Dominance

          In the 13 years since, I find that I still reminisce about what could have been. Where we would be if things were different. If I was different, but especially if he was. In a social psychology class, the teacher had us learn the difference between liking and loving someone. The difference between physical attraction and interpersonal attraction. Interpersonal attraction is the concept of the strength of either liking or loving someone through experiences with them. Physical attraction is usually the first thing we recognize in someone that we may be interested in. The way their hair lays, their eye color, their smile, weight, height, etc. In only having relationships based on physical attributes, we leave ourselves susceptible to being hurt. What do I mean? When we pick someone solely based off the way they look, they may not be the person we thought they were after we get to know them. So, then what do we do when we find out that the person that we have a strong physical attraction to is a piece of shit? Some run, some stay, and some become complacent with abuse because it is easier than leaving. The first time he wrapped his hand around my throat, and not in dominant nature, with malicious intent. I should have run. I should have run as far as I could, but I thought it was my fault. I was so accustomed to people pleasing in my youth, that I must have upset him, did something I was not supposed to. Now that I look back, I think this relationship was one of many reasons I say sorry. Even when I have nothing to be sorry for. There is a difference between a dominant relationship and abuse. He was indeed abusive. In my heart of hearts, I want to believe it was alcohol. It turned him into someone I never thought I would have to run away from. Our exchange relationship, a relationship where either person keeps tally of who has done more in the relationship. We both kept tally, but the realism was that I was putting forth more effort in the relationship than he ever would. I was 19 years old. I had not learned how to value myself nor did I know my worth. He preyed on my insecurities and made me feel like he was looking out for my best interest. He was looking out for himself, part of me knows this now. The other part of me hates that I let him affect how I felt about myself.

In knowing this man lost his parents at such a young age and had to survive in the world by himself at 18. I can only imagine how that made him feel. Maybe he felt like I did, abandoned. I remember how he’d make me feel special, introducing me to his closest friends, people he’d grown up with. I remember watching him effortlessly flirt with beautiful women right in front of me, knowing that I was not allowed to be upset because I wasn’t his girlfriend. He did not want to label our relationship, what was I even thinking? I was thinking that maybe I could change him, make him see I was worth it. Well, I was worth it, just not for him. He introduced me to my favorite drug in this world, X. That day will forever be imprinted in my brain as a core memory. A memory of what I allowed myself to accept in future relationships. I let myself miss the signs, there were so many. His job status, his jumping from couch to couch, his verbal abuse, which later turned physical. Why is it we see these red flags and completely dismiss them? It is because when you base a relationship off physical attractiveness and then take it out of the picture, what are you left with? Values and beliefs. When your values and beliefs do not match the other person’s, you try to make the other person happy by ignoring your own. I have seen it a lot, especially in the younger generations. When you are attracted to or even in love with someone, you tend to abandon some of your morals. Then when the relationship ends, you are left looking at the person you have created in the mirror. A person you may not even recognize.  That is why now, I am firm in my belief that it is extremely important to get to know someone before you sleep with them. In creating a strong core friendship first, the relationship has a better chance of lasting. In becoming intimate you open yourself to an emotional attachment, a soul bond.

A soul bond is a strong spiritual bond you create with someone before or after intimacy. In many cases, it is when you become intimate with the person. I realize now that is what we have, because there is not a day that goes by that I do not think about him or miss him. He even invades my dreams from time to time. He made me realize who I was, who I wanted to be and who I was going to be. His domineering nature lit me like a flame to the fire. When we first met, the first time, I thought I had known him my entire life, we clicked on every level. Intellectually, spiritually, and physically. He stroked parts of me that still have his imprints. Now soul bonds have the tendency to become increasingly toxic. Either one or both people become toxic. One person beats the other down with harsh words or actions, or even both. Our relationship turned toxic, and it was not just one sided. I was just as toxic. Our relationship started striving on toxicity and it made the sex just as hard to give up. When I did leave, I never fully left. I was always going to keep a part of something that never fully existed close to my heart. A part of him always has stayed and maybe always will stay. Remember what I said before, I let this relationship led me to accepting future relationships that were bad as good. I let this led to accepting toxic relationships as normal. They are not normal, and with each, a piece of you is given away until there is nothing. Nothing but a hollow core of a person. A person that can easily dissociate themselves from people. Who can sleep with someone and get bored easily and then cheat. I was that person, and he was that person, maybe still is. Years have passed and we find our way back to each other, checking in and reminiscing about times of passion. What if we stopped finding each other, would he hurt? Would I? Would things be harder than they are now, or would it be a weight off my shoulder, or even his.

I am sure at this point, you are like you were just young and misguided, but I think it was more communal for me. He was not all bad. He was charming, compassionate, and undeniably motivated. He was always motivated, or at least seemed to be. Couch surfing or not, when he finally found somewhere stable for himself to live. He made huge strides in making a life for himself, working, grinding, and achieving whatever it was he was trying to achieve. He never gave up on himself. Regardless of the positives, that dark person still resides inside him. After half a decade of being sober, he continues to find his way back into my life, making me question my fucking sanity. Am I dreaming God? Do I really want to go down this road again? No, I will always be a convenience store he thinks he can run through when he is bored. I keep that in the back of my mind. Fucking Pisces. When I ran into him at RiotFest a few years ago, both of us were in a serious relationship. I tried to walk past him, wanting him to be a ghost from my past that I couldn’t see. He called my name, firmly. I halted, turning around, my heart just started pumping with nerves, like we had just met again for the first time. When he embraced me, there were no words, no words that could describe how I felt. Like my soul was full again. Our conversation was brief and all I could think about was if he thought I was fat now. How fucking horrible, that I even gave a fuck what he thought about me, I was in a relationship. Deep down, I feel if in the moment he said all the things I wanted to hear years prior, I would have fallen down the rabbit hole. Falling just as fast as I had done before.

Normally, I say “In the end…”, but this is the start. The start of understanding that people like this roam the earth and exist to just cause pain and torment. When you say in the end, it is the finish, but you have only just begun. At first, you cry because the loss is so immensely painful it is all you can do. The tears streaming down your cheeks, soft sobs escaping your lips with each breath. Clutching your pillow to hide the gasps of air. Then you have the middle where fight the urge, urge to run back to them. Forgiving them for all the pain they have caused you. Then you remove them completely from your life, so they do not exist anymore. It is a liberating feeling; fundamental. He is FINALLY the ghost of my darkest past and in moving on and finally letting go. I can now try to find healthier, more stable relationships with other people. My point with ‘Dominance’, is you cannot let someone take your soul away from you and not get it back. When you leave your heart open to someone who has caused you the hardest internal pain. Someone who wished for your death, or harm. You leave yourself broken and torn. It is time to pick the pieces up and work towards a better version of you without THEM. You do not need them, because they never needed you. The last thing I asked him was if he ever loved me. As I knew the answer before even typing out the sentence in our snapchat. I wanted to see him say it, I wanted to read it. No. Yes, just as I have always known. The fact that someone can manipulate someone else’s feelings and make them feel something that never existed. It is sick, sick, sick. I hate the way you make me feel, sick, sick, sick. Words of a song so true, and now that you no longer exist. I can fly freely knowing that you will never have energy from my mind and heart again. People who I have told this story to always say, “his loss”, “he’ll regret it”. Truth is? I do not give a fuck if he feels anything because I feel nothing. A man who puts their hands on a woman was never a man at all, a coward. A woman that hits a man is a bully and coward.  He is a story I warn young women about. He is the abuse that I will never let myself ever endure again. He is the fear I will never relive again. In healing, we do heal but time does not heal wounds. It is what you do in that time that heals you. Truer words could not have been said. As I now progress through my life, knowing what I know now. I will always remember the pain I felt. I will always remember how it felt to ride a roller coaster ride that I stayed on for 13 years. No longer, sick, sick, sick.