Within Her Crystal Blues

Hindsight is 20/20

WARNING! This chapter contains topics not safe for children! Topics such as mental/emotional abuse, neglect, toxic relationship and so on will be discussed. Please read at your own risk! 

     Love is a funny thing, given with grace or taken by force. My partner explained to me once that we all have the hindsight of 20/20 and it's indescribable how right he is. Almost two years with someone purely toxic deals a lot of damage to someone, you know? Walking into a relationship with him, let's call him Dave, I thought I was walking into my forever after. So many signs were present from the beginning and yet I chose to ignore it all because I thought I knew better than everyone else. He was loyal to me just like I was to him and everything was perfect though we fought, I knew it would never get too bad. My senior year in high school proved everything I thought about us was a lie.

     It was the fall of my Junior year if I recall correctly that is, and I was a little lost given that I had just ended some really toxic friendships with people. My heart was broken since I thought of those people as a family but I realized I needed a better support system than what Hell I just left. I needed a friend, not a partner at the time and that's when I met Dave and his friends. We quickly became really close with each other and as the school year went on, Dave and I started dating. After a while, I thought I knew every bit of him; his limits, his passions, his goals, his home life, and even his demons. Even though I had been lied to and cheated on before, I felt like he was different. He wouldn't do me wrong as everyone else had before him, he accepted my way of life and parts of my life I had hidden from my family. I had let him in and know all of my demons and the darkest parts of my past, I truly believed this was my happy ever after.

     Though the simple signs at the start should have been my red flags. A good friend of ours' told me she loved him even though we were together. She even tried to say he loved her more than a friend but I didn't trust that I knew he loved me and only me. How blind I was especially when another of his exes came to light after two years of nothing from her. I told him I was uncomfortable with them talking because she would say I love you and call him titles of endearment. I begged him to block her just so I wouldn't lose my mind to jealousy again but he didn't. It was just another adding factor to our end as a couple and as friends. It took over a year for him to finally do it or that's what I was told. The one thing I hated and I still truly hate is being lied to and broken promises. I grew up with that pain time and time again. I didn't want that in my relationship because it just meant that I would be left or cheated on or worst. I knew his home life wasn't the best and he had me believing it was all because his mother was a control freak like my sister had been when I was younger. He painted the single mother who raised him as a true modern-day villain to him but a saint to his siblings. I believed every word from his mouth as if he was true to every word he spoke. A little over a year into our relationship and I almost left for the first time because he broke too many promises for Christmas. All I wanted was for him to come over and stay with my family for one family event and he swore he'd be there. He didn't show and didn't explain what really happened or why he couldn't show up. Though me being the lovesick pup and only wanting to believe the best of everyone, I stayed with him.

      Had someone told me that the winter of my Senior year would be the triggering point of my toxic Hell for the next nine months, I wouldn't have believed them. Had they said he would cause my anxiety to rise and my state of mind to fall, I would not have believed them. If they said he would become my worst nightmare that I would live with and suffer with through days of an unbearable weigh, I would not have believed them. Such a foolish and native mind to believe I had found my forever in the eyes of a monster that all but handed me the knife or the pills to end it all. If only I had known that was exactly what I was walking into, maybe I would've left sooner. Dave had a falling out with his mother because we had fought that night and he wanted to fix it personally. After this point and him failing college, he was kicked from her house to which I begged my folks to let him stay with us. This all happened as my Senior year was coming to a close which was only more stress on top of holding down a job and figuring out where I was going after I graduated. Nothing can express just how much I wish I had known just how bad that would be for me, my parents, and the relationships I had with them. He never helped out around my folk's place no matter how much he was asked to, he ended up dropping out of his free ride through college and couldn't find a job until June of that year. That whole time I was holding down a job at our local Kroger, finishing up my senior year and helping out around the house and with other family members. These differences caused plenty of verbal fights and arguments and they were never quiet ones. I was known for being silent until I couldn't bare what was on my mind no longer so when we'd have enough, I'd lose control of my tongue. Every day turned into a fight with him or a fight with my father over my 'deadbeat boyfriend' doing nothing but playing videos and eating fast food every day. Just as before there were so many signs that I should have ended it right then and there with simple things such as getting on him about taking a shower or doing his laundry just lead to another fight. My depression had actually started a relapse due to the stress, the fights, the yelling, and the fear of being disowned because of this boy I thought would be my husband.