Promises...

Chapter 9

I don't understand how my mom and dad are so judgmental, yet my aunt is so full of wisdom and acceptance.

"Your parents just don't understand that you feel alone and lost in this world, like no one is there to love and support you. They don't understand what it's like to wake up and realize you've been stranded in a way you can't describe and can't physically see. It's almost like they refuse to look on the outside of what is their perfect world, and that's being shattered, but they refuse to accept it as just that."

"How did you become so wise to just perfectly explain everything I am going through in this very moment?"

"I went through a few of the same things when I was your age, but they don't know that, so they accept me more."

"What are you talking about?"

She sighs deeply. "When I was your age, I was in a very abusive relationship. My boyfriend at the time would make me do things I wasn't ready for at all, and I ended up completely heartbroken with no one but myself." She pauses and drops her head for a moment. As she looks up again, she takes another deep breath. "I thought I knew better than anyone around me witnessing who he actually was, so I packed my bags, going against what they all told me, and I moved to North Carolina with him. He came off as this perfectly charming man for the year we were together before moving, and for another two months after, but things quickly altered. He began drinking obsessively and demanding I have sex with him. Whenever I would say I didn't want to, he would whip a beer bottle at me," she rolls up her sleeves and shows me four large scars on her forearm where the glass had shattered and imbedded itself into her skin.

"If he was hurting you, then why did you stay?"

"I loved him."

"What did you have to prove to him? You were the one getting hurt, and he thought that was okay. Did you go to the police at all with this?"

"Eventually. When my physical scars were almost healed and my emotional scars began to unstitch themselves."

"I just don't understand why you waited so long to get out of there..."

"Stephanie," she takes my hands in hers. "Yes, he did hurt me, but I was always told that love hurts. I was trapped with only myself. I didn't have friends nearby and I couldn't call them without him knowing, so I waited."

"When did you realize you needed to get out?"

"When the test came back positive."