Total pages in book: 190
Estimated words: 185785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 929(@200wpm)___ 743(@250wpm)___ 619(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 185785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 929(@200wpm)___ 743(@250wpm)___ 619(@300wpm)
My thought processes are all screwed up.
If the old me were on the outside looking in, I’d try to help that poor, pathetic girl get out of this situation. Talk to her one-on-one and if that didn’t work, maybe even stage an intervention. But there was no one to help me, no one to talk me into just doing it, because nobody knows how bad it is.
Why?
I’ve withdrawn from everyone in my life other than him. And I’ve withdrawn from him, too. Withdrawn from who I was, into myself I guess.
And I hate that I’ve allowed it to happen. I chastise myself for it – which isn’t good because if I wasn’t chastising myself, I was listening to him do it and over time with all the voices internal and external, I just feel… less.
No, it didn’t just happen overnight. A frog dropped in boiling water will jump out. This frog let herself get boiled slowly instead.
The first months with him drew me in and in hindsight, it was methodical. He had me making promises. Promises that he now reminds me of when we fight.
Ray has pale blue eyes that are so smoldering – in the early days I told myself I’d be willing to drown in them. I wish I could go back and warn myself that drowning is a torturous demise.
Now? Now I hate even looking him in the eyes as they’re a reminder of what I allowed to happen. A reminder of all the times he used them to cut me down, bit by bit, making me become less and less.
In the beginning, those eyes melted me.
These days, they pierce me. They’ve pierced so many times, I feel like Swiss cheese.
Ray has demons, so he told me early on; I just didn’t know that his demons would haunt me as much as him.
Back in the early days, I was a goner. Swept off my feet. But when the crap started, I tried to handle him with care, be supportive, be what he needed. I’d be there through the all-night talks we had as we held one another, touched that he trusted me with his secrets, talking about his demons, about his childhood, his abusive parents, about the fact that people always gave up on him.
Those early days set the tone for our relationship. I allowed him to emotionally blackmail me and eventually break me down.
I made promises at his urging, no – at his pleading. I wasn’t going to desert him. No way would I abandon him like his mother, his father, like his other girlfriends. We’d be together forever; blissfully happy. Grow gray and wrinkly together. Have everything together because he swore he would give me the world. He knew when he met his dream girl, he’d move mountains to give her everything. He told me I was her. He’d spend his life giving me everything.
Or so he said. And so I believed. For too long.
Over time it became evident that the relationship was all about Ray’s needs and never about me.
He’d throw my promises in my face if I got angry or impatient with him and twist my words up to make himself the victim. What happened back then was what I now know to be gaslighting. Ray tried to manipulate me from the beginning.
He gambles. He lies. He screws up all the time. Forgets appointments or interviews. Sleeps in. Gets fired. Loses money. Overspends. His temper feels like a ticking time bomb grenade, and anything can pull the pin. Illogical things even. He blows up over the slightest little thing, gets right in my face until I cower. And then he apologizes and begs me to forgive him. In the beginning, he’d beg me to give him another chance, beg me to be what I’d promised, not to ever, ever leave him, not to give up on him. In the beginning, it worked. He’d tug on my heart strings with excuses for his outbursts and I’d forgive him.
But over time, the bad moods became the norm. Threats almost always simmered below the surface. And he chipped away at my heart a little bit with each blow-up. I let myself become lost, became his emotional punching bag doormat.
On our second anniversary, we had a terrible argument over something stupid and I told him we needed a break, told him to leave and give me some space.
He looked me right in the eyes and told me he’d never leave.
“You made promises, Violet. Forever, you said. And forever it’s gonna be.”
The next day, he looked me dead in the eye and told me, “I had a dream that you tried to leave me. In the dream, I slit your throat and watched you bleed out. Not that I’d ever do that in a million years, but…yeah… weird dream. I know you’d never leave me.”