Why I Stayed
Why didn’t I follow my first impulse and bolt out into the night? If my boyfriend came home and hit me in the face, I would have left. Instead, he broke a lamp, smiling, while I begged him to stop. That smile terrified me. But he didn’t touch me, and all he said were the words I screamed at him when he stumbled into the room drunk for the third night in a row, turning them into questions. Self-destructive? Slam. Bullshit? Slam. When he went up to the roof for a cigarette, I packed a suitcase. But instead of leaving, I locked myself in our room.
At first light, I snuck by him passed out on the fold-out sofa of our tiny Brooklyn apartment and called my best friend. She offered to come over and help me put things back in order, as if I was having trouble with a messy closet, instead of a terrifying man who was supposed to love me. She met me at the bodega down the street. I was shaking, but she didn’t notice. She suggested we buy Vitamin Water and snacks as a peace offering, offered to come back with me, help smooth things over. Shouldn’t I leave? I wanted to ask, but she didn’t seem concerned. I must be overreacting. At the apartment, she pointed out the piles of takeout containers and empty liquor bottles. She helped wash dishes and sweep the floor. Then she left, and my boyfriend fumed about how I’d embarrassed him. Maybe I blew things out of proportion.
Why didn’t I leave? Because I couldn’t trust my own feelings. Because when I reached out for support, for validation, for someone to tell me, yes, that’s awful, that’s scary, you should get out of there, what I got instead was an offer to bring me back, tips on how to smooth it over, a boys-will-be-boys shrug.
Why didn’t I leave? Leaving might have seemed reasonable, or at least bearable, if I hadn’t already done it. This was the fourth time I’d lived with someone. I’d left before, left my stuff, left the city, moved back to my hometown, lived with my parents in the house where my brother once molested me. I couldn’t do it again. I couldn’t keep running. I’d never had a safe home. But maybe if I didn’t run, if I stayed a little while longer, I could get to something else.
It got worse, but it happened slowly, in increments. Often the things he did were hard to explain. He would stand over me, his body looming a foot above mine, fists clenched, spitting words in my face. He would drink until he couldn’t stand and slam his palms against the roof of the car when I’d offer to drive us home. He threw things at me, claiming to miss on purpose.
I did my best to minimize the conflict. I apologized for things that weren’t my fault. I defused, overextended, pretended to forgive the unforgivable. Meanwhile, I dreamed of a better life. I did this in the open, under the pretext that I wanted these things with him; I talked about going to graduate school as an opportunity for us. I even believed it sometimes, that somehow, we could both escape. But mostly, I just said what I needed to, to survive.
There are other reasons why I stayed. I thought I loved him. I thought I deserved it. I thought he could change. I believed these contradictory things simultaneously and irrationally. But I wasn’t wholly illogical. Yes, I told him it was okay when he came home at six in the morning with bloody knuckles and a missing wallet and told me he’d made out with someone else. Yes, I apologized instead of telling him to go to hell when he accused me of being jealous of everyone and everything in his life. But I also took on extra work on the weekends, to save money and to get out of our apartment a few hours at a time. I took the GRE. I applied to graduate programs.
We’ve all been in abusive relationships. We’ve had a boss who yelled at us for things that weren’t our fault, a coworker who gossiped about us behind our back, a friend who insulted us when they were drunk. We put up with it, at least for a little while, because we wanted to believe someone’s behavior isn’t characteristic, isn’t really them. We don’t want to have to start over with nothing when we don’t deserve to be the one who loses.
Maybe from the outside the difference between an abusive boss and an abusive boyfriend seems clear. But to me, it’s like a series of Warhol prints, different only in tone or saturation. Most of the abuse I’ve tolerated has come from men, much of it with sexual overtones. And for most of my life, I’ve been told to ignore it. Ignore the stranger who gropes you at the bar, ignore the boss who grabs the back of your neck and pushes your head down, pointing out the mistakes in your haircut, and the one who touches your stomach at the company Christmas party and tells you what great legs you have. Every woman I know has these stories, dozens of them. After a lifetime of ignoring, it's hard to suddenly draw a line, to say that this is the thing you won’t tolerate. I probably couldn’t have stayed if this dynamic hadn’t been so familiar.
Staying took its toll. Ten years later, the smell of whiskey on my new boyfriend’s breath sends me back to memories more like hallucinations, horrors only I see. Maybe staying was stupid, self-destructive. I can’t pretend I did it with a clear head, or without hoping along the way that I could salvage the ruin of our relationship. But I made a choice. It was a choice that got me out of the city where I had no one. It was a choice that took me away from a career full of bosses who ogled me, where it was considered high maintenance to ask for a lunch break. It led to everything I have.
-Laura M. Martin
Laura M. Martin resides in South Carolina and teaches writing at Lander University. You can find her essays online at New South, The Smart Set, The Eckleburg Review, Luna Luna and Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood.