My ex once called me disgusting.
Well, in actual fact, they screamed in my ear ‘you disgust me’ as loud and as sickening as they possibly could. We had been dating for about eight months at the time. We lasted a year together all up.
The circumstances for them calling me disgusting was... Well, let me just tell you.
For the longest time, I had wanted a lip ring. And when I turned 16, I decided I was going to get one. My partner, who had braces and strict parents who would not let them get a facial piercing let alone a lip ring, suggested that a nose ring would look better on me, in their terms ‘hot’.
I never wanted a nose piercing, I get horrible hay fever, but trusting in their word, the next week I got a nose piercing.
Fast track to the end of the healing process where I was attempting to change the ring over. My partner was over at my house, and my mum was out, leaving just the two of us.
As I tried to put the piercing in, I grew angrier and angrier at myself. Being the light and bubbly person that I am, I don’t respond to negative emotions very well, so I told my partner not to worry as I started yelling and swearing at myself.
I eventually gave up and retreated to the solitude of my room, where I blasted My Chemical Romance’s 2006 album The Black Parade and started painting my art project. I just needed a moment to re-evaluate, to calm down. My partner obviously did not like the way I was feeling, and was upset that they could not calm me down themselves.
Half way through the album’s second song, Dead!, my partner came in screaming. Because they basically matched the volume of the music I was blasting, the only words that actually stuck to me were “you disgust me”, which she said with venom fucking dripping from her tongue. This wasn’t the worst thing she ever said or did to me, but it’s one of the things that still stick with me to this day. A common occurrence, my entire view of myself and my emotional/mental state plummeting in a matter of seconds from the words she spoke.
After that, they left the room by promptly slamming the door. I cried for a bit, while singing the end of Dead! and took a short break from painting.
Tonight, I sit with a bear lip. I took my lip ring out today for a facial mold to be done. I cannot put it back in and I am filled with that same rage that I have felt time and time again. Every time I accidentally touch the vacant space on my lip where a ring of metal should be, I feel less and less like my disgusting self.
