The Process of Losing and Gaining

I’m sitting on the couch trying to complete my homework but he just keeps screaming at me. He’s standing in front of me, spitting as he yells. I’m doing my best to try to ignore him. There are only a couple months before our lease is up and I’d be able to move on then. Spit landed on my glasses and I decide that I’m done letting him do this to me. I stand, put my hands on his shoulders, and step forwards forcing him to walk backwards into the wall.
“Leave. Me. The fuck. Alone,” I state this low and through my teeth. The look in his eyes turns to pure rage as he storms off down the hallway. I sign in relief, expecting the exchange to be complete, and relax back onto the couch.
I was wrong.
He stomps back into the living room and flips the coffee table over, sending everything flying, including glasses and our bird’s jungle gym. I duck my head to avoid the flying objects, and when I lift my head I am instead met by a fist directly to the back of my skull.
I sit in shock for a moment; there is a ringing in my ear. I look up and he is staring at me in disbelief. I’ve seen enough abuse in my life to know what I’m supposed to do next. I grab my phone and dial 911.
“You fucked up, Matt, I’m calling the police.”
I do my best to avoid him while I spoke to the woman on the other end of the line, and after while we waited for them to arrive. He began cleaning the mess he’d made, I assumed to make it look like this was less of a problem than it was. I began to tell him not to clean it up, but he threatened to tell the police about my stash of marijuana if I didn’t allow him to finish cleaning.

After the police arrived I was informed that they couldn’t really do anything. Basically, if I wanted them to take Matt to the police station I would also have to go because I put my hands on him first. I’m not sure how they figured that what I did was equivalent to him hitting me, but I wasn’t going to question it.
“Are you going to stay here? Do you have a friend’s house you can stay at?” The officer questioned. I nodded.
“Yeah my friends live in this building. I’ll just…go down there for the night.”
I did do that, but only for the first night. I couldn’t burden them with my presence.
The next few weeks were full of similar situations. I was lucky that my bosses at work didn’t care much about me, so they didn’t mention the bruises I came into work with regularly. The professor of my English class did bring it up to me, though. I assured him that I was fine, and that I was going to get out soon. I could tell that he wanted to help me, but there wasn’t much he could do.
The last three weeks of that class he brought me a coffee and a bagel, plus a knowing smile. During my free time I researched cheap ways to get across the country, and found that flying would be cheapest if not most difficult. I saved every bit of money I made, and bought a ticket to San Diego on credit. I told Matt that I would be leaving, and he agreed that I wouldn’t have to put up my half of the last month’s rent. Though, after that I think the punches hurt a little more. I documented my bruises with my camera, and I wrote in a journal almost constantly.
I didn’t have any specific reason for choosing San Diego, other than I had a friend that used to live in the area and bragged about the weather non-stop. I contacted multiple landlords, pulled the abuse card so they might feel a little sympathy. Right before my scheduled flight I was finally approved to rent a one bedroom home in a really nice part of San Diego for pretty cheap, considering surrounding rent prices.

“And now I’m here, just me and my snake,” I said, trying to hold back tears. I was happy to be out of the relationship, but thinking about what I used to have still made me sad. Tony and I had made it to a secluded area of the beach and we were sitting on a huge log not too far from the water. I used my hand to quickly wipe away a stray tear, and rested it on my thigh. I didn’t really want to look at Tony to see his reaction.
“Hey, look,” I turned my head towards him slightly and watched him point at the sky. I followed the dark outline of his arm, to the tip of his finger, and immediately saw what he was talking about.
“Oh wow…” I felt his eyes on me. “The big dipper. I’ve never seen it.” He gasped.
“What? You’ve never seen the big dipper?!”
I looked over at him and shook my head.
“Mm-mm. I’ve always tried to find it but never could.” I bit my lip, a bad habit I’d formed recently, and turned away from him to look back up at the sky.
“It’s amazing though.”
We sat in near-silence, listening to the waves break. It was low tide, but the water here is never still, unlike the lakes back home. When I brought my head back down to earth I noticed Tony was no longer sitting next to me. I squint my eyes to find him in the dark, but there was nothing. I was suddenly nervous. I’m not a fan of being in the dark, especially when I’m alone. I immediately became emotional about it, but tried to hold back.
“T-Tony?” I called out quietly. Nothing. I stood and turned myself in a slow circle, and began walking almost blindly.
“Tony, where…where’d you go?” I felt my breathing get heavier and my chest tighten. Tears threatened to spill yet again, and there was a hand on my shoulder. I screamed out, “Don’t touch me!” and spun around ready to defend myself.
“Hey, hey it’s me, it’s just me!” My eyes adjusted to the figure in front of me, Tony, I could just barely see the piercing in his cheek. I quickly sat on the ground trying to catch my breath. I cried silently. I know it’s not something that anyone else would see as being worth crying over, but when I’m afraid of something I am truly afraid.
“Kali? Kali, it’s okay, I’m sorry for scaring you,” I felt him kneel next to me. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want him to know I was crying.
“Kali, are you all right?” I nodded, and wiped my face.
“Yeah..” my voice cracked.
“Oh God, I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was going to freak you out like this. You wanna go home? I’ll take you home.” I allowed him to help me up, and brushed the sand from my clothes.
He brought me to his car, and held open the door. I was silent the whole way home.