To start off with I am brand-spanking-new to this site, but I have been researching signs and symptoms of mental/emotional and physical abuse for months and the path usually leads me to this site where I am gladdened to see that there is a community of people that have banded together, who have suffered, and in many cases survived their abusive and toxic relationships and have begun to thrive on their own. This gives me a glimmer of hope, that I can read other stories and realize that I am not alone, I am not crazy. This is a real and unfortunate thing.

I have grown to accept that I have hit a wall. I haven’t had my “defining moment” but I very much want to. A very large part of the reason why this is such a swirling mass of chaos for me is because of the circumstances surrounding my so-called relationship.

Please bear with me, it is a story that I have been needing to get off of my chest so that I may better understand why it is I have allowed myself to be trapped. I would appreciate any insight as to whether or not I really am… broken.

I met B when he was 12 and I was 15. I grew up in a very small dairy farming town, my parents are very much city folk and so kept themselves mostly separate from the hunting/fishing types but were amused by the rednecks and tolerated them around me. His family came from a line of loggers, they are all tall, muscular, strong-jawed types, and each of them are obscenely and inhumanly strong. At the time I met B he was too young for me, and I was actually dating his brother S. His brother is a kind hearted man, I dated him for two years in high school, and to this day he has still been the most gentle man I have ever met. B had an alluring magnetism even at a young age and I always found myself wanting to catch his eye, even while knowing that it was wrong. S and I split up and I joined the Navy, I was gone for 4 years and came back home. It was B’s 20th birthday, and he now had a beard and was sitting quietly and calmly taking in his surroundings. He invited me to go out with him and his friends, before I knew it he had managed to drop everyone off at their homes and some how end up with only me. He drove me up to the top of a mountain and we had sex. Two days later I was sitting in his room and I had the most strange urge to reach out to him and place my hands on either side of his head and kiss him gently on his forehead. The words ran through my mind “He is special, and beautiful and I want to protect and care for him.” Then and there I was smitten, as I had never been before. His touch and kiss were like fire to my skin, thoughts of him consumed my days and all I wanted was to be a part of his beauty.

But he rejected me. Kept me at bay, would have sex with me then tell me why it wasn’t ok. He said he only wanted to be my friend. I was crushed, lost and vulnerable. Here I was, a grown woman, most definitely feeling something I had never felt before and I was getting rejected in a way I couldn’t understand. His father told me it would take someone remarkable to make B want to be with them, and I thought “why can’t that be me??”
One night after work I called his father, I told him I wanted to talk to him about B. Even just being able to say his name and hear stories about him was enough to jump start my heart. His father drove to my work and drank a beer with me and we talked about his sons and their childhood, that in many ways I had been a part of. We drove to another bar to play pool. This is a man I practically grew up with, he came to my high school graduation and sat in my house with my whole family… I looked at him as my family too, he was someone I trusted. We left the bar, I was happy to be on my way home, I had felt like everything had gone well. B’s dad called my cell phone and told me that he had forgotten he had some whiskey he wanted me to try. I told him to pull over at the bottom of the hill. I smoked my cigarettes and drank more, and we talked about my time in the Navy. Before I knew it I was drunk, and sitting in his truck. He asked if he could touch my leg, I said yes, he asked if he could kiss me, I said yes. Then he told me he wanted to have sex with me. I was jolted back to reality. This was a situation I didn’t want to be in. I told him “I don’t want to, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I dated one son for two years and I want to be with your other son very badly.” I thought he would see the logic in it. He told me it didn’t matter. I protested again “not today please.” He begged. I resigned myself to the situation, as I have so many times before and let men use my body. I drove home afterwards and fell asleep. When I woke up I prayed to God that it had all been a dream, that the line hadn’t been crossed. But it had. I kept it to myself for nine months.

Flash forward to the day before my birthday in August. B and I have been spending every day together in bliss, the sun shined for me in a way that I’ve never seen before, the colors of the forest were vibrant. Even the air I breathed felt different. I was unspeakably happy. But the night before my birthday B told me that he wanted things to move forward with me in a more serious way, but he told me that I would have to tell him the people I had slept with when we weren’t together. I steeled myself for the information I was about to impart. I wanted to marry him and have his children, I loved him with every shred of me and so I wanted to be honest about what had happened. He began screaming and crying “My Dad?” he punched the wall and began ripping apart my drawings of him. He made me call my family and tell them “what I had done.” My dad asked him to be gentle with me… he said you don’t know what it took for my daughter to be honest with you, think about how much she loves you.

The next three months were hell on earth. He deprived me of sleep, screaming all hours of the night, threatening to sell me to people that would rape and kill me. Telling me that I had killed our baby by being too much of a slut that we would never have a child breathe the air of this earth. He would fire his gun next to me and I would jump like a scared little rabbit, but silent and enduring. Believing that I deserved every second. Things progressed to physical abuse. I won’t go into all of the details, but I did contact the police and they put him in jail. I went to California to live with relatives for a few months, I felt better in many ways, stronger. But still… I had that suspicion that it was my fault.

I went back to him… many, many times. He has abandoned me on the side of the road in the middle of the night more times than I can count, destroyed all of my possessions, black mailed me for money, and yet… I still go back. I still want to see that beautiful boy I once thought I knew. I just wanted to love him, and perhaps be loved in return. He is still in my life but I know it is a shadow… just a pale pathetic form of what was once my trust and love for him. He has broken my heart so many times. How do I let him go? How do I bury the life that I wanted more than anything else in the world? How do I let it die? It has now been almost a year since he was put in jail in October, but over the course of this last year he still brings up his father and other people, calling me names and jolting me with his graphic statements. He brings it up again and again. He tells me that I lied to him, that I wanted to sleep with his father, that it happened more than once. He said my story doesn’t make sense. He has made me question my own reality too many times. He has made me feel ashamed of my sexuality. It has made me feel very exposed and uncertain.

I am sorry this is so long, but I have been so alone in my search for answers. I want to heal, to know that I deserve to heal. Please help comfort me in this time. I feel so very small.