Should’ve

I forget what started the fight. Was it my drinking or his cruelty? He never wasted an opportunity to humiliate me. It wasn’t always like that.

When I first met him I was 16 and painfully shy. The boys in High School never looked at me or if they did it was to make a joke about my weight and laugh with their friends. It’s hard to be invisible when you’re 5’7″ and over 200 pounds.

He saw my potential. I thought as a friend, person, possible girlfriend. None of the above. I was being groomed by a professional to think all of these things when he really wanted someone to control, manipulate, humiliate, use, and years later throw away.

I should’ve let him kill me that night. I’m not sure why I lived. Nothing got better when I was no longer around him and his friends. In fact I became a little like him.

It was the “I love you. You’re my best friend. I need you.” that hurt more than anything else. In a twisted way he probably did love me. He always said it after doing something he knew hurt me. He was with other girls and I was with other guys because mostly we were best friends. Feelings changed time to time and he would do something to ruin what I had going on.

He was at his meanest at parties. They were always where he lived and I was there everyday. He would say “Dana is wanna be slut she’s too fat to be a real slut”. “If Dana ever got pregnant she’d have to lose a couple a hundred pounds so people would know she wasn’t just getting fatter”. It was worse than that I don’t remember all of it. One day I said something back to him I thought was funny. He grabbed my arm, twisted it behind my back, pushed my body to the floor and my face into the carpet. He said “Don’t you ever f*cking talk to me like that again”. Then let me up like nothing had happened. His friends were yelling at him to let me go because at this point they were sick of his shit.

Nine years wasted to end up at the bottom of two flights of stairs, bleeding and half conscious. First words out of his mouth as he put me in his car were “No one will believe you. You’re a drunk and a liar.” He would’ve been right if he had kept his own mouth shut and gotten rid of the heavy oak chair he smashed over my neck and head. But he always had a big mouth and gossiped more than anyone I knew.

But I still wish he had succeeded because I don’t belong anywhere. I had a taste of what life could be like today only to find out it was a lie. Be nice to Dana for an hour and then she won’t bother you for awhile. Don’t invite her to the parade with her nephews, or the neighborhood block party, and NEVER volunteer to spend time with her if she hints at it. Quickly change the subject instead. All of this hurts more than any physical pain could.

To know how others feel and think about you is something I want to erase from my memory. There’s no drug, procedure or therapy for that. I don’t want to feel anything at all anymore. No joy, no pain, no love, no sorrow, nothing. Just numb like a rotting tooth at the dentist.