When The Darkness Takes Us: Jess's Story

You'll Always Be My Problem

Travis: Jess

Travis: Jessica

Travis: Noodle pls

Jess: What?

Travis: Can we talk?

Jess: Talk

Travis: It sucks when you're like this.

Jess: I'm not like anything.

Travis: You understand nobody else is gonna be able to put up with the level of bullshit you bring, right?

Travis: I'm sorry. That was mean. It was mean and it wasn't true.

Travis: I'm driving over.

Jess: And I'm not answering the door

Travis: You really suck right now

Jess: I cheated on you

Travis: Kind of. You kind of did. Yeah.

Jess: Not technically

Travis: We should have talked it through before it got this far.

Jess: I tried to

Travis: I know you did

Jess: So...???

Travis: I didn't want to talk to you about those times sex went bad. I know how you are. You'll post every thought in your head all over the internet. Face-to-face, you freak out if I want to talk to you about certain things.

Jess: I like talking about things through the computer. Nobody is looking right at me.

Travis: Strangers you'll never meet have heard more about your trauma than I have. All I know is how you reacted when everything was fine two seconds before. You froze up and curled up into this little ball and started begging me to get off you.

Jess: I told you what happened.

Travis: You talk about it really strangely. 'He had non-consensual sex with me'. It's a weird way to put it.

Jess: Women lie about this stuff all the time. Women are attention whores. I made it up.

Travis: Oh, shut the hell up, Jessica. Nobody who matters thinks you made it up.

Jess: My family thought I made it up.

Travis: Fuck them. They're all insane.

Jess: So am I.

Travis: You always say that 'I'm crazy' and 'I'm a mess.' It's an excuse to not get any better. You haven't gotten past anything because you don't want to.

Jess: Fuck you

Travis: You need to be in therapy

Jess: Oh yeah, magic answer. Therapy. Definitely not a corrupt system that ignores trauma and pins everything on some mythical chemical imbalance

Travis: ffs shut up, Jess. I can't help you. I think a professional should.

Jess: I'm not your problem anymore.

Travis: You'll always be my problem. Until the black hole kills us. You're my problem.

Jess: What were the other issues?

Travis:??

Jess: Yesterday. When I asked why you stopped wanting to have sex with me. You said it wasn't just one thing. We only got to one thing.

Travis: Because you kicked me out.

Jess: Tell me the other things.

Travis: That'll make this conversation better...

Jess: Would you just tell me?

Travis: You're insatiable. It's not normal to be able to orgasm that many times. You always wanted to go for HOURS. So between knowing that sex was going to be an entire afternoon with no end in sight and being worried that I might do something to scare you again, sex became this really overwhelming thing in my head. Even if I did great work and knocked six or seven O's out of you, you'd be begging to keep going.

Jess: Why didn't you tell me any of this?

Travis: I didn't want to hurt your feelings. And every time you'd cry, I'd feel bad and think that I'd start making an effort again. I wanted to get our sex life back on track without having to tell you this stuff. But then I kept putting it off and the longer I put it off, the more overwhelming it became.

I don't answer. I read his message three times.

Travis: Hello? Jess?

I shut off my phone.