* was the star athlete at our high school and I was a cheerleader. We were the cliche high school couple from the movies. Everyone would always tell us how cute we were together and that we were the perfect couple. His huge family was amazing, I loved his mom and dad, younger sister, brothers, and cousins like they were my own. I envied their family functions because even though I have a huge family we aren’t as close as they were.

One day he told me he loved me but I wasn’t ready to say it back and I told him that. He was so sweet and understanding. I felt blessed with someone so funny, charming, and talented. Eventually, I told him I loved him too because I did.

My relationship was everything I could ever imagine besides the fact that Justin had a bit of a temper. But it wasn’t a problem because he never took it out on me and I assumed he was just going through a lot with the stress of school and sports.

I don’t remember exactly when it started but that temper that he never took out on me, well he started taking it out on me. I don’t remember the first time he screamed at me or the first time he called me a “bitch” and a “ho.” Though, it conveniently often happened after I caught him texting an ex or asking for some girl’s phone number on social media. It became a routine; he’d get caught, I’d get angry and he’d get upset with me for being angry.

Justin was always accusing me of “assuming.” He would tell me that I was insecure and that the girls he texted were just his friends. Somehow he always managed to lie his way out of things. This happened almost every week. Sometimes I would get so sick of crying and competing with other girls that I’d break up with him, just to take him right back after his crying, pleading, and angry outbursts. After bashing himself in the head, “I need you,” he’d say. He was my project; I thought I could save him from himself and his anger.

As usual, something happened between us that I didn’t like, he was flirting with someone else, texting someone else, or maybe it was the time he received oral sex from a classmate in the school parking lot. (We were the center of school gossip for weeks, even the teachers knew.) Whichever occasion it was, I was beyond fed up, so I left him. He threatened to kill himself, that’s how he got me to come back that time. He told me, “I’m going to kill myself, just so everyone will know how horrible of a person you are … my mom will hate you”.

Though I don’t specifically remember the point in our relationship where he became physically violent, I do remember the first time he hit me in my face. It was a Friday and we went to his house after school. We were sitting in his mom’s living room. He was laying on the fluffy, brown leather couch and I sat on the edge of the large square foot rest looking down at my phone. He grabbed their silver Comcast remote and turned on the TV.

My phone rang and the name Andrew showed on the screen, Andrew went to our local rival high school. I answered the phone and he told me that Justin had been seeing his girlfriend Hannah. Though I was upset, I did not react. I simply began asking indirect questions that wouldn’t reveal to Justin exactly what the conversation was about, but something triggered his attention. He whipped his head in my direction with fire in his big, dark brown eyes.

“Who are you talking to?” he snapped.

I hesitantly replied with, “Andrew”.

Before I could say anything else I felt a heavy open palm at the side of my head, I flew off the footrest and onto the hardwood floor. I immediately bounced back to my feet with adrenaline rushing through me as I chased after him, because he had taken my phone. He was cussing and screaming at Andrew on the other end of the phone, telling him wanted to kill him.

He threw my phone and stormed down the basement stairs, he began punching holes in the white plaster walls and throwing wooden framed photos. Glass crashing and plaster cracking; it was a nightmare. He grabbed me by my arms and threw me to the ground, lunging on top of me, I lifted my legs in the air protecting myself from his impact. He flew to the ground in pain. Panicking, I searched for my car keys and ran for the door. I drove home with tears burning as they streamed down my cheeks.

The mental and emotional abuse was one thing, but I never thought I would be that girl. This day was the day I realized I was in an emotionally, mentally, and physically abusive relationship with the guy I loved and my best friend.

I walked into my mother’s house to the comforting and familiar scent of her cooking, with a smile on my face and a big secret in my heart. That day, I pretended as if nothing happened. I was emotionally exhausted. I got a phone call from Gloria, Justin’s older cousin. She told me that he told her what happened that day.

“People make mistakes,” she said.

My phone had received over 70 missed calls that night and a handful of heart wrenching voicemails. One voicemail in particular stuck with me. I could hear the wind blowing violently through the windows of his rusty red Blazer truck and the tires squealing on the pavement. Screaming and crying, he said if I did not answer his calls he was going to drive his car off of the highway overpass on 28th Street. He said he was coming over and that I “better open the f*cking door or else I’ll beat that bitch down”.

I called back. I told him that he had to stop and that it was over but he wouldn’t take that for an answer. He arrived at my house shortly after the call; I opened the door out of fear. Not fear of him, he had already done the worst to me, but fear that my mom would hear him beating on our front door, and walked onto my enclosed porch, closing the door behind me. The air was sharp and cold, it was late fall and it snowed that night. He was sitting on the porch, against the house with his knees bent to his chest. He pleaded and apologized for what he had done, grabbing onto my legs like a 2-year-old who didn’t want to leave his mother. I looked down at him in disgust. I didn’t understand why he was the one crying as I stood strong. I told him he needed to go home, but he refused. He said he was going to sleep there. Though his actions sickened me, I still loved him and cared for him. I told him to come in and sleep in our guest room. That was not the end of our relationship, we continued our tragically twisted love for a year and a half longer.

Nothing stopped. Nothing changed. The unfaithfulness and the abuse continued.

Being with him literally made me sick. Over the course of the rest of our relationship, the depression led me to lose 20 lbs that I initially couldn’t afford to lose. My friends would tell me that I was getting “too skinny” and my mother always said I looked sick. I barely ate. And I ended up hospitalized and diagnosed with hypoglycemia due to my poor diet. I was not myself. I painfully remember the time I laid on my bedroom floor pleading to my mother. I fought through the crushing weight I felt on my chest and whimpered, “I don’t want to be alive anymore.”

My relationships with friends and family were taking a serious hit due to my depression. None of the people closest to me knew what I was going through. Everyone knew Justin was unfaithful but they never knew the abusive end of things.

I don’t know when or why or how I found the courage to walk away from him.

My senior year of high school I woke up and left him. Using my friends and family as a booster to pull me out of the deep dark hole I was in, I finally realized my worth. The change was gradual, I didn’t just cut him out of my life cold turkey. It took time. I would talk to him once a day and then once a week and eventually not at all. He would call me crying and begging for another chance but I was out of chances to give.

The healing process was awful, I hurt some people. I had this tall, thick wall up protecting my feelings so anyone who had tried to get in, not knowing the significance of my last relationship, always failed. I unintentionally led some people to believe that there was something between us when really I was battling demons that I thought I would never defeat.

I was asked “how did you get over that?” but honestly, I haven’t. I still cry and I still hurt. I don’t cry and hurt because of him but because of the scars I have to deal with even without him. Trusting others and dealing with confrontation in my current relationship is 10 times more difficult than it would be for anyone else.

Just this year, I remember telling one of my best friends, “I’m broken, I can’t be in a relationship.”

In that moment I realized that it is going to take more than three years to repair my heart and my trust. The physical damage fades but the emotional and mental damage does not.

Many women and men find themselves in abusive relationships, but no one deserves to have to deal with something like this. I got out, anyone can. You’re stronger than you think.