We were just friends when we decided to accompany our best friends, who were dating at the time, to the aquarium on one of the nicest days in spring. He had bought my ticket, but I never thought of this as a date. I remember the way he looked at me under the rolling blue light of the sea nettle’s tank.
One day, after school, he picked me up and drove me down the long road until the end of it kissed the water. He had packed snacks and we sat on the roof of his car listening to Weezer’s White Album and eating PB&Js with strawberry jam because I detest grape.
When we argued about some miscellaneous disagreement and I needed space to clear my head, he wrapped his arms around my person, swung me around to lay on the bed, and told me to stay so we could work things out.
On prom night, I told him I was disappointed with the fact that they didn’t play our song, which I had requested. When we left the parking lot, he drove down a dirt road in his neighborhood and we walked down to a small sand peninsula, where the Bay Bridge and the lights of the cars crossing it gleamed, and moved across the surface like water bugs. He played the song and we slow-danced to it for what felt like hours.
I had told him, after spending all free hours of the day I had with him, that I wanted to focus on spending more time with my family and friends. He agreed that it was a good idea, until the days when I exercised this decision. As he grew more and more frustrated with every conversation on this, I decided it was best to appease him. Now I see how isolated I grew from those I loved.
We consistently stayed up all night talking and joking, listening to music, even on nights when I had school.
The night before a big test, we were on the phone and reintroduced ourselves to another nameless argument. When I told him I couldn’t talk about it anymore and had to go to bed, he accused me of not caring. When I proceeded to hang up, he redialed me relentlessly until I picked up again. That night I got three hours of sleep and a 76 on my test.
When he was busy one day, and I had the opportunity of spending time with my family, he revealed that he had a present for me. Afterward, he gave me a blue piece of wood with white nails, covered with glow-in-the-dark paint on the head, hammered into the shape of the Little Dipper. He had made himself the Big Dipper the same way and we displayed them in our rooms. It was a simple and inexpensive way of showing me he loved me, which is something I often found myself questioning.
Courtesy: Stokkete/Shutterstock.
I had asked him repeatedly if he had ever had feelings for a girl we both were friends with and I always got the answer no. I asked so often because they worked together and he consistently ditched our plans to spend time with her, which I only ever found out about thanks to SnapMap. When he noticed the change in my behavior, he knew what it was about and told me he wouldn’t be friends with her anymore. I soon discovered text messages exchanged between the two of them as he told her that I had forced him to dissolve their friendship. After leaving for college, I also came to the revelation that he would spend time with her and deliberately keep it from me. He proceeded to gaslight me by saying I should trust him when he seemingly gave me no reason to and told me I was acting crazy, and honestly, the situation brought that out of me. Even after this, which I felt confirmed his feelings for her, I stayed.
My phone would blow up whenever I went out with friends late at night, or hung out with a friend of the opposite sex, or wore a shirt in public without a bra even when he told me he was okay with me doing these things. It seemed to have become a trend that he said some behaviors were okay, and when I acted on them, they weren’t and I should have known better than to engage in them.
He was my first everything physically, even sexual assault. While we had engaged in activities like this before, sometimes I wouldn’t want to, and after much coercion, I laid like a corpse as he satisfied himself. I have never felt more worthless than the first time I said this aloud, or even wrote it here. It’s not something I recognized right away as abusive, this epiphany came long after it happened, and continues to be something that crosses my mind every day.
For Christmas, he got me a record player, something I expressed that I wanted for a long time. I no longer have it. He took it back after I ended things.
I was unhappy in this relationship for a long time and nearly followed through with ending things many times. When this happened, the wall between succeeding and failing lied in his insinuation that if I ended things, he would harm himself or commit suicide. This happened about five times in the one year and eight months we were together.
I finally decided enough was enough when I realized that I didn’t love him. I ended things late one night this past winter over the phone. He continued to insinuate that he would end his life and hung up on me. I called his mom and told her to watch after him and make sure he didn’t do anything of the sort.
In the weeks that followed, he would call my phone 40 times a day, begging me to be friends with him. At this point, I was finally fully-aware that none of his behaviors were okay. When I blocked his number, I received his calls with “No Caller ID.” I would get his direct messages on Instagram, or through my friend’s Snapchats, one he was still close to. Over Spring Break, he even kept my belongings hostage in an effort to see me
I talked with a friend about being fearful of seeing him and a restraining order was even suggested.
This was my first relationship, and because of that fact, I didn’t know that none of this was normal for a healthy relationship. And when the inclination that they weren’t normal arose, I ignored it and justified them with the good aspects that still existed. Shortly before ending it is when I realized that the right person will love you the right way, and while there may be disagreements, there should never be abuse, coercion, disrespect, objectification or malintent. This is something every girl should know before they start dating.
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