Danica Barnett shares a painful story of how abusive partners continue to haunt and assault their victims, as real-life monsters whose memories never fade.
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it is always late at night when my mind starts racing. i cannot ignore the pain of my broken heart and my mind rushes to think about you. unlike most of the lonely people, lying in bed with tears falling from their eyes and a sadness that they feel they will never shake, my thoughts are not kind ones, full of love and longing. on a loop, i am reliving everything you did to me. i am watching my innocence taken away from me. i am playing on repeat a soundtrack of every abusive thing ever said to me.
They say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes, and sometimes, I wonder if I die a little more inside every night. The lights go out and I am wrapped up in my blankets, feeling completely safe until your ghost begins to haunt me. Most people are afraid of monsters under their bed; I am afraid of the monster you are, the one I may have gotten out of my life, but will never get out of my head. I am supposed to feel comforted knowing that I have gotten through one more day, as far away from you as an out-of-state college will get me, but I am unable to run away from the memory of you that lingers.
I was seventeen when you broke me. You had gained my trust and took advantage of me. You quickly became emotionally abusive, reminding me that I was a horrible person. Your lingering eye, the one that seemed to catch on me, told me that my body was at fault. I tried too hard to get myself off your radar, hoping that I could make my hips disappear, that perhaps if I threw up enough, my chest would flatten out. I blamed my body for your sexualization of it.
I curiously stumbled into a reckless behavior, hoping that something awful would happen to me, and I could be punished by karma for what you said I did.
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I was seventeen when you made me believe that I deserved to die. I sat for hours in my shower, hyperventilating, hoping if I turned the water hot enough, I would feel something. I counted how many calories and lies I needed to spend in one day so no one would suspect anything was wrong, and I could continue my destructive path. I curiously stumbled into a reckless behavior, hoping that something awful would happen to me, and I could be punished by karma for what you said I did.
I was seventeen when I sought the love on Tumblr you made me feel I didn’t deserve in real life. I fell into friendships with girls who hated their bodies the way I did and I’ll never forget how loving they were to me, even though they didn’t love themselves. Most of them had ghosts like you haunting them. They spent months trying to convince me that my curves are not consent to anyone, that you took emotional advantage of a girl who looked up to you as a brother. While they cared for my burdened heart, they also encouraged my disordered eating and I did the same to them. We kept each other alive, but we also fueled each other’s destruction.
When one of them attempted suicide, ten months after you ruined me and four months clean of purging, part of me blamed you, even though I remember exchanging daily statistics with her, both of us wearing our low-calorie count like a crown; if you hadn’t hurt me, I would have never become friends with her. I would have never talked to her, we never would have shared our darkest stories, and I would have never felt as if I could have stopped her, had I not been trying to take my life back from your grip. I had not talked to her for a few months, but when I got the news, I couldn’t help but think about the nights when we had both been so sad and I hadn’t been encouraging enough because I would have felt like a hypocrite for telling her that her body was beautiful and she was worth it, when you made me believe otherwise about myself. I question if I negatively impacted her, and I wonder every day if I would have ever stumbled into her life had you not given me a reason to log onto Tumblr.
I developed a fear of men, no longer wanting to be around any man alone, although I eventually warmed up to a few. No one really knew how broken you had made me until months later.
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I was eighteen when I realized that you had not only broken me emotionally, but you had broken me physically. I shrank away from any sort of physical contact, freaking out at the thought of anyone touching me. My body was shameful to me, and I feared if I didn’t cover it up, another person I trusted would catch their eye on me. Suddenly, I developed a fear of men, no longer wanting to be around any man alone, although I eventually warmed up to a few. No one really knew how broken you had made me until months later, the night I had to explain to my mom that she didn’t have to worry about me having sex with a guy I had started seeing, because I would not even let him hold my hand. I have never seen her more saddened by something no one should experience, that her daughter had suffered through. Unlike my friend, I didn’t need to take my life. You took it from me.
I was nineteen when I realized I was still allowing the ideas you had planted into my mind to run my life. You knew more than anyone that I didn’t think love existed. I saw hints of it when you were with your girlfriend, but then you shattered the illusion of love for me by the way that your eyes and words turned me into a sexual object.
It is late, and those that aren’t sleeping are dreaming of someone they love. I am wasting my late-night thoughts on you, still wondering if I will ever hate you more than I do myself.
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Almost two years later, I still believe that I need to be afraid of men, that they cannot be trusted. I may not flinch when a boy holds my hand, but I breathe a sigh of relief when I convince them I am not worth time or effort; I feel oddly at peace when after a date or two, I am told that they do not want to take things further. I have spent what seems like ages living in a Tinder-like lifestyle, hopping from one match to the next. Eventually, you get tired of it. I have known for a few weeks now that casual dating exhausts me, but for some reason, I cannot bring myself to get attached to anyone. My heart grows heavier with each Tinder match, but my mind reminds me that I’m better off this way. No one should have to love a broken girl.
You are a ghost that haunts me almost every night and I am scared I will never be able to replace the loneliness that both destroys me and comforts me with a hand I will not be afraid of holding. I am terrified I will cease to allow guys to become good friends, almost brothers to me, because I am afraid that one of them will mistake my friendship as flirting and try to take advantage. I am scared to open myself up to love because you loved your girlfriend, yet you said the things you did to me.
It is late, and those that aren’t sleeping are dreaming of someone they love. I am wasting my late-night thoughts on you, still wondering if I will ever hate you more than I do myself. I’m not sure that I will in the near future; but I know that with time, I have begun to love myself. You once told me that I had a big heart, and I know that is true because for months afterwards, I could not entertain any sort of hatred towards someone who I looked up to so much. Your words, and the echoes that followed me around for over a year, managed to break that heart and close it to the world. It is these late nights that I slowly take it back from you.
Originally published on RealTalk.
Photo: Joan Sorolla/Flickr
“Almost two years later, I still believe that I need to be afraid of all men, that they are not to be trusted ….”
So horrible that that happened to you…. Memories like that are imprinted on your body and psyche… I still recoil from men who get too close…(although my son’s friends are okay– they are still quite bashful and awkward and naive)….Being violated like that just stays in your body forever…