Kaleidoscope Eyes

“I really thought he loved me.”

For Isabella, that had been the hardest thing to accept. She believed in love. She had always been dreaming of the day when she could love a person through thick and thin and that these feelings would be returned. But what really happened was that she gave her all to one boy, and she got nothing in return.

“But a person who loves you wouldn’t do that to you,” she said fiddling with the edge of her tank top.

She had known Mark since primary school. They had grown up a few houses apart from each other in a leafy suburb of Los Angeles. They went to the same primary school and went through High School together. They began dating at the end of Isabella’s freshman year and things had been going amazingly well for the both of them. Almost too well.

But then came senior year. Isabella could no longer devote all her time towards her boyfriend, her parents had been pressuring her to apply to UCLA and she had to catch up on extra credits. Mark didn’t like the feeling that his girlfriend was slipping away from him, as well as the added fact that Isabella had a style overhaul in the summer. She had always been a pretty girl but over the summer, Isabella had fancied a change and with this frame of mind unwittingly attracted a whole load of new eyes facing her way.

Mark had always been a jealous person, even despite the constant reassurances from Isabella that she loved him, but it wasn’t enough. He had always accused her of being insecure, when in fact he was the one that had brought all the issues into their relationship. But he felt like he was loosing control, with every day that he couldn’t understand her joy of cooking, or the days which she happily spent with her friends, he grew angrier and soon Mark was a person that Isabella couldn’t recognise.

He became paranoid and spiteful, often purposely saying hurtful things to hurt her, especially about her younger sister who at the time was at the height of her eating disorder. He called Isabella useless and said that someday she too would end up like her useless younger sister and that she would never get into UCLA.

It all frightened Isabella so much, she couldn’t recognise Mark anymore. He wasn’t that person whom she adored so much anymore. He had become cruel and vindictive and she was completely overwhelmed by it all. She should have seen the warning signs right from the beginning but Isabella was in denial.

“At the time he just meant so much to me, and I was so frightened to admit that he changed,” Isabella said slowly, still avoiding eye contact with John. “I didn’t want to believe it.”

The first time that Mark Coonan hit Isabella was the first time that he had ever hurt a woman. He had always used to say that he could never lay a hand on women and openly criticised the men that were shown on the news and convicted of domestic abuse. But hypocrisy has an interesting way about itself.

He hit her the day she arrived at his house ten minutes too late after having spent a little longer than anticipated with a female friend of hers. His paranoia had reached new heights in the weeks leading up to this night and when Isabella let herself into his parent empty house with a smile on her face, she had no idea what was about to happen.

She held her own as he shouted at her whilst she stood up and tried to explain to him where she had been, but when he slapped her clean across the face there wasn’t much that she could do at her mere height of five foot six, and especially not when Mark was on the football team and worked out three times a week.

And there was very little she could do to defend herself from the blows delivered to her side and face. All she could do was explain the markings and split lip as an accident where she fell down the stairs.

Nobody questioned her.

Not even when her klutz complex grew even more, not even when she started wearing long sleeve tops and cancelling trips down to the beach with her friends when normally she was the one who organised them.

It carried on for all of the senior year.

Over and over Isabella tried to make herself see the truth: that Mark wasn’t the same person anymore and you can’t love a person who hurts you. But she was scared of being on her own. Mark’s constant abuse of her left her feeling worthless, and thinking that even if she left Mark nobody would want an insecure and useless wreck of a girl.

However absolution came with her UCLA acceptance letter. She persuaded him that what they needed was a break now that she had to focus on college. She said that they could still be together but she needed room to breath. He allowed her this on the condition that she lived at home and not in college dorms.

She agreed and for the first semester all went well despite the fact that she didn’t enjoy her course and found college constricting. So without her consulting her parents she dropped out of college and joined the catering company.

Mark was furious when he found out three weeks later and more so when he found out that Isabella had moved in with her new friend David.

It was the worst he had ever hit her.

He can come round to her new apartment that night whilst David had gone to the supermarket to pick up some food. Mark had slammed on the door until it almost broke down and in a furious rage smashed every part of his girlfriend that he could reach.

When David came back and found Isabella bleeding on the floor he took her to hospital. He had questioned her over and over again who had hurt her like that but she wouldn’t say. Somewhere deep down inside of her there was a voice shouting that she still loved Mark, that he still meant everything to her. She couldn’t be without him because then she truly would be alone.

But after that one night her world shifted into perspective again. She realized how bad he was for her. She changed her number and threw out everything that reminded her of Mark. She gradually was able to open up to David and after she told him everything, David insisted they find a new apartment so there was no way Mark could find them.

This was almost two years ago.

However three months before the start of Warped tour the bell of Isabella and David’s apartment rang and Mark was stood at the door holding a big bunch of flowers and wearing a careful smile.

He proclaimed he had changed and that the past two years he had spent in therapy for his anger and his general attitude. He said that he felt like a new person but that he still loved and he couldn’t stand to be without her now that he was better. He wooed her with presents, flowers and smiles, and slowly Isabella began to see the same old Mark that she had fallen in love with in high school before all his issues had taken over him.

David was naturally not impressed in the slightest with Mark’s sudden reappearance in Isabella’s life, but she seemed happier than she had in a long time and so David simply stood guard in the background, always weary of Mark.

But of course it was too good to last, and Isabella learnt the hard way that Mark had in fact changed very little.

“I wanted to believe him so badly when he said he’d changed,” Isabella said, now in tears as she tried to wipe them away with the back of her hand.

John put a warm hand comfortingly on her arm, knowing that it was best not to say anything right now. She still had a lot that she needed to get off her chest.

Things started to go wrong when Isabella started to spend more time with David because of the plans for catering Warped. She hadn’t told Mark that she was going to be away for the whole summer, she was worried that it would set his jealousy off again. She wanted to wait until it was certain that she was to join the rest of the catering team. But unbeknownst to her Mark had in fact become increasingly jealous and angry as she spent more time working with David.

Isabella had finally worked up the courage to tell Mark that she was going to be on tour for the whole of summer two weeks before she was due to leave. In hindsight it was cowardly to leave it that late, but she genuinely thought that Mark had changed and that for once he could be happy of her achievements.

The sense of déjà vu that literally hit Isabella that night was overwhelming. It was exactly like the time two years ago when she had told Mark that she had moved in with her best friend, who so happened to be a male. Except this time it was worse. Every part of her ached but what caused her the most pain was the shame and the embarrassment she felt for thinking that she could ever love someone like Mark who so obviously hadn’t changed.

“I can’t believe I ever let someone do that to me and still think that I loved that person.”

She was sobbing now, all the emotions that had piled up for the past months had reached breaking point; the shame and regret had overwhelmed her for so long and dragged her down. It had changed her so drastically that at times she hadn’t been able to recognise herself anymore.

John now put his arms around her and pulled her into a hug that made her feel more secure than ever. He felt peaceful and comforting, but despite all of this she still couldn’t stop crying.

“I’m so scared that he’s going to force his way into my life again, I’ve been trying so hard to finally let myself be happy again but I’m so frightened that he’s going to ruin everything again.”

John gently pressed his lips to her forehead and lifted her chin up so he could look her straight into the eye.

“I am never going to let him do that to you, I am never going to let him hurt you ever again.”

Every word carried its own weight, every word was sincere and Isabella knew that she could trust everything that John said. Now she wouldn’t have to feel worthless or insignificant again.