Eat, drink, and be miserable.

I was skeletal. It seemed like it happened overnight. The confusion controlled me, it controlled everything. My body couldn’t even tell me it was hungry anymore. I would honestly forget to eat. One of the most basic human functions, simply overlooked. People noticed. Even though I would smile and say everything was great, I couldn’t hide the fact that something was very wrong. My slight figure irritated him, I was showing off my misery. It made him look bad. “Eat,” he said, placing a bowl of ice cream in front of me. I didn’t want it, it didn’t matter.

“You should get yourself some cookies, too. I like a girl with a little meat on her bones”. His accent was thick, exactly what you would expect someone who grew up in New York City to sound like. It flowed out of his mouth the way air bubbles out of a pot of thick, simmering marinara sauce. Like most severe American accents, it didn’t present a refined or intellectual persona. It made him sound tough, sometimes it was really pronounced…especially when he was angry.

I used to love the sound of his voice, not anymore. It was either judging or scolding me. He never said anything nice. “You had a gut when I met you. Your ass is gone. What happened? Do you have an eating disorder? You need to eat,” he said from the other end of the couch. I didn’t have a gut when we met. It made me so mad when he spoke about my body, it wasn’t like he was a fitness model. He had a gut when I met him, he had a gut as he criticized me, he has a gut now. He didn’t acknowledge his flaws, but he pointed out mine every chance he got.

He slid over, closer to me.  He was trying to show me he was concerned. “God, I can’t even sit next to you. Your hip bones are stabbing me.” I didn’t want him to sit next to me, I was thankful that I repulsed him. “Maybe you should go to that therapist. You’re acting all crazy”. I had been contemplating going to a therapist for a while. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe I did need to speak to a professional.

“What are you thinking? I can never tell what’s on your mind. I feel like I’m always walking on eggshells around you.” He had been really concerned about my thoughts lately, he made it sound like I betrayed him if I didn’t share every idea that popped into my head. I smiled, it was involuntary. “What’s so funny?” he barked. “Nothing,” I mumbled. I knew what was coming, it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

It didn’t matter what I was thinking, whatever I said would be used against me. What I was really thinking was, “You’re the one with the family history of mental illness. You’re the one with the sister that voluntarily committed herself to a psychiatric hospital for shock treatments. You’re the one who’s moods cause everyone to walk on eggshells”.  But, if I said what I was thinking, I’d just be pouring gasoline on a raging inferno.

“You’re projecting,” slipped out from between my lips. I don’t know why I said that…why couldn’t I have just thanked him for the ice cream and be done with it? “I don’t know what that means, Penelope.” He always called me by my first name when I displeased him, making me hate the sound of it. I wanted to take it away from him and forbid him from ever using it again. There was no avoiding his wrath; I wouldn’t be able to diffuse the situation, I knew this. “Google it, Edward,” I spat back. “You always use those big words to confuse me. Why do you have to be such a bitch? You do it to make me feel stupid,” he was yelling.

He positioned himself a few inches from my face. I stopped listening after he called me a “cunt”.  I hate that word, almost as much as I hate him. I knew he’d start throwing things next, this was the way our arguments went. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was somewhere else, the chill of melting chocolate ice cream that puddled in my lap brought me back to reality. “Look what you made me do?” he screamed. Involuntarily making people throw food at me was a talent I didn’t know I had.

I didn’t think “projecting” was a large word, nor did I feel I had to homogenize my vocabulary to communicate. This is a man that would proudly announce the many college degrees he earned and claimed that one of them was in social work. In his studies, he should have amassed a vocabulary above a third grade level. Surely, you must be required to take a psychology class or two to earn this degree. Even if he was absent the day they discussed “projecting” he could have fallen asleep on the couch during an episode of Dr. Phil and absorbed the definition. This degree was fabricated, just like his accent.

Teddy is from Upstate New York, not New York City. There are no skyscrapers, there are no subways, and there is no accent. He was playing a character, and he was doing it poorly. I wondered how many people he tried this out on before me. I was starting to see through his facade. He knew it, he was growing more violent by the day. He stormed out of the house and slammed the door, leaving me to clean up the aftermath of his tantrum.

As I wiped the sticky residue off of my legs, I fantasized about getting a phone call telling me he’d been in a fatal motorcycle accident. I had to get away from him, this relationship was killing me.

Just like him…

He drove by my office again, today. I saw him yesterday, too. Yesterday he didn’t look at me. Yesterday I had someone else in the car with me. Today he made eye contact. I work on a very busy road, but it’s not the only road. This is not small town America, there are several ways to get to the highway, ways that are more convenient. He takes this route on purpose.

From the moment we split up I could swear I saw him several times a day, on that damn motorcycle. I assumed I was just seeing things, like the fear morphed every two-wheeled vehicle I saw into him. My vision isn’t the best, but this week proved to me that my imagination wasn’t in overdrive. It was him, the helmet…the backpack. He’s stalking me.

I was trying to pull out onto the main road from a service road as he passed me, my face contorted, unable to hide my anger. I stepped on the gas and my heart pounded, this too was involuntary. I wasn’t focused on the traffic, just him…looking at me. My car lurched forward, it was this movement that snapped me out of the hate induced fog. I jammed on the brakes. Instantaneously, my conscience broadcast through my head, the dictator wasn’t my voice though. It sounded more like Frankenstein, “Revenge, bad. Retaliation, bad. Vehicular homicide, bad.”

A lesser person would have hit him, he would have hit me, he’s lucky I’m not him. Fucker. Good for nothing fucker. Six months after I threw him out I am still so angry I don’t even recognize myself. I just can’t let it go. I know I need to, it’s not good for me. I’m getting myself back, little by little…but it’s a long process. I keep kicking myself for letting things go as far as they did, not outwardly recognizing the signs. Love is blinding.

I should have ended things sooner. I should have ended things when he started telling me what to do, when I found out about the terribly unstable people in his family. He came from a long line of violently abusive men. He made it seem like he broke the mold, he didn’t. He just slightly altered it. He claimed he’d been through therapy. He may have, but the only lessons he learned were how to mask his flaws. Stupid optimism. Stupid hope. Stupid me.

On the surface, we seemed to have a lot in common; art, music, stupid humor, political views, and orphanages. My grandfather was an orphan, and so was his father. I didn’t know my grandfather, he died before I was born. I’m told he ran away from the orphanage and joined the circus. I didn’t know Teddy’s father either, he died two years before I met him. He didn’t try to run away.

“My father blew his head off with a shotgun,” he confided in me on our first date.  Not exactly first date conversation, but I felt so comfortable with him that it didn’t phase me.  He spoke highly of his father and painted a picture of a man that quickly fell into depression after an injury, which caused an addiction to pain pills.  The way he’d explained it made it sound like it happened over the course of a few months. I’d later find out that Teddy’s version of the events were not chronologically accurate.

“I had a friend tell me his soul was going to hell. Your father is going to hell, that’s what she told me”.  I reacted, I think as anyone would, “Who says that? Even if you feel that way, why would you say that out loud to a grieving friend?” As those words left my body, the corner of his mouth turned up in a smile; just one corner. It was an expression I initially adored.  By the end of our relationship, I grew to hate it. It was his “tell”.  Most people have them, expressions or actions they exhibit when they’re lying or trying to hide their emotions. I’m good at picking up on them, I never know why I do until it’s too late.  The half-smile was a face he made when I said something that pleased him…in the beginning it pleased him when I sympathized with him, in the end it pleased him when I said something he could use against me.

I was at his uncle’s house when I found out why he and his siblings has been left without parents.  His uncle was the twin brother of Teddy’s father. It always made Teddy uncomfortable to go over there, he drank uncontrollably in his presence.  He didn’t put up with Teddy’s shit, he didn’t like Teddy’s mother, I’m not sure why Teddy went to see him.

“My brother was home when it happened. He saw him drag her to the basement, he saw him stand her on a chair, he saw him throw the rope over the rafter. My father kicked the chair out from under her, she didn’t even fight.  Then he shot himself, it looked like a murder/suicide. The police, they thought it was the other way around. Lyle was so loyal to our father, he never corrected them.  All us kids got split up after that. I went to live with a real nice family until I was in high school, they were going to send me to college.” The gaze in his uncle’s eyes focused on something far away as he told the story.

“Lyle was never right after that. I felt guilty.  Here I was with this family and he was on his own.  He called me to come join him.  Like a fool I did, he got this crazy idea to join the Army.   So we all went down and signed up, we weren’t going to let him join alone.  He didn’t pass the physical, I did…so, off I went to Vietnam and he went to California.  Thankfully, I lived and went to join him after I got out”. Even though Teddy had heard this story a million times, he hung on his uncle’s every word.  He was well aware of what was coming next, I was caught completely off guard.

“There were a bunch of the kids from the home that signed up with us.  When we all got out  Lyle got us to come to San Francisco, he had an apartment.  It was the 60’s, we were all into a bunch of shit we shouldn’t have been into.  He had a girl that lived with him, she was real pretty little thing.  He took care of her, she didn’t have to work or nothing. She’d clean and shit, but her only real job was to go get the guys from the airport when they got home from Vietnam.  Well, one time she got stoned and forgot.  He got so mad.  He had a temper,  man was he explosive.  I watched him, he picked her up…and threw her off the balcony.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, Teddy watched me fumble for words.  I vividly recall him smirking.  The only thing I could come out with was “What floor was the apartment on?” Teddy looked at me, “Third,” he said calmly. “We never saw her again. She left her stuff, I don’t know what happened to her. She was a nice girl,” Teddy’s uncle added.  This nameless girl, she got lucky.  She was thrown to her freedom, my release wouldn’t be so easy.

As I drove home that night, Teddy drunkenly rambled about what a great man his father was. “I want to be just like him,” he slurred while we sat at a traffic light.  I wasn’t listening, I tuned him out when he was drunk.  He grabbed my arm, squeezing it hard.  When he was sure he had my attention, he repeated “I want to be just like him,” driving his point home.

What are we fighting for?

The phone rang, I didn’t recognize the number but I answered it anyway. I thought it might be my son’s school. It wasn’t, it was the police department. I wasn’t prepared for the conversation.

It was the Detective assigned to my case. I don’t like having a case. I don’t like having a Detective. I have been operating under the assumption that people like me, we don’t have these problems. I’m not exactly sure where I get off thinking that way. At worst, it’s an elitist statement…at best, it’s a coping mechanism. She was asking for details. I tried to provide them as accurately as possible without getting emotionally involved. It’s difficult not to be emotional when it’s your life you’re talking about.

She was understanding and comforting, as if she was speaking to a child. “What did the texts say?” she asked. One of them didn’t say anything, it was blank. The other just said “Hey”. It was a far cry from the messages I received in October. Those were meant to degrade me. These are just testing the waters. He was sending them to irritate. He was trying to illicit a response. He knows what he’s doing.

I hate that he knows me so well. I hate that my resolve and self-control are being tested. It shouldn’t be this way, he should be the one looking over his shoulder. He should be the one whose heart sinks every time his phone alerts him to a message. It’s clear to me that this isn’t happening. He’s free and I’m the one imprisoned. I don’t go out, I don’t see my friends, I just hide at home and wait.

The Detective offered to contact him “l could call him and just say knock it off.” I wished it was that simple. If he would listen to reason, I wouldn’t be spending my morning on the phone with the police. I wouldn’t have gone to the Courthouse to fill out the paperwork to request a Restraining Order. I wouldn’t have sat in a courtroom in front of the Judge, with the embers of my relationship smoldering in a stack of papers on his bench.

My complaint sounded childish, I knew it. I felt silly, having to call the police about a text message in the first place. But, if I didn’t report it…what did I go through all of this crap for? “We don’t have enough to make the charges stick with the State’s Attorney,” the Detective finally blurted out. “There’s no threat. He could say someone else used his phone.”

I didn’t really want to hear this, but logically, she was right. “You did the right thing by reporting it, you just need to keep reporting. Every time he contacts you, call the police. We have to build a case. ” This infuriated me, she could tell. I already built a case, I have an non-expiring Order of Protection. Judges just don’t hand those out. “I know there’s no threat, but he violated the Order. He’s mocking me. I’m not a Psychologist, but I have been doing research. He’s a Narcissist and a Sociopath. Calling him and telling him to knock it off is only going to fuel him. If you let him know he’s bothering me, but you don’t arrest him…he’s just going to take that as a hall pass…and I’ll be getting visits instead of texts…and you’ll have a crime scene and not a police report.” She seemed to be startled by my honesty. Her tone changed, I was not the scared young women she thought she was dealing with.

The night in October that began this uneasy chapter in my life was still fresh in my mind. I could still hear him yelling “Don’t forget to hide the crack,” as I tried to speak with the 911 operator. He paced around me like a caged tiger, refusing to leave after I told him he was no longer welcome in my home. He was angry, so was I. I had finally had enough. He’d been goading me all day. He was in the mood to fight and laugh at my anger. I wasn’t in the mood to be a puppet anymore.

Earlier in the afternoon he’d referred to me as “his bitch” and stated he needed to “keep me in line”. He chuckled, although I knew he wasn’t kidding. He thought he was pretty damn funny, but I’d stopped laughing. For a man with four sisters he certainly didn’t value women. I once thought there was irony hidden behind his chauvinistic remarks, I was wrong. Many years ago Teddy realized if he said what he was thinking with a smile on his face…people would think he was joking.

There was a time when remarks like his would send me into a tearful rage and I’d try to explain that he couldn’t talk to me that way. I was done explaining. I didn’t care how he spoke to me, I stopped listening. I was rather emotionless when I walked over to where he was sitting and said, “you need to find somewhere else to stay, and I’m changing the locks.” He was stunned, so much so that he didn’t protest. He calmly got his things and left. It was all too easy. I waited til I could no longer hear the sound of the exhaust on his motorcycle and then drove to the hardware store to purchase new locks.

I was on my way home with new locks and tools to install them when my phone rang. It was him, habit made me answer the call. His sentences were fractured, it was a side of him I hadn’t seen. He was always so confident in his accusation, the person I was speaking with didn’t sound so sure of himself. He managed to squeak out “Where are you? You out fuckin’ some other guy?” I laughed at him and hung up.

I was more than a little surprised to see him sitting on the couch when I got home. He thought he was going to talk me into reconciliation, he pretended to ignore me as he went through his phone. “I don’t have anywhere to go,” he said, without looking at me. “Just let me stay here until I can get in touch with someone.” The only words that came out of my mouth were “No”.

I wasn’t going to bargain. Teddy grew agitated, he was so used to pushing my buttons. The fact that I wasn’t screaming frustrated him. In arguments prior, admittedly, I would lose my composure. I would behave in a completely irrational manner and my actions would be used against me. The fact that he couldn’t make this happen caused him to lunge at me.

I was already on the phone with 911 when he did this. He grew frantic. He started yelling, as I attempted to spell his last name for the dispatcher…I was bowled over by a moment of clarity. I paused mid-last name. It had been such a long time since I’d felt this way, I tried to determine what the sensation was. It was strength. I continued to provided the details that would help the police identify him.  He yelled louder.

I wasn’t backing down, I refused to allow myself to be intimidated any longer. I didn’t care what the repercussions would be. He opened the front door and ran down the hallway, he screamed the whole way down to the parking lot. My neighbors heard him yelling about the bitch on the third floor…so did the dispatcher. As he turned to flee, I waved at him. I was smiling. Finally, I wasn’t the one running off with my tail between my legs.

When the police arrived they searched my condo, making sure the Teddy wasn’t there. They asked a lot of questions and encouraged me to file for a restraining order. They said he was described as dangerous and crazed. I didn’t realize how accurate they were until a few days later. I still held out hope that he could be reasoned with.

The cynical side of me still wonders why they encouraged me to press charges, knowing that it takes an act of violence to get the State to prosecute. But I know if I hadn’t taken these steps, the harassment would be far greater. He’d be free to continue to make my life a living hell.