God Bless This Mess(30)
One time he looked at me and said, “You’re fat.”
I tried to play it off.
“Shut up!” I said. “No, I’m not.”
I wasn’t fat! I was at a healthy weight when we dated. I was sure of it. But then when I got home and looked in the mirror, I saw what he saw.
Let me just stop right here to say this behavior is not okay. Looking back on it now, I can see that I should have spoken up about it, and I should have gotten myself out of that relationship at the first sign of his putting me down like that. But back then, I didn’t think I could speak up. Tucker was popular. I worried that people wouldn’t believe me. I worried that people wouldn’t like me if I said I didn’t like him.
Being with Tucker felt good some of the time. He could be so charming, and so fun. We had our own playlist, and we could have a blast just singing and dancing in our seats as we drove around town. But then in private he had this possessive side that was honestly scary. If I wanted to leave his house, sometimes he would stand in the doorway and not let me leave. We would get into these really crazy fights, then make up, and I thought that’s what couples did. I didn’t know any different.
But it was confusing, because dating Tucker made me more popular with some of the girls in my own grade. They were talking to me more, and that was something I’d really wanted.
A few months in, Tucker told me he loved me. I didn’t say it back at first, but I eventually did. I thought I loved him, that this was love. There were just some bad parts, but we were mostly good. Everybody loved him! How lucky was I to be his girlfriend?
But then he’d say “I love you,” and instead of waiting for me to say it back, he would insist: “Say you love me!”
“All right! I love you, okay?”
“You don’t mean it. You don’t mean it!” he’d yell.
“I don’t mean it ’cause you’re driving me crazy!” I’d yell back, and we’d get into a big fight again.
Because of the pressure he put on me, I did things I definitely wasn’t ready for.
I never had sex with him. I’d been told my whole life that it’s wrong to have sex before marriage. But if I didn’t let him touch me some place that I didn’t want to be touched, or if I didn’t do something physically to him that he wanted me to do, he’d get all upset and say, “It’s because you don’t love me.” Then sometimes, when I absolutely refused to do what he wanted, he’d say, “Well, if you’re not gonna do it . . . ,” and he’d threaten to watch porn, or sometimes turn it on right in front of me.
Once again, I know now that this behavior is not okay, and that all sexual encounters need to be consensual. I didn’t really get the distinction at the time, but for anybody reading this: If someone you’re with is pushing the physical boundaries you’re comfortable with, it’s not okay. What is okay is to stop it, and to tell someone about it.
When I got upset with Tucker, he made excuses for his behavior. He talked about his parents’ divorce, and how his mom and dad had issues, and how sad and miserable he was. I swear he tried to make me cry sometimes, just to prove to him that I felt bad for him. And it wasn’t like I didn’t feel bad a lot of the time I was with him—I did. I guess I just thought that if other people at school thought we were a good match, then maybe it was all okay. I’d seen my parents fight so much I figured that the fighting was, well, normal. That it was just what couples did.
Just before the end of school, when Tucker took his senior trip to the beach, my family went on vacation to the very same beach.
It was on that trip that Tucker’s private behavior suddenly became public. My dad saw Tucker grab me and yell at me through the window of the place we were staying, and he came outside and went nuts on him. “You do not do that!” he yelled, and Tucker practically bowed down. “I didn’t, sir,” he said. “I wouldn’t. I’m sorry.”
I broke up with Tucker, but that wasn’t the end of it. He came over early in the morning one time when my parents were gone. Either the door was open, or he knew where the spare key was, and he brought me breakfast in bed—while I was still asleep. I woke up to find him sitting on the edge of my bed.
“Please just leave,” I said. “Leave me alone!” I closed my eyes tight. “I don’t want to see you. I need you to go.”
He climbed on top of me and grabbed my face and physically pried my eyes open with his fingers. “You’re being crazy!” I cried. “Please get away!”
Another time, after I thought things had calmed down, he begged me to come see him at his house, and I agreed—and it caused a whole scene in his neighborhood because he wouldn’t let me get back in my car. I started yelling, then screaming, and his mother came out and said, “What the hell?” as if I was the one causing the problem, because I was drawing attention from the neighbors.
It was awful.
I wasn’t thinking of Tucker’s behavior as abusive. I would have never used that word. But after yet another fight, I told my mom and her friends all the things that had happened, and they were shocked. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I saw them start to cry about it.
“This is not okay,” they said. And I finally got it.
This was not okay.
I told Tucker that I didn’t want to see him again. He still showed up randomly at times, and “just wanted to talk.” And it wasn’t until I started dating someone else that he reluctantly left me alone. Honestly, if he hadn’t graduated that year and gone off to college, I’m not sure what would have happened. Tucker didn’t want to let me go. And I was scared.