*******************************************
I let the liar have me,
the forger and the cheat.
love is the legal tender,
they try to steal from me.
but tell me how you lose what you
want to give away for free?
O please be good to me.
*******************************************
I let the liar have me,
the forger and the cheat.
love is the legal tender,
they try to steal from me.
but tell me how you lose what you
want to give away for free?
O please be good to me.
*******************************************
We fight wars every day. Not major ones, usually with our own emotions, and sometimes even just to get up in the morning and live our lives. Most people don’t even realise that’s what they’re doing, but we’re all waging war with ourselves. It’s a fine balance to maintain to keep the wars from changing from internal battles to interpersonal warfare. Sometimes the wars just get too big to fight on our own though, and we have to bring in reinforcements in the form of someone who cares. I’ve always longed to find a person to bolster the weary troops on the battlefront of my heart. I never thought it would be too much to ask to have someone who understands the inner turmoil a person can feel, someone who can listen unwaveringly so that I don’t have to fear treason of the heart.
Like anyone else, my heart reeks of scars and old hurts. No one comes out of life completely unscathed, when our hearts fight on the front line. I am one of those willing to bare my heart to anyone who promises help. I am also one of those who has it taken advantage of every turn, exposed and exploited due to treachery.
And like many young girls I started out with the belief that fairy tales come true, though even by the time I had my own fairy tale I had become jaded enough to sincerely doubt that things would work out. But I tried my damnedest to make it work, because love should heal all and is the ultimate power. Nothing makes the world go ’round like love, only I found out it’s not in the way people like to make it out to be. It’s through the pain of broken hearts, one-sided love, and imagined hope that the world turns.
I did love him though, nothing can ever erase my feelings that once were. I probably always will to some extent, after all, he was the one who made me realise that no matter how much you love someone, it won’t make everything better. No matter how jaded I am since then, I know what it’s like to love someone completely and with every part of my being. I also know what true, unrequited love feels like. When you think your life has a purpose for the one person you adore with all your heart and you begin to realise that they are so consumed in their own world that they could never return the feelings you share.
Sean made me feel… alive inside. Like my life had meaning. I could relate to his pain - or so I thought. Once jilted by a girl my age, he was angry at having been played. Of course he would never see that in effect he played me. Of course he didn’t laugh about it behind my back, as far as I’m aware. He was convinced in his own twisted mind that he loved me too.
It was a simple mistake that I made, to develop feelings for someone I’d never met. The Internet is a great big world, and we met on a website where you least expect to fall in love. He seemed smart, charming, and very interested in many of the things I was. It was very appropriate that one of the things we shared most in common was The Phantom of the Opera. No one ever touched my heart like he did, it was good in the beginning too. Of course I could have just been riding the high of finding someone so wonderful. We got to know each other and eventually he confessed he had feelings for me. I couldn’t believe it was happening to me, that someone was returning my affections. I felt dizzy from his confession. I’ll never forget the way my heart beat hard and fast inside of my throat.
Soon it became apparent that I wasn’t the main thing on his mind. Sean was obsessed with his former lover, the one who had lied to him. Eventually I got to hear him start talking about how he wished nothing but to kill her for everything that she had supposedly stolen from him. Friends; which he had more of than I did at the time concerned with how he was doing. And love. I wanted to scream at him that I was right there, that I was there for him. But I wasn’t enough for him to let go. He started a downward spiral, ending up talking of suicide. I could barely cope with that, even if it was just an Internet relationship he meant the world to me.
One night he seemed convinced of killing himself. I called the police and told them his address. They showed up to his door and his parents were alerted. Of course the time in between calling the cops and talking to him again was the longest day of my life. However, the second time he threatened death, however, my hope died inside. I stopped caring if he lived or not, he meant nothing but pain to me. I knew that even if he professed to love me, that if he couldn’t even choose to live for my sake that it could barely be true. On top of that he refused to seek help, even if it was for my sake not his. It was done, 3 months of pure bliss and pure torture. Everything he put me through was a feeling I had to remember to get me to where I am now.
Of course Sean wasn’t my first experience and definitely not the last. High school is a dangerous place to tread with your heart, and during the time I had been corresponding with Sean I had been talking to a boy a year and a half younger than me who had very strong feelings toward me. An understatement would be that I hated his guts. Jeff followed me everywhere like a puppy dog. If that wasn’t stalking I don’t know what was.
His persistence still paid off, once I was feeling lonely and but half-healed enough to move on he was there. Out for a friend’s birthday party at the local sushi place, I began to flirt with him in the strange way I had developed with him - I offered him two dollars to eat a big wad of wasabi. Jeff most definitely returned some of my bizarre wooing techniques. I began to talk with him online and after a while I asked him out. It turned out that he was dating one of my friends from high school - my “little sister” as I had called her. She had a huge thing for him when we were in school together, but he said he was more interested in me than her anyway and that he would break up with her. I was horrified, but the damage had been done and I didn’t try to stop it.
Of course a few weeks after we had started hanging out, Jeff still hadn’t broken up with her. I was mad at him for doing that. In the end my friendship with her was broken over him - and it was not worth it at all. If I wasn’t playing video games with him or making out with him on the couch he was bored to death. I would ask him if he would talk, and he would respond with an “I don’t have anything to talk about.” I wanted someone who cared but only ended up with indifference. But with indifference there is no arguing, you don’t talk so there’s nothing to disagree on or fight about. One time I asked him to come with me on a boring vacation and at first he said “no” but reconsidered when he found out there would be video games and that my younger brothers were coming. That was one of his last major ******** ended up staying with him for precisely a year. I broke up with him on our 1 year anniversary, with a week or two’s warning. He was convinced he’d be able to get me back through sheer willpower. I had stopped caring about Jeff a while back because another man had piqued my interest. Once again, he seemed intelligent and was the only other one in my first year university class to put up his hand and know the correct answer to very simple questions.
Things developed very quickly between Mike and myself and I made the mistake of moving in with him right away. Originally I just needed to get away from my mom’s and he offered a place to stay. My mom practically disowned me after that. The original plan was to stay a week to get away as all my sleepovers were always at my house and I hadn’t spent a night away from my mother in well over a year. We were living together before we had even been dating for a complete month.
It turned out that we shared many of the same interests and had a lot to talk about - though I later realised that it was a lot for him to talk at me about. Mike’s conversations consisted of him talking while not even acknowledging someone else’s input to the conversation. At first he was sweet and bought me jewellery and showed me ways around the university that I hadn’t known about. He even wrote me a poem for our one month anniversary.
The relationship quickly developed a darker side. I woke up one night to him trying to get me to fellate him in my sleep. I wondered how often he had molested me in my sleep and he insisted it was a one time thing. I thought I loved him so I let it slide as best I could and moved on with the relationship. Repeated offences led me to begin cutting myself again, a thing I had not done for a very long time. I simply couldn’t cope. It stopped briefly after he found me with huge fresh gashes on my legs. I ended up seeing therapy for depression and got onto some anti-depressants.
A month into my medication I tried to kill myself, feeling lonely and like he didn’t care. The relationship had already become slightly abusive, my despondency a likely result of the way he talked to me when we fought. Mike had started to restrain me physically when I tried to leave an argument I knew would turn bad. It escalated over the months, turning into him twisting my wrists painfully. After all the physical pain it was flicking me in the face like a dog - though not his dog, she got treated better than I did - and covering my mouth so I couldn’t retort to his rage even while I was trapped in his grasp that hurt the most. I found his not letting me speak rather ironic, as he wanted me to stay and finish the disagreement we had. His roommates turned blind eyes, just not wanting to be a part of the fights. I ended up with no one to turn to as the roommate I was friends with turned his back to the abuse and pretended it wasn’t there just to avoid being dragged into fights.
All of his friends ended up finding out eventually though, and I talked to them. I got it pretty bad for “making him look bad to his friends.” No one wanted to believe that he was doing it, least of all me because I thought I loved him and he was a nice guy - or so he seemed in the beginning. Mike couldn’t have really been capable of the things we was doing, was he?
I talked him into counselling, after much nagging. I convinced him to go for my sake even if he thought it wouldn’t do him any good. I sat in on a session once, and it turned out he had told his counsellor nothing that would have helped him at all. I was livid with him. Eventually he stopped seeing his counsellor and his therapy went to hell.
Mike began to pressure me for sex worse than ever before. I got the “you sometimes enjoy it even when you don’t feel like it” and I’d cave in and say “yes.” He nagged me until I’d do it just to shut him up. I asked for some foreplay, even just some cuddling so I could get in the mood and it would end up with an “is that enough? Can we have sex now?” He would actually ask it almost exactly like that.
Eventually his friends convinced him to break up with me. My heart ripped in two that night. I missed him, I yearned for him. I forgot about all the wrongdoing he had done me. We got back together again after some time away, but things were worse than ever before. We had an argument where he told me to leave his house after his usually wrist twisting and flicking in the face. I asked if I had time to put my shoes on and he said that I couldn’t. In November I was prepared to walk all the way to my mom’s house barefoot just to get out of his house. Of course listening to him was a way of defeating him so he came to get me and half-dragged me back to his house. In the driveway I called him a “dumbass” and he smacked me upside the head so hard that I stumbled. His response to my stumble was “Come on! I didn’t hit you that hard. You’re faking it.” Turns out he hit me because he found me insulting, I tried to convince him that it was not appropriate to hit me no matter what words I use. The logic was lost on him.
I ended it but my reason wasn’t the abuse, it was just the overall failing of our relationship - even though I told him the first time he got physical that I should have left him right there. Even still, after we broke up we agreed to be “******** buddies.” He wanted sex and I tried saying “no” but that wasn’t a good enough answer for him. “Come on, you sometimes enjoy yourself.” I still was not enjoying myself or getting into it at all after some “foreplay” and I told him so. Mike wasn’t taking my “no” for an answer though. He nagged me into intercourse and I tried telling him I didn’t want it. He wheedled his way past my “no”s again to get a chance to just go for himself. Nothing was more physically or emotionally painful than laying back and pretending to enjoy myself to get him off faster.
Later on, though we had been trying to stay friends, he showed interest in a girl I had gone to school with. I told him that unless he started going to therapy again that I would tell her about the abuse or call the police. He said “I don’t think you really want to be my friend.” I also found out that he started abusing me because he couldn’t cope with my lack of money, with my emotions, and with the fact that I had tried to kill myself. Only he was always spending like crazy. I couldn’t believe that he was trying to blame his actions on the fact that I was once suicidal. I had even warned him at the beginning that after Sean and Jeff I wasn’t the most emotionally stable person. He blamed it all on me and it made me sick.
I ended up getting a seasonal job at a music store and started to pick up the pieces of things. I began to fool around a little with Mike’s roommate who professed deepest apologies at turning away from it all. I understood, I put up with it myself for so long. Ben had been Mike’s friend as well and none of us wanted to see him as a horrible person. Of course, as females go I developed feelings for Ben, voiced the possibility and he was out like a bullet from a gun. In his defence I had only asked for something physical, so it was fine by me that he was out the door.
It was working for the music store that I developed a crush on one of the other employees. It turned out that he had gone to my high school a few years before me. But it also turned out he had a long time ex girlfriend that he still loved. Nonetheless he returned my signals and one thing led to the other. Rocco was over at my house and we were watching a movie, which quickly developed into making out on the couch. “You make me think bad thoughts” was what he told me. As he left that night he went out the door saying he would “definitely call” me later.
I got his call at an early hour in the morning and talked to him all night. I asked him, “So do you or do you not want to make something of this?” and by the next day we were going out. He was supposed to be my date for a New Year’s party. I was stood up because he couldn’t bring himself to leave his ex’s house - they were good friends. Later on he didn’t even have his cell phone with him. I panicked and felt terrified that something bad had happened as he mentioned taking pills that reacted badly with his anti-depressants. The next day he came over and tried to make up for it with ice cream and chocolate. I said to him as he was leaving that it felt like if he walked out the door he would never come back. And it was true, he never did. The next day he missed out on work and called me to tell me that he couldn’t be in a relationship right then and that he still had feelings for his ex - who had threatened to kill herself on New Year’s Eve to make him stay. However, he got together with her right after breaking up with me over the phone. I begged him to at least break up with me in person, which he didn’t do.
I saw him two or three times after that at work and once for coffee. He said some things to make me feel better and I tried to convince him that his ex was nothing but harmful to him. I discovered that he was just weak-willed and not worth my time. It didn’t stop the hurt from seeping in, after all, no one likes to have their hopes crushed after dating for only three days. The worst part was that he made me feel like I did for Sean, that giddy schoolgirl feeling. It was all dashed away because he was weak-willed and so controlled by his past feelings that he would never feel anything proper for anyone. To top it all off, the music store dropped me as an employee after 2 months, I was laid off with less rights as I was seasonal. They told me at the beginning that I’d be on the staff permanently after my temp work was done but then changed their minds when they found out that they were over staffed and needed to cut 100 hours and I was the only employee laid off after they had just hired two new people.
After that I started sleeping with a few of my male friends. First was Josh, who is quite bi-polar and ended up hitting a neurotic high after sleeping with three people in one week including myself. I slept with him a second time, which was where I started to confuse my feelings for him. Even when I had been dating Mike I found him attractive. In the end he managed to make sense through his bi-polar and neurotic nature to make me understand that he was not relationship material.
I moved on to Isaac. I don’t even know if I can speak about the details yet, or even the vagaries. He was also still in love with his ex, but up for a sexual relationship. Then he told me it was about more than sex but not love. He was very possessive. At this time I got a new job and met someone else who seemed to have so many of the same interests as me it was ridiculous. I wanted to visit him one night when he had to do an overnighter at the store - one of the joys of his new position in management. James and I had been flirting a little since I started working there, so I knew I was being reciprocated. Isaac came to get me from the store that night and he kissed me deeply just to show off that I was “his.” My heart broke for James that very instant, and that night it was over. No more Isaac.
After everything all of their I-love-you’s feel so fake now. It’s the falsehood that hurts and makes it hard to trust the words anyone has to say to me these days. James has his work cut out for him to help me fight this war within myself to be free and love him the way he deserves. At the same time I need to help him with his own inner battles. I hope that one day we can have something truly beautiful and he won’t be just another name to add to this story.
-La Belle Isolde-
