So, there I was, grade 11… yet another new school. By this point I was well and truly over everything when I met this guy, lets call him A. He was new as well, he had just moved to Australia with his mum and oh boy, was he a tortured soul. 16 and already an alcoholic. We fell “in love” or so I thought, but this love was sick and twisted. The kind of love that is obsessive and dependent. Our relationship was toxic from the very beginning and just festered the longer it went on. He would hurt himself when I did to “punish me” but he would take it to extremes. In a weird way I have him to thank for the fact I stopped and never did it again because I hated seeing him do that to himself.
We would go to parties and drink or walk to his house on lunch breaks to drink… there was a lot of drinking going on, and every time we did, we would fight and I would get hurt. Halfway through grade 12 his mum decided to move back to where they lived before, taking A. with her and I thought I was going to die without him. I flew over to visit him, my first time on a plane, first overseas trip you would think I’d have more to say about it but honestly it’s all a bit of an incoherent blur. One night I do remember, we were at a party with all his friends, he got jealous over something I did, still not sure what it was but he demanded we go back to his house. Walking back, we got into an argument, and he hit me, pushed me down to the footpath and then just walked off and left me… I was in another country, no idea how to get back to his house just sat on the side of the road and cried. Not sure how much time had passed but he eventually came back to get me. I spent the rest of the night cleaning up his vomit. Charming right?
You would hope after that I’d wake up to myself and break this off and I’d like to say I was that smart but no. After graduation I got a unit of my own and A. came back to live with me. For a year I worked while he sat at home drinking, the fighting and abuse was almost constant until, one night we went to a birthday party for a friend of my sister. Same thing as always happened A. got so drunk and we started to fight. We took the fight out the front and he grabbed me by the arms and was trying to throw me onto the road. My sisters’ boyfriend at the time heard the commotion and came out to stop it. A. was in a rage trying to bottle him with an empty 1-liter vodka bottle and then… well let’s just say A. was sent home in a cab with a broken nose and eye socket. The days that followed my dad intervened and A. was sent home to his mother. We drove him to the airport, I said my goodbyes then I cried the whole way home.
That was it, he was gone, never to be heard from again. I missed him but at the same time felt a sense of freedom but now I was alone and had no one else’s alcohol to pay for besides my own. At one point I was working 3 jobs and still had no money left at the end of the weekend. Trying to fill that hole, that emptiness in my heart with anything and anyone I could.
I had a couple relationships after A. I didn’t actually love them I was just trying to make “smart choices” thinking they would be safe bets. There was C., who took longer in front of the mirror to get ready than I did. He told me he was, “sick of seeing me naked” then cheated on me with a girl I used to know. There was M., a nice guy, everyone loved him. He played his computer so much I felt more alone with him then I did on my own and I resented him for making him feel that way. It was like everything he did annoyed me and still… he proposed and I said yes. I think I said yes just because I wanted to be a wife and a mother more than anything. To have a family that loved me, a place where I belonged and well… at least this guy didn’t beat me and would never cheat on me, but I was miserable, and it didn’t take long for me to snap and break it off.
Then there was my last ex…
Managing Mayhem 