Pale Blue Love

Support?

   April already. So much occurred during the span of those three months. Before he got back to cadets, I discovered he had infected me with an STD, something I thought I would never get. Not once, but twice in that span. Then plenty of cheating scandals followed. Not only with girls from outside of school, also with those within. The group of friends I had disappeared. He threatened to beat them up with his posse if they came close to me after finding out they were alerting me of all his movements and dirty doings. My father had not spoken to me since I introduced them to each other and my mother detached from me when she found out I was no longer a virgin back in November of 2010. Back then I did not understand her, but now as a parent, I completely get it. 

   Being a cadet helped me escape my reality for a bit. It helped me cope with the things I could not control. But sometime during such revolution in my life, I lost myself trying to please and keep him around. I looked in the mirror to find only the ghost of whom I once was. I was struggling and yet no one noticed. All I wanted was a helping hand. But I was alone. 

February 11th, 2011 

   I remember crying myself to sleep after hearing him say that he wanted a break from us. I tried to get him to stay, I begged him to stay. He was the only person I had that I was able to speak to and hang with. Carlos was holding a grudge on me after I confronted my "man" with information given to me by him. And well, my oldest brother was always working and I was afraid of opening up to him out of respect and the fear of his reaction. Plus, he had his own problems to deal with. We did not take the break then, but on March 16th, 2011 the break came. 

   I found myself eating alone during lunch. I was surrounded by people but I was lonely. I sat in class and endured bullying from the other girls. They called me weird, crazy, a witch. They said that they were afraid I would one day cast a spell on them, that I tampered with voodoo. All because of a stupid joke one of them played on me in middle school. 

   I would come home wishing the ground to swallow me whole, or to leave to a place where no one knew me. I wanted to be invisible. To be anywhere, another place, anywhere but where I stood. I began eating less, sleeping more during the days, staying awake with my thoughts during the nights. Music soothed me but it also transported me to a very grim place. A place where I would find myself fighting my demons. Once again, I begun to construct a world of my own. I thought if I sheltered myself in a bubble again, no one could hurt me.

    This was around the time when he began beating me. Belittling me. "Ewe, you look like shit." He'd often say while curling his top lip and staring right into my eyes. "You need to gain weight. You're too skinny. I don't like it." 

   I had never felt like dirt until that day. His finger pointing at me while his mouth seemed to swallow his face as he laughed at me loudly. I could not understand why he was treating me this way. Just a month before he was different, what had changed? The sparkle his eyes held were no longer there. Where was the him I knew? I guess somewhere in a gutter. I would never find him again. 

   The other guys at school and in cadets would always compliment me; tell me how beautiful I was. But it meant nothing to me coming from them. The idea that I was worthless and grotesque had been drilled in my brain every hour of everyday. I just wanted to find a common ground with him, but we were miles apart in a different territory. It was just like he said, while I was in point A, he had already reached point Z.

   When we took the break, he quickly got with someone else, and about a week later, we got back together. For the following three weeks everything ran smoothly. Then I received a call from Mrs. L while being on the phone with him, I was being pressured to break things off with him. Unaware that he was still on the call, I made some confessions. He heard it all. This only made his aggression towards me greater. He began throwing heavy objects at me while we were alone in his house. Screaming and twisting my arm was another technique of his. My hair was pulled so many times that I eventually got used to it. I became numb to the abuse and to hide the bruises I begun wearing long sleeved shirts. 

   There was one day we were showering together and I do not recall what I must have said or done, but I know it made him angry. He got out of the shower and wet a small towel and begun to twirl it, as the water fell over me, he struck me with it. The pain was so great that my vision blurred for a moment as I fell to the floor shouting and crying. He then took that time to scold me and tell me things that lacerated my brain and heart. I remember the mark lasting on my skin for over two weeks. I was avoiding to seat around people, just so that the pain from the mark wouldn't show on my face. Reminiscing I understand that I was protecting him by doing so. 

   When he returned to cadets that April, I was in a state of depression I had never found myself in before then. It was as if the voice within me had been muted. I began speaking less, being in school less, being locked in my bedroom more. The only place I appeared was cadets, the only people speaking to me were the commanders and two other girls from there. The commanders begun calling their selves my parents. I began feeling a different kind of love. It was warm and so inviting. Almost like when walking into a bakery during the cold winter days. You wish that warmth could follow you home. But it can't, it is only around while in the bakery. 

   I tried to reach out to the teachers and the school counsellor. But they told me that I was crazy. "You're just another crazy girl telling stories to harm our youth." I was not expecting such words from them. I felt trapped. What should I do? Let him beat me? Kill me maybe? If he did, he would just be saving me from the hell hole I was living in. But I was afraid, I wanted to be more, I wanted to "wake up".  I was not trying to damage him; I was reaching out for help. I still loved him; I did not want to tarnish him. I thought that if I reached out to them, things would have gotten better.

   The commanders took me under their wings and begun teaching me self-defense. They helped me realize the truth from the lies and how to put my foot down without back-tracking. He did not like this one bit. Little did I know, while I was beginning to wake up, he was brewing a hot one for me.