Musings of a lonely mind

  It’s kind of surreal really. I look in the mirror and physically I’m 25, my brain tells me that I’m young; but I look back at so much life experience and I feel like I should be expecting grey hair any day now. Sure I can pull off a little black dress but now that I’ve seen what dating turns into I’m not sure I’d even want to. *Me to new guy*, “Hi, If this works out we might fall madly in love…for a couple of years, but when we break up it will hurt worse than anything ever has and though we’ll try to stay friends there are pieces of each of us that will be irrevocably damaged…. Want to get a drink?” 

  What a strange feeling looking back sometimes, I was madly and passionately in love. The way that the warmth of his hand on the swell of my back could resonate through my entire body, the spontaneity and passion of sex was exhilarating. I really can’t pinpoint what changed, or when that stopped but I know that it did. Everything fell into a routine, but in spite of all of the problems I was okay with that, I assumed that it was what most couples went through while they were raising children. 

  I wonder now if part of the reason I’d fallen so hard for him was the same reason I would have fallen for anybody. I’d just been raped, I felt ugly and scared and all I wanted was someone to save me. It took the simple act of him respecting me when I said no to sex, that was it, he became my safe haven.  I started sleeping in his room (we were both in the Army, these were barracks rooms) before we’d even officially become a couple. He had a couch and I was too afraid to be alone, not just of being raped, but of what I did to myself when I was alone. 

  On top of the horrible thing that had happened I blamed myself, I blamed that naive little girl (I was 19 at the time) simply for being naïve. I used my military issued Gerber and I cut myself, over and over, I drank anything I could get my hands on and as much of it as I could tolerate before blacking out. I punished myself more harshly than the military ended up punishing my rapist. I mentioned before that I was not there to testify at my rapists trial, the reason was that after the last pre-trial hearing I went to, I rolled my car off I-81 at 80+ MPH. I don’t know how much of that was truly an accident but when I survived I’d decided that enough was enough; I backed down, I let him win. 

  In the midst of all this insanity, there was my future husband, telling me the only thing that I wanted to hear, “everything will be okay.” 

  For five years things were not okay, we argued, violence ensued, then things would be better; our pattern erupted time and again until he told me he just couldn’t do it anymore. He told me that neither of us could grow or change in that relationship; I hated him for saying it, but he was right. Since we’ve split his life got simple, all the things that I cared about, like bills and cleaning the house just don’t get done… but he’s okay with that. Me, I’m eating healthy, going to school, putting away some money for a rainy day, taking care of my kids, even building a more fulfilling social life… but for what? 

  There is no easy answer; I’m just looking down the barrel of the rest of my life hoping that if I keep moving forward, keep striving to be better, that someday none of this will hurt so much. Maybe in spite of all my reasons to be jaded I retain just an ounce of hope that there is a Mr. Right out there, a future that I had to walk through hell to get to, but that I’ll appreciate all the more when I find. 

 All just musings of a lonely mind I guess, Goodnight. Xoxo.