There’s No Such Thing As A Knight In Shining Armor
Trigger warning: This post contains sensitive topics such as relationship abuse.
When I was 14, my first boyfriend left me on the side of the road because I wouldn’t have sex with him. I think it was the first time in my life that I was genuinely sure that it was the end of my life, the first time I’d ever been truly afraid.
It wasn’t the first time he hurt me, but it was one of the last, and it was the worst. When I got home (miraculously) I cried an endless river of tears — seriously, I thought I was never going to stop crying. I just remember lying on my kitchen floor, blaming myself for being too scared to have sex. If I wasn’t so much of a coward, I’d be happy right now, I thought, red-hot tears seeming to sizzle on the cold linoleum.
Spending all that time having yourself broken open is not exactly something that you just get over — and when it’s your first relationship, your first love, and he yells at you and spits on you and corners you in your high school hallway, what can you do but expect that this is what love is?
Seven years have passed and you’d think that the fear would go away, that I would stop flinching when men on the street walk too close to me or I’d stop shaking when I hear a couple fighting loudly in my apartment building, but I don’t.
And when this is your idea of love, it’s a pretty hard idea to shake. You date every kind of guy under the sun, but most of them hurt you in some way, even when they say they won’t. Seriously, all abusers should come wearing leather jackets or have the courtesy to let you know that you might find them kissing another girl in the Sonic parking lot.
And the ones that don’t hurt you confuse you. You still find yourself with the fear, but when there’s nothing to fear, it suddenly makes you even more scared. You don’t want to get comfortable because the slaps and the cheating and the yelling will come eventually, and they will catch you right off guard. I became the girl everyone hates — the one that runs from the nice guy.
A weird thing and possibly scarier thing happened my freshman year of college — I was alone, truly alone, for the first time since I could remember. Being alone made some of the fear go away, it was never like I thought it would be because I kind of saved myself.
But, it also made me happier. It made me actually smile again, it made me a little less anxious, it made me enjoy sex, it made me who I am.
People love to shit all over abuse survivors because they didn’t make a seemingly easy move to leave. Despite how absurd and simplistic that is, being alone can be just as scary as abuse. For me, the loneliness was terrifying until I was there. Then I couldn’t leave it.
No one tells you how to love again after abuse. No one tells you how to not want to cry when something good happens to you. No one tells you how to not feel like the happiness is the same as drowning.
When you’re getting over a cycle of abuse, it’s hard to be good to yourself, just like it’s hard to be good to others. It’s also really hard to discern the good scary from the bad scary. For the longest time, the thought of being in a relationship made my lungs want to shrivel up. I didn’t feel worthy of affection and I didn’t feel like I could give anything to someone else. It just became something that I was never going to have, like the ability to belch on cue or the love of running.
I wish I could tell you that this has all changed because I found the right guy. I have found the right guy, that much I’m sure of, but somehow that’s even scarier. In the real world, there is no such thing as someone saving you from yourself. When you’re this type of person, the good things are scary too. Not because I’m afraid he’s going to turn around one day and hit me — although of course that crosses my mind.
I’m afraid that the person I am, who made those guys hit me and call me names, will somehow be chipped away to exposure and he’ll one day feel the same type of disappointment and rage they all did with me. I’m not afraid of being hit — I’m afraid of being left. I’m afraid that there is something inherent about me that drives people to hate. And now that this is out, I’m afraid of being pitied. Probably the only thing that hurts more than abuse is someone being with you only because they feel like they have to be.
I don’t want the narrative about abuse survivors to be a waiting game until they’ve found the right person because if you expect that to make the fear to go away, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. But when someone who has lived through so much darkness meets someone who makes them want to fight, I want them to fight because God knows I am and it is so worth it.
Sometimes being in this relationship is the easiest thing in the whole world because it’s so good — seriously, I want you to understand just how stupid I am for this guy. But, I also want you to get how even in times when I am warm and safe and smiling, every fiber of my being is screaming to get away. And that is something that no amount of love or protection or validation is going to change. The only thing that can change it is time and the fact that I am fighting tooth and nail to stay above water every day. But I want to and that is what is important.
When you care about someone and enough time has passed, you become ready to fight, or at least I am. I’m fighting for my fucking life, my sanity, for him, so he can be with someone who can come close to deserving to be with him, and for 14-year-old me who thought that some dude was justified in causing her to lose everything.
I’ve lost enough. I’m winning this one.
