Screw You Guys I’m Going Home.

I’m like pretty new to fanfic, and I’ve always known writing is a good outlet but it was surreal writing my most recent chapter bc it has a character running away from a physically abusive situation.

Tbh in the fic it’s a father-son abuse situation which I can’t necessarily relate to because I have a decent relationship with my father.

But I did escape an 8 year verbally and physically abusive relationship about 3 years ago now. My ex was violent, hateful, and a pathological liar. He in the 8 years together never held down a job for longer than 6 months due to his temper. My family noticed and I would lie that he was door dashing and ubering. In reality he was occasionally selling pot, not enough to pay for anything substantial, just enough to get us raided. Still I stayed, I went into credit card debt getting him out of it at the age of only 19– Barely out of hairschool. Every penny I had went in his pocket, he had possession of all of my cards, even as a highschooler. He’d spend my money while I was at work and then get mad when I didn’t have enough tips that day to fund his weed-habit. Constantly paying off money he owed to people, working for no gain since I was 17, A baby. I’d come home to my stuff being pawned off and have to go get it back from pawn shops. I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface. I met him in highschool, he was 21 and told me he was in college. It seemed so cool at the time that a guy in college liked me, I had never had much attention at all. It was my first ever real life boyfriend- (found out a year later he wasn’t in college- he actually never graduated highschool.)

and God, was it cathartic to write down that emotion and to describe in a round-about way the feeling of leaving something like that. It’s something I’ve never really talked about in great detail to anyone, even my former therapists. It’s not a part of my history that I’m particularly fond of. It’s something I’ve never been proud of. I laugh it off and push it down and pretend that it never affected me.

When it happened I didn’t know how to explain to people it wasn’t like a thing I was actively conscious of, like I pronounced enough was enough and left in some kind of confident way. it was more like a thoughtless thing, something robotic. I knew it had been too much for far too long but for years and years and years I stayed, that night he left to go smoke with a friend. He left after a fight because I had denied him access to my body— and at this point had been denying it for over a year. He left after throwing a cup of little Caesar’s buffalo ranch at my face— it’s funny what details you remember from things like that. I remembered this one particularly because he threw it with enough force to not only leave a welt on my face but to bust open the package. It wasn’t the first mark I received, and it was far from the worst— but it was the final.

He left his wallet so I took my cards, I packed up everything I could into my little Volkswagen. I left behind chunks of my life, my cats ashes. So many things that at the time were just that— only things.

It took nearly a year to switch over all my cards because even after I left he would continue to use my information to buy games, onlyfans, all kinds of things. I paid off his phone and cancelled his service, he somehow was able to go into xfinity and get it turned back on. This man was literally insane and unstable.

I for years wished truly that I had said how I really felt, told him how truly evil and despicable he was.

But that’s not the story, I left quickly and wordlessly. my brain wasn’t thinking it was more like my body moved on its own. I escaped that night, I sat for hours in my car outside of my grandmothers house until the morning because I didn’t even know how to speak about it. I still haven’t told most of the people in my life because I felt so cowardly and pathetic about it.

I restarted in the best way I knew how, paid off my debt I left with, worked hard, got my first apartment, met a new man who actually treats me like I matter.

I don’t think it was intentional, or I was really aware of it. But when I was rereading the chapter I saw so many parallels to my experience it hit me like a train.

Except I expressed that the character was brave, I somehow throughout the course of writing changed my entire perspective on how I viewed the situation. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t me, it was a character I feel strongly about. But somehow, I felt like I was brave too, I felt that leaving silently was one of the most powerful statements that could be made.