[CLOSED FOR SUBMISSIONS] Stronger than You 2017

Part 16: Vicious Love

Written By: FindaMeaning

"Will you go to the movies with me?" I blurt out, struggling not to squirm in all my awkwardness.

He laughs.

Well see, now it's awkward.

But then he says yes, and I blush because that was the most confidence I've ever had in me. I don't know what came over me, but he had been texting me for weeks on end about how he needed something happy and good in his life.

I thought I had never been something happy and good in anyone's life before. He offers to pay for the popcorn and the movie tickets.

He really was a true gentleman in the beginning.

I met him in the summer after my eighth-grade year and his tenth grade year. Considering how young I was, everyone thought it was a little weird. But the way that we met was through a camp where age didn't matter, because theater connected us all in one nerdy family.

Two weeks after I ask him out, we have our first kiss. I told him that I don't kiss on the first date. The night after the first date, he asked me if i wouldn't kiss him because he wasn't attractive enough. I told him for every single day until the third date that he was handsome and that I still wanted to kiss him, but had to repeat to him that it was my first kiss so yes, I'm going to wait. Until I'm comfortable with it at least.

The third date came around and he planned the whole thing: us watching Netflix in his basement, there was two couches, and I asked him what movie we were going to watch. He said "does it really matter? It'll just be background noise."

I wasn't comfortable. I wasn't ready. It was my first kiss ever, and I didn't like it.

He pulled me to him and kissed me hard, forcing my head against his. I pulled back and told him to let go, but he kept pushing his tongue down my throat.

I clawed at his chest and pushed but he grabbed onto my shirt and yanked it towards him, holding my hands behind my back with one of his. My hands are so small, I'm a tiny person.

I looked back on that moment hundreds of times, and I always thought that if I just had bigger hands, or f I didn't bite off all of my nails because of my anxiety, I might have been able to get away before he did more to me.

I wanted to yell and run away from him, because the situation suddenly turned very wrong, but his other hand suddenly had clamped over my mouth.

I freed one hand from his grasp and slapped him in the face. The sound of my fear resonated off his cheek as I scrambled away from him.

His face twitched when he looked at me, just before I had gone up the steps, and he hissed a word I won't repeat to me under his breath. I looked at him from across the room, smoothed out my shirt, and walked up the stairs calmly.

His parents were in the kitchen.

I looked at them, told them it was great to meet them, and walked out.

I just started walking. I cried so much that day because I realized what he did, and I knew, I knew that it was wrong of him, and I still didn't break up with him.

For weeks after, he texted me every night saying that he was sorry, that he missed me, that he wanted to see me again, that his love was so strong.

I asked him if he loved me or my body. He never answered.

Weeks later, I went to the mall with him and my best friend. I wouldn't kiss him at the mall because I didn't want to. That night, I was sleeping over at her house, and I got a text from him. It said "hi, this is Mrs. ___" (leaving out the last name) and he pretended to be his mother, telling me that he got hit by a car and had a concussion, and when he got home, all he could say was "I wished I kissed my girlfriend before I left. Then maybe this wouldn't have happened." He said later that it was the butterfly effect.

I felt horrible for not letting him kiss me that night, so I called him and he asked me where I was. When I told him I was sleeping over at my best friend's house, he said he thought she was a bad influence on our relationship and that I shouldn't hang out with her anymore. I cried that night for no exact reason, and my best friend sat down next to me and hugged me until the tears stopped.

Months of the threatening and the lying and the manipulation that he put me through, I handled and I let it happen. I never stood up for myself. And I should have.

One night, he told me he was done with life because I screwed it up for him. He told me that he knew I never cared for him. He told me he wanted to find someone else better than me because obviously, I wasn't good enough.

I didn't say anything.

I just sat there quietly as tears fell down my face silently because I knew I had to do what I was about to do.

I asked him if he still loved me.

He responded with "if you break up with me, I'll kill myself."

I told him that he never answered the question.

He never did.

I broke up with him.

But a month passes, and he is still on-and-off threatening his own life until one day, he told me he was cutting himself as he texted me at that very moment. I called his mother and she went to check on him.

He was sitting on his bed watching TV and eating pizza.

I texted him to have a nice life, then blocked him on everything I could think of.

A couple days later Monday, I walk into school screaming my head off about a text that I got from my friend on his bus saying that he "got hit over the head and stabbed in the leg." I was hysterical, and I had never lost so much control of myself.

They sent me to guidance.

My brother and sister came to cheer me up.

I read the text again. And again.

And again.

I sat on the floor and cried until I was sitting in a puddle of my own tears, drowning in self-pity and bitterness.

And I couldn't help but think what would've happened if I never asked him out that day two months before

Maybe I'd be able to be with someone, to love someone.

Maybe I'd be able to touch someone without worrying about what they'd do.

Maybe I'd be different.

If you ever felt like maybe your life wouldn't have changed so freakin dramatically because of one person, talk to me.

PM me.

Comment.

I want you all to know that you have someone else out there that knows what has happened to you and that knows what you had to face. I love you because you're here reading this and not sitting on the bathroom floor with a razor. I love you because you are strong enough to look at yourself and tell your reflection that you are not as weak as you think. You're not as weak as you feel.

You have yourself.

And that's all you need.