The Truth Will Set You Free

I had never loved anyone so much.

I had experienced “love,” and I had thought that was the pinnacle of the experience. I had adored, committed, and been broken.

But it was different with him. I had never felt anything like the feeling that ignited in my stomach when he put his arms around me. I had never imagined the exhilaration a first kiss could send through my heart, the thrill through my body. No one made me laugh the way he did. I delighted in his company; I felt complete in his presence; I felt comfortable, but never bored.

“This is for your joy,” he whispered, planting a sweet kiss on my cheek. I could not stop smiling, my stomach alive with happiness as his lips pressed softly against my skin once more. “This is for your patience.” Kiss after kiss, whisper after whisper, my eyes fluttered shut slowly as I drenched myself in the moment. I listened. I felt. He kissed my forehead, my nose, my chin, my cheeks, each followed by a dedication, something he cherished about me.

But he had stopped.

I kept my eyes closed, suddenly aware of his warm breath on my lips. My breathing accelerated. My heart raced.

“This is for the future,” he whispered, and pressed his lips gently to mine.

I truly loved him. I would sacrifice anything for him, would do anything if it only meant it would elicit the smile I held so dear.

I would never have imagined that my genuine love for him would be my eventual downfall.

Let me rephrase. It was not my love that brought me down. It was his lack of it.

We were impossibly happy. The transition from friendship to relationship was euphoric; I could not sleep at night, enamored with our reality. For almost a year, he was everything I had ever dreamed I could ever find.

But it all changed so quickly.

We were alive with color and light, but the darkness set in and the vibrancy drained slowly until all we were left with was gray.

It was gradual, but sudden. I can’t seem to remember the warning signs, the time building up to the explosion. In my mind, he was Dr. Jekyll one day and Mr. Hyde the next—and constantly flickering between the two for the duration of the remainder of our time together.

He was gentle and sweet and sensitive and caring, and then he was angry and aggressive and violent and impatient.

I was dancing through life, and then I was tiptoeing.

Maybe I missed something. Maybe if I hadn’t been so caught up in being happy and in love, I would have seen something that would have tipped me off to his instability.

But by the time I saw his crazy, I had already fallen deeply in love with his good.

People ask, why did you stay? They ask this as though I made the decision to fall in love with a man whom I knew to be hurtful and destructive, but this is ignorant. I fell in love with his gentle. I fell in love with his sweet. I fell in love with the firsts. I fell in love with his simple thoughtful surprises. I fell in love with how selflessly he loved me. And this was the man that I believed him to be, because this was the man I knew, and this was the man I loved.

And so when we rounded the corner and I found myself with a man who hurt me, I believed it would pass. This was a stage—a hard time in his life. After all, this wasn’t him. I knew him. I could help him get through this, and he would not let it go too far because he loved me.

That’s why I stayed…at first.

Because at first he was only impatient. He would get upset over silly things, and he would go into a rage.

“Leo,” I said softly, lifting my hand to brush his hair back from his eye. He would not look at me. His fists were clenched with anger, his head ducked, his dark eyes burning into the floor.

“Leo,” I repeated. I lowered my hand to close around his own, interlacing our fingers, squeezing gently. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

He did not answer, his jaw clenched.

“Maybe I should just go back to my room for awhile,” I suggested, skimming my thumb over his skin softly, trying to lift his chin so he would look at me. “Maybe we should just take some time to cool down and then we can talk a little later.”

He lifted his head.

I was shocked by the darkness in his eyes, the deep anger that I had never seen there before. “You know how I feel about rejection,” he growled, jerking his hand from mine.

“I’m not rejecting you!”I insisted. “I love you, and I want to talk about it. I just think it would be better for both of us if we took a little time.”

“You’re rejecting me!” he snapped darkly. “I swear to God, Annie, if you leave I will cut myself.”

That was how it started.

It was an empty threat, then. I would begin to cry and beg him not to hurt himself, reassure him that I was not leaving him for good, that I never would. Eventually he would calm down.

But he continued to use that threat, and every time it hurt me more.

“If you leave I’m going to cut myself,” he shouted as I walked away from yet another fight stemming from absolutely nothing. I could hear the desperation in his voice, but I kept walking. I didn’t believe him anymore. I knew he was all talk; he would say anything to make me stay.

“If you leave me I will KILL myself, Annie.”

My heart nearly stopped, but I kept walking. I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t remember when the tears had begun, but I could barely see through them.

“LOOK!” he screamed.

I turned around.

He had pulled out his knife, blade open and pressed against his wrist.

“Come back here,” he said quietly, “right now.”

“You wouldn’t,” I whispered, but fear and panic had set in. I took a step toward him.

“Keep fucking coming.” He pressed the knife harder to his skin. I took another step.

“Goddammit, Annie.” Before I could say a word, he had sliced the blade across his wrist. He held the blood-stained knife up. “Do you want me to do that again?”

My tears and pleas meant little to him. He knew what he wanted from me, and until I figured out precisely what that was, he would continue to drag that blade across his arm as I tried everything to make him stop.

When he got to that point, I was nothing to him. Leo was gone, and in his place was a crazed lunatic and there was no talking any sense into him. He did not care what I said or did.

We sat in the spiritual life center. He would not look at or speak to me. I had taken his knife to stop him from cutting himself, and we were now simply sitting in silence.

In keeping with the theme of silence, noiseless tears rolled down my cheeks. I felt helpless and hopeless as I looked down at the knife in my hand. Why did he do it? I wondered. Did it help?

I glanced over at him, his head in his hands. Slowly I opened the knife and rested the blade on my arm.

I put pressure on it. I slid.

I bled.

I gasped at the sudden pain, the blood on the knife. I stared at it, and a small whimper escaped my lips.

He looked up.

He laughed.

“Stop being so goddamn selfish,” he told me, his voice mocking and hateful. “Stop making this about you.”

The escalation came in stages, but each stage simply built upon its predecessor. He had decided that my friends were not good for me, and I was “asked” not to see them anymore. If he saw me talking to another guy, it was assumed that I was cheating on him. He was paranoid, possessive, controlling, and manipulative. But it didn’t stop there.

“Please stop!” I screamed, running as fast as I could to try to catch him. We had been running for almost half an hour. Every so often he would turn and glance back to make sure I was still chasing him, sometimes even stopping to let me catch up a bit, but then he would start running again and put distance between us again. It had started as a walk around campus, and I hadn’t bothered to put shoes on—something I was regretting as we neared the end of the pavement.

In that moment, I could not remember what I had done to set him off this time. All I knew was that suddenly he was running, pulling his knife from his pocket, and all I wanted was to make him stop.

As he ran, he cut his arm. I chased the trail of his drops of blood down the dirt road, the gravel digging into my bare feet.

“I will do anything if you will just stop hurting yourself,” I pleaded, slowing to a halt and placing my face in my hands as I cried. Desperation had become my default.

“You can’t do anything,” he snarled at me, turning to glare at me as I sobbed. “You are worthless. This is your fault, anyway.”

“I know, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I cried, slowly walking toward him as though he would scare if I moved too quickly. “It’s my fault. I messed up. How can I fix it? Please let me fix it.”

He said nothing. Instead he began to walk toward me; hope filled my heart. Had it been resolved so easily? Usually it took hours. But he continued past me without stopping, acting as though I were not there, jogging just enough to create space between us again.
I walked behind him in silence.

He stopped on a street corner, turning and watching me approach. When I reached him, he spoke softly.

“I know what you can do to fix this.”

“Anything,” I said quietly, my eyes locked to his. “Anything.”

“You’re not going to like it,” he went on, his eyes flicking to the sidewalk as he fidgeted. He seemed nervous, a drastic change from his previously evident fury.

“I just want to make this okay,” I whispered.

His eyes met mine once more. “Give me a blow job.”

His voice was quiet, timid. I caught a glimpse of his humanity, and I trusted it.

“No,” I said softly. “There has to be something else. You know I won’t do that. I don’t want to.”

Instantly the timidity vanished, the nerves replaced by rage. “Then make your choice.” His voice was dark, his eyes burning into mine. “Do this and get it over with, or go back and tell everyone I’m dead and you could have stopped it.”

That was the first time he raped me.

It was far from the last.

I lived in constant fear of making him angry. I was never safe. Nights were spent on the phone or video call as he screamed at me and forced me to act things out for his pleasure. Sometimes I hid in my room for hours, door locked, light off, phone silenced as it lit up with calls over and over again—first from him, then from his mom, then from my friends. He would tell them any story to get them to call me: he was worried about me, I had a bad day and he couldn’t get a hold of me. Any story, as long as it painted him as the concerned, heroic boyfriend. I knew what he was doing. I did not answer.

Before long, someone would knock on my door. He was not allowed in my girls-only dorm, but he would find someone who was and send them to me. I would silence my sobs by covering my mouth as I waited for the knocks to end and the person to go away, at which time he would begin calling me again, leaving me voicemail after hateful voicemail, calling me name after hurtful name, sending me picture after blood-filled picture. And when I finally couldn’t take it anymore and went to meet him, he would show me his new cuts all over his arms and stomach and legs, ask me how I felt knowing they were my fault, and tell me exactly what I would do to make it better if I didn’t want there to be more.

So why did you stay then? people ask. It is very simple. There were multiple times that I tried to leave. And, consequently, there were multiple times that he tried to kill himself.

What an ignorant, survivor-blaming question it is. As though I or anyone else in my situation made the conscious decision to stay. As though it wasn’t the hardest decision I ever made to finally get out of it and risk being responsible for his death.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was late.

And I was terrified.

My periods had always been regular. I had never missed one or fluctuated by more than a few days.

I was late.

It was too soon to take a pregnancy test, but I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. I was afraid. I didn’t know what to do besides express my fear to him.

I called him and asked him to meet me; not long after, he drove over and picked me up. We drove in silence for awhile, his hand resting on my knee. It was one of the good days.

“I have to tell you something,” I whispered.

He turned to look at me, squeezing my knee as he pulled the car over. Turning it off, he swiveled his body to face me, taking my hand as he did so.

“I might be pregnant,” I said.

He didn’t say anything at first. Tears welled in my eyes.

“I’m so scared,” I said quietly, leaning into his chest and laying my head on his shoulder. “What’s going to happen? I’m scared…”

He did not put his arms around me. He had no words of comfort or strength.

He pushed me away.

“Why did you fucking tell me?” he asked, his voice deadly quiet. “If you don’t even know yet, why did you fucking tell me? There’s no point. Now I’m just going to be stressing about it and it might not even fucking be true.”

I did not answer. I was shocked.

“God-fucking-dammit,” he shouted. “Why did you tell me?”

“I was scared,” I managed finally, staring at him in astonishment. “I needed you. I needed you to tell me it was going to be all right.”

“Why do I always fucking have to be the strong one?” He turned and started the car. “Goddammit Annie. As if I don’t have enough on my plate right now? How fucking selfish can you get? You don’t care about me; don’t even try to tell me you do.”

I could not answer.

“SAY SOMETHING!” he screamed, slamming his head against the driver’s side window. Immediately tears rolled from my eyes.

“Say something,” he repeated.

I couldn’t.

His head slammed repeatedly into the window as he beat the console between our seats with his fists. I was frozen with shock.

“I don’t want to hear anything else about this until you know for sure if it’s true or not.” He turned to face me and I saw, to my horror, the blood caked across his temple. “Do you fucking hear me? Are you stupid? Answer me.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

After our fights, after I had done whatever he wanted me to so that he would calm down, he would always tell me he loved me.
He would kiss my lips gently, a smile on his face, tenderness in his eyes. “I love you.”

And if I did not smile, if I did not say it back with utter conviction, the nightmare would begin all over again.

He would walk me back to my dorm, holding my hand. He would talk about his day, track practice, classes, and I would laugh and talk with him. To a bystander, we were happy. To a bystander, we were in love.

And I think he honestly believed that he loved me.

But I knew better.

We would arrive at my dorm. I would turn to him with a smile, kiss his lips.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

With one final squeeze of my hand, he would walk away and I would go inside. I would walk to my room, smiling and greeting those I passed on the way. I would unlock my door, go in, lock it behind me.

And I would sink to the ground, finally releasing my agony from its carefully concealed cage, and cry.

Take me, God, I would beg. Please just let me die.

He told me I didn’t care about him, that I was so selfish. He told me that all the time. And if there was any way to hurt me more than he already was, that was it.

Everything I did each and every day, every soul-ripping heartbreaking moment of my worthless existence was for him—to keep him alive. I lived in constant, absolute misery for the sole purpose of keeping him from harm.

And not a single moment of it was recognized, let alone appreciated.

The fight had been going on for hours.

We found ourselves in the cafeteria. I was desperately trying to keep him in a public place; it was the only way I felt safe.

I sat on a cabinet in the hallway, and he was standing close in front of me, grasping my hand. To a passerby, we looked like a couple sharing an intimate moment. In reality, my eyes were stinging with tears from the pain of his grip.

My leg was swinging as we fought, a byproduct of my anxiety. As it swung, it made contact with his stomach.

He snapped.

He hit me.

He insisted it was reflex, said it “didn’t count.” He did not apologize. And we never spoke of it again.

I hated and loved him. He knew what to say and when to say it. He could be so sweet and so toxic. Even in the summer, when I should have been free of him, he needed me communicating with him at all times or he would call me in a rage and accuse me of cheating on him, a phone call that would inevitably end with a video call during which he would force me to do whatever humiliating things would turn him on. Video calls that ended at 6 a.m. after hours of fighting and using me as his own personalized pornography, at which time he would say he loved me and I would say whatever I needed to in order to hang up. I would close my laptop, curl up into my blankets, and wail into my pillow so that my parents would not hear me downstairs. I did not know I could cry that way. I did not know I could hurt that much.

We sat in his car in the parking lot.

We had come here to talk in privacy, where we could not be interrupted. It had begun as simply a night alone, but it had quickly morphed into a battle.

He had fallen silent awhile ago, a trademark of these conversations. He would yell and insult me until he had said everything he wanted to say, at which point he would refuse to say any more until I spoke up and told him I was willing to do whatever he wanted me to.

I was not going to say it this time.

The silence was becoming too much for him; I could see it. His fists were clenched and his jaw was set, his eyes squeezing tighter and tighter shut.

I said nothing.

Suddenly his arm extended and his fist hit the window. “Dammit, say something.”

I said nothing.

He sat tall, his back rigid, refusing to look at me. He started the car.

He backed out of the spot carefully, idling in place for a moment. He glanced at me, giving me a chance to change my mind.

And then he hit the gas.

The car lurched forward as he continued to accelerate, going 60 down the 25 mph cobblestone streets. I began to cry.

“Stop,” I whispered.

He slammed on the brakes, and we jolted to a sudden stop as the car rocked back and forth. “Now you wanna talk, bitch? It’s too fucking late for that.”

He stepped on the gas again, then the brake, accelerating and slamming on the brakes so that we were both jerking back and forth in our seats. I begged him to stop.

When he hit the brakes again, I jumped out of the car.

I walked along the sidewalk, shivering in the cold, ignoring him as he drove alongside me. The passenger window was down as he shouted at me from the car.

“Get back in the fucking car, you stupid bitch,” he yelled. I ignored him.

“GET BACK IN THE FUCKING CAR!” he screamed.

“NO!” I shouted, tears streaming down my face as I walked. “You’re crazy, and we’re over!”

“Oh, we’re over,” he snarled, slamming on the brakes. “Then I guess I might as well fucking kill myself. Have fun telling everyone what happened.”

He hit the gas again, stopping again a ways in front of me. When I caught up to him, he held his bloodied arm out the window.

I got in the car.

To write in greater detail of the year I spent in hell would be vulgar and repetitive. The point has been made. There were good days, but they were rare and even those did not pass without tears. I was depressed and lonely, sure it would never end, convinced that my life would be spent in this anguish for as long as I lived. I was stripped of my confidence, devoid of self-worth. And I would have gladly welcomed death at any moment.

It frightens me to think of the way it would have ended had I not worked up the courage to end it. I cannot imagine committing suicide, but I could never have imagined doing any of the other things I did. I honestly believe that if I had not left, it would have resulted in my death.

The breakup is hazy in my mind. I cannot remember much of it. I simply remember having had enough.

It was summer, and it was over the phone.

He threatened to kill himself.

I told him I did not want that, but that I could not take responsibility for it anymore.

I ended it.

For the remainder of the summer, we mostly left each other alone. He was very sweet to me when we did talk, and I knew it was because he knew how he needed to act to get me back. I was civil. But I was done.

When we returned to college in the fall, we had several long conversations. I had not yet recognized our relationship for the abuse that it was. He was broken, and I felt sorry for him as well as responsible. I wanted to help him. However, he would not leave me alone.

I tried to explain to him that I could not be the one to help him through our breakup.

He became livid.

He called me constantly, emailed me continuously, appeared wherever I went. He accused me once more of selfishness, called me the names my existence had been littered with over that year, and threatened to tell my parents and our Christian school “everything.”

And when he said “everything,” he meant “Annie and I have been having sex.”

We had been caught by the school once, and I had not had the courage to tell them what was really happening. We were placed on probation. Unbeknownst to them, they punished me for my rape.

The second offense would result in dismissal, and he was trusting that once again I would not reveal the truth behind the surface.

He was wrong.

“All you have to do is stay with me. That’s it,” he pleaded with me. “I’ll do better. I know I can help you love me again.”

“I’m done with you,” I told him matter-of-factly, shaking my head and ignoring his outstretched hand. “We’re over, Leo. I meant it before, and I mean it now.”

His face became distorted with anger as he yanked his hand back to his side. “Then I’ll tell them everything. I’ll call your parents. I’ll tell the school.”

I pushed down the initial flash of fear, refusing to break his gaze. He would not win this time. “Go ahead.”

Confusion washed over his expression. He stared at me. “What?”

“GO AHEAD,” I repeated emphatically. “GO AHEAD. Tell the school your story and I’ll be sure to fill in the blanks. Call my parents and I’ll do the same. You can be sure you’ll get kicked out and my parents will want a restraining order.”

He took a step back. I stepped toward him, reducing the distance.

“I am not afraid of you,” I said to him, my voice low, my eyes alight with fiery anger. “All I have to do is tell the truth.”

That night put a stop to his threats, but it did not put a stop to his contact with me.

He continued to email, text, and call me nonstop, this time begging me to meet with him and accusing me of selfishness for ignoring him. I had had all I could take.

I showed the texts and emails to someone I trusted, someone who knew everything that had happened. She stood by me as I took them in to the school administration and had a campus restraining order filed. I told them nothing more than that he was essentially stalking me after our breakup, and the contents of the emails held enough cause for concern that they did not question my request.
He was not allowed to speak to or contact me in any way. His lack of cooperation would result in his dismissal.

I was free, and I felt as though I was learning to walk all over again. I had lost so much of myself over that year; it was going to be a long, difficult journey to find what I could and start anew with the rest.

It was an ending, waking up from a nightmare, but it was more than that.

It was the hope of a life worth living.

It was a beginning.