Sitting on my bed, I felt like a statue permanently buried in cement as I was staring around my room at what looked like open and empty space that he himself made me have; it was a rule that if I had too many belongings I obviously had too much room I could hide things, which wasn’t acceptable. The closet that had previously been stocked with hundreds of different neon colored shirts, sweaters, shoes, and skirts was now taken over by dark denim Buckle jeans, multicolored converse, as well as multicolored tank tops. My head was beating; perhaps it was from the lack of food I hadn’t eaten in over 16 hours. I went to my tall cherry wood dresser, reached in the far back of the first drawer and pulled own my Tylenol; this would help me sleep tonight. All I wanted to do was eat something greasy, something that I knew would clog my arteries and make me wish I wouldn’t have eaten that, but first I needed to sleep. I grabbed my brown and green body pillow, wrapped myself around it, and started to slowly go to sleep. At the exact time I was about to only see black my blackberry bold started to ring, I picked it up and heard his voice on the other end.
“Answer your phone on the first ring next time, you worry me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Be ready around 7:00, we’re going out with my friends.”
I knew better than to object to him when he suggested that we go out with his friends, I knew that if I argued with him, it would turn into another fight like the one that had just occurred in my bedroom an hour before. I didn’t know how to tell him no, I had forgotten what it was like to be able to do my own thing since our relationship had started 3 ½ years prior, and I just didn’t want to fight anymore.
“Alright, I’ll be ready.”
Stepping into the warm shower burnt my eyes; I could feel the steam rise up as I buried my face into the water and took in the heat of the water beating down on my entire body until I felt myself go numb. I wanted nothing more than to stay in the shower forever that was the place that I felt away from it all and away from the anger that could possibly come to be later on in the night. I grabbed my peach Dove exfoliating soap from the tray in the bathroom and started scrubbing every part of my body. I could hear my phone on the counter buzzing with text message after text message that were from no one else but him. If you were to look at my phone you would see that the only contacts I do have, are family, him, and the people that he approves of, which goes along with everything else in my life. If I have a friend that looks at him in a way he doesn’t like, he will tell him I shouldn’t talk to them anymore, and as for guy friends, I haven’t had a friend who is a boy in over 3 years other than him.
If you were to ask me, 4 years ago what I thought my life would look like in the future, I would have never said or even thought that it would be the way it is today. I would never believe that I would be the one in an abusive relationship with someone who controlled my every move, what I ate, or even when and how much I did eat, just as I would never believe that I would be the one to keep it hidden as well as I have, but as my mother always said,
“Life surprises you in many ways.”