Resolutions

Staring down at the pond, I watched my reflection distort as the creatures living inside moved through the water. I stood there for a long time, enjoying the summer breeze blowing my hair back, carrying scents of flowers with it. I always came there when I needed to think. 

I hadn’t been feeling much like myself lately. I always got lost when I fell into something too deeply. Usually after some time, I was able to find my way back, but this time seemed different. It’s like whatever I tried, I couldn’t go back to who I was before. This time, I was really scared.

I’d been with him for a few great months, but things started to change. We got into a fight and things got very heated. It all happened so fast. I don’t even remember what we were fighting about. But before I knew it I was on the ground, holding my face. He knelt down beside me, apologizing profusely. 

He swore it would never happen again and I believed him. It’s been a little over a year and I’m still with him, even though we fight daily. He doesn’t even apologize anymore. He just walks away, usually grabbing a beer out of the fridge and sits down somewhere to sulk. 

At first, I would be furious after each time he laid a hand on me, but after a while I just stopped caring. Obviously if this was occurring so often, I had my part in it and he wasn’t really to blame. When he would walk away, I would pick up the pieces of whatever he might’ve broken and would go back to what I was doing before. Nothing ever got resolved. 

The people at the office would try to tell me that I couldn’t keep letting him do this to me, but it had just become part of my life. To me, it wasn’t abuse, it wasn’t domestic violence… It was a daily routine. It was something I had come to expect and I wasn’t just going to walk away. I loved him.

I used to talk to my friends and they tried so hard to get me out of this relationship, but I was too far gone right from the beginning. I felt that my love was more important than keeping them around. And after a while, I had pushed them away.  I was spending all my time with him and soon enough he was the only person I was talking to outside of work. 

At the beginning, I used to cry. I would cry right after our fights, in the shower, on the way to work, sitting on the toilet. There were tears all the time, but then there weren’t. One day, they just stopped. That’s how it was with everything, it all just stopped. I wasn’t wearing anything that showed too much skin, I wasn’t talking to my friends, I wasn’t consuming food that I wanted to eat. I wasn’t me.

After just a few months, we moved in together. His apartment lease was ending and it seemed to be the only way to go from there. I had a cat before he moved in, Sniffles. She sneezed on me when I picked her out as a kitten and it was love at first sight. But when he moved in, he told me that he was allergic to cats and I had to get rid of her. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, but it also felt like the right thing at the time. 

My house was covered in abstract art and bright colors, but when he moved in, it was dulled down, covered up by fake plastic trees and somber paintings. Strong candles burned throughout the house, making me cough often. When I would ask him to find some lighter scents, he would just reply “but I like these” and that was the end of the conversation. 

He clearly had a problem with compromise, so I always just did what he wanted because it was easier than fighting, but we fought anyway. We fought over who finished the last of the milk and didn’t inform the other, who was going to shower first, what we were going to have for dinner...the list went on and on. It was rarely about anything serious, but when it was, I knew what was coming. After every time, he wouldn’t talk to me for a day or two until I begged for his forgiveness, often on my hands and knees. I would cry about how much I needed him and how life wouldn’t be the same without him.

But there was the time that he got a DUI and I had to pick him up from the police station. I couldn’t believe the anger that was spewing out of me. When we got home, he was still drunk and he was angry that I was angry. He didn’t think he should’ve gotten a DUI because he claimed to have walked in a straight line and touched his nose easily. Obviously, the cops did not agree and got his car towed, taking him downtown.

So of course when we got home, we were fighting and things got bad. There was a bit of shoving, him starting it. But then I tried to walk away and he grabbed my arm. I screamed for him to let go, but he just kept holding tighter, twisting it as he did. Then there was a pop. He dropped my hand and I fell to the floor, crying in pain. I yelled for help so loudly that minutes later, an ambulance arrived and took me to the hospital. The neighbors had called them. 

He stood over my bed, angrily staring down at me as I came to after surgery. “Get out!” I screamed over and over until security was called on him. A couple of days later, when I got out of the hospital, I had a Protection From Abuse order placed against him and he had moved all of his stuff out of the house. 

As I sat on the couch, head in hands, I cried and cried. I missed my cat, I missed my friends, I missed my family, but most of all I missed him. I hated myself for every second that I did, but I couldn’t help it. I loved him no matter how messed up the relationship was.

After some time, I gathered myself and went out for a walk to the only appropriate place I could think of. I went to the pond with a loaf of bread to feed the ducks. It was quiet and the perfect place to gather my thoughts. I wasn’t sure how I would ever be okay, but I knew I would one day.