A Sort of Therapy: Part Three

The transition from junior high to senior high went smoothly. I had two groups of friends - the more "defiant" ones (MB was a part of this) and the goody two shoes (Boo was a part of this). I wasn't exactly defiant. The worst thing I ever did at that point (and it was stupid) was have a drawing put on my wrist. There was a guy in school who was drawing marijuana plants on everyone in pen, and I was asked if I wanted one. Ha! I got one. It was the last day of school. I even remember what I was wearing - a tank top. No sleeves. I got home and my mom saw it and freaked. I told her I'd wash it off, that it was no big deal, but I got grounded for it anyway. Haha! I think it's kinda funny now...they never really discussed drugs with me, and when they saw that they didn't ask me if I was smoking it or anything. There just was no discussion. There never was. If I tried to explain or talk, then I was "talking back". I would just get into more trouble. That I could never learn. I always tried to defend myself. My brother, S, would just keep quiet and let it blow over.

My parents bought a lot of land in a different school district and moved there (across the road from my mom's parents). It was a different school district. I was very upset - I had finally made some great friends, was actually not loathing school, and now I was going to have to move with basically just a little over one more year of school left. While they moved, I stayed with a girl (AC) and her parents. They had money! There was my dingy little Ford Escort sitting in their driveway with their Lincolns and European sports car. They never complained and always welcomed me - I even had my own room to stay in. I never wanted to leave! They were right in town and I felt a sense of freedom I never had before. At this point, I was hanging out with AC and MB a lot. There were a few other people too, but they were my main best friends. I still talked with Boo a lot too, but I felt that sometimes I couldn't be honest with her. I didn't want her to criticize me. She didn't like a lot of the friends that I had, I don't think.

While in town, I spent a lot of time at my parents' friends' house too. I always referred to them as my aunt and uncle - Aunt S and Uncle B, though when I spoke to them directly I dropped the "Aunt" and "Uncle" formalities. I loved being there because I felt like I could be myself. Uncle B was really quiet. He had been friends with my dad since forever. They looked alike too. Aunt S was awesome - she liked the same music I liked. She had an open mind. I knew that if I told her something that she wouldn't repeat it or would respect my point of view. She always gave me a new way of looking at things too. I used to wish that they would adopt me! Haha!

After my parents were settled in, I moved in with my dad's mom (Grandma C) so I wouldn't have to go to a different school. Grandma C didn't live far from Aunt S and Uncle B. I didn't live there very long. My parents gave me a curfew that I followed, yet Grandma would lock me out of the house by 8 or 9 p.m. I would bang on the door and even yell at her bedroom window, but she would not let me in. I had to stay at Uncle B and Aunt S's a couple of times. Even when my dad asked her to give me a key, she would then lock the screen door. She just didn't like me being out. She thought I should stay at home with her all the time. Grandma C only watched certain channels (mostly PBS or the country station) and didn't say much to me. When my parents asked her why she kept locking me out of the house, she stopped speaking to me. Then my dad said that I was to pack my stuff - I was crying and didn't understand what I had done. I didn't want to go to a different school my senior year. I remember my mom coming into help me get my stuff and I was sobbing. She hugged me and said, "Don't worry, we'll work something out." I felt a little better then - I knew that I hadn't done something wrong, I guess. I think my dad was more mad at my Grandma C. She used to do that to him too, I guess.

By that time I had a boyfriend, MA,- my first serious one. He was different, to say the very least. MB warned me about him, but I didn't quite see what she was talking about just yet. She knew him a lot better than I did at first. He also did not live far from town and I loved the convenience of seeing him a lot. I will get to him in a little bit...

So anyway, I moved back in with my parents. They decided that I would drive to school. It would take me about 25 minutes to get to school without any hangups or anything. To help out with gas, I decided to get a job in a small town near them. At first my parents told me that they didn't want me to work if it was going to impact my grades. But I wanted to do it. So I applied at a pizza place and got the job one summer when I was 17. That too, was a life changing experience. The girls there were very pretty, popular (in their respective schools), and really were involved in living life to its fullest! I was still sort of shy. I entered the job with glasses and braces. I remember two of the girls telling me later that they thought I was a "total dork". Ha! Before too long I got to know them all pretty well and was invited to some of their parties. Any parties I had been to before was nothing like I was about to experience. I wasn't going to be very innocent too much longer! I started dyeing my hair, waxing my eyebrows, buying stylish clothes and wearing more makeup. I wore colored contacts that made my eyes very blue looking. I wouldn't be able to do much about the braces yet at that point. I also went tanning - I was so white and the girls convinced me to do it. I even started buying underwear from Victoria Secret online (we didn't have a nearby store). But the parties - there was always alcohol. I didn't like beer, to say the least. But I would try to drink as much as the rest of them. I got to know their guy friends, and developed a crush or two.

I still had my boyfriend, MA, though. He had also quickly evolved from a "bad" looking kid into this extremely handsome preppy guy. He did that on his own, but I think a part of him did it for me. He developed a lot of popular friends in the senior high. I still felt sort of intimidated, to say the very least. He was extremely sweet the first year that we were together, but he didn't like my work friends. He viewed anyone that didn't go to our school (a rich school) to be unworthy or something. He came from a broken home. He hadn't spoken to his mother or his little brother in years and refused to. He lived with his dad in a beautiful huge home out in the woods out of town. He did drink a lot and smoke a lot, and his dad supplied the money and the goods for him. It seemed like his dad was a little scared of him. I never really got that until later.

I did not spend a lot of time at home at this point. I was working, going to school when my senior year started again, and then I was hanging out with friends and going to parties on the weekends as much as possible. My parents didn't ask many questions. They had met my boyfriend and liked him at first. I was nervous - his family was so well-to-do and when he met my parents I was afraid he wouldn't want to be with me anymore! But he didn't say much then, so it was okay at that point. They didn't allow me to spend the night at his house (because it "didn't look good") but the rules had become a lot more flexible my senior year. After all, I was working all the time AND keeping good grades. My mom later told me that she didn't ask many questions because she "didn't want to know".

The option to quit work faded away. I was soon expected to buy everything - right down to toilet paper - for myself. They then started yelling at me about not offering to help pay the bills. That was stressful. I didn't make that much money, but I did get a lot of credit cards that I payed on. I was paying for my own medical bills too. I had gotten a kidney stone right before I started my job and was paying a hospital bill that my insurance didn't totally cover. It's not like I was out there blowing all of my money on clothes and such. But when I didn't offer to pay for a portion of the electric bill or something, my parents would get mad and start a fight about it. I was paying for my car insurance and gas bills at this time too.

My relationship with MA started to turn bad and abusive after the first year. He would flip out over the smallest things. He had successfully isolated me from a lot of my school friends. I felt like I was no one without him, and he had told me as much several times. I wasn't any good, but he was still with me. I didn't get that. I was sad, paranoid, and really stressed out. I hid it at first, then I started to share some things with the girls that I worked with and MB. MB told me that she had tried to tell me about him before but I wouldn't listen. She told me what she knew about his past history. Her mom was friends with his mom and then I knew why he hated MB so much - she knew too much. He was always telling me that she was "trash" or worse and that I should ditch her. I couldn't do that. She was the only one that I really trusted (I could tell her ANYTHING) and I knew would not lie to me. I started to think that MA was cheating on me. He denied most of it and told me that it was all in my head. There was one particular girl that was a year younger than us that seemed suspicious. He loved the attention from her and she openly snubbed me. It became this stupid battle my senior year...very immature. I tried to do as much as I could to make her life a little harder and she tried to do the same to me. I'm sure MA sat back and enjoyed it all.

To make a long story shorter, MA and I had an on again, off again relationship. We seemed to hate each other but couldn't stand to be without each other. I dated other guys but always stayed connected to MA. By this time, my parents had enough of MA and forbid me to see him anymore. I lied and still saw him. I think they knew better, but felt that as long as I was still dating other people, there was hope that I'd ditch him.

Funny thing: When I dated a lot and hung out with friends all the time, my parents would tell me that "this is not a damn hotel where you can come and go as you please". But when I stopped doing all that, they told me that I had to "get a life". Haha!

When I graduated high school, my parents pretty much let go of any restrictions I had. My dad said that I was 18 now and they had raised me the best they could. I could make my own mistakes now but I had to deal with the consequences. So with this new found freedom I lived it up! I probably went overboard with it at first. I partied with friends from high school and I partied with the people I worked with. I dated a lot of different guys. Some of them were a little more serious than others, but again, I'd always drift back to MA it seemed.

I did not go to college at the same time that most of my friends did. I continued to work and stayed in touch with friends from high school. I used to go to parties with my friends at work and then end up staying with friends from high school in their college apartments. I had a lot of fun, avoided trouble and had near misses with trouble! But I stayed away from "home" a lot. I was hardly ever there. I know that my mom had a break down during this point. I didn't know a lot about it because again, I wasn't really there.

Sometime during all of this, an incident occured with MA. A big, scary incident. One of the scariest and craziest moments of my entire life. MA had made new friends in college and one night he asked me to come party with them. They went to a house in town (not MA's) and we all drank and played cards. It was a lot of fun. MA got super drunk. He locked his keys in his truck. I had taken a seperate car and was not drunk, though I had drank a little. I didn't like beer so I had barely had any at all. MA was extremely agitated that he could not get into his truck. His friends and I tried to tell him that it didn't matter anyway - he shouldn't drive. I told him that I'd take him back to his dad's house if he would just let me and we'd get his keys (I figured that by the time we got there I could distract him and he'd pass right out). But he wasn't going to go with me. He contemplated smashing the window in his truck but then decided he'd walk the whole way home by walking up this one street which eventually took one out by the woods. He was then going to cut the whole way through the woods and somehow make it home. I was scared for his safety. Again, he was very drunk. It was very late at night and I didn't want him to get into trouble for underage drinking or anything else. I was afraid something might happen to him in the woods. So I followed him up the road trying to convince him to just let me give him a ride. We had gotten a good ways from the house (it was on another street by this point and way out of sight). MA got agitated with me for following him. He turned around and punched me right in the nose! I was lucky that I had tried to move and it was not a full blown contact. It made my nose bleed, but it could have been much worse. I panicked. I called his friend back at the house on my cell phone and told them they needed to come get him. I was crying a lot. They tried to get me to describe where we were, but they were not from town and it was hard trying to get them to the spot where we were. I kept walking after him (I don't know why). The guys hung up to come find us. MA turned around and tried to convince me that he didn't hit me. This was nothing new to me - he had many times flipped out and then told me that I imagined it or something else that made it my fault. So by this time we were up by my Aunt S and Uncle B's house. I thought of going there but it was so late and I didn't want to wake them up or freak them out. Right before their house and their neighbor's house was a telephone pole. Out of nowhere, I kid you not, this car comes plowing up the road and brushes my hip. I distinctly remember my hair being blown into my face. The car slammed right into the telephone pole. The guy in the car seemed momentarily knocked out. MA approached the car screaming at him, "You tried to kill my girlfriend! Get out of the fucking car! You just tried to kill my girlfriend!" I was in shock. The guy in the car seemed to come to. MA tried opening the door to get the guy out. The guy was trying to start his car. MA was still screaming and then tried to break the guy's window. Somehow the car started and the guy went down the road with his car falling apart and MA trying to chase him down. I was shaking so bad. People from across the road came out of their house and MA came back to get me. We walked over to the people and they were calling 911. MA was trying to convince them to leave us out of it, just to report that the guy had crashed and left. They saw me crying and shaking with blood on my nose and probably figured that this had happened from the accident. They told me to sit down and MA was pulling on my arm and yelling at me to come with him. He told the people that we'd both had too much to drink and didn't want to get into any trouble. Then we left. He made me run with him through back yards...I remember that much. It was so dark. I just kept saying "Oh my God, oh my God" over and over again. I felt like I was hyperventilating. So we made it out to a street and MA thought it was safe to move to the sidewalk again. We were headed back to our cars. One of his friends was still on the lookout for us and had ditched the rest of the crew that was searching for us in a car to see if he could find us in a different direction. He approached us and immediately pushed MA back. He started yelling, "Did you hit her?" Of course, there I am, a total wreck - I was just in shock from everything. MA wouldn't say anything. His friend looked at me and said, "Did he hit you?!" I said, "Yes..." and then started crying all over again. His friend punched MA in the face. MA didn't have much time to prepare for it, but MA probably had enough to drink that the punch didn't really seem to phase him at first. He was carrying a knife and pulled it out and swung at his friend. The friend turned around and began running (he was a bigger dude and MA was very athletic and in shape). MA chased him. I didn't know what to do. I felt like my legs were made of Jello. I yelled at MA to stop but they turned the corner and I couldn't see them any longer in the dark. I could hear his friend yelling. Then there was silence. So I found my way back to MA's friends' house, and saw five HUGE guys holding MA down in the front yard. MA was spewing nonsense things. Weird things. It was almost like he was possessed. He was talking about God and just really strange things. MA was not very tall or big (athletic and muscular, but still not anywhere near as big as the guys trying to hold him down). It was like he was full of superhuman strength. Some guy across the street yelled that he was going to call the cops if things didn't settle down. I went over to him and tried to calm him down but he was just going crazy. I pleaded with him. I said, "I need you right now, please, please, just pull it together and let's go..." One girl from the party screamed at him, "Can't you see what you've done to her, you bastard! Help her!" The guy he chased with a knife was unharmed. He told me that they were all going to go in and lock MA out of the house - if I wanted to stay I could. I just could not leave MA there like that. They let him go and ran into the house. He seemed rabid or something. He jumped up and ran after them but they beat him to the house. I was so scared. I was out there with him alone. He was beating on the door and screaming at them that he was going to kill them. The neighbor yelled that he was going to call the cops. MA looked up and yelled at me to get in my car. So we got in the car. He didn't say much. I drove him home. He was breathing very heavy and had this insane look on his face.

I got him to his dad's house and he went into the garage. His dad was not home. I can't remember if he went out of town on a business trip, but I remember his dad was not home. The garage was empty. It was attached to the house. Again, this house was out in the middle of the woods. The closest neighbor was not close at all. It was so dark. I got out of the car to make sure he could get in the house, I remember. He told me to come into the garage. I asked him to turn on the light. He didn't respond, but I could kind of make out his shadow in the corner. I started to panic. I yelled, "M-, turn on the light now!" He flipped on the light. He was holding a rifle. Just standing there, staring me down. I froze. I told him to put the gun down. He didn't say anything, but just kept staring at me. I said, "I just want to help you. Come on, you need to put the gun away." He told me to go in the house. I said, "Not until you put the gun away." I was incredibly afraid to turn my back on him. He put the gun down and held the door open. I told him to go in first but he would not move. So I went inside. I was trying to avoid any other confrontation. He came inside but didn't have the gun. I felt much better but was so tense. He didn't say a word but went upstairs. I thought he was going to his room. I waited. I didn't know what to do. I was really afraid for myself, but I was also afraid for him and his friends. I didn't want to leave without knowing what he was going to do next. I felt that at least I could warn his friends if he decided to do something stupid. So I went upstairs. His bedroom light was on, the door was closed. I said his name at the door, but he didn't say anything. I opened the door and went in. I didn't see him. He had his own bathroom connected to his room. I thought maybe he was in there. I sat down on the bed and waited. He came into the room from the main door and had a bottle of water in his hand. He threw it on me - my natural reaction was to recoil and jump back. I said, "Stop! What was that for?!" He gave me the weirdest look and said, "You shied away from holy water." I was shocked. I could not make sense of any of this. It seemed like a really bad dream. (MA had gotten "holy" water when he had made a trip to Italy the year before. He was very proud of his Catholic faith. I was not Catholic. He had made a big deal about this several times before.) I told him to stop acting this way and to lay down. He just stood there. I know it was a bold move, but I felt that I had nothing much to lose. I got up and took the bottle from his hand and set it on his headboard, then I tried to get him to lay down. He did. He was mumbling something about God and other things, but I thought he was going to pass out. I got up and turned the light off. I was still hesitant to leave, though I wanted to get the hell out of there. MA asked me to come over to him, he wanted to say something. I went over and he asked me to sit down. I did, and when I put my hand on the bed he grabbed my wrist tightly. I felt like my insides were going to explode, I was so tense. He had a light on his headboard and I reached up and turned it on. I'm glad I did. He had one of those big Rambo knives pointed right at me. I grabbed it - he did not fight me - and he let me go. I got up and sat in a chair opposite his bed. I held onto that knife and stared at him all the rest of the night. I did not sleep at all. He went to sleep quickly. I was so afraid to leave. Then in the morning, I thought after he had slept off the alcohol, he would be better. That wasn't so. He talked just as crazy as he did the night before but in an oddly calm way. He told me that he was going to go get his truck and his stuff. They would have to give him the stuff he left in the house. And then when they let him in, he'd kill them all. I said that I didn't think they'd let him in after last night. And he said then even if it took weeks, and he had to "apologize" to them, he would get close to them and then kill them. He was so crazy (and knowing his prior actions and reactions to things) that I believed him. I told him I had to leave to get ready for work and I'd talk to him later. He just laughed.

I was so freaked out. I called his friends and told them not to let him in, just to put his stuff outside on his truck. I told them everything he said. The one girl that was there that night worked for a battered women's shelter, and she thought that I should talk to someone there or file a police complaint. I then stopped at MB's apartment to tell her about it. I didn't know what to do...

I will write more on this later (I am exhausted!).