That Bitch Chloe

Chapter 3: The Cycle of Bullying

    Growing up I was brought to believe that most people were good. I stayed polite, out of peoples ways and followed a somewhat Catholic out look on life. You see by the time I had reached teen years I started to believe the religion was flawed. There was still so much hate in the world by closed minded people taking every word for word in the bible. Blaming the gays for sinning. As well as forcing me to respect my parents or elders in all situations even if they had been in the wrong. So from a young age I had sucked it up and started to apologize for things I didn't exactly feel all that sorry for. Confession was forced on me by my mother as she reminded me if I didn't tell all my sins to a sixty year old man than none would be accepted. At age sixteen I decided religion was a choice and one I no longer wanted to partake in. It didn't mean I was an atheist I still had some sense of a belief system just not one that concluded in strict rules. 

    You see it was this for that matter, that had taught me how to deal with my parents at the end of conflict. To apologize for creating problems that they had started, because as long as I lived under their roof I needed them not to hate me. At nineteen I had bolted out the door one day after a conflict I refused to apologize for. Which was a big step for me and caused my parents to realize I would no longer abide by their rules. You see you'd think those would  be the last of them but It was only at age twenty one a few short years later that I had found myself living with Derek and his rules. The vicious cycle began once again of me apologizing for things that I hadn't really felt sorry about.  I wasn't a heartless monster. I had my faults but deep down I knew that him gaslighting me and me apologizing for his mistakes was messed up. I was truly sorry for the certain things that were in my fault but not for everything. Therefore the longer this process went the more it took a tole on me and the lines began to blur. The lines in which separated the real faults of mine and the ones Derek believed to be mine, and not in fact is fault. I started to believe I was the screw up in this relationship. That if it were to crumble it should be all my fault. I was being brainwashed by Derek and I didn't even really know it. 

    If you look  at history and cults based on some form of religion it goes back to being so in love with someone. Trapped under a spell, or being so lost and unheard that the first person that gives you attention and makes you fell loved, needed, and part of something is everything. It's how the male of a polygamist cult convinces his wife that they should wait for him as he goes and sleeps his way around his other six wives. That he shall truly be hers on Monday.  If Jim Jones tell you to drink the damn koolaid, you do. Now it's only if you are smart enough and break from the spell that you will refuse this and when he threatens you, you apologize and press it ever so slightly to your lips and pretend to drink it. You make a plan to overcome the cult, but for now you blend  in. He can't know what you know. Derek can't know what I know. 

    A few weeks had passed since the night of the party and my discovery. I knew if I confessed what I found out Derek would lash out at me for looking through his phone. I knew if I brought up my jealousy towards Chloe it would lead to a fight and for Derek to possibly move out shifting some sort of blame on me for being a controlling freak. As toxic as it maybe was the idea of being kicked out of my apartment because I could no longer afford rent seemed worse. I was on a year lease and would have to pay out a big sum of money to break it. There was also the overwhelming fact that for the first time in two years I would probably have to move back home with my parents. This stress was somehow still better than the stress from overwhelming over protective parents. That's how fucked it was. 

    At least things were getting slightly better. We were into Christmas time and as much as a bi-polar hot mess Derek could be he was making the season seem really festive. We watched Christmas movies or worked on puzzles most nights after my work. The occasional sex kept me going. It wasn't mind blowing because Derek didn't last long but it was something. As much as the Chloe thing lingered and made me jealous at times Derek was unemployed and home everyday besides going out rarely to play cards with the guys. If I couldn't fully trust him at least monitoring him when I could made me feel secure. Plus the occasional times I checked his phone revealed there were no new messages from Chloe since the party. Maybe things were really over between them and the party was a fluke, just a mass invite and a reason for Derek to get free shrooms. The past was the past and although I couldn't forget it smoking enough weed would. 

    Derek and I stood on the balcony over looking the park as we shared his joint. As I took it from him Derek watched me closely. It didn't feel like he was admiring me but his eyes stayed plastered to me as if to warn me he was uneasy. 

"You know you're smoking that wrong!"

"How do you smoke it wrong?" I stated

"You smoke it like a cigarette you're letting it go to waste!" He exclaimed upset.

"We've been smoking together for like ever now. Why are you just bringing this up?" I said

"Then do it properly. Prove it to me that you're worthy of that smoke" He said handing the joint back to me intimidating me. 

"You're making me super uncomfortable." I said annoyed as I declined the joint and went inside. 

    So much for a decent time. Derek could find fault in almost everything. It made me wonder if he had found fault in Chloe, in other girls or if I was this sick experiment to see how much he could get away with until he scared me off. Events like this started happening more and more. One time Derek watched me eat with an annoyed look on his face as he told me my mouth was open while I was chewing and that I was in fact disgusting. It had only been slightly opened because it was burning my mouth and I was trying to recover by letting some air flow in though. I didn't not have manors. He made me seem uncivilized and like I had to follow strict rules of his own on how to eat, drink, breathe, talk and smoke properly.  

   On other nights he would talk about how great his life use to be in high school or elementary and how he wasn't part of any group but he'd go around making fun of people in all of them. 

"You were a bully back then." I stated

He refused to believe me as he continued with the trolling and awful things he had done. Making them seem like grand old times when clearly the other person on the  other side of the story had had a bad time. They had been a victim to Derek's cruel pranks, a laughing stalk. It should have stood as a bigger red flag for me to run as fast as I could from him and never look back, but I liked not being completely on my own. If he wasn't mine then Chloe would win this demented battle. She would get him, if he even still wanted her. She would go on to say more mean comments about me and he would laugh and join her. If he wasn't in my life he wouldn't have the last bit of respect that he still had for me now. This would make me nothing to hm. It was better this way, when he belonged to me more than anyone else and I was in fact something to him. 

    You see Derek and I led such different lives in our youth. In elementary school I found myself around toxic girls, who used me and forced me to do things for them. I not wanting to spend recess alone I obliged believing I was part of something. That I could be like everyone else and follow a normal life. If I tried to do anything on my own and avoid the conflict, drama and bullying, this girl Stacey would pester me and start crying forcing me to come back to her. Telling me she missed having me as her friend. She would play nice for a while and make me feel needed, wanted and then throw all my issues back in my face. It was girls like her and the ones that passed rumors about me in the halls that caused me to  be overlooked by most of the student body. To also have the few friends I had to only want to hang out with me outside of school, because the other friends in their groups didn't like me. It was always the leader of the group. Some of her followers were decent kids on their own. Back then I hadn't done anything wrong. If I had then a consequence was more than understandable but that really wasn't the case. It wasn't fair that I was alone or was so easily sucked into people who would manipulate and bully me constantly. I was powerless to them.

     I think its why in my adult friendships I started clinging on to people. To anyone who seemed nice. People just like Derek. Who were perfect on the surface and had many who loved them but held a darker side they didn't show most people until they really got know them. Derek was just part of the cycle, my cycle, it was inevitable. Chloe really did remind me of all the mean girls from my younger years. She was a mix of all them. You see I was older now, things were different. I didn't have to be powerless  to Chloe anymore. It was getting more obvious now. With her gone the world would be a better place and there would be no Chloe drama. Derek would become a different person once he saw my power. He would see her for the real bully she was and come to term with his faults. Maybe I was a little delirious but lying in bed with my head rested on a pillow it seemed like the perfect answer.