The Choices We Make

Deeper

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I was so quiet at lunch. I knew that my old friends must have noticed, but they weren't really speaking to me. The boys that sat with Damien and I were always cracking perverted jokes, usually at the expense of women. They were pigs. It hurt me that they were so cruel, but I said nothing. Whenever I would talk, Damien would look at me like I was the stupidest person he'd ever met. His nasty looks always shut me up. I was getting scared of him.

He was always belittling me in front of his friends, making it seem like I was crazy. I wasn't crazy and I was so much smarter than him that it was ridiculous. My 3.8 GPA toppled his 2.3 big time. And yet, I was the idiot. How or when I started believing this lie myself, I'm not sure. But surely enough, I began to feel just as dumb as he made me out to be.

"You need to learn to think before you open your mouth." This was his famous line. The thing was, I was so quiet. So quiet I sometimes talked to myself when I was alone just so I wouldn't forget what my own voice sounded like.

I was spending much more time alone now and was acting noticeably different. My mom was always saying "Come downstairs out of your room and participate in the real world for once. Spend some time with your family." The thing was, I had my own little world. His name was Damien, and the balance was easily disturbed.

Every night was full of phone calls. Damien wanted to talk on the phone all night, every night. When I told him I was sleepy he would tell me to suck it up.

"Please let me go to sleep. I love you but I'm really tired."

"I'm not done talking to you. We'll get off when I say so."

"Ugh I'm going to turn my phone off. I need to get some sleep!"

"You better not turn your f****** phone off! What if I f****** die or get hurt and it's your fault because you didn't answer your d*** phone?!"

"Oh my gosh fine I'll keep it on."

"F*** you."

He hung up on me. And, naturally, I called him back and apologized for what he had done. He was never man enough to apologize for what he had done, so I apologized for both of us every time.

It took three tries to get him to answer the phone, but finally he did and said not one word on the other end.

"Damien, are you there?

Silence.

"Look, I'm sorry okay? Its not my fault that I'm tired. I just want to get good grades and I need to go to sleep so I can concentrate in school."

"Oh bull****. You just don't wanna talk to me anymore. Good f****** night."

And once again he hung up.

This is how most of my nights went, talking to him on the phone and then getting cussed out right before bed. I cried myself to sleep most nights, wondering why I deserved to get treated so badly. All I wanted was for him to be happy and love me, but it seemed like no matter what I did, he was never satisfied.

I would usually stay up into the late hours of the night, trying to get him to forgive me for what I hadn't done. If he wouldn't answer his phone, I would text him apologizing until he was forced to respond. Sometimes the hypocrite even turned his phone off or rejected my calls.

It sufficed to say that I was getting deeper and deeper into the kind of relationship I swore I would never get involved in. I didn't know it would be so easy to slip into that kind of darkness, but here I was, letting a boy manipulate me and control my life.